Slashdot Mirror

Marvell's done that...with up to quad cores even. Dell partnered up with them to make their first ARM server in their lineup.

from WP PXA940 Little is known about the PXA940, although it is known to be ARM Cortex-A8 compliant.[11] It is utilized in the Blackberry Torch 9800[12][13] and is built using 45 nm technology. ^ http://extranet.marvell.com/technologies/cpu_history/cpu_history.jsp ^ http://www.ubmtechinsights.com/reports-and-subscriptions/investigative-analysis/blackberry-torch-9800/teardown/ ^ http://www.ubmtechinsights.com/uploadedImages/Public_Website/Content_-_Primary/Investigative_Analysis/2010/Blackberry_Torch_9800/torch-front-web.jpg

Intel was the top contributor to Linux 3.0 (by lines) (source)

IBM is in there, too at #8

Google pushed the Linux kernel and WebKit into an uncountable number of handhelds

Apple deploys Webkit, too, on a smaller number of handhelds

Amazon deploys Android, too (just without Market support), and they use Linux in their cloud offerings.

If you hate Microsoft, give in to your anger and join Oracle (there are a lot of angry JCP and OpenSolaris fans but hey, they made that Linux list, too!)

Remember those handhelds that run the Linux kernel and/or WebKit?

• Broadcom
• Atheros (are they are part of Qualcomm now? You can check out Qualcomm, part of "Qualdroid")
• Marvell

all made the top Linux contributor list, too.

I'll assume that other posters will cover the Red Hat and Novell bases.

There you go:
http://extranet.marvell.com/drivers/files/install_v10.88.1.3.tar.bz2
You're welcome!

Most $600 cellphones have more functionality than this thing (I was going to say power too, but its new Marvell SoC is described as having a FLOPS count 2x that of non-Tegra hardware). They also charge quicker (and probably last longer), some have more durable (and improved) screens, they make calls, they have lots more SD space, and they come with an actual operating system (with apps).

This project is doomed. When do we initiate One-Phone-Per-Child or One-Tablet-Per-Child?

Oh wait.... Darn

Buy a SheevaPlug. It's a headless Linux PC that consumes less than five watts and is about the size of an electronic ankle bracelet.

I run Lighttpd, MySQL, SVN, and Samba on mine. If I weren't so lazy I'd set it up as a mail server. I would post its URL here to test it, but, naaah.

Take it to your local recycling bin and just forget about this piece of garbage. Really, buy something better and more power efficient. I recommend a Sheevaplug if you want to keep price low, power consumption low, and get a lot better system in general.

My SheevaPlug arrives via Fedex in about 30 minutes :).

how much did it cost you? been looking at getting one myself.

Well, if he doesn't answer in the next 17 minutes, we know we're not gonna hear anything for a few days....

My SheevaPlug arrives via Fedex in about 30 minutes :).

It's going to be like Christmas in a few hours. The Fedex box will be ripped apart strewn across the living room as will be the product packaging. I'll plug it straight into the wall and Ethernet, realize it doesn't do much. Break out the 8GB SD card and not sleep tonight.

The most obvious answer is Marvells SheevaPlug, about $100 US. It uses approximately 5 watts, I have multiple usb hard drives hanging off of a powered 2.0 usb hub, right now I have about 2 Tb hooked up, but it is easy to add or subtract. I run mysql, apache2, with a dyndns account I can access everything from any where. I run a vnc server also which also allow me access to a virtual desktop as the SheevaPlug itself does not have vga output. I never turn it off and it is fanless. I boot debian lenny from a 8 GB SD. I can not believe there is a more energy efficient solution out there at the moment. Very nice. Check out: http://www.openplug.org/ http://www.marvell.com/featured/plugcomputing.jsp http://www.marvell.com/products/embedded_processors/developer/kirkwood/sheevaplug.jsp

