Slashdot Mirror

Like this? In the 1990's?

The paper says they are using a computer from Gumstix.
The "minicomputer" confusion is from the paper calling them "miniature on-board computers".

• Gumstix the Company
• Gumstix Open Source Linux

I have a Gumstix Overo Fire COM - "Computer On Module". It really is about a size of a stick of chewing gum, however the I/O board it mounts on is much bigger. I'm heavily into woodworking, so I'm planning to make a real nice hardwood case for my Gumstix Android Tablet.

Gumstix sells individual units to hobbyists, but most of us have commercial products in mind, at which point Gumstix offers volume discounts.

The schematics of the I/O boards are Open Source.

Michael David Crawford, who can't be bothered to recover his password.

Though when you need closer to a full system, there are other options at the $200 price range, mini/micro-itx etc. Though larger than a Pi or BeagleBoard, you'll get more power, flexibility and compatibility.

If you're prepared to spend $200, you can have a gumstick or some cotton candy, both of which are not bigger than a USB stick, much smaller than a raspberry pie.

These are pretty cool: http://www.gumstix.com/

Super tiny!

Don't do that to me. You make my brain go strange places.

I'm picturing a security-focussed Linux-based portable computer, that uses the Linux Mint distribution, but only a really stripped-down, bare-minimum installation. Just enough that once you set up the password to log in, you can then run a virtual machine from an encrypted loopback device which actually contains a "full" Linux Mint distribution.

And then you install that setup on one of these...

"Double Mint Gum(stix)"

Because they're fun? I did development on a board with a similar spec about ten years ago - back then it was an expensive and unusual board in a research lab. The difference that comes from a "disposable" price-point is amazing. I'm sure there will be a huge number of fun projects with these boards outside of their target educational market. If you want to go for the luxury $100 market then gumstix are quite nice boards to play with.

A heck of a lot cheaper than the Gumstix board I bought a few years ago! and about 1/6 the price of the Beagle Board I bought last year. Looks interesting.

This? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumstix aka http://www.gumstix.com/ All models appear to have SD card readers.

As a further alternative, there is always the Gumstix. But, overall, the Pandaboard looks like a much sweeter deal: for $174 you get a dual-core ARM A9 board with 1GB, DVI output, Bluetooth, and all the goodies. I think I'll get one really soon now.

...considering how much software, both for Windows AND Linux, that isn't for ARM based CPUs...

CPU architecture doesn't really matter with FOSS - once you have a working compiler, you just compile everything from source. Alright, you need some arch-specific work in the kernel and a few other places too. But by the time you get to end-user applications, all of that is long gone. So I would reply with "almost all Linux software already is for ARM-based CPUs". Or MIPS. Or POWER/PowerPC. Or whatever architecture you want.

And one advantage that ARM's low power/heat could bring is high density. Take a look at the Gumstix boards. Now imagine a "blade server" board with 16 or more processors crammed onto one board. You could easily get at least a few hundred CPU's in a 19 inch rack, with each CPU draining less than a watt of power. Now I'm not really sure what could be done with such a system - either do everything over the network (NFS or ATAoE), or equip each CPU with a good lump of flash storage for data and programs. But it would draw very little power and is something to think about.

Really well here you go.
http://beagleboard.org/hardware
http://gumstix.com/
There are a lot more but beagleboard is the closest I have seen to a mini ITX board.
Just plug in a keyboard, mouse and monitor and you are good to go.

VirtualBox or VMware have always worked pretty well in my experience. VirtualBox is free, and VMware Server is free as well. I know there are Linux and Windows ports for VMWare Server (for the host OS), not sure about VirtualBox. The one problem with virtual machines is the students' computers will have to have enough resources to run the software plus the guest Linux OS that they install. Some students' home systems might not be quite up to par.

