Photos and Commentary On AMD's PIC

vincecate writes "I just purchased a brand new AMD PIC which has been on Slashdot and LinuxDevices. I have opened it up and put some pictures and comments on the web. Some interesting things are that the system uses only 8 watts, the Windows CE does not want you installing any software, you can not get to the BIOS settings, and I was not able to boot Linux." (He was able, though, to boot Linux from an IDE device on a mini-ITX system also based on the Geode processor.)

Comments

Geez...

[k4_pacific]

"Windows CE does not want you installing any software, you can not get to the BIOS settings,"

It might as well not even have a keyboard or monitor port. Yeesh.

Re:Geez...

[NanoGator]

"It might as well not even have a keyboard or monitor port. Yeesh."

Didja read the bit about who the target audience is and what it does do?

Re:Geez...

[Vo0k]

Yep. Putting things simply, it's a crippled Microsoft demo almost-giveaway product.

They use it to show Windows and MS products. People CAN'T use it for anything else. This way if they want more, they need to pay real money and next time they buy something "bigger" they certainly won't get any fancy "linux" or "Mac", because they know Windows already.

Remember, the first one is free.

Re:Geez...

[NanoGator]

"They use it to show Windows and MS products."

AMD is pushing MS's products?

Re:Geez...

[Vo0k]

AMD is providing hardware platform and providing a method to hide Microsoft...

What is being sold?
Is it a small, minimalistic platform by AMD, running third party (Microsoft's) OS?
Or is it crippled WinCE bundled with a third party (AMD) platform it can run on?

Re:Geez...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not impressed with the interesting moderation here. Microsoft did not make this device. AMD built it to be as cheap as possible. It's laughable to think that somebody would be interested in buying a full on Windows machine after using CE. People making $6,000 a year aren't buying one of these machines because they're just not sure they want a real computer.

I could keep going, but now I'm drifting away from my point. "Microsoft is addictive", boy that's insightful. Afterall, we wouldn't want to bring up that Apple's not in this market or that nobody's trying to do the same thing with Linux. It's much more insightful to liken Microsoft to a controlled substance.

And the people here wonder why nobody takes them seriously when they bring up issues about MS. The sky is falllllliiing!

Re:Geez...

[tonsofpcs]

Free like beer, yes; but not FREE like nux.

Re:Geez...

[Catbeller]

"The whole idea is to allow poor people to get on the internet."

Well, then it is highly illogical to use Windows, no? Linux and OpenOffice are both "free", as in: not costing money.

AMD doesn't need MS for this at all. The price of the box would be much cheaper without Redmond's contribution.

So why? Because they want to give MS a bone. MS likes bones, and if you don't feed them the occasional femur, they start thinking that meat would taste better. The meat of your still-beating heart, freshly ripped from your chest during the hostile takeover, or during the utter destruction of your business model.

Re:Geez...

[harrkev]

Yup. And a poor person in another country would NEVER want to improve their education by installing a compiler in order to learn C++ or Java. And an electrical engineering student would never want to install SPICE. And I guess this means that there will be no educational software on these things. If you want an education, you have to get on-line. And this is the type of system marketed to people WITHOUT broadband. So this thing will tie up the phone line unless using strictly built-in apps. And I have heard that some areas have a per-minute internet charge.

Yes, the concept is cool. But if the system is completely locked down, then this is nothing more than a glorified internet appliance. And NONE of those survived very long. There is a BIG DIFFERENCE between a computer and an internet appliance. A computer lets you install software. Let me illustrate:

Computer: "What do you want to do?"
Internet appliance: "I will tell you what you are allowed to do."

See the difference?

Don't get me wrong. This is still cool. Just not as cool as it could have been. But I must admit that AMD likely did this in order to prevent viruses, worms, and trojans - which is not necessarily a bad thing.

Re:Geez...

[somethinghollow]

It's funny when someone says they tried to install linux and it didn't work, they get chastised for trying. If he never mentioned Linux at all, there would be at least 5 users asking "Yes, but does it run Linux?" ;)

Re:Geez...

[dave420]

It is an internet appliance, not a study tool for a CS degree. That's the whole idea of these guys - hardened PCs for using the internet.

Installing a C++ compiler is a really silly idea. Would you recommend someone trying out their engineering ideas on their own kidney dialysis machine? No - it's too important for that.

Of course I understand the difference between the two. I also read the article, and can see that this is an internet appliance, not a general-purpose family PC.

I don't think anyone will be upgrading these with geforce cards, or thinking about SCSI.

Re:Geez...

[westlake]

The price of the box would be much cheaper without Redmond's contribution.

But not so much cheaper that anyone would notice. There are economies of scale. Windows sells. Windows systems sell in such numbers that even Walmart has given up on the Linux PC as a mass-market product.

Re:Geez...

[Drachasor]

That poster's comment was on why it will fail because it is *merely* an internet appliance. If you don't have the capability to do anything more than what the box allows, then it loses out on a ton of usefulness. Poor individuals that can't afford a good computer, but have the brains to excell if given the tools are treated very poorly by this. They should allow custom software to be installed, though perhaps make it mildly difficult to enable this feature. They shouldn't be thinking of this as an internet appliance, but more like a mixture of that and a Commodore 64 for developing countries. -Drachasor

Re:Geez...

[dave420]

The computer is restricted to ensure people don't screw it up. If they install something weird on the first day and break it, they won't get a new one. It will be useful BECAUSE it's an internet appliance. A working internet appliance is infinitely more useful than a broken UberPC.

We're not talking about PCs for people who can very nearly afford them, but for people who have no hope in hell of buying one. If they break, the owner is screwed.

Re:Geez...

[dmaxwell]

What about a poor geek in such a country? I find this attitude of "It's an almost charity thing and you should be grateful for what we choose to give you." to be very condencending.

It will be perfectly natural for a few recipients of these things to gain skills and to try to find a way to get them to do other things. There is VERY little reason for these to be locked down to the extent that they are.

Re:Geez...

[starm_]

If it break you re-install the OS. These people aren't stupider than we are you know. We dealth with constant reinstalling in the Win95 area and still wanted to be able to install software even if it sometimes broke the OS. And I'm sure since its new tech it wont need to be installed nearly as often as win95 did.

Re:Geez...

[somethinghollow]

The X-Box was built as a gaming console, not a Linux box. It was recieved well on slashdot.

The iPod was built to be an MP3 player, not a Linux box. On slashdot, while some people were perplexed, others/many thought it was great.

I don't see the difference. Any talk of "purpose" is moot in the Linux community. People generally applaud putting (or attempting to put) Linux "where it doesn't belong." It doesn't make sense to give this guy a hard time for trying.

Now, if you want to give him a hard time for FAILING, that is another story, esp. when it appears that the OS is on a removable flash card or on the harddrive, both of which could be put in the other PC with the same chip and installed there and swapped back, assuming the CMOS and the OS aren't tied together.

Re:Geez...

[Technician]

"Windows CE does not want you installing any software, you can not get to the BIOS settings,"


Wow, a MS OS that won't install the latest root kit. I'm impressed.

Acording to this page;

http://www.gensw.com/pages/stories/amdpicst.htm

Firmbase Technology provides a chain of trust from power-on to OS boot.

and

(Cryptographic handshake between firmware and OS/Application) assures the service provider of system integrity Links to bootsec landing page

It looks like the ISP is in full control. It looks like the RIAA Cable TV subscription box for the Internet.

It may work in some applications (Web TV or I-Opener). In non-island monopoly countries, I'll keep my regular ISP and browsing options.

It could be fun to try a man in the middle attack to get your favorite OS to boot much the same way broadband users uncap cable modems.

Re:Geez...

[Tassach]

It's supposed to be for charity

You fail basic reading comprehension. Put down the doobie and come out of your bleeding-heart fantasyland.

Did you RTFA, or did you just pull that out of your ass? The only subsidy mentioned in the article is a mention that THIRD PARTY companies can license the design from AMD and sell their own branded version at a subsidized price:

The chipmaker plans to go forward by essentially licensing the PIC design to local companies, including telecommunications or Internet service providers, allowing them to use local contract manufacturers and control distribution, marketing and pricing of their PICs. Thus the companies will sell PICs under their own brand names and be free to subsidize the machines' cost to lower the price consumers pay. AMD is targeting companies in Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Russia, initially.

AMD is making a profit on this, guaranteed. Maybe not a huge profit per unit, but there are BILLIONS of people in their target market. They'll make money selling Geode processors to the licensees, and they'll make money off of licensing fees. The licensees (telcos and ISPs) aren't doing it for charity, either: they're doing it to expand their market and get more paying customers.

Trivialising it by suggesting it's some sort of geek toy is just pathetic

What's pathetic is your lack of touch with reality. This isn't some noble utopian project to bring the Internet to the starving masses for free. This is one megacorporation marketing a device to other megacorporations to help those megacorporations make a profit off of poor people.

Getting Linux to run on this isn't just a Geek Toy. Doing so will empower ALL people to use a cheap (possibly subsidized) general-purpose computing device in ways other than their corporate masters want them to use it. The telcos and ISPs who will be licensing this want nice obediant consumers who'll buy the device, subscribe to their service, and use it to buy stuff from their advertisers & partners.

Re:Geez...

[Chris Burke]

Yup. And a poor person in another country would NEVER want to improve their education by installing a compiler in order to learn C++ or Java.

While I appreciate the design spec that said they wanted a zero-maintenance computer, I still feel this is a minor tragedy. The only reason I'm sitting here hacking while reading /. is that I had a computer I could put a compiler on. If I had only been able to run the applications that came with it, I'd probably be doing something completely different... I dunno... maybe outside.

Oh well. If the only way this will be palatable to the ISPs or whoever are going to be selling these things is to have them locked down, I guess that's better than no internet. But it seems like they're only getting half of what they should -- they're getting the consumer internet-user half, but not the creative, producer half.

Re:Geez...

[benzapp]

So why? Because they want to give MS a bone. MS likes bones, and if you don't feed them the occasional femur, they start thinking that meat would taste better. The meat of your still-beating heart, freshly ripped from your chest during the hostile takeover, or during the utter destruction of your business model.

Don't you think this is just a bit dramatic?

Re:Geez...

[jesup]

Getting Linux to run on this isn't just a Geek Toy. Doing so will empower ALL people to use a cheap (possibly subsidized) general-purpose computing device in ways other than their corporate masters want them to use it. The telcos and ISPs who will be licensing this want nice obediant consumers who'll buy the device, subscribe to their service, and use it to buy stuff from their advertisers & partners.

Or, like all the other "Internet appliances" that came out and were hacked, allowing people to bypass the service that provides the subsidy will drive the company producing them out of (this) business. How does that "empower" the people who can't afford the up-front cost?

Corporations aren't looking to enslave people, really. Make a profit, yes (though a non-profit company could certainly license, build and sell these - so where does that leave your theory?) Someone licensing these could leave it unlocked I'd bet if they want to. If they're selling them at breakeven or a loss (aka subsidized), they're not likely to leave them unlocked, since they wouldn't last long doing so.

As for AMD: they may well be selling these processors at effectively cost, in the hopes of creating markets for their higher-end stuff in the longer run. One way to make a profit in the long run is to do things to help create demand by improving the economic/educational situation of people/countries that are not viable current customers.

I can envision a spreadsheet at AMD showing how a small investment (developing PIC, selling the geodes at cost, etc) could result in considerable long-term profits 10 or 15 years down the road (and some profits much sooner). Not to mention getting a marketing leg up in 3rd-world/developing countries on Intel.

Re:Geez...

[mrchaotica]

Are you sure?

Re:Geez...

[mrchaotica]

So what? Just put a big reset button on the thing (possibly labeled "don't panic"). Seriously, a computer that isn't hackable is absolutely stupid, because some of the users will be interested in that sort of thing, and moreover it could be their ticket out of poverty. Instead, they get a blunted, broken toy that only serves to remind them how poor they are, since they can't do the things all the other Internet users can do.

Re:Geez...

[ozmanjusri]

Cryptographic handshake between firmware and OS/Application

Isn't this just Palladium? The PIC may be MS and AMD's full-scale trial of the technology.

At this price point, no-one can complain about the loss of functionality. If it works out, a few years from now they'll be able to point to the installed base of PICs and say "Look, it works fine. Now we can do this to all new PCs"

Re:Geez...

[Long-EZ]

The computer is restricted to ensure people don't screw it up.

Wouldn't want to break the PC before the latest Outlook worm turns it into a spam spewing zombie. I can hardly wait for there to be 5X as many Windows PCs in the world, 'cause I'm still not getting enough spam and Outlook worms.

If the goal is to increase internet usage from 10% of the population to 50% by 2015, the best way I can think of to do that would be a program where the three year old PCs in the west that are being dumped in a landfill are retrofitted with Linux and open source applications with language configurations that are native to the new users in the developing countries. The target countries could do the retrofit. It's a hassle to do one at a time, but if it was done on a larger scale, it could be a nice efficient business, where the hardware and software was free and the only cost is labor. This would be *MUCH* better than the $100 PC that Balmer proposed.

Re:Geez...

[Tassach]

Or, like all the other "Internet appliances" that came out and were hacked, allowing people to bypass the service that provides the subsidy will drive the company producing them out of (this) business

The smart man learns from his mistakes, but the wise man learns from other peoples' mistakes.

If a company adopts a business model that has repeatedly been demonstrated as being flawed and a guaranteed money-loser, then they're just being incredibly stupid and deserve to fail.

