World's First Linux Computer In A CF Card

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices reports on the world's first Linux computer to fit inside a CompactFlash card. The 'Compact Flash Computer' (CFC) can be mixed and matched with third-party CF cards to instantly create minuscule Linux systems based entirely on CF cards. A wide variety of third-party CF peripheral cards can be used with the CFC, including RS232/485, Ethernet, Bluetooth, USB, 802.11, GSM, GPRS, GPS, and more. A combination power supply / bus expander module on a separate CF card, as well as a tiny 8-slot CF card backplane, are available as options." An anonymous reader adds "The card is based on a Freescale MPC5272 system-on-chip processor and contains 32MB of SDRAM and 8MB of Flash memory, and it comes with a uClinux based operating system and GNU development/debug tools."

Comments

Re:The custom-built pda

[0x0d0a]

Why hasn't this been done yet?

Because most people, unfortunately, are not geek hobbyists, and think of computers in terms of application, not of mechanism. To them, this reconfigurability is just additional cost, complexity, and fragility to get a "follow the directions to assemble it yourself" device that performs some task that they want to do, like store lists of phone numbers. Sure, it drives us bonkers that we don't have a pretty interface and better support for the I2C bus (or internal USB in cases), interesting input (knobs, sliders, etc that can be interfaced with) devices, cheap interesting output devices (LED/LCD/VFD front-panel displays), thermometers, and the like. The typical computer user, though, doesn't give a damn about extending or reconfiguring their computer, because they want to accomplish a task, and don't really want to "figure out what to do to their computer to accomplish that task".

Sigh.