The most obvious answer is Marvells SheevaPlug, about $100 US. It uses approximately 5 watts, I have multiple usb hard drives hanging off of a powered 2.0 usb hub, right now I have about 2 Tb hooked up, but it is easy to add or subtract. I run mysql, apache2, with a dyndns account I can access everything from any where. I run a vnc server also which also allow me access to a virtual desktop as the SheevaPlug itself does not have vga output. I never turn it off and it is fanless. I boot debian lenny from a 8 GB SD. I can not believe there is a more energy efficient solution out there at the moment. Very nice. Check out: http://www.openplug.org/ http://www.marvell.com/featured/plugcomputing.jsp http://www.marvell.com/products/embedded_processors/developer/kirkwood/sheevaplug.jsp

I thought that was the idea behind Zigbee, the low cost, low power, mesh networking standard. Not to mention, there is a home powerline networking standard, HomePlug alliance, that has been out for quite awhile. Unfortunately, neither of them is popular enough to get the economies of scale. (now if that fancy little linux powered wall wart http://www.marvell.com/products/embedded_processors/kirkwood/plugcomputer.jsp would support either of the other two standards, we might be able to do some very, very cool stuff!)

http://www.marvell.com/featured/plugcomputing.jsp

I think you're after a plug computer ( http://www.marvell.com/featured/plugcomputing.jsp ) and just don't know it yet. Super low power, ARM-based system that can (easily) run debian + an apache stack, along with whatever else (well, within reason) you need. http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-22-sheevaplug-dev-kit-us.aspx has it for $99; you can get a European or UK version as well.

And buy one Sheeva Plug Computer http://www.marvell.com/featured/plugcomputing.jsp. I bought one and now I save about 245 W per hour. I love this wonderful machine. I have an apache/mysql/webcam, mldonkey, bittorrent, ssh, samba, print server and nfs services and run fine!

Mod parent up. I've got a Compaq Presario desktop from 2001 currently acting as a simple file server and IPv6 router, but I'm giving serious thought into replacing the whole thing with a plug computer. Not only does the later consume only a tiny fraction of the power the PC is, but it's also considerably more powerful (better CPU and more RAM than the full desktop, imagine that).

At $100, they should have a "BUY IT NOW" button on their site. They missed at least one quick sale from an impulse buyer here.

The link to buy it was right there in the summary and has a big magenta button on the first page that says "BUY NOW $99".

And I also couldn't help but notice that Marvell's page for the device has a big clickable image on it that says "VISIT PARTNER PAGE TO BUY."

I agree that this device, at present, is a trifle too limited. USB expansion works; but it gets rather clunky if you want more than a few devices. On the plus side, the platform on which it is based offers a variety of more serious expansion options(2x SATA, 2xGbE, 1xUSB, 1xPCIe, and a bunch of serial and similar). It would be quite easy and, I suspect, quite likely for either Marvell or third parties to build slightly more expensive and substantially more functional versions of the device.

You can beat this with an array of Pogoplugs at $99 each. They draw under 5W and have 512MB RAM, 512MB flash and GbE. Stick a 64GB USB stick into it. They about about 3in square.

Pogoplug is same thing as a Marvell SheevaPlug.

Interesting that that post is from 2007.

Marvell's canned history of their processor line states that in 2007 they released a core which -

pushed performance to the next level, featuring Wireless MMX2, floating point support, and compliance with both the ARMv5 and Intel XScale architectures.

Sheeva is the next generation from these and should be pretty quick, operating at over 1GHz and with FP.

What the hell is wrong with you?

http://www.marvell.com/files/products/embedded_processors/developer/kirkwood/SheevaPlug_DocumentationPackage.zip

http://www.marvell.com/files/products/embedded_processors/developer/kirkwood/SheevaPlug_SchematicsAndBOMs.zip

Just what else do you need to know?

What the hell is wrong with you?

http://www.marvell.com/files/products/embedded_processors/developer/kirkwood/SheevaPlug_DocumentationPackage.zip

http://www.marvell.com/files/products/embedded_processors/developer/kirkwood/SheevaPlug_SchematicsAndBOMs.zip

Just what else do you need to know?