How does that "empower" the people who can't afford the up-front cost?

Because it gives them a piece of hardware that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Because the act of hacking the box is a LEARNING experience, and paves the way for more learning experiences, which might just open up a way to a better life. Knowledge is power.

A non-profit company could certainly license, build and sell these - so where does that leave your theory?

Why would a legitimate charity have any incentive or motivation to lock their beneficiaries in to a propriatary operating system? Why would a non-profit spend money on software licensing fees when it could help more people by using Free software? I can't think of any reason to do so unless they have ulterior motives -- like shilling for Microsoft.

Re:Geez...

[Technician]

"Look, it works fine. Now we can do this to all new PCs"

No they can't. One thing I always tell people when shopping for a computer is "Find the software you need to run and then get the hardware that will run it."

If you need to run Linux as a router network traffic analisis box and this new PC won't run it, you won't buy it. You will find something that will.

You might get one for your mom's e-mail, but there are many things it simply is unable to do. It's the same reason you don't use your cable TV box to send e-mail. It won't run your e-mail application. This Internet box is the same thing as a subscription box, but for basic Internet.

Re:Geez...

[jesup]

Actually, the business model has been a wide success (i.e. cellphones for one). The internet appliance people got caught by the fact that their hardware was pretty easily used for other purposes, and those purposes were attractive enough that lots of people (read geeks/slashdotters) went out and bought every unit they could get their hands on. (I know, I saw a friend do this.)

How does that "empower" the people who can't afford the up-front cost?

Because it gives them a piece of hardware that they wouldn't have had otherwise. Because the act of hacking the box is a LEARNING experience, and paves the way for more learning experiences, which might just open up a way to a better life. Knowledge is power.

You missed my point: it doesn't empower them because either (a) the company that made them went out of business shortly thereafter, dis-empowering lots of people like them, or (b) the company never produced them in the first place because they were scared away. The general idea here was to provide access to data and communication and tools, not as a toy or learning experience for computer hackers.

A non-profit company could certainly license, build and sell these - so where does that leave your theory?

Why would a legitimate charity have any incentive or motivation to lock their beneficiaries in to a propriatary operating system? Why would a non-profit spend money on software licensing fees when it could help more people by using Free software? I can't think of any reason to do so unless they have ulterior motives -- like shilling for Microsoft.

Ummmm - because the operating system wasn't the point? This thing isn't running WinXP (or Word). It's running CE, and the cost for that in an embedded use is around $5 as stated here. Some charities might be focused on improving the lives of people by giving them access to things like weather reports, crop prices, etc, etc, not on what software it runs.

And more importantly, you missed my point again. My point was that a non-profit _could_ sell an unlocked version of this - nothing requires that it be locked. Also, as others here have said, Linux is an option for PIC; the current shipping ones happen not to use it because the companies making them decided not to (or the ancillary applications such as those on the WinCE PIC weren't available or up to the level of the WinCE ones).

No one is stopping these manufacturers from selling PICs running Linux or unlocked CE. But for most (I didn't say all) users, this is a good device as it is. And as has been stated many times here, you are not the target for this. Nor are proto-geeks in these countries really the target market either (though they could be targetted by say a Linux PIC or an unlocked PIC).

Put ReactOS on it.

[isolation]

seeing as it has limited hardware or software support under Windows CE if they must have a Windows-like OS then we could get ReactOS running on it.

Re:Put ReactOS on it.

[stupidfoo]

One would question why they went with Windows CE. Microsoft must have given them an amazing price otherwise it simply would have eaten up too much of the $195. I'm guessing MS is selling them copies at less than $5 a pop, but who know.

Wouldn't this truly be something much better suited to use Linux or some other freely available OS?

I'll answer my own question (as it is obvious): Yes.

Re:Put ReactOS on it.

[Surur]

Win CE *is* about $5 a pop, for most applications, including pocketpc's. $5 is not far from free, and Win CE is open source to the OEM's, to modify as they see fit. Further more there are a lot of drivers available for Win CE already, and they get supported by microsoft. Its not too bad a deal.

And we KNOW microsoft is salivating over getting into the 3rd world cheap computer market before Linux and other free software takes hold, robbing them of future revenue forever.

Surur

Re:Put ReactOS on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Win CE is open source to the OEM's

Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code.

Re:Put ReactOS on it.

[0racle]

Open source does mean access to the source code. Open Source (TM) or OSI approved Open Source means more then access to the source.

Re:Put ReactOS on it.

[Technician]

seeing as it has limited hardware or software support under Windows CE if they must have a Windows-like OS then we could get ReactOS running on it.

Except they won't bother to give you the details on how the encrypted BIOS works with the encrypted OS boot loader that was customised for this product. WIN CE comes with source for developers. Dropping ReactOS in will break the BIOS encrypted handshake.

The sad detail is here..

(Cryptographic handshake between firmware and OS/Application)

Source;
http://www.gensw.com/pages/stories/amdp icst.htm

It looks like the X-box Linux team have another chalange.

Re:Put ReactOS on it.

[rxmd]

One would question why they went with Windows CE. Microsoft must have given them an amazing price otherwise it simply would have eaten up too much of the $195. I'm guessing MS is selling them copies at less than $5 a pop, but who know.

Windows CE is sold at $3 per "core license" by Microsoft, so the price isn't that much of an issue. Developing and supporting a custom version of Linux wouldn't probably be cheaper.

Another reason for the choice might be that Windows CE offers better i18n and Unicode support, both on the OS and application levels. Since this is targeted largely at markets with non-Latin scripts, good i18n is a necessity. While it's possible to use Unicode with Linux as well as most of the scripts in question, application compatibility can't still always be taken for granted and can be a hassle at times. Linux is making good progress here, but Windows is still better.

Re:Put ReactOS on it.

[tepples]

Was the term "open source" used to refer to software before 1998 or so, when Mr. Raymond created his fork of the free software movement?

Re:Put ReactOS on it.

[0racle]

Open source is just two words that literally mean access to the source, thats it, nothing special. I would bet that the GNU project called their stuff free and open, its just a phrase. Not until people became obsessed with labels and the need to differenciate themselves from so called Free Software did 'Open Source' come to mean something else in specific contexts. OEM's have access to the Windows CE source, therefore saying that 'Windows CE is open source for OEM's' is correct, since the lable 'Open Source' is obviously not applicable and we are just using the words open and source together.

Re:Put ReactOS on it.

[0racle]

Then I'm sure you can provide a reference to somebody using the term "open source" as a synonym for "with source" from before the popular use arised

Of course I can.
1996 1996 1992 1990

There might be more but I got tired of looking at source for opening files. Interestingly there is a post there talking about copylefts and HP's Open source X, a post about Caldera opening the source to DR-DOS, BSD's open source policy and someone asking for something that has the source. Sorry but open source is sometimes just a phrase that means just that, its not always a religious statement.

Linux on PIC

[MoxFulder]

This article on LinuxDevices discusses the possibility of installing Linux on the PIC.

Re:Linux on PIC

[LDoggg_]

Isn't that link is in the story already?

Re:Linux on PIC

[DrinkDr.Pepper]

This article on LinuxDevices discusses the possibility of installing Linux on the PIC.

No it doesn't. The article describes the PIC, but says nothing about Linux. Maybe you linked to the wrong article?

how about a useful link...

[Lumpy]

Like where to buy one?

I would certianly like to get one to tinker with and make do things that are against the wishes of the manufacturer.

Re:how about a useful link...

[Lumpy]

I'm most interested in using it as an automotive computing platform, or replace the hard drive with a battery pack and a laptop hard drive, plug in a usb thumb bluetooth or 802.11 adapter and have the backpack storage server. I'm betting that with the geode processor in there and switching to a laptop drive I can get 8 or more hours of battery operation from it.

Re:how about a useful link...

[david.given]

nothing like 680 watts of light and 60 strobelights to scream "im cool!"

I've just had the mental image of a guy in plate armor with neon stripes and sunglasses --- the Knight Who Screams 'Im!'

Need caffeine. Must have caffeine...

Re:how about a useful link...

[bandrzej]

same here...i am also interested in buying one since they are low power, fanless, and would make a good hardware/software hacking project :-)

Boot problem

[spotteddog]

The problem booting from the CF card is probablly just a partition type or signature thing. It would be interesting to hook the hard drive from the PIC up to a working Linux box (as hdb or hdc) and poke around to see how it is partitioned. Maybe a block copy from the hard drive to the CF would create a booting CF based system. Granted it still would be running WinCE, but it would be a start.....

Re:Boot problem

[Anonymous Coward]

It could also be a BIOS issue. Maybe the bootloader or the kernel is trying to call a BIOS function (E.g. the 13h functions or e820) which is not implemented? However I'd agree that the disk layout or MBR signature is the most likely candidate. If I were him I'd hook that drive up to another system and check the partition layout and a hex dump of the MBR to see if this device is using any little tricks.

Re:Boot problem

[stoborrobots]

My thought was the reverse; install linux on a spare hard drive, and fit that in the PIC. Eliminate the CF card, and see if this is a linux problem...

From there, we can work backwards...

(I was also interested in the partitioning structures though... I had the same first step...)

Re:Boot problem

[Anonymous Coward]

My bet is that the "BIOS" is just Windows CE with a bootloader, why bother add something made to run DOS when you can just kick it into the OS itself?
This is not made to be a PC-clone it is made to be low cost box that runs CE.

Re:Boot problem

[drinkypoo]

That might not actually be possible, because the BIOS in the device may be looking for a signature and if it does not find it, it may be refusing to boot from it. The i-Opener in particular has an issue like this until you reflash the BIOS, and it will refuse to boot anything but a QNX partition. This device may very well be the same way and might require a special partition and bootloader (mimicking WinCE) to boot anything else.

Re:Boot problem

[kmurray]

It looks like the BIOS is using Crypto to lock the OS. Check out the link.
One of the "Custom Features" the BIOS company did was "Boot Security". Sounds like something the XBOX uses. We'll probably have to wait until someone comes up with a mod chip.

"It doesn't work!!!"

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if he would expand on why Linux doesn't boot we might have a better chance of helping. Just saying "I connected the CompactFlash card via. an IDE->CF adaptor but Linux wouldn't boot. Please tell me why." isn't any help.

Re:"It doesn't work!!!"

[nomadic]

Maybe if he would expand on why Linux doesn't boot we might have a better chance of helping.

Maybe linux just sucks?

Re:Paperweight.

[hajihill]

From the article: "Personal Internet Communicator, or PIC as AMD calls it..."

"Geode x86 processors, 128MB of Samsung RAM and a 10GB Seagate hard drive." And, "a version of Microsoft's Windows CE operating system, fitted with Windows XP-extensions".

Now, just add all the spyware you can download by the average "families who make the equivalent of between $1,000 and $6,000 annually" (the specified market), and you have a high performance virtually unsinkable machine....

Does anyone else see a problem here, or is it just me???

Cryptographic BIOS?

[reality-bytes]

Apparently, the BIOS is designed by General Software for AMD and features a 'cryptographic handshake' between BIOS and O/S.

The Boot Security Application is a firmware application that establishes trust between platform hardware and the user application, preventing operation of systems compromised by unauthorized tampering with BIOS, OS, or application with cryptographic signatures on all trusted objects.

This sounds like a horrible lock-in to Windows CE ie: "We only want you to run what we want you to run"

However, in the same document:

Supporting both Linux and Windows, the Boot Security Application requires the user application running under Linux or Windows to periodically (as defined by a policy established by the ODM/OEM in the system registry) request security challenges and provide challenge responses, convincing the Boot Security Application, which represents the hardware and firmware, that the application is genuine. Similarly, the Boot Security Application responds to out-of-band challenges as requested by the user application, to convince the user application that it is running on genuine hardware and firmware.

So it now looks more like; "You can run another O/S but only if all the software is registered with us first"

The first line of attack with getting Linux running on an AMD PIC would appear to be by simply contacting General Software and asking if they are willing to provide some advice (Its worth a try).

Re:Cryptographic BIOS?

[Lehk228]

sounds to me like the point is to provide some serious virus/trojen/spyware hardening for sale in an environment full of new users and poor availability of tech support.

Re:Cryptographic BIOS?

[anum]

I suspect that they (AMD) don't want you to think of this as a general purpose PC but rather more like an embedded internet device. In other words, it is designed to always run in kiosk mode. It may limit its funtionality but it should also limit problems like spyware and mainstream apps that need a lot more horsepower than this thing has.

Re:Cryptographic BIOS?

[OwnedByTwoCats]

An embedded internet device that locks out java in favor of Microsoft technologies. MS might even be giving this to AMD, with tech support, to get into the specification, planning on charging the actual hardware manufacturers.

PIC?

[gUmbi]

Did anyone else think 'programmable interrupt controller'? It's too early...

Re:PIC?

[Garabito]

or a PIC-like microcontroller made by AMD?

Re:PIC?

[Lizard_King]

Indeed. Even as I looked at the pictures I was thinking to myself, "Damn, PICs are getting bigger these days." Its been a while since I worked with one (familiar with IBM 8259 and 8259A) and haven't been up to speed with PIC development.

I need to go splash my face with some hot coffee and wake the f@#$ up.

Re:PIC?

[maxwell demon]

Or "Position Independent Code"?

Re:PIC?

[Spirilis]

LOL yeah, same here...

Re:PIC?

[TwistedSquare]

Certainly did, then wondered how it ran Windows CE...

Re:PIC?

[Garak]

Depends on the application, for electronics and engineering PIC's and 68HC11's are where its at. Its all about the timer interrups.