Perhaps another route, although a bit more expensive, could be to go with a computer-on-chip type system like Gumstix. They have entire kits that can be purchased for about the price of a netbook. The students would just need access to a keyboard, mouse, USB hub, and monitor. It doesn't run Ubuntu by default, but there are instructions on how to install it. That could be an interesting project as part of the class, even as a final project after the students learn how to install to the desktop. They can take that experience and apply it toward installing Linux onto an embedded device like the Gumstix. Just a thought :)

Problem is almost all the cheap computers are in netbook format.

Huh? What are you talking about? My favourite hardware online store has an Atom-based motherboard for a whopping 58.90€. Add in a 1GB stick (if you don't already have some lying around, like I do... from dumpster diven machines) for a 23.99€. You can most likely reuse your cases and power supplies (I have an Atom ION 330 motherboard living of a 300W powersupply and that overkill). That's your base system for less than 85€! Matches your "below £100" no?

If I just want the motherboard, or a box without a screen, they assume you're in the embedded/industrial market, with prices to match

Ever heard of Soekris? Sure, they are not *that* cheap and not that high-performance but you were talking "home servers". I have a net5501-70 and it handles pretty much anything I throw at it for home server usage. Of course, that's not in your given budget range...

Now, I admit that these are all x86 machines but currently your machines are too.

Perhaps you can base something on this. Based on XScale processors, but they seem to be out-of-budget too.

Perhaps you might start reavaluate your £100 requirement. I haven't seen any netbook at that price either. £100 ~= 115€. Cheapest netbook I have seen was 199€ and was Linux based. So, I ask you the reverse question; Where can I find a £100 netbook?

Agreed. It's what Gumstix seems to be using for their tiny ARM-based boards, it's a good lightweight alternative to the increasingly bloated glibc.

ARM is getting big these days, it's not a market to sideline.

Nice, but I don't think this is as big a deal as all that. More along the lines of price pressure than anything else. I may buy one, because it is so cheap. Even if I don't, I'm glad everyone else will have to lower their prices now. I've always felt they put on too big a price premium for the small size, considering the generally low performance of the class as a whole.

There are many similar devices already out there. There's the much beloved Linksys WRT54GL. I have a Soekris. Not the most friendly plug and play device ever. I find it easier to update the CF drive by removing it and mounting it on a desktop system and editing files that way, rather than connecting via a serial port terminal. Gumstix is another. Lots of super micro mini ATX form bricks (mini-itx) out there too. Expensive though.

I do that on my home phone line (actually even simpler than that -- "Press 1 to continue in English"), and it works quite well.

Could you please provide a link that could explain how one would go about doing this themselves?

I'm using a Gumstix box running Asterisk with a SPA-3102 for the connectivity to the actual phone line proper, and a compact flash adapter (on the Gumstix) for storing voicemail. It also routes outgoing international calls to my SIP account with the Gizmo Project folks (much cheaper than AT&T, the local landline provider), and feeds incoming SIP calls into the house phone.

This was set up as a hobby project, so I wasn't going for a lowest-cost solution. If I were doing it again, I'd probably see about using my home router in place of the Gumstix box (I'm waiting for stable OpenWRT support for the WRT610N, with its USB host interface and 64MB of RAM -- more than powerful enough to run Asterisk in addition to its normal workload, with the voicemail storage and software that won't fit in 8MB flash kept on an attached external drive), or at least get one of the newer Gumstix motherboards with an FPU onboard to be able to receive and send faxes with iaxmodem (as the SpanDSP library it uses hasn't yet been ported to fixed-point, and so doesn't run acceptably on FPUless embedded hardware).

Once the hardware is set up, the actual Asterisk configuration is embarrassingly trivial, at least until I get around to implementing all the wishlist features I've been putting off. Should you decide to go the same route, drop me an email and I'd be glad to lend some assistance.

And you know in 20 years they will be in exactly the same position. Software and hardware will have progressed so much the youngsters will say: "what less than 20 cores?"

When I was in college, I worked on a PDP-8/L on the third floor, when an IBM 370/168 was running in on the (entire) fourth floor. That 370 had an 8 MHz CPU clock, 1 Mbyte core memory, 1 Mbyte of new-fangled MOS memory, and 20 disk drives adding up to about 200 Mbytes.