According to this page it seems that essentials like the "Linux support package" are not yet available ("Coming Soon"). So would that be like REAL SOON NOW?

<bart

The OLPC wiki is very extensive and growing, and is a great starting-point for making contact with the core OLPC team (including senior management at OLPC, who are surprisingly accessible). If there isn't an article specifically addressing a person's questions, the wiki at least provides a place where questions can be posted with a reasonable expectation of getting an answer. In addition, there are instructions on how to join OLPC mailing lists and IRC, where you can communicate directly with the team.

Nevertheless, I will say that much of what is on the wiki is oriented to software or organization building, and that info on OLPC hardware seems to get the short-shrift. There is a *short* article discussing the wireless repeater here, which links to the manufacturer's page here. I'm sure that contributions to the wiki in this area would be appreciated.

Yeah, that site looks to be real useful. Why if I didn't check that site, I'd have no idea that the Via 82C686 UHCI controller didn't work with Linux. This was news to me and the two Via 82C686 based boards I've used over the past four years with fully functional USB support. I'm sure the really early drivers may have had problems, but those problems havn't been seen in nearly half a decade now.

Same deal with the Marvell Yukon gig-e, which is directly supported by Marvell themselves. That site is so out of date it's useless.

Ok. Video card. You can use the ATI fglrx driver.
Here are the SuSE 9.2 install instructions. Sadly, its not as easy as an NVIDIA card. But you will get hardware 3d and TV out.
http://suse.cbn.net.id/i386/supplementary/X/ATI/su se92/i386/fglrx/8.8.25/

Video capture. Supposedly, you can use the 'Gatos' capture project. This is designed for 2d acceleration, video capture, and several other ATI features. I've never played with it myself, since I've only owned standard radeons, never a AIW.
The site is here:
http://gatos.sourceforge.net/overview.php

But i've been browsing their mailing list, and it doesn't seem like the 9600 is supported. There is a LOT of work being done on it, though, and there are several devel list entries from the beginning of the month.

Sound&Modem, as you already know, will be a breeze.

Your gigabit ethernet card has drivers avaliable from the manufacturers website. This is here: http://www.marvell.com/drivers/driverDisplay.do?dI d=107&pId=10
I'm assuming you meant Yukon, not ukon.
This page here suggests that it is avaliable in the lastest 2.6 kernels (This is Gentoo, not SuSE)
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:3PYpQxdJcwoJ: linuxforums.org/forum/ntopic31345.html+Yukon+SuSE+ 9.2&hl=en&start=16&client=firefox-a
This seems to suggest its in the default install:
http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/suse/9.2/i386/lib_mod ules_2.6.8-24.10-bigsmp_kernel_drivers_net_sk98lin _Tree.html
I'm not really sure, as I have little experience with Gigabit ethernet.

The broadcom wireles will present a moderate amount of difficulty, but it can be made to work, and if you are willing to spend a little money, it can be made to work easily. There are no native linux drivers, so you can either use ndiswrapper http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/, which is an opensource project that allows you to use the Windows drivers, or you can use linuxant's Driverloader, avaliable at http://linuxant.com/

The bcm4306 is confirmed supported under both, but I know from experience that driverloader is extremely easy to use, but ndiswrapper is slightly more challenging (still not impossible, but requires editing some configuration files by hand). SuSE has been working on integrating Driverloader into the distribution, but it hasn't happened yet.

Yeah, the floppy, the 7-in-1 usb reader, the DVD drives, etc, will all work without any difficultly. If you intend to use a USB dvd burner in SuSE, you will need to "sudo chmod +u /usr/sbin/cdrdao & sudo chmod +u /usr/sbin/cdrecord" which is a minor security risk. SuSE, for some reason, has redesign those two to not run as root, but it doesn't work properly for USB writers. That simple chmod command will fix that, and then you will be able to burn CD/DVDs under SuSE.

Here, http://lists.suse.com/archive/suse-amd64/2005-Jan/ 0019.html Someone refers to using your motherboard, and it seems to work properly.