Re:PIC?

[jbridge21]

I thought that, but then I also thought of the line of microcontrollers made by Microchip.

Re:PIC?

[ashSlash]

Juniper Physical Interface Card, for sure.

Re:PIC?

[mvdw]

No mention of AVR or 8051? Shame on you.

Re:PIC?

[gswallow]

I was thinking "Position Independent Code".

So what comes with the AMD PIC?

[FerretFrottage]

From the pictures I gather a floral bedspread, a Baby Enstein DVD, and a dry erase marker. Any other goodies?

Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[magarity]

Look at the target market kids; some village in inner Mongolia or northeastern India saves up to buy a computer with the help of a government grant. The first thing that happens is someone accidentally screws up the BIOS settings or downloads and installs some flakey software. Wanna guess how easy it is to get a tech out to fix it? Be serious and stop your whining about WinCE and no BIOS access. It obviously isn't for you. The thing's capabilitis in terms of software/firmware were very carefully considered in light of its target demographic.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[WARM3CH]

I agree. The design goals of this device is clearly are: Providing minimum requirments to access and browse the net, and do basic word processing and that's all! It should not require any service, patches for a long time. Many slashdotters many nor realize that design of such a system is quite different from normal PCs and is a completely different beast. You need a system to do something very basic, only do this job and do it right with no future need for any chagnes. This is logical to lock it in a way that making any changes to it be very difficult. Not only to protect it from the users, but also from all unknown possible future threats on the net. You can imagine millions of such simple machines round the world and far from any service center can be a very good target for spammers, black-hats and anyone who needs a hord of zobie machines. How would you design such a thing if you needed to do it with such a tight price limit?

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I fully understand that reasoning. My question is, why not have the maker put a custom version of Linux on it and lock that down? I don't see the need to require the Microsoft tax on something that needs to be as inexpensive as possible, especially considering the target demographic.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[anum]

What makes you think that Microsoft is "taxing" these boxes?
Microsoft (and just about every other large company in the world) is more than willing to SUBSIDISE projects like this for market penetration. I wouldn't be suprised to find out that MS has at least helped with design if not funding.
Remember, this box is intentionally limited. Consider it a teaser or loss leader. The first one is free...

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[DrWho520]

Ofcourse, so installing a free operating system, say Linux, on a micro-budget PC was automatically discounted as "unreasonable" during their "carefully considered" design phase. What happens if/when there are 10 millions of these in some rural part of India and/or China, all susceptible to the same Zhombie Boxen WinCE virus and Beowulf Spam Cluster. I will tell you what. Everybody wonders why they get more spam now than ever.
//RANT

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[madfgurtbn]

It obviously isn't for you. The thing's capabilitis in terms of software/firmware were very carefully considered in light of its target demographic.

Certainly true and certainly sounds reasonable. But in the bigger picture, these sort of locks are the kind of things the corporations that be would like to implement in all hardware/software. Is it really a service to the developing world to provide them computers where only the manufacturer has the root password?

If they can get a zillion of these systems out to the developing world and get them in use, don't you think they will provide a way to install more "approved" software via something similar to Linspire's Click-n-Run system? If so, will they use their lock-in to extract more than market price for their wares?

Of course, you or I could figure out a way to load Gentoo or something on it and do whatever we want. What you or I do wouldn't make much difference, though. The target for these is the emerging worldwide n00b market-- just a few billion non-affluent users who should be using free in every sense software for reasons too many to list here.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[justins]

Consider it a teaser or loss leader. The first one is free...

Right. Becuase once they're hooked, those sub-Saharan Africans will be ready to shell out the big bucks for all sorts of software and electronics. AMD and Microsoft will have them right where they want them.

Come on.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[morgue-ann]

those sub-Saharan Africans will be ready to shell out the big bucks

But when the kids (which are the gross majority of the population in many developing countries) grow up and specify computers for business & government, the seed will have been planted. The market for high-margin products in target countries might be small now, but it has huge potential for growth. Developed countries have most of the computers they need & only replace them every few years.

Think long term....

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[magarity]

I don't see the need to require the Microsoft tax

No one in the Linux community is up for spending megabig bucks subsidizing low cost, low power PC hardware for the third world as a tax incentive or philanthropic gesture. Even at this thing's low base cost it still needs a display, kb, mouse, a way to get electrical power; nevermind a 'net access method and associated fees. All this adds up and the really poor people of the world could use a little help. So putting an MS product on it draws in a certain company and foundation with plenty of ready cash. Far from a tax, I'm certain there's going to be a MS subsidy.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[justins]

If you view the long term in those terms (which I'm not sure are valid), and AMD and Microsoft are successful in helping to improve those third-world economies to the point where people in those countries can afford higher-margin products... more power to them. Let them have their (very) long-term profits.

If some company with a Linux-based solution wants to compete in the "selling super-cheap computer stuff to third world countries" market, more power to them, too. It seems like a natural niche for Linux, but so far nobody is making it happen on the scale AMD and Microsoft are trying to do.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[akac]

I know for fact that Linux was considered, but was not feasible for many reasons. They actually tried several different OSs.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[networkBoy]

"MS has at least helped with design if not funding."

Uses the same cost reduces 10 gig seagate HDD as the Xbox. :-)
-nB

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[harshaw]

I couldn't disagree more. Sure, harden the damn device. But remember the *customer* still purchased the device and should have ultimate control over it. This is the same problem in the mobile industry where the carriers want to control what customers can do with their handset that they *purchased*.

We need to give people an option to disable all protections while tell them that they product will no longer be supported. What happens when I want to mod my car? I can do it although I void my warranty.

The only exception would be if I am renting a piece of hardware (aka a cable box). In that case I don't have rights to it.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[rocur]

What happens if/when there are 10 millions of these in some rural part of India and/or China, all susceptible to the same Zhombie Boxen WinCE virus and Beowulf Spam Cluster.

Which is exactly why the box is locked down. If you can't install or modify software, can't change the BIOS or the registry or run Java or ActiveX applets, then you don't need to worry about viri and worms.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[reflective recursion]

free software is merely open, not free as in free beer. Why do people still confuse this in 2004?

There is nothing to worry about. If these people run into enough money to buy a real PC, and if they want such a thing, they can acquire it. Therefore, even with some magical "lock-in," there is no money to be made.

You people make me sick with all this anti-MS lock-in propaganda. I haven't used an MS product since 1996. You never had a gun to your head forcing to use their crap. Why must people dramatize it to that level? Seriously, grow up kids. Even if there was a government mandate requiring all to use MS products, it would be the very least of my worries today.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[rbk17]

Do you REALLY belive the put in those kind of blocks for the users sake? Belive me, they only think with there wallets. a 3. party company can NOT sell anything for this thing without a licens/key! Not that I worry, if millons of these boxes are made, they are gonig to be hacked - just like the X-box...

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[magarity]

OK, having spoken with an AMD developer about this box, it turns out the thing has an idiot boot loader and not a regular BIOS. So that's why the end user cannot convince the thing to boot out of the box Linux. Feel free to modify an embedded type Linux to boot from a boot loader expecting to find WinCE. While probably tedious, not impossible. Furthermore, by not bothering to develop a BIOS for it, AMD saved more than enough worker-hours to justify the (very) cheap price of WinCE.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[aminorex]

I've found that it's usually easier to get free beer if it's open. The longer it sits around open and unconsumed, the more likely it is to be free.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[Alsee]

OK, having spoken with an AMD developer about this box, it turns out the thing has an idiot boot loader and not a regular BIOS.

Either someone is lying, or the "AMD developer" you spoke to doesn't know what he's talking about. If you read the GeneralSoftware website they do indeed document that this is not a "regular BIOS". It is instead a BIOS with extensive extra "BOOTSEC" security, and if you look carefully there is specialized hardware support that keeps the keys "safeguarded" in hardware, "safeguarded" even against an attacker (aka OWNER) with advanced tools trying to read these keys off of the busses. The keys are locked inside a chip itself, and software access is impossible.

It also documents numerous things that trigger "security violation exceptions" which disables applications or the operating system itself from running, including any attempt to change the "tamperproof BIOS" or the "tamperproof OS" or the "tamperproof applications".

Look to this page for an overview of the security system.

I cannot find any detailed documentation of the security system, but I can virtually guarantee it is built on top of the Trusted Computing Group's Trusted Platform Module (AKA TCPA AKA Palladium's Security Support Component AKA you no longer own your computer AKA All Your Base Are Belong To Us).

-

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[anum]

Actually, I agree with you. Those sub-Saharan Africans will only use Microsoft while there is some advantage to it. Same goes for China, India and the US.

You are assuming that I think this strategy will work, I'm just giving a likely scenario. The sort that plays out in boardrooms all over the world.

Just because they are Microsoft and therefor inherently evil doesn't mean they can't be incompetent as well.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[magarity]

the "AMD developer" you spoke to doesn't know what he's talking about

That's odd; I was in his office (where I used to work at the next door down the hall) at AMD's facility just three weeks ago fiddling with WinCE on an old prototype of exactly the computer in question. And since he worked on both the regular BIOS for the Geode chip as well as the idiot boot loader, I guess you're right: that web page talking about trusted security which doesn't mention this computer AT ALL must be what is going on. Furthermore, the original article is about someone who can boot both Windows AND Linux on a different model based on the same chip because that manufacturer DID want a real BIOS.

Re:Reason why you can't fiddle with it

[Alsee]

that web page talking about trusted security which doesn't mention this computer AT ALL

THAT page doesn't mention the AMD's Geode GX PIC, but the linked story ends with a link to THIS page certainly does. And it says:

Specialized BIOS/firmware requirements and functionality AMD's Personal Internet Communicator required some very specific features within a small footprint. The specialized features and the results delivered by the General Software development team are listed below. ...
Custom feature requirements and reliable operation were implemented using Firmbase® Technology v1.3. * Boot Security (Cryptographic handshake between firmware and OS/Application) assures the service provider of system integrity Links to bootsec landing page

Note that the Boot Security link is the exact same link I gave you before.

So yes, your original post was wrong about the problem being an idiot bootloader (meaning a simplistic bootloader). The device in the story does have an idiot bootloader, but it is a more sophisticated Trusted Computing-idiocy that goes to a lot of advanced effort to LOCK OUT any non-approved BIOS, non-approved operating system, or non-approved applications.

I was in his office (where I used to work at the next door down the hall) at AMD's facility just three weeks ago fiddling with WinCE on an old prototype of exactly the computer in question.

It's quite possible the the old prototype had an idiot bootloader and no Trusted Computing anti-tamper system in place.

-

flash drives and longevity

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

I remember several years ago I was boasting about running some of my servers from Flash IDE drives, and I immediately was blasted with comments like: "yes, but you can only write to the Flash disk so many times before it fails". Any comments on that? Was that ever the case, and if so, is it still the case?

Re:flash drives and longevity

[rkhalloran]

This thing would be ideal for kiosk or net-cafe type usage (low power, minimal moving parts), and in that sort of environment, the writes would be minimal, so I'd expect the flashcard's life expectancy to be fairly good.

Re:flash drives and longevity

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

well, for web browsing, if it has a cache of any kind it will be doing a lot of writes. plus, with 128 MB of RAM, one suspects a lot of virtual memory will be used on the disk as well (lots of writes).

Re:flash drives and longevity

[cflorio]

The article mentioned this thing having a Seagate 10Gig Hard drive... I didn't see anything about a flash drive?

Re:flash drives and longevity

[slide-rule]

Depending on whose number you believe, flash drives are good for about 100k writes... not that such a number tells me how long it would last. Anyway, I'm working on a CF-based server, but the CF will be effectively read-only, as the file system will mount into a ram-drive... for what I'm needing, I don't need any additional writes (or I can mount a network drive or something).

Re:flash drives and longevity

[The_countess]

you can change a bit of a flash drive about 100.000 times. for everyday use this is more then enough but linux changes a lot of things quite often so it wears out relativly quickly. there are however specialy distributions for flash drives that change verry little, and work almost exclusivly in RAM.

Re:flash drives and longevity

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

the article also mentions that (1) the guy hacking it apart intends to put a flash drive in it and (2) that AMD intends to put a flash drive in it soon.

Re:flash drives and longevity

[Norgus]

each bit 100k times?

Do any flash drives or usb flash sticks have firmware to distribute writing so that the same bits don't get re-written more than neccisary?

Re:flash drives and longevity

[Shadwhawk]

Yes, virtually every modern flash storage device has load-balancing firmware. Still, you don't want to use them for your swap file.

Re:flash drives and longevity

[Ost99]

128MB ram is *a lot* for WinCE + applications.
No need for any disk cache or swap file.

This is not a PC, it's an appliance with a embedded small footprint OS.

- Ost

Re:flash drives and longevity

[Garak]

You don't cache to disk, you just cache to ram. Really all you want todo is boot from the flash and then run from the lan.

Re:flash drives and longevity

[vincecate]

If you do not have a filesystem designed for flash, you can wear out part of the flash quickly. But with something like JFFS2 on Linux, it should last a very long time for light to normal loads.

Re:flash drives and longevity

[mvdw]

Yes, it is the case, but it is only on a block. CF cards have some wear-levelling technology inside them that dynamically maps actual flash memory addresses to the addresses the CF interface sees, so it is really not an issue unless you're writeing a lot of data.

We've done the math here, as we have a data logger that uses CF.