The Gumstix Verdex Pro has far more resources. Their new Overo Earth is even better equipped while being smaller yet. Low power, low cost, and way more powerful.

Ray Kurzweil writes in The Singularity Is Near: One could argue that the information processing capability of the most advanced life form has an unblemished record of exponential increase from day 1. That record continues today.

I believe that in 20 years, the question won't involve counting cores any more than today's questions involve core.

I am 51 and I've worked on essentially all the machines in Mr Burnet's collection. In college, I would have exchanged my soul for a PDP-11/45, but it (the soul) wasn't valuable enough! :-) :-)

And you know in 20 years they will be in exactly the same position. Software and hardware will have progressed so much the youngsters will say: "what less than 20 cores?"

When I was in college, I worked on a PDP-8/L on the third floor, when an IBM 370/168 was running in on the (entire) fourth floor. That 370 had an 8 MHz CPU clock, 1 Mbyte core memory, 1 Mbyte of new-fangled MOS memory, and 20 disk drives adding up to about 200 Mbytes.

The Gumstix Verdex Pro has far more resources. Their new Overo Earth is even better equipped while being smaller yet. Low power, low cost, and way more powerful.

Ray Kurzweil writes in The Singularity Is Near: One could argue that the information processing capability of the most advanced life form has an unblemished record of exponential increase from day 1. That record continues today.

I believe that in 20 years, the question won't involve counting cores any more than today's questions involve core.

I am 51 and I've worked on essentially all the machines in Mr Burnet's collection. In college, I would have exchanged my soul for a PDP-11/45, but it (the soul) wasn't valuable enough! :-) :-)

Those specs are very similar to the Gumstix Verdex, which runs 2.6 just fine.

Gumstix seem to have more options.

There are also a handful of different "sets" from Gumstix which are seemingly more similar to this BUGboard than the thing you posted (which has more similarity to a microPIC than anything usable and has a steep learning curve).

Gumstix has been for a while. Their hardware is the basis of many devices out there, noteably the Amazon Kindle, Sony E-ink reader, and the E-ink development board.

And if you need more than what the Arduino has to offer check out the Gumstix

Nothing to see here. Gumstix has been around for quite a while, and their stuff is cheaper... and more useful.

I noticed the price was kinda insane. Why would anyone want to pay that kind of money for the cube when you could buy a Gumstix for $200? You can even expand a gumstix box by using daughterboards,whereas with the cube you are just stuck with what it has. They would need to be a lot lower than a Gumstix or Netstix for me to look at one. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

I noticed the price was kinda insane. Why would anyone want to pay that kind of money for the cube when you could buy a Gumstix for $200? You can even expand a gumstix box by using daughterboards,whereas with the cube you are just stuck with what it has. They would need to be a lot lower than a Gumstix or Netstix for me to look at one. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Gumstix are tiny 386-compatible boards - although they're modular, they occupy less volume than a space cube.

Well for model rockets it isn't as bad as you might think.
http://rcsource.hobbypeople.net/calendar.htm
And if you decide to go the rocket route here is a payload that is right up your ally.
http://www.gumstix.com/
Maybe you could build a war rocket or RC plane and look for open waps :)
Or build a really fast and high PBX :)

Oh this is sooo easy to do: http://gumstix.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=202 Ok done. Only problem, it is going to run closer to $500 for all the parts you need. Considering a 4.3" touch screen runs $85 if you're not buying in quantity, and a 4GB micro SD runs about $15, that's $100 right there. And the cheapest retail 15" touchscreen I've seen is $299, Megavision MV155U, and the power requirements for that thing make "portable" an impossibility. I've been playing around with building a dual screen ebook reader and I've come to the conclusion that it will cost at least $800 to make a one off prototype without doing anything really special engineering wise. To get down to the $200 range you need basically need to get your screen for free, or buy an iPhone :)

I think Gumstix are so popular precisely because they are completely open.