BTW: I've been checking the SuSE hardware database, and it seems to have started working, but it is by no means comprehensive. http://hardwaredb.suse.de/index.php?LANG=en_UK Once again

• Marvell 88E6060-RCJ: This is the ethernet controller for the wired switch ports.
  
• AMD AM29LV800BT: This is flash. I believe it's 8MB.
  
• (quantity 2) Winbond W981616BH-7: 16MB 143MHz SDRAM
  
• Marvell 88W8500-BAN: This is the wireless controller, which also has an integrated ARM946 CPU. Other features include hardware WEP/AES decryption and encryption, 802.1x, etc.
  
• Marvell 88W8000: This is the partner chip to the 88W8500-BAN. It contains the RF transciever. If you look at the mainboard you won't actually see this chip--it's covered by a metal jacket, presumably for interference prevention.
  

There are other PowerPC motherboard suppliers our there still, notably Genesi Sarl which ships a Micro-ATX board of its own design, as opposed to the OEMed Mai Teron board that both TerraSoft and Eyetech have been licensing. There are a limited number of Pegasos 1 motherboards available from Genesi and a Pegasos 2 motherboard is in development for release later this year. Additionally Eyetech has been pre-selling their "AmigaONE" boards, which as I mentioned are based on the old Mai Teron design.

Please note that the current Peagsos 1 boards use the same chipset as the Teron boards, except for the addition of a chip dubbed the April which fixes some bugs in the chipset. The new Pegasos 2 boards will use a completely different chipset from Marvell.

There are other PowerPC motherboard suppliers our there still, notably Genesi Sarl which ships a Micro-ATX board of its own design, as opposed to the OEMed Mai Teron board that both TerraSoft and Eyetech have been licensing. There are a limited number of Pegasos 1 motherboards available from Genesi and a Pegasos 2 motherboard is in development for release later this year. Additionally Eyetech has been pre-selling their "AmigaONE" boards, which as I mentioned are based on the old Mai Teron design.

Please note that the current Peagsos 1 boards use the same chipset as the Teron boards, except for the addition of a chip dubbed the April which fixes some bugs in the chipset. The new Pegasos 2 boards will use a completely different chipset from Marvell.

The WD drive is just a PATA drive with SATA front end put on it also. In fact, the first SATA release of every major drive manufacturer (IBM/Hitachi,WD,Maxtor,Samsung,Seagate,Fujitsu) is just a PATA drive with a SATA front end.

The Seagate drives out there are actually the closest to a pure SATA implementation available. Everybody else used a transceiver (phy) part from Marvell, but Seagate actually did their own SATA logic with a phy from LSI.

If you really want to build a system from parts there are several places you can go. Motorola sells evaluation platforms that consisto of a motherboard (essentially a backplane) and CPU modules that plug into it. It's calld Sandpoint. You can get third party CPU modules for it from Tundra (who also sells whole kits with their own system board). Marvell/Galileo sells a platform that is well suited to building a PC style machine with PPC hardware, and you can get a variety of processor cards for it ranging from low end G3 style processors up to dual 7450 processors.

Some of the best PPC machines available right now can't be built from parts simply because they're on a single board. My current to y is the cyclades TS-100 it's only 1"x3"x3", has dual CPUs and can be had for under $200.

More news on the 22mbps USR WiFi can be found here, and the 88W8200 Wireless LAN Baseband Processor information can be found here

Many people would be happy to sell you a board with a G4 on it. Maybe even 2 G4s!

Marvell makes ATX boards with 1 or 2 7450s.

MotorolaMakes a very nice ATX board with 2 7450's on it. They also have the Sandpoint platform which you can use with many different PPC chips.

Merlancia seems to have some good stuff.

There's a bunch more too, Tundra, GMS, Force, just do a search on google. You'll likely find though that Apple has the best prices. If you want to play with a PPC (I'm assuming you want to do some low level stuff for fun or profit) you'll end up spending $1500 on just a board from somewhere else, or $1500 on a complete system from Apple. The Apple systems retain their value for a long time too.