Re:flash drives and longevity

[bhtooefr]

Depends. If you're swapping, BAD, BAD IDEA, NO MATTER WHAT. However, JFFS2 isn't exactly necessary if you're using flash media that load-balances for you *cough*CompactFlash*cough*.

This would make a GREAT car computer

[TheUnFounded]

I'm planning my Senior design for next year, and it looks like its gonna involve a computer in a car (I know, original, eh?). The problem was going to be selecting the parts that'd be cheap enough and portable enough.

This would be IDEAL; basically a hopped-up PDA with a regular full screen interface available. BUT: I don't want to run CE!! I know the poster hasn't been able to, but if anyone knows of a hack that has managed to put Linux on this beastie, please post!!

Re:This would make a GREAT car computer

[dave420]

Why don't you just make a bong out of a kidney dialysis machine? Or play baseball with donor kidneys? These are boxes for poor people. They're not made for students in their expensive colleges to do "cool" projects. You are all concerned about your "Windows CE vs. Linux" choice, whereas the intended customers for this machine are more worried about feeding themselves and not getting shot at.

Re:This would make a GREAT car computer

[ParnBR]

Friend, I appreciate the sentiment. But I live in a so-called third world country and not every "intended customers" here are worried about feeding themselves and not getting shot at. In fact, a big part of this country is really poor, but not that violent. So, please, don't generalize, ok? :)

Re:This would make a GREAT car computer

[Teancum]

Maybe we are not going to some expensive private university but instead we are attending a local state land grant college with money that we scrape by on waiting tables and flipping burgers.

Having a cheap computer that you can hack on and do "cool" projects with on a budget has more applications than simply offering to somebody in Bolivia or Madagascar the chance to own their own computer.

It is also from cheap boxes like this that other cool "inventions" can also be created, unless AMD is specifically restricting the sale of boxes like this to 1st World nations artificially.

Re:This would make a GREAT car computer

[Garak]

Students are poor people!

Anyway the target market is the 3rd world but these things are the future of computing. Most people don't require a big bulky, expensive, non-standard PC. A simple box like this is really the solution in offices and schools. Its basicly a low cost thin client.

This box has lots of potential, so why not hack it to its full potential.Kidney dialysis machines are very expensive while you can make a bong out of a free pop bottle. While this box is really cheap and PC's for mobile applications are pretty expensive.

Re:This would make a GREAT car computer

[conway]

Go to eBay, look for an "e-vectra" or "e-pc" from HP. These are small form-factor machines, and have a laptop-like DC power input - you can use a cheap laptop car power adaptor to power them. Makes a great PC for a car.
Another possibility is a laptop with a broken screen (also cheap on eBay). The laptop has the added advantage of having a battery - it can, for example, shutdown automatically on sensing power loss (== ignition off).

Re:This would make a GREAT car computer

[djshinny]

I'm also thinking of basing my masters project on a car computer. I would go and buy one of these right now if it ran linux. As it doesn't, I'm probably gunna go for the EPIA 5000 mini-itx board and a car power supply.

I have a budget of £200 and so far haven't found hardware that will fit entirely within that.

Why no Linux?

[ajs318]

I'm highly disappointed that AMD isn't offering a Linux-based version, especially as there is no good reason not to -- Linux already can do everything this device is supposed to be able to do.

This is merely more evidence supporting my theory that Microsoft are paying companies sizeable -- and very illegal -- cash bribes to actively not support other operating systems.

Re:Why no Linux?

[dave420]

Because no-one will support a linux install on the box, most likely.

They use Windows because Microsoft will support the installations. They will custom-write a version of their own OS, and ensure it's as hardened as possible. Who's going to do that for a linux port? Which company is going to write the "encrypted handshake" software for Linux? Exactly. With no central "linux" organisation, no-one can do this work.

Don't be disappointed with AMD - these boxes aren't for you. You're already on the internet, so that's obvious. These boxes are for remote areas where there is no tech support. If someone's linux box goes tits up because the 14-year-old Finnish kid who wrote the distro they picked made some mistake, no-one will be able to get to it, and the owners will have no idea what to do.

So, basically, they chose MS because they could get closer to what they needed.

Re:Why no Linux?

[Thundersnatch]

This is merely more evidence supporting my theory that Microsoft are paying companies sizeable -- and very illegal -- cash bribes to actively not support other operating systems.

Riiight... AMD and Intel don't support Linux at all. I mean, just look at all the evidence! There's this and this, and this. All these developer tools and documents are just fakes! They secretly install Windows in the background!

Re:Why no Linux?

[ajs318]

AMD could do all that. Making a distribution is not hard. If you can spell "configure", "make" and "install" you're already halfway there. Remember, the hardware is as known and fixed as a Mac. You can do all kinds of formal type-approval testing on it, and there are plenty of informal test results out there on the Internet.

If someone's Windows box goes tits-up because some sloppy programmer in Redmond made a mistake {and thought he could get away with it since nobody else was ever going to see the code}, the situation really is no better. Microsoft's EULA disavows all responsibilities for anything that happens -- if something breaks then you don't even get to keep the bits. At least with Open Source, someone, somewhere can fix it. And Open Source has the unique feature that every investor receives a dividend on everyone else's investment, as well as on their own investment.

If they had gone for a BSD variant, then they could even have made that closed-source {at least, till the BSD guys wrote a fully-functional clone and released it open-source}.

So I stand by my original claim: Microsoft is misusing its position to maintain a monopoly on operating systems by financially punishing any vendor who dares support alternative, non-Microsoft operating systems. Look at it this way: the only companies who admit to supporting Linux are the ones Microsoft can't actually harm. It would not surprise me one iota if it turned out that Microsoft threatened AMD that the next version of Windows would be engineered not to run on their hardware, unless they went with a Microsoft OS for their high-availability PC project. AMD wouldn't be in a position to do anything save capitulate to a demand like that -- being primarily a matter for the civil courts, it would degenerate into a war of attrition. AMD would be bound to run out of money sooner, just because AMD's line of business is a zero-sum game and M
Remember, if someone really is out to get you, assusing you of paranoia is the ideal cover for them.

Re:Why no Linux?

[starm_]

The people in the country that buys the thing can do the support. sheesh. They are as smart as we are. Their labor is cheap so they can offer support for a very low cost, and with linux, they can learn everything they need to know on the web or by reading the code. It wont help them if they can't have their own computer companies and depend on M$ for all their needs. They do need versatile machines to get their industry going. They have to have independence and be able to take care of their own needs.

It all translates to, if it aint usefull to us, it aint usefull to them.

Re:Why no Linux?

[Teancum]

You don't think you could get a hardened version of Linux? There aren't companies selling distros of Linux that won't back them up?

There are plenty of people who would harden a box with Linux, and I disagree that Microsoft could harden a version of its OS any more than they already do for high end servers or customers who spend a whole lot more money than Microsoft would ever get from these very low-end computers.

I would be more apt (if I were still living in a 3rd world area) to buy the computer if I knew I could find a computer savvy neighbor who could rewrite the operating system if I found a bug (i.e. with GPL'd source code included) as opposed to a totally closed Microsoft solution. These are boxes that are going to areas that have people with brains, just not a whole lot of money to break into the computer industry with a $10,000 workstation and $50,000 worth of software development tools (and a $10,000 annual license renewal fee).

If AMD goes for a 14-year-old Finnish kid for the distro, then they are shooting themselves in the foot just as if they used the CPU design from a 14-year-old Finnish kid. This is not to say they couldn't hire a 14-year-old Finnish kid who is highly competitent and able to do all of that with high competency either.

Re:Why no Linux?

[aminorex]

> They use Windows because Microsoft will
> support the installations. They will
> custom-write a version of their own OS, and
> ensure it's as hardened as possible. Who's
> going to do that for a linux port?

Cygnus Solutions.

> Which company is going to write the
> "encrypted handshake" software for Linux?

Cygnus Solutions.

Re:Why no Linux?

[mvdw]

I almost agree with you, but the qualifier should be that (I speculate) MS will custom-write a version of their OS *for free*, or at least less than anyone else will do a Linux version. MS can afford to do this to as a strategy to prevent Linux gaining mass acceptance, while a Linux company will need to make a profit on the software writing to do it.

All speculation, but I can imagine this is the case - the MS solution is actually *cheaper* than the corresponding Linux solution.

Re:Why no Linux?

[ajs318]

I already typed it up once and I'm not doing it again. See here for details.

Re:Why no Linux?

[ajs318]

My thoughts entirely. There's an oft-quoted saying about fish that I'm not going to repeat here. Microsoft are basically saying "Take out the part of a man's brain that would enable him to learn to fish, and you can sell him food for a lifetime." Also known as the heroin-dealer business model.

Of course, what might happen is that the purchasers just reverse-engineer the simplified MS code, treat it like Open Source, and start up their own support operations. I somehow doubt it though. For one thing, they could have hacked Windows wide open a long, long time ago; and they haven't.

For another thing, this isn't how the cycle of addiction works in most people. If you're together enough to help yourself out, then you probably won't even get addicted in the first place. Most people get to a point where their habit isn't actually worsening and they can just about afford to sustain it, though for many of those feeding a habit is occupying resources they could be using elsewhere. It's the ones whose habits spiral out of control that everyone gets to hear about.

For a third, most people actually don't seek autonomy. Which is understandable, since having too many potential leaders would be bad for the survival of a "pack" species. If someone is coming around with a crate of fresh food every day, most people simply aren't going to think about growing their own supply till it's too late; and when the price-hike comes, they'll just pay the man rather than take on the responsibility for themselves.

Microsoft already destroyed pretty much every other competitor in the West, by giving away software at below-cost price {or putting up with "piracy", which amounts to the same thing in the end}. I've seen the same tactic used by bus companies in the early 1990s: an independent operator tries to muscle in on a popular route, so the existing operator takes a temporary loss by throwing extra vehicles at it, and honouring the competitor's return tickets. In that situation, the company with less money always goes out of business first: the existing company has the rest of forever to make good the short-term loss.

WinCE on DreamCast

[GrassMunk]

Maybe im mistaken but WindowsCE is what powered the DreamCast and they've had freeBSD on there for ages. Whats the big deal?

Re:WinCE on DreamCast

[Rude Turnip]

WinCE was available as a platform for games that ran on the Dreamcast. However, most games ran Sega's own OS for the Dreamcast. The unit itself didn't have an OS...that was included on the game disk. FWIW, the few games that did use WinCE sucked (or at least that's what I read on /. a couple years ago).

Re:WinCE on DreamCast

[alc6379]

Just a clarification, it's NetBSD, not FreeBSD.

Flash Failure?

[twalls]

"This type of computer should last just about forever."

Right... except the flash will die after about a million writes. Still, a cool concept indeed!

Re:Flash Failure?

[Col. Bloodnok]

Right... except the flash will die after about a million writes. Still, a cool concept indeed!

Not if you symlink /var and /tmp to a ramdisk. Even PocketPC basically bootstraps the OS from read-only flash into RAM.

This problem has already been addressed, many times.

Re:Flash Failure?

[twalls]

You missed my point completely. Sure, cutting down a source of frequent writes will increase the life of the drive but he acts like it will last "forever". Even if you just use it for documents and media, I would think parts of the drive would eventually go bad.

Re:Flash Failure?

[Col. Bloodnok]

Err, if all you're doing is reading a compressed filesystem into RAM then it will last, for all intents and purposes, forever.

Even if you use the drive as an occaisional document store, with a suitable filesystem that distributes data writes - including meta-data - evenly (i.e. not FAT), it can last for years.

Take for example an early ipaq's internal flash. It is supposidly rated at 300000 writes. Lets assume we initially create then overwrite a file in the same location (say a company telephone list) once everyday. By my calculation, the device will last for nearly 822 years. In practice of course, it won't. In that sort of timescale it'll be dropped, or lost, or fried by radiation, or stomped on by a giant Japanese lizard.

Removable flash storage in PDAs tends to be misused by both applications and user alike, but that's separate issue for which I blame Microsoft. Running linux on a flash based device is really quite easy and very effective and reliable, if you have a good understanding of it's read/write behaviour.

Re:Flash Failure?

[vincecate]

If you need to do 100,000 writes over 2 GB of flash, that is 200 TB of writes. If my system averages 1 MB per minute of writes, this will take 380 years. A bigger flash (4 GB etc) takes even longer, and flash is getting bigger. Also some flash says 1 mil writes. I don't think disk drives can be trusted after 3 or 4 years. Forever is only a slight exaggeration for most of my machines. Most failures seem to be writes. If you read after each write, and relocate the data if the write did not work, you can keep going even in the face of some errors. Errors tend to be bit errors and not whole blocks. So if you have any ECC in your filesystem you can fix errors without a huge overhead.

*Limited* Windows CE included!

[Woogiemonger]

Umm, Microsoft had to dig, but they managed to find the next step down. They're providing a limited version of Windows CE for this $185 PC that's even beyond your average crippleware. It has a MAX of 800x600 resolution (shouldn't that be left up to the video card?) AND you can open a maximum of *3* Windows. Why let them open 3? You can keep Windows pluralized with only 2!

Re:*Limited* Windows CE included!

[martin-k]

Strange. My PIC runs at 1024*768 and definitely allows me to run TextMaker, PlanMaker, Media Player, and Internet Explorer at the same time.

Sure you didn't confuse this with the crippled XP Microsoft is selling in Asia?

Re:*Limited* Windows CE included!

[Woogiemonger]

They're providing a limited version of Windows CE for this $185 PC that's even beyond your average crippleware. It has a MAX of 800x600 resolution (shouldn't that be left up to the video card?) AND you can open a maximum of *3* Windows.