Not hard... Make sure to plant the downloading software on machines that are not linked to you. (Coworker you don't like, a badly secured server, etc, etc..) Many places don't do MAC-address checks and connect any laptop to the network and they will access the whole network. A few Gumstix Linux machines that download Britney Spears continually to /dev/null, well hidden around the office under the raised floor.

It's easy, really...

Not that I would do such a thing, but you just have to think a bit out of the box.

There are several inexpensive ARM boards available in small quantities, look in any recent Linux Journal. I am currently running several systems built by Gumstix which work well for me and for my customers.

I have no financial relationship with Gumstix. I have several of their systems. Cheap, effective, and supported by an exceptionally active, friendly and supportive mailing list.

Your post doesn't describe required specs or desired features, so it's not easy to know what you're looking for.

Gumstix. The eBox, if you want something much, much meatier for $300ish.

The technology exists - consider radio scanners and repeaters. Add in some memory and create an interface to your mini scanner/repeater (sounds like a job for gumstix http://gumstix.com/ ) and off you go.

FWIW directional antennas (dish, yagi) could direct a RF signal source at distance & coupled with a rifle site it would make all of those people carrying RFID easy targets to pick out of a crowd.

Whose idea was RDID tags in passports, anyway? The Saudi's?

I can imagine that many here will have a hard time seeing the utility of a device like this because it doesn't have the horsepower for gaming or 3D rendering.

Are you new here? Most of us see a use in such machines. Heck, I'm a notorious dumpster diver, and specs like this are a "gem find" for me. Consider this: it's a kickass small server for the price. Sure, it won't run a whole corporate network, but if it's relatively quiet, I could run a fileserver on it (replace the 60Gig with something bigger)... A nice firewall (not sure if one can add a second NIC), or simply a nice computer for the kids. After all it comes in cheery colours, and they can run an x-session to the home server for more heavy duty stuff.

People around here love things like Soekris boards or Gumstix modules and you should have read the enthousiasm about the EEE PC. For 200$ (135€), I'd buy one without thinking. Heck, I'll take three!

you'd like Gumstix, it's closer to what you want.

http://www.gumstix.com/

Thanks, that's a decent approximation. However, it costs $249 if you don't subscribe to their Internet service (their real business), or $338 if you subscribe and immediately cancel, while the service costs $13:mo for 2 years minimum (cancelable) prepaid.

It's also kind of overkill for my app. It's got a bunch of SW preloaded, which has some kind of cost in installation/maintenance even if it's FOSS. It's got QXGA display, which I don't need, kbd/mouse ports (in addition to USB), and the 4GB Flash is costs about $30 (though power saving), which could probably buy a 40GB SATA HD - $15 buys 20GB SCSI HDs. Even the CF slot is probably a few extra unnecessary bucks.

I bet that the $249 is full of not only profit, but also higher to balance the loss of profit from the network business. And the extra HW could be another $50-75. If this box, stripped down, could sell for $100-150, then it would be exactly what I want. As long as I can telnet into it and force it to install Linux from across the ethernet.

Meanwhile, the Gumstix waysmall 200 is almost exactly what I want, for $129, but no soundchip. All the cheaper Gumstix have client-only USB, so can't take expansions. Though the $186 200xm-cf has CompactFlash, into which soundcards or CF/USB adapters can plug. And the waysmall 400m-bt has Bluetooth, which might send audio data to Bluetooth speakers or audio adapter, which could be even better, for only $200. But the audio module is $40, and the USB host module is $27, so $197 does get me all I want. Even if the extra $52 for the Zonbu gets a lot more (in a larger package). I wonder whether the Zonbu has 25% more processing power.

Since Gumstix is so close, there's probably a competitor. My app is basically an "ethernet to stereo/5.1/7.1 audio" adapter, which has got to be a popular app (at least a . Probably there's one that has either soundchip or just USB host (for external DAC), with options for either ethernet or WiFi. For under $200, if not yet under $150.