Not to mention, the cost of this crappy OS is $36. For something so crippled, 20% of the cost seems pretty steep. These emerging markets can pay $149 per computer if they had a very powerful and free Linux on it. And can these emerging markets afford other applications? Are they going to buy $36 versions of MS Word that only lets you type in Scribble font and save one document per fortnight?

More important, users can run only three programs or have three windows opened at once, a limitation that research company Gartner believes could frustrate users and drive them to buy bootleg copies of Windows XP instead.

Why can't Microsoft just sell the software for less, with the agreement that it can't be exported? I'm fine with that, and it'd spare Microsoft the annoyance of piracy, plus it'd spare the consumers in emerging markets both frustration, and humiliation.

Re:*Limited* Windows CE included!

[dave420]

The fewer the features, the less can go wrong. These boxes are supposed to be zero-maintainance. As in, someone buys one, they never EVER need to get fixed.

These computers aren't for you. They're not for anyone you know. They're probably not for anyone in your country.

They're for people who make just over $1,000 A YEAR (not week).

If they put linux on there, it would need a larger storage device and technical support. That's why it's not on there.

Re:*Limited* Windows CE included!

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

Funny how everyone ignores the information provided by someone who actually *OWNS* one of these!

Re:*Limited* Windows CE included!

[poot_rootbeer]

Why let them open 3? You can keep Windows pluralized with only 2!

You have to keep a spare slot open for the inevitable "An error has occured" modal dialog.

Re:*Limited* Windows CE included!

[MrWim]

Because the only people who want to tinker with thier machines are rich? Or perhaps because windows CE never EVER goes wrong? Because linux is less stable and goes wrong more often perhaps?

Please check your prejudice before you post

Re:*Limited* Windows CE included!

[Benanov]

If they put linux on there, it would need a larger storage device and technical support.

Bold-faced lie. There are Linux distributions out there that are designed to run on Flash Media.

Hell. There's a build of Firefox that's designed to run off of a USB Flash drive.

Windup power supply?

[Ironsides]

Considering that companies make Windup radios and flashlights I wonder if they could make a similar generator for the AMD PIC. Given, that the monitor would require more power, but the windup might supply enough wattage for the PC itself.

Re:Windup power supply?

[Lehk228]

If there was enough current available to run the monitor it would be somewhat pointless to wind up the computer itself. Now a two-tone LCD display for it would be pretty nifty with a hand crank generator

Re:Cost

[Billy69]

That's pretty neat It's also a pretty big assumption. Microsoft probably don't charge $50 per license.

If they get their operating system 'lite' on a device that is being marketed at the 50% of the world that currently doesn't have computer access, that's approximately 3 billion more people who will associate MS with OS. 3 Billion more people who will expect to use MS products if they ever work in an office or similar.

I know this company

[koi88]

Apparently, the BIOS is designed by General Software

Is this the company that also developed the famous "General Protection Fault"?

Re:I know this company

[aminorex]

It's not a company, it's a person, a member of the General family, which has given us most of our military leaders for over 200 years. Other well known family members outside of the military include General Electric, General Panic, General Failure and General Incompetence, although I suspect the latter may have been responsible for planning the attack and occupation of Iraq.

Beginning reverse engineering

[DanMc]

I think the first thing to do is take the WinCE drive and put it on a PC and make a 'dd' backup. Poke around, analyze it. Does it have a traditional partition table? dd clone onto a CF disk and see if it boots WinCE in the PIC?

If there really is a well designed "OS Handshake" to boot, try to work around it. Can you let WinCE complete the handshake, then use something like 'bootlin' to bootstrap linux? I think there was an evolution of bootlin into the windows days but can't recall it's name.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[dave420]

These machines aren't for you. Just like you don't eat someone else's subsidised soup, you shouldn't buy this PC. Yes, it's cheap, but you can afford to buy a proper one. The people these boxes are intended for can't. If you take one, it means someone who needs one can't.

that'd be cool with you?

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[DanMc]

I disagree. There are only 2 possibilities I can see. Either they're making money, or they're losing it on purpose.

1: AMD is making money off every sale. They did not recieve some grant to make PCs for poor people, and are not getting any tax exemption from these things. As much as I like AMD, I'm sure they wouldn't be able to get their stock holders to be happy with the idea that they're helping mankind by losing money. They help mankind enough by keeping Intel in check. 2: If AMD is selling the device under cost, the only thing I can think of is that they hope to break in to the embedded market. The SIZE of this device adds to the cost. If the goal was to create a nice cheap PC, it'd be slightly bigger.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[rRaminrodt]

There's no stamp on it that says, "Poor People Only". Besides I'm quite confident that the company would be happy to make more. He's not robbing a charity, he's purchasing a product. It just happens to be aimed at low cost markets.

Just because I can afford an expensive product I should choose it over a cheaper one? That's not very resonable... especially since these folks are trying to satisfy their curiosity about a new piece of hardware.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[dave420]

Either way, these machines aren't targetted at you, but at people who's only route to buying a PC is this one.

It doesn't matter who's gaining from what, if someone buys one of these PCs and takes it home as a toy, they've deprived that PC from going to someone who actually NEEDS it, not WANTS it.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[dave420]

These PCs are part of the 50x15 initiative. They're intended for poor countries. Any of these machines that get eaten up by rich people looking to play is as ridiculous as me washing my car in blood plasma.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[multriha]

Haven't you been reading the articles on these?

Yes, they aren't designed for the average slashdot person, but they aren't being sold at a lose. People buying them to hack away at is just making these machines more profitable to build and sell overseas.

Besides, the poster was talking about understanding the bios/os handshake, and what lock-out mechanisms were used. This is useful knowledge to have.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[rRaminrodt]

I read your link. It sounds like a nice initiative, in fact I really like it when companies do things like that, but you have to face the fact that AMD and its partners are for-profit companies and they don't do anything just because they're nice folks. They see an opportunity to sell to markets that haven't traditionally bought computer products.

This device is a product. They want people to buy the product. They will make as many as they can sell. If both rich and poor both buy the same product economic factors can cause the price down making it even more affordable.

I think that pretty much all I have to say before I need to start dragging out economics principles. Nicely exaggerated metaphor by the way. :-)

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[dave420]

You're looking at it from a business point of view. These boxes are made for people who need them. If someone buys one who doesn't need one, someone who DOES need one can't buy it - they have to get another one, which could take time.

They're trying to help people who NEED these PCs, not stroke the egos of those who WANT them.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[dave420]

Exactly. Economics principles. I'm looking at it from a humanitarian side.

I can go eat some food destined for hungry people, and according to your logic, it's cool, as more food can be grown and sold. However, for a really hungry person who wanted that food, that's hardly a consolation.

I know financially it's not going to hurt anyone - of course that's the case. I do know, however, that people NEED these machines, and they should get them before those who WANT the machines.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[SwellJoe]

Either way, these machines aren't targetted at you, but at people who's only route to buying a PC is this one.

It doesn't matter who's gaining from what, if someone buys one of these PCs and takes it home as a toy, they've deprived that PC from going to someone who actually NEEDS it, not WANTS it.

Just as someone bought up all of the brains capable of comprehending basic economics before you came along? Google "economies of scale", and then come on back to Slashdot after you have something sane to say.

To put it more simply: You're assertion is idiotic. Actually, now that I think about it, I suppose I've been trolled since no one on slashdot is really that stupid...are they?

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[dave420]

Why is it useful knowledge to have? No-one here should be getting their hands on one.

Shouldn't people who NEED them get them before those who WANT one?

And, what do you think happens when AMD sells the last batch of PCs, and there are still poor people left who want them? AMD isn't going to keep on making them until all the poor people have them - they're going to make a quota, and sell them all. If rich people get them, that means poor people don't.

Though, if a toy is more important to you than a way out of poverty for poor people, then fine.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[dave420]

Maybe it's not about economics? AMD isn't doing this to turn a profit. They're not going to be making these PCs forever, or even participating in this project forever. That means there is a finite amount of PCs. For every one of those PCs that is in the hands of a rich person, a poor person goes without internet access.

I don't need to google for economics of scale, as this isn't about economics but altruism. I guess that's just white noise to you.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[Porphyro]

Except for the fact that in this situation the economic and humanitarian sides aren't mutually exclusive. This isn't some limited resource - if "not-poor" people buy some, AMD will produce more to fill the gap - and due to economies of scale, etc, these new ones may be even cheaper than the first ones. And your food analogy fails - unlike food the PIC isn't something people can't live without. If I take food intended for a hungry person, I've taken something from them that they require to live. If I buy a PIC, all I've done is make the person wait until next Thursday to pick one up as opposed to today.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[multriha]

Knowledge on how to use technology we buy is useful. The techniques used on the PICs are going to be used elsewhere.

AMD isn't doing this to help the poor people of the world, it's doing it to make money. Cheap machines will allow impoverished people to get the net and become new customers. If the cheap machines turn out to be popular in richer areas, great. They can sell more, cut their production costs, or even offset the cost by charging people in richer countries more for them.

When AMD sells out of their first production run (which is most likely fair less than the number of poor people that want them), they'll look to see if its profitable to do another run. A main factor is going to be the size of the market, and people in richer countries buying them is going to increase the market. So, if you want these machines to be available to the poor people of the world, we should buy them. Thus encouraging AMD to keep producing them.

As it turns out, based on the slashdot response. There's a demand for cheap/low power/well build computers like these in the states.

Hopefully AMD will see that, and start offering a similiar model (designed with easy hacking/linux-use in mind) for us slashdotters. Our market provides us with only one effective way of sending the message that we want these, by buying them.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[OwnedByTwoCats]

AMD isn't going to manufacture the devices. AMD is going to license the design to manufacturers/marketers. AMD is going to make money on the processors that go into these devices.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[zanderredux]

These machines aren't for you.

Yeah, right. Nobody is interested in things other people say they cannot have, anyway.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[Rasta Prefect]

I don't need to google for economics of scale, as this isn't about economics but altruism. I guess that's just white noise to you.

Unless AMD is losing money on these, buying one isn't depriving anyone of squat - They'll just _MAKE MORE_, thus making this a more rewarding venture for them. In other words, unless this is being subsidized out of some pool or charity funds, buying one of these isn't depriving anyone of anything. To put it another way, when dell runs a back to school special, thats intended for students. If I buy a cheap desktop and use it as a cheap server, I haven't deprived some poor students somewhere of a desktop. It's not that he's ignoring altruism in favor of economics - He's saying that lots of well understood economics principles say that what you're saying makes no sense.

Now, if they _are_ losing money on them, doing this as a charity thing as opposed to a business venture with humanitarian overtones, then they probably won't sell them to us.

Incidentally, assuming that manufacturing costs are lower than the purchase price, every one a first worlder buys makes it more likely that the venture will be profitable as opposed to charity, as the design costs can be amortized over a larger number of units.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[anagama]

Jeez Dave420 - smoke a bowl.

• Monday was the first day the PIC was available in Anguilla and I bought the first one ...The PIC is a very low power system ... This is like 100 watts less than some other machines we have. At island electric rates this should save more than $200 each year, if the machine is on all the time.

Quit repeating yourself - we all know it is your opinion that this device is only for 3d world people and that you think that 3d world residents are too unsophisticated to use technology (support issue responses). Also, you believe people shouldn't put linux on this because that somehow hurts the 3d world users. Well, if you RTFA, you would note that the author lives in a 3d world country. It appears that 3d world residents have a good reason to put linux on the AMDPIC and make it a useful device. The electricity savings alone would make this machine almost pay for itself (it was about $250 after shipping/duty charges for the author of the original article). Apparently, even people in the 3d world would find it useful to able to use the AMDPIC as a computer.

So chill out - we all heard your opinion. Your point is made. Some of us disagree and repeating it ad nauseum is not going to change our minds.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[42forty-two42]

It's not like these machines are a limited natural resource. If they run out, they'll just make some more. Duh.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[vincecate]

It does have a normal partition table. We did dd to clone the disk onto a CF and it still did not boot. However, it did act differently. This time it goes through the diagnostics and then blanks the screen and starts all over again. Our CF is only 2 GB, and the disk is 10 GB, so it may not have all fit.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[Locutus]

The subsidizing is likely to be coming from Microsoft. The reason for this is because they want to be "THE crack dealer" of OS's and software to the 3rd world before they learn about freedom and GNU/Linux. If AMD REALLY wanted to help these people out, they would be using GNU/Linux and GPL'ed software and not Microsofts proprietary junk.

This is a business deal for Microsoft and nothing else. Do you think that Microsoft "donates" software to schools because they want to be nice? It's about getting them hooked young and to take the huge rightoff they get at the retail price of the software they're handing out. IMO.

So, letting people get addicted to Microsoft is a good thing? Not in my book. Hack away people, hack away.

LoB

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[42forty-two42]

Companies are not altruists. They do things because they think they'll get money. Period. If they've convinced you that they are altruists, of course, you might buy their products. Which makes them money. Which means it's all well and good for a company to pretend to be altruistic, but somewhere in the accounting department they have a positive dollar figure for every move they make.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[Locutus]

NEED them? From what I read, the target audience for these devices NEED food, clothing, and a roof over their head. Not a Microsoft Windows based, locked down and proprietary computer.

Send out library cards and donate a GNU/Linux based( cheaper ) PC to the local library instead. It'll help these people more than a small $200+ computer and an annual phone fee. IMHO.

LoB

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[aminorex]

> Some of us disagree and repeating it ad nauseum is not going to change our minds

Whoa, and here I was getting all ready to agree with him. Glad I read your reply before he said it again!

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[aminorex]

So from your post, I can infer that Laotians
wash theirs in blood plasma?

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[stampsm]

try cloning the current hd onto another hd to see if it is the same sort of protection that the x-box has for it's hd.

Re:Beginning reverse engineering

[spdt]

They're not going to be making these PCs forever, or even participating in this project forever. That means there is a finite amount of PCs. For every one of those PCs that is in the hands of a rich person, a poor person goes without internet access.

Of course there is going to be a finite amount produced. However, your assertion that rich people purchasing them will deprive poor people of them is flawed. There will be a limited number of these made, but it will not be a small number. They will continue being made until they are no longer profitable. At this point, all of those who wanted (or needed) them will have gotten one (or even two). A company will not just cut off a product that is still in high demand.

Re:Cost

[danheskett]

Windows CE, in volume, costs between $2 and $10 depending on how much volume.

As a comparison, XP Home edition in volume costs about $60.

Not meant to last

[rexguo]

I saw a Lithium CR232 battery in one of the photos. By making it hard to remove and voiding the warranty by opening it up, this thing is not meant to last for more than a couple of years for the regular Joe.

Re:Not meant to last

[Col. Bloodnok]

I've never had to change the CR2032 battery on any motherboard I've ever owned - and I've got a 10+ year old Pentium 75 here which still runs fine.

The backup battery is only used when the power is off to the unit. These things could easily be left switched on, or left on standby.

Re:Not meant to last

[gothzilla]

I could be meant as easy revenue in the repair department. There's nothing like charging someone $80 to remove some screws and change a battery.
Of course by the time the battery dies the warranty will be dead too.

Re:Not meant to last

[pjkundert]

So... It's really only meant for developing countries with ... reliable power?

We run about 100 Geode-based totally solid-state devices in our control system. The first thing we do is remove the battery. Our BIOS is configured to restore itself to a working default configuration, when it detects invalid CMOS checksum. Any device seriously intended for long term operation needs to be configured like this.

The hard drive is likely to fail before the battery does, in third-world conditions (heat, humidity, etc.)

Pull the HDD and put in a 512MB CF card with a compressing filesystem (about the same cost as the drive), and install a small Linux distro (which can easily fit in a fraction of that -- we do it in a 16MB compressed filesystem), and THEN this device will be worth shipping to 3rd world countries.

Re:Not meant to last

[Technician]

By making it hard to remove and voiding the warranty by opening it up, this thing is not meant to last for more than a couple of years for the regular Joe.


The Yamaha DX7 came out in 1983. It has a Lithium backup battery. I've never changed mine. One of the features of the keyboard is battery test. I've never had any reason to consider changing the battery since I've owned it.

I would expect the battery life to be a little shorter in the computer because it supports a running real time clock unlike my synth.

why called PIC?

[kcelery]

PIC seems to be a registered trademark of MICROCHIP, this is extracted from one of their web page:

About Microchip Technology

Microchip Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MCHP) is a leading provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors, providing low-risk product development, lower total system cost and faster time to market for thousands of diverse customer applications worldwide. Headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, Microchip offers outstanding technical support along with dependable delivery and quality. For more information, visit the Microchip website at www.microchip.com.
###
Note: The Microchip name and logo, PIC and MPLAB are registered trademarks of Microchip Technology Inc. in the USA and other countries. PICDEM is a registered trademark of Microchip Technology Inc. in the USA and other countries. I2C is a trademark of Philips Corporation. SPI is a trademark of Motorola. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective companies

Re:why called PIC?

[kcelery]

Try google with PIC then you will find the world will be a better place if they name it like AMDPIC in one word.

Re:why called PIC?

[ajs318]

Well, under English law, on which US law was loosely based, trademarks are tightly associated with a product. In other words, you can legally call anything a BMW as long as it isn't a car. So Pig Improvement Company's trademark most probably isn't being infringed by this device.

But Arizona Microchip trademarked the name "PIC" in relation to a simple one-chip microcomputer. This thing is also a kind of microcomputer. Could be a potential trademark violation ..... ? Unless it's only sold in areas where the local trademark law is different {or there is no local AZMC distributor}.

Install LinuxBIOS

[LuxuryYacht]

LinuxBIOS supports the AMD Geodes. You'd have to do a little hardware hacking (flash in a socket, to allow recovery from a bad LinuxBIOS image) to get the first working image of LinuxBIOS working. After that it's just re-flash and you're up and running with LinuxBIOS!

www.linuxbios.com

Re:Install LinuxBIOS

[LuxuryYacht]

The above link should be www.linuxbios.org

LinuxBIOS

In case of /. effect killing it...

[RagManX]

I've already read it via http://pair.offshore.ai.nyud.net:8090/pic/ so you can get to a distributed copy out there.

RagManX

Shouldn't they be able to make this cheaper?

[slusich]

$185 still seems like a pretty high price for something designed to provide access to the third world.
Seems like they should be able to design a cheaper unit for this.

Re:Shouldn't they be able to make this cheaper?

[spotteddog]

We can just send them modded X boxes. $ 150 new, $ 100 "refurbished"

Re:Shouldn't they be able to make this cheaper?

[Gilk180]

I was thinking the same thing. Think about the cost of console games. You could buy an xbox or a ps2 and have $35 left over, or for another $10 you could get 2 game cubes.

Re:Shouldn't they be able to make this cheaper?

[jgs9455]

$185 - isn't that the same price as a xbox and mod chip? We already know that will run linux. PLUS the 3rd world kids could play xbox games! They might have to trade a ox/cow/camel/goat for each game though....

A review of the device?

[mstefanus]

Is there a review of the PIC somewhere? How well does it perform? What softwares are included? etc?

Re:A review of the device?

[Anonymous Coward]

PIC installed software

Games (Black Jack, Chess, Freecell, Minesweeper, Missile, Solitaire, Taipei

ADSL Setup
Chat Messenger
E-mail Client - V???
Image Viewer - ClearVue Image v2.4.383b
Internet Explorer - V???
Media Player - Windows Media 9 Series
Modem Dialer Setup
Plan Maker 2004 rev 275 (like Excel)
Text maker 2003 rev 401 (like Word

Here is a Plan Maker summary
http://discuss.pocketnow.com/printthread. php?threa did=15269

Plan Maker and Text Maker created by
http://www.softmaker.de/index_en.htm

It's the software, stupid...

[martin-k]

*I* find the software on the PIC much more interesting than the hardware. But that's maybe because we wrote it... :-)

See English or Portuguese article about the SoftMaker apps on AMD's PIC.

Re:It's the software, stupid...

[martin-k]

He he, thank you for preempting them.

TextMaker (especially the upcoming 2005 release) and PlanMaker are indeed highly Microsoft Office compatible but there is so much legacy crud in the .DOC file format that we still receive documents from customers and start think "What the..., how was this created?"

-mk

You can hack it

[MicroBerto]

Personally, I'm of the philosophy that "if you made it, you can unmake it". I'm sure you can find a way to hack it and get a different OS on it, or add components.

You just need to try harder :)

Re:Paperweight.

[Pxtl]

Such an abysmal shame - if you could run linux on it and could stick in a real hard disk, every geek and his brother would buy one. After all, we all run fileservers, ftp servers, game servers, print servers, etc. Hell, if you bundled it all up tight enough with a dynDNS service, you could even get it to be a popular end-user device (host 20 gigs of webspace at home! Upload all those old wedding pictures to your website 100 times faster than normal!).

At any rate, the problem is that all these servers that geeks run are usually horribly high-wattage cases, wasting tons of power doing nothing. This little beauty would be perfect for those environmentally-conscious geeks who want a nice low-power server box to drop into their home network.

Wow, nice colors !

[herve_masson]

Please someone tells me where to buy those fantastic tablecloth ! So much potential for screen backgrounds !

Re:Cost

[LDoggg_]

Too bad they don't also give the option of allowing you to boot PXE or etherboot without a hard drive.

Would be cool to see them sellling thin clients for less than 140 or so and still profiting. Would be perfect for an LTSP network.

Re:Paperweight.

[dave420]

BECAUSE IT'S NOT FOR YOU

It's for poor people who can't afford to get online. People who make $1,000-$6,000 PER YEAR. They are people who don't care about linux, who don't want to install p2p, who don't want 17 different media players for their downloaded simpsons.

This PC is not for you, so the fact you don't like it means absolutely zero.

You moaning about it is like if you went to a soup kitchen, moved some starving people out of the way, tried the soup and proclaimed very loudly "This soup tastes like shit! I'm off to a fancy restaurant for a steak!". You don't see the point, as you can afford something better. Not everyone can. Count yourself lucky, don't put down their only option.

nope.

[numbski]

Notice that the Japanese version said "Powered by WinCE", and the US Versions said "Compatible with WinCE".

Neither one runs any version of windows. What DID happen was that Microsoft release a WinCE dev kit for the dreamcast. This was supposed to make software development easier.

It probably did, but also of note was that the the WinCE games sucked, and provided the most hackability to the dreamcast.

Wonder why that was? :P

Don't kill the guy's bandwidth

[signingis]

Use a Coralized link

http://pair.offshore.ai.nyud.net:8090/pic/

Re:Well, my car won't boot Linux, either

[maxwell demon]

What's wrong with "-help"?

That's equivalent to "-h -e -l -p". That is, 4 options.
However, in case you have not noticed: Linux supports GUIs, too. Especially for the things the PIC does, you'll not be likely to ever go to the command line at all (I'm not sure when was the last time I started Mozilla from the command line, for example).

GECOS ?

[tinrobot]

From the article:

Another thing that causes computer failures on tropical islands is bugs or gecos getting inside.

I didn't know they ported the GECOS operating system to X86. Thought it only ran on Honeywell and GE mainframes from the 70s.

Re:GECOS ?

[Quixote]

I think he's referring to the GECOS field in /etc/passwd entries. By implication, he means that Unix getting inside the PIC is a bug.

Heretic!

Depends on BIOS...

[Svartalf]

If you can't boot anything other than WinCE or XP Embedded, then it becomes a little harder at the minimum. Combine a goof-ball video adapter and sound adapter with no available specs and you've got a doorstop instead of a hacking project.

Re:Paperweight.

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

Mod paent up, they seem to be one of the few that actually 'gets' it.

Considering...

[Svartalf]

...that the SolarPC lite is $89 less, with a CPU that runs faster (Yes, faster... A GX2 is a good old-fashioned MediaGX CPU with a slightly faster FSB- it's still going to be slower than an Eden CPU...) and isn't borked like this one, why would you want something like this?

Paperweight or Doorstop, take your pick- either would be an effective use of this box.

Now, if they'd used an NX Geode instead, that'd been a different story altogether.

Re:Considering...

[Aggrazel]

"why would you want something like this?"

You would want something like this if you were quite ignorant of computers and only wanted to "Press the button and have it work."

You would want something like this if you lived in a remote area that didn't have good power connectivity and wanted something running on 8 watts, something you could easily generate with oh, I don't know, a small hydrowheel or maybe solar?

You would want something like this if you were a sysadmin who had to deploy thousands of PCs to little podunk villages with a bunch of wannabe hackers who would undoubtably install some crapware causing you to have to spend hours and hours fixing these things to keep them able to send their friends e-mail.

You would want something like this if you're a third world country trying to bring your population into the 21st century.

You probably wouldn't want something like this if you're an Geek from a modern country who has grown up hacking their own PC and can afford to purchase thousands of dollars worth of hardware a year, and know how to fix things yourself.

Re:Considering...

[Svartalf]

Considering that you can get the same sort of PC with more power for nearly HALF the price, which do YOU think they'll go for?

I'll say it again, using the GeodeNX series of chips for anything other than a specific set of embedded applications is a waste of time and resources. This is coming from someone who intimately knows the weaknesses and strengths of this CPU line because of all the set-top box work he's done with Linux...

Re:Considering...

[vincecate]

I'll say it again, using the GeodeNX series of chips for anything other than a specific set of embedded applications is a waste of time and resources.

Why? It seems like 6-watts and 1 Ghz for the "AMD Geode NX 1500@6W" makes for a really nice chip. The price on this chip was $65 each for 10K back in May. This does not seem bad. Why is this chip a waste of time?

Re:Considering...

[Aggrazel]

TCO = Total Cost of Ownership

A PC with more power has an open OS, meaning anyone with a CD can reboot it to load (or break) whatever they want.

A PC isn't a sealed device, meaning dust, vermin, and all sorts of crap can get in there to gunk up the thing.

A PC has a LOT more moving parts to break. This thing has no CPU fan, how long do you think a CPU fan will last in some of those places, especially really humid ones?

A PC requires a LOT more than 8 Watts to run. 200+ watts is nothing for you or I on our electric systems, but you have to consider your location. In some of these villages where these things are going to be targeted, 200 watts * however many PCs they want to set up will overload the system. You can run 10 of these on 80 watts.

Seriously, from an overall administrative point of view, these things are WAY better than a homebrew thrown together PC. this thing is solid and as close to bulletproof as you can get for under $200.

Re:Considering...

[bhtooefr]

Assuming that AMD's PRs are right on these (VIA says that AMD is way off, and is using unfair benchmarks, which is why I said that), then it should be roughly as fast as a 533MHz Eden (assuming it is the 400MHz GX2 in there).

Re:Paperweight.