Even an embedded Linux platform (e.g. Gumstix) would be a bad idea for this project, as cross-compiling is a PITA. For rapid development (something I have much experience in), go with a standard PC with your development system of choice: C/C++, LabVIEW (really, not flamebait :) , MATLAB, etc.. Basically whatever you already know. Whatever can get data in and out of an ethernet port.

As for hardware, there are so many ways to go. If you have some cash laying around, go with National Instruments as their hardware line is well supported, has a very nice C/C++ API library, and will stand up to the elements pretty well. Even if you're on a budget, they sell some multifunction USB DAQs for less than $200. Buy your motor controllers and control wiring from Automation Direct they'll have almost everything you need.

Depends what hardware you are looking for...

http://www.dspdesign.com/products/index_html?categ ory_id=1

http://www.embeddedarm.com/

http://www.phytec.com/

http://www.gumstix.com/

http://us.kontron.com/

I think one of these products (or similar) would be much better suited to the task: http://www.gumstix.com/. They are a lot cheaper, more configurable and should be able to run unmodified kernels, which is a big plus concerning reliability and security. It lacks the design case from a Nano, but maybe that's acceptable in this application.

Gumstix Connex with a netDUO-MMC and you're in business. 64 Mb RAM, bluetooth, dual-Ethernet, MMC slot for storage, 400 MHz -(Intel XScale® PXA255).

Gumstix Connex with a netDUO-MMC and you're in business. 64 Mb RAM, bluetooth, dual-Ethernet, MMC slot for storage, 400 MHz -(Intel XScale® PXA255).

I recommend Gumstix for beginners.
It uses U-Boot and the whole uClibc BusyBox Buildroot stack for development.
It is rather slick to work with. They even added support for the rt patch not too long ago which was a big bonus for me.
I've been working with it for about a year now and I have to say it's really the best solution for embedded Linux beginners.

you might already be able to do that.

i think you can make your own computer into a cellphone if you get a certain type of adapter, like the ones this comany sells. i think you just need to get a SIM card and plug it in. and you'll need to find/write some software, i'm sure.

and gumstix makes a variety of very small linux computers.

now you'll need some type of interface thing. not sure about the hardware, but you could find something that works with qtopia

granted, $10 says the end-result doesnt fit in your pocket.

The embedded world has had complete computers on "motherboards" this small for quite some time. Check out gumstix sometime.

The fundamental problem with PC based motherboards has always been heat dissipation and interface connectors. Heck, the back panel of my desktop uses more area for the connectors than exists on this board. There are processor heatsinks bigger than this thing!

PC's have always been about cheap computing power, not low power dissipation or form factor. I remember a time when the power of your desktop was considered commensurate with the size of the box - we had friends putting regular motherboards into server towers so they could "impress" fellow geeks.

Not that I would mind x86 in the embedded world, but it seems to me that this is going nowhere fast. The problem isn't technical - it's business. Most embedded systems run some sort of ARM variant, which would mean that code would have to be ported to x86. Furthermore, there's no way this would make it into a cellphone - primarily because of the fact that it is x86, and the carriers are adamantly opposed to the prospect of the consumer being allowed to run unauthorized code on their cellphones.

Linux already runs on the ARM, and you still aren't seeing a proliferation of ARM-based general purpose computers. While this would be nice for a sub-notebook, the problem is that sub-notebooks, while a personal favorite of mine, typically have not done well in the marketplace. Consider the HP Jornada, which was discontinued after a few short years. And it seems today that that trend is toward larger, not smaller, laptops.

But does the taste move you when you pop it in your mouth? It's just not the same unless the taste - the taste - the taste - the taste is gonna move ya.

Do you know the Gumstix http://www.gumstix.com/ they are embedded linux platform which run on that pxa270. With 64mb of ram and I can't remember the flash size, it's smaller than a juicy fruit stix...

http://www.gumstix.com/ might be what you're thinking about.