[maxwell demon]

Please tell me, how is locking out Linux making the system cheaper?

Re:Paperweight.

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

*parent*

Re:Paperweight.

[jridley]

Depends. TCO may be lower.

If the system is really locked down well, such that you can't make significant changes to the OS, it may be resistant to being infected. If someone with very low income is going to buy a PC, they're not going to be able to afford to have it serviced every time it gets a worm on it. I suspect these machines may be more resistant to that than a standard Windows install.

MOD PARENT UP

[alc6379]

I opened the GP link in Firefox, and got some squatter site. Hope nobody opens it in IE, hate to know if it's got any browser nasties waiting for them...

Wholesale/OEM source for Geode fanless with NIC

[WECoyoteSooperGenius]

DT Research is selling (wholesale only apparently) a Geode "thin client" base on AMD's Thin Client Reference Design -- which seems to be want the original poster wants.

Anybody want to start retailing these? I'd bet you could ask DT (pretty please) to not install CE on them, or even put a CF adapter on them.

Heck I bet you could even get AMD to put in a good word with DT if you were going to put up some kind of "community site" to support them.

Re:Letting it run Linux==Bad idea.

[spacepimp]

from what i had gathered this device is not capable of letting you add a camera. or install software. or even look into the bios to optimize it. how does this make your comment at all relevant. this int a pc per se, its a cripplwared device that is capable of more, and they wont let it be. ms has something to gain out of this, and im certain its got something to do with their os in emerging markets (or eroding markets)

don't you get it?

[catalax]

don't you get that this device isn't made for people who are being exploited by the western civilisation and get nearly no meny to live?? this thing is made to be sold to make money with it! Yeah, they get $1,000 per yeah, right.. But they get their $1,000/y from companies like Microsoft, AMD, Intel which produce in the Third World... What they try is to sell their expensive castrated controlling crap and tell you it a good deed because we want do help - BLAH BLAH! If you want to help, fucking stop robbing these people, that's it!

Trying to get localized Linux on it

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the volunteers of the Indian Linux Project, along with team members of a few other South Asian Linux localization projects are trying to get Linux running on a low cost Geode based system. Join the indlinux-group mailing list if you are interested in helping out. The latest Indlinux Newsletter mentions this effort briefly.

Re:Paperweight.

[sleepingsquirrel]

It's for poor people who can't afford to get online.

<Flame=on> Since when is free software not for poor people?!? Maybe free speech isn't for the poor either. Why should poor people live in the Microsoft-only ghetto? How could limiting software choice possibly add value to those devices? Your moaning sounds like the indignant soup kitchen owner who is upset because the poor won't eat your rancid swill, prefering to feed it to their hogs!<Flame=off>

AMD is already exploring PIC Linux

[taj]

Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2004 14:06:53 -0600
From: "Hale, Brad"
To: Trent Jarvi
Subject: RE: PIC Linux

Trent, thanks for your interest in AMD's PIC. We have not entered an
exclusive agreement with Microsoft and are currently working with a number of
Linux developers for future support. Please check back on AMD's web site for
future announcements regarding Linux support.

Regards,

Brad Hale
Business Development
Value Platforms
Advanced Micro Devices
(XXX) XXXX-XXXX

-----Original Message----- ...

Re:AMD is already exploring PIC Linux

[ParnBR]

I'm not one who usually asks for karma, but please guys, mod the parent up. It answers (very concisely) a lot of questions people are asking around.

Re:AMD is already exploring PIC Linux

[Locutus]

That's a surprise to me... If Microsoft is not funding this, then why would they use WinCE instead of GNU/Linux?

The target audience is 3rd world countries and it's not being sold as a full-up PC so what is the advantage of using WinCE? Email works fine with text and/or html and the browser is not biggie.... What would someone do with the word processor when it's not likely to be used in school and expecting them to purchase a printer and paper would be too much for 3rd world populations....

So, as an internet appliance, I see this as a helpful device for the target audience and as such, paying anything to Microsoft for WinCE is a waste of money and it'll lock those users into a proprietary and costly system upgrade if they ever move beyond this device.

What am I missing here? Is there free Microsoft support or something? I know RoadRunner support was originally funded by Microsoft so this isn't new.

LoB

Re:AMD is already exploring PIC Linux

[Nethead]

But what about BSD you inconciderate OS bigot?

Re:AMD is already exploring PIC Linux

[truesaer]

That's a surprise to me... If Microsoft is not funding this, then why would they use WinCE instead of GNU/Linux?

I know that Slashdot is the home of Linux fans, but there is a REASON people use Microsoft products despite their flaws. In many ways they are easier to use. Linux has been about 1000% improved, and is getting better everyday. But familiarity carries a lot of weight when it comes to usability (and for that matter, when developing a product).

Re:AMD is already exploring PIC Linux

[forkazoo]

Very interesting. IMHO, something like this, with no hard drive, for $149 US would be a *very* interesting kit for enthusiasts. Some of us want a big HDD for our personal media server. Others want no moving parts and a flash drive. Most everybody would would really want such a thing would have no problem installing their own OS. Be it BEOS, Linux, BSD, one of the Redmond toys, it could be extremely versatile as an MP3 player, Car accessory, home server, HTPC, or any number of other things where you want something small, quiet, low power, and unobtrusive.

Any chance that eliminating the HDD and the OS would bring cost down enough to make it a viable product under $149?

Re:AMD is already exploring PIC Linux

[Locutus]

well, my wifes friend and daughter( highschool ) have been using Linux for over a year, a realtor friend is now on Linux( about 8 months ), my brother got it( Knoppix ) on his laptop a year ago, My wifes mom used it to get back online when her system was taken over by spyware before having the manufacturer fix it.... I think it's ready for AMD's PIC.

It just doesn't jive anymore when people say that Windows is easier than Linux or that Linux is more difficult to use than Windows. I've seen otherwise. Not all cases but most can use Linux today. Most home/school users can use Linux today. And you can't get much lower priced than FREE.

LoB

Re:Paperweight.

[timts]

can those poor people afford the >$20/month telephone bill and at least $9.95 plus tax dial up bill?

other options to get online seem to be more expensive, as far as I know.

maybe this could be put in those bars/coffee shops for general public to get online, do a little surfing.

Re:Well, my car won't boot Linux, either

[pandrijeczko]

The fact that it runs a Microsoft operating system means that some of the money from the sale of every unit goes to Microsoft.

Put Linux on it and you can cut Microsoft out of the loop completely and sell it slightly cheaper - to someon who earns $1000 a year, $5 cheaper is a big saving...

Also, what's this fascination Windows people have with the Linux command line? As a starting user, you can do all you need to at the GUI level, just like Windows. Sure, as a power user, nothing beats the command line but then I've never used a Windows system where I've not needed to drop to the command prompt on occasions to do an ipconfig, nslookup, ping or net use.

Re:Paperweight.

[rho]

The computers are "subsidized"--I imagine the connectivity is similarly "subsidized". (Scare-quoted because a government subsidy is an oxymoron. That money comes from somewhere.)

Re:Paperweight.

[kappa]

Most of my friends are at about $3000 per year. What makes you think that we don't care about downloaded simpsons? :)

I'll buy a desktop for $300, get online for $10 a month and be better without this stinking locked matchbox pretending to be a computer.

This was a reality check for you.

The only interesting use for this box is "tinkering" but the system does not allow it. AMD will fail at this project (as will Microsoft with XP Starter Edition). This is absurd.

Shades of the ThinkNIC

[BenEnglishAtHome]

I bought, used, and loved the ThinkNIC. It was conceptually similar to this PIC thing, booting Linux off a CD to launch a very basic set of apps. As long as you didn't mind saving your documents to a remote network share somewhere (the instuctions that came with it provided procedures for doing exactly that), it was all the computer lots of our moms and dads need and it only cost $USD199.

Marketwise, it was stillborn.

Now, years of technological process have allowed AMD to bring out the same thing with some disk space and Windows. Personally, I don't see that this is *that* big an improvement. It's pretty much the *same* concept.

This time, I hope it flys. I know I'm itching to throw one onto my home network already.

Re:Paperweight.

[rho]

You can do that now, for a couple/three hundred bucks. Mini-ITX comes to mind.

Actually, I think your idea has merit--providing a home-server unit that combines the best parts of Free software and Internet technologies and mixes it with fast broadband. But not for this case, where they are trying to provide an Internet-capable device that is built for ease of use, durability and low-cost, and that won't require expensive tech support.

Also, the PIC does come with a real hard disk. When did 10 gigs become chump-change? I remember when we only had 6K of hand-wrapped core memory, and we LIKED IT, blah blah blah....

Linux running on this device

[anonymous123]

The company Linspire is working with AMD and they have linspire already working on this device. AMD made a special version with the bios enabled for usb cdrom boot support. I hear that Linspire is going to be shipping these computers for $150 all over the world. Finally linux hits the mass market and thank god it is linspire.

Re:Linux running on this device

[Anonymous Coward]

Linspire is free via bittorrent and you can pay $5 a month and download all the apps in the warehouse then quit. You get to keep the apps once you download them even if you quit the warehouse. Therefore, the total cost is $5 for Linspire. Best price for the only Linux that Microsoft worries about.

Re:Paperweight.

[ParnBR]

I make $5,000 per year. Not too shabby, considering I am a public worker in Brazilian education area. =) I'm a bit skeptic about the unit's cost here, since imported goods (especially computer-related) are heavily taxed in Brazil. My income makes me a probable target for the PIC, although I already have a fair computer (which I painstakingly bought with months of savings).

Although I already have a PC, I'd like to sink my teeth in one of these. If I could install Linux in it, it would be the ideal test bed for all sorts of crazy stuff I have in mind; since I can only afford one computer, I can't do most of this stuff in my main computer (and things like VMWare are off-limits to me, because they aren't the fastest thing around and require a lot of memory and storage I can't spare).

But then, I'm just a relatively poor geek. This product wasn't made for me. I can only dream if it were... =)

Oh, come on, this isn't a finite resource

[wirefarm]

What if someone here decides to hack one of these in an innovative way and gets a mail/web/whatever server running linux on one. Sure for him it's a toy, but for the village that needs a low-cost, low-maintenance webserver or mail server, it would be a godsend.
The only thing getting in the way is the company's decision to try to prevent this from happening. This is a good thing how, exactly?

Take a look at some of the embedded linux devices around - they're doing things that the designers had never envisioned. Here at home, I just upgraded my mail/web/file/music/media server from a 333Mhz to a 566 Mhz. This thing is 1000Mhz and uses a fraction of the power? II'd buy one.

What if I buy one at twice the price and sponsor a village somewhere with one? If I could run Linux on one, I might consider doing that. Rather than just accuse slashdotters of taking food out of these people's mouths by buying one to play with, maybe they should be given the opportunity to help sponsor them, or at least come up with some hacks that these people could actually use. After all, how much would it cost to set up a Windows-based *server* in one of these villages?

I'm just not comfortable with the idea that people in the third world are only capable of becoming media consumers, which is where it looks like this kind of thing will lead them.

So just use something like knoppix

[wirefarm]

You don't *need* a CD drive for knoppix, do you?
That would seem to be a far better way to create a no-maintenance box, IMHO.
Problems on the box? Cycle the power.

Re:Paperweight.

[DysonSphere]

Were putting down the fact that it doesn't have to be their only option. As stated above, WINCE is only $5, but in the $1000 to $6000 per year tax bracket, $5 makes a difference. What's wrong with unlocking the BIOS for people who want to hack the box into a cheap low power web/cluster/ldap/dns/etc box? Are people in the $1000 to $6000 bracket the only people who should be eligable for a lower elec bill?

For a large chunk of my life, this would have been me. Something like this would have made my career take off years ago. I suppose there was some value to writing and debugging .asm on paper.

Good and Bad

[hhawk]

The good news is that this is good news for many countries, say the Philipines and Egypt where college educated people earn only a few 1000 (USD Equiv.) a year. This is a computer for them and it will work well.

That it isnt' open source, yada yada, will not make it less valued to the target market. This puts personal computing/Internet into the hands of up to an extra 500 Million people, probably more like 200 to 300 Million.

The bad news? This still puts personal computing and the Internet OUT of the REACH of BILLIONS. The only way that will happen in the short term is a totally open source solution from Chip to Software. IMHO, that can only happen with support from governments like India and China.

My personal rule of thumb is that a computer needs to cost not more than 1 or 2 weeks INCOME. If this thing costs $185 that means you need to earn 5k to 9k a year to afford it. In some countries the people earning that much are the upper crust...

We need open source solutions that cost $25 to $50. That can be afforded by most people/families in the would -- say at least 3 or 4 billion out of 5 billion.

Re:Paperweight.

[Pxtl]

10 gigs? I should've RTFA'd. That's more than enough for a webserver and some samba shares.

Yep... I just think its sad that linux users keep going through the "linux on the toaster!" when it sounds like more and more all everybody wants is a nice simple *nix $200 barebones "just-works" netpliance.

And I've looked - its really hard to put together a PC for under $200, especially in a nice form factor mini-ITX case.

Roll this sucker out with Fedora and let the hardcores wipe it and put on Gentoo.

IMHO you miss the point completely

[Moraelin]

Letting the computer load other software too (e.g., Mozilla) wouldn't have cost _anything_. If it can already load the supplied software, i.e., it already has a loader, then it already has all it needs to run third party software too.

This machine is deliberately crippled. Plain and simple.

In fact, au contraire, it probably took extra programming (and thus money) to lock it down like that. Why? Probably some management fuck figuring they can make more money this way. E.g.,

1. To make sure it does not compete with the more lucrative Windows and Athlon XP markets.

To reuse your kitchen soup example, it's like deliberately adding a generous dose of laxative into the soup, just so the soup kitchen doesn't cut into the profits of your restaurants. You know, just to give everyone the idea "buy an expensive steak instead, you fucking bum."

2. To give the TCPA a jump start, since it doesn't seem to start on its own in the normal desktop market. Convincing PC people that it's in their best interest to give away all freedoms and let Microsoft decide what they can and what they can't run, is a tough sell. So they're sneaking it in from the other end.

Again, it's like generously adding laxative to the soup, only this time to jump start one's public toilet business.

3. To milk those people of more money in the long run, since they're already locked in and depending on your approval for every program they run and every media file they play. Which strikes me as a very heartless business plan: it's figuring out how can you milk more money out of the _poor_.

Again, feel free to fill in your own analogy with deliberately putting laxative in poor people's soup, for the sole purpose of lining corporate pockets.

Re:Letting it run Linux==Bad idea.

[MrHanky]

"ls -al|grep sd"

Why don't you just do a 'ls sd*' like a normal person would do. Pipes can be fun and make things easier, but using grep when ls does everything you need it to do is just ludicruous. If you're capable of compiling your own kernel, you should know this. Also, why do you need to list hidden files (-a)? But perhaps you're just trolling.

"Take a step back and shut the fuck up for a sec."

[Didion Sprague]

What about a poor geek in such a country?

This brings up a couple interesting points, none of which are really worth pursuing. But I'm surprised (or maybe not surprised) to see that most Slashdotters posting about this and what it can and can't do have remarkable tunnel-vision.

This isn't meant to be a "geek" machine. This isn't for a "poor geek" (who, I'm sure, if he or she was worth his or her geekiness, would find other, better machines to receive geek training from). It's a *tool* -- much in the same way that a hammer or a pair of pliers are tools.

In fact, you sound like a bunch of carpenters complaining that no one is gonna use a $4 hammer from Home Depot when what they really need is a $49.95 double-balanced claw hammer with an oxide tip to "properly sink nails."

Yeah, that's nice, but when I need a hammer -- I need a hammer. I could care less about the size of the claw or the oxide tip.

I realize most folks here are in college and high school and aren't yet capable (this is gonna sound condescending, but it's true) doing what my old comp sci professor called "taking a step back and shutting the fuck up for a second."

(This is the same guy who urged us all to read Shakespeare in order to understand that what's really at the core of computer science is humanity -- not silicon. At the time we laughed. Now, twenty years later, I've come to understand he's exactly right.)

Anyway. I digress. And I condescend. But, really. the windows/linux stuff is necessary sometimes, funny other times, but in this case, it completely misses the point. What no one is mentioning is the cultural *reason* for such a low-cost box -- and how (and why) the internet has become (oddly?) indispensible -- even for those "poor folks" in the sticks.

That's pretty amazing, actually. And it seems to be the most significant part of this story.

Re:Why oh why...

[wastingtape]

I was wondering that too. When i first read the headline i thought AMD was going to be competing with Microchip. I don't know why companies insist on using already well-used acronymns.

Re:Paperweight.

[Teancum]

I guess where the unspoken complaint is where this computer could be a full-functional general purpose, programable computing device, and instead is a marketing tool for Microsoft and a bug-filled internet access box like a car with the hood welded shut and no lug-nuts to replace the wheels on the same car.

There is no reason why people who only make $6,000 per year couldn't get a simple computer to hack on. Indeed, some of the most original software I've ever seen has come from places like where this computer is going to be marketed. While these people may not care about Linux, they should, as it allows people with more brains than money to succeed.

Treacherous Computing

[tepples]

The problem booting from the CF card is probablly just a partition type or signature thing.

"Just a signature thing"? You talk about breaking what could possibly be 2-Kbit RSA like it's "just a signature thing". It looks like Treacherous Computing.

Re:Paperweight.

[CTho9305]

Who said anything about locking out linux? Just because he couldn't get it to run doesn't mean it's locked out. Besides, given the target market, the machines are as locked-down as possible to minimize support cost. This doesn't appear to be aimed at geeks in developed countries (is it even available in the US?) - it's aimed at people who can't afford faster PCs and just want internet access. They probably don't want someone to look up "how to make your PIC cooler by installing linux", botch the setup, and need support.

Baby Einstein supports Sonny Bono

[tepples]

I wouldn't recommend the Baby Einstein series to anybody because the Baby Einstein DVD series is made by a company notorious for being an ardent opponent of the public domain. Look in the lower left corner of the box.

"Left up to the video card"

[tepples]

It has a MAX of 800x600 resolution (shouldn't that be left up to the video card?)

AMD probably skimped on the RAMDAC as well.

Re:Letting it run Linux==Bad idea.

[anagama]

• I love Linux, and so does everyone else here ... Yes it runs faster, yes its more stable, but think of the target market! I don't think anyone will dare argue with me when I say that Windows is more user-friendly to someone who has never touched a computer in his or her life.

I won't argue with this (though the half dozen times I've touched WinXP I've been lost). But why lock down the BIOS as it seems they've done? Sure - supply windows for people who don't want to learn about the system and istead, plan only to surf the web. But there is no good reason to lock out linux - it isn't like linux will magically install itself and cause 3dworldwide mass confusion. If a person is not into linux - they won't ever try installing it. If a person is, why make it hard??

Still one other problem ...

[psuedo_samurai]

Many of the places in the world that would benefit from these devices still face the challenge (to the computer owner) of power fluctuations. Power can drop, spike, or simnply go out at any time. I had the pleasure of installing a cybercafe in Western Africa, and needless to say protection against these events was one of the first steps to it being sucessful.

$5 worth of rice?

[sleepingsquirrel]

but $5 probably buys a months worth of rice.

• $300/metric ton ~= $0.15/pound
• $0.15/pound times 1 pound/person/day = $0.15/day/person
• $0.15 a day per person times 30 days/month
• $4.50 to feed a person for a month

Re:$5 worth of rice?

[Surur]

Just think how much rice $380 of AMD computer would buy. Somehow I dont think $5 for rice is much of an issue.

Surur

This thing is the future of computers

[Garak]

This thing really is the future of computers. I know alot of geeks don't really want hear that.

There really isn't any need for a large HD, 3d video, fast processor, upgradablity, etc... in an office PC or even a home PC. Something like this little box is all you need. Legacy free, simple, cheap, etc...

The only software an office PC really needs is a webbroswer and all the applications can be webbased. This kind of goes back to the mainframe style computing of the 70's. Current broswers are not really suited for this but you get the idea.

Once standards get alittle more defined there will be no need to upgrade a computer. Things are already leveling off in proformance. Its just the big companys trying to maintain upgrade cycles to keep the revenue streams going thats fueling faster processors.

A PC for the people will just be a small box like this with a few USB ports, maybe USB 3.0 will become the standard. With a simple standardized interface so that no 3rd party drivers will be needed. No internal HD. Lots of ram, OS in rom, most apps will be internet based. This requires alot of future looking standards to be put in place.

If so someone wants todo video editing, the video editing software will run right on the camcorder, they just plug the camcorder into the usb port and go. No need for the video files ever to see the PC. The DVD burner will be built right into the camcorder, this will be pushed by the copyright lobbist. Same goes for music...

If someone wants to Play games they buy a console or play webbased games(kinda like flash games but with 3D maybe). The game console may not connect to the TV, it may just plug into a USB port.

All these changes are going to be fueled by a few things.
1) Copyright, PC's with HD's and burners make media copying to easy.
2) People want simpler computers, the adverage person dosn't want to have to worry about upgrading or installing software or drivers. People want true plug and play. For this to work we need strict standards.
3) Security - If you can't install any software than worms and virus can't install them selfs basicly. Its the only real solution to todays virus/worm/spyware problems.
4) Price - people want cheaper PC's, by removing the drives and other moving parts PC's become cheaper and last longer.

The only place left for us geeks will be on high priced servers where all the web/net based applications are done.

Re:This thing is the future of computers

[Garak]

Alittle more to add to this rant...

The PC could basicly just become an ethernet switch that connects the display, input devices(keyboard and mouse), speakers(with built in DAC and amp), and other media devices together. You just login to your ISP's 'mainframe' and your desktop is basicly just a trusted webpage from which you could use a webbroswer to browse to untrusted sites. You should beable to login to the trusted 'mainframe' from any computer anywhere in the world and have all your desktop settings, etc... Once logged in, the trusted 'mainframe' would probe your local network and provide links to your hardware and setup stuff like audio feeds to your speakers. The connection between your hardware and the ISP's mainframe would be only permitted while your logged in.

Ofcourse all this is going to require fiber to the home or atleast to the neighborhood and copper from there. Lots of bandwidth will be needed for realtime loss less audio and video.

This is the only way really to ensure security. Sure we lose the ablity to run our own OS, save media locally, etc... But we gain the abillity to have our documents, media and settings go where ever we do. You will beable to walk up to any computer and instantly have all your custom settings. Ofcourse it all has to have end to end encryption.

All this is quite a few years off yet, maybe google will get things started with their OS.

Re:This thing is the future of computers

[nickgrieve]

Umm... what are you on about,.. you have heard of thin clients, winterms etc... the "future" is now dude

Get a brain

[Moraelin]

I'm generally pro-MS, and god knows I've pissed off enough Linux zealots even on Slashdot. But this kind of a crippled machine is just idiotic, plain and simple. Saying basically "we can't let you run OpenOffice or Mozilla" because it might be spyware, is like castrating someone so they can't get AIDS. It's missing the point completely.

And it might not even be Microsoft's idea. After all, they don't have a monopoly or patent on having greedy fucks as managers.

Re:What's the point of it?

[multiplexo]

to probably paraphrase :

What, my dear, is the point of a new born baby ?

Yeah, but imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Re:Hmmm

[vincecate]

The shipping of a big Dell box to this island is far more than the shipping on the PIC.

Re:Paperweight.

[42forty-two42]

Then put the restrictions in Windows, not the BIOS. Linux still runs, worms don't. Simple.

Re:Paperweight.

[kisielk]

Maybe because they aren't? See This comment

Just because the current version doesn't run Linux right now, does not mean future versions will not.

Re:Letting it run Linux==Bad idea.

[Locutus]

Exactly and that's why I figured Microsoft was helping fund this somehow. That and the fact that a Microsoft exec( Stevie? ) mentioned that the world needed a $100 computer just weeks before AMD announced this device and the MS press gobbled it up at the time.

We might find that the BIOS isn't locked out or something about another way to get a real OS installed so I'm still not 100% sure who is funding this "project". My tin-foil hat make me think Microsoft has its hands in this though...

LoB

Re:Why oh why...

[Locutus]

but MicroChip PICs are known to the techie crowd and not the marketing types. They are targetting this to consumers so even if they did know about PICs in the MicroChip sense, they probably figured they could take it over by using it in the larger market...

I don't think the AMD term/usage will catch on.

LoB

I wouldn't bother.

[Ayanami Rei]

For not much more money, you can get the exact same configuration without the BIOS/OS crypto-handshake.
And that configuration would probably have a few extra nice things, like digital I/O pins on the mainboard, or an I2C bus, or something fun like that.

Re:I wouldn't bother.

[ryanr]

Yup, yup..... WHERE?

Re:I wouldn't bother.

[Lumpy]

For not much more money, you can get the exact same configuration without the BIOS/OS crypto-handshake.

incorrect.

for TWICE the money you can get a bare motherboard that is losely related to that device.

if I wanted to build the case and everything else I'd go mini-itx for less than a Hundred bucks. I can get 500mhz miniitx for around $78.00 locally.

I want that EXACT device. simply blow out the bios and put in a different one from a compatable board or even linuxbios and continue on happily.

heck, I can get a board like you speak of for $160.00 without IDE and a geode processor but a CF slot and flash disk onboard with a linux distro ready to go from most anywhere using a superior alpha processor.

NO.

[Ayanami Rei]

the REASON the device is locked down is because they're going to market it to 100s of millions of people and that's one big fat cash cow for whoever gets to charge 10 cents for whatever gets bundled per delivered unit.

If they leave it unlocked, then they can't sell "upgrades" to the newly created captive market later (for when they've saved up the money).

Re:Paperweight.

[toddestan]

I would think that a poor person would be better off with a used PII/PIII computer for under $200 than this PC which is about as useful as an X-box. Atleast if this person is at all interested in doing anything more than email and light webbrowsing.

Re:Paperweight.

[pauldy]

Relativity strikes again as going from an abacus to this makes it look like a high performance machine. Now they can work on their resumes and get them in a word format so they can post them on monster and make more money. Isn't that how the world works anyway?

For real though you can't just sit back and take the no brainier approach of blaming the big bad corporation. If people can't afford them they won't buy them.

What I find amusing is how everyone wants to get linux on this device under the guise it is cheap. But if you look at it a brand new xbox goes for $149 at game stop add to that a 30 dollar mod chip and you can have linux running on a faster device and have the same if not more functionality.

So it's single tasking?

[Ayanami Rei]

I guess that makes sense if it's based on WinCE.
But that sounds really retarded. You'd have to get apps and certificates signed by their private key before deploying.

Ugh.

Re:"Take a step back and shut the fuck up for a se

[Enigma_Man]

Excellent post. You hit every point I'd been thinking about while reading the comments here.

-Jesse

Troll Me. Please.

[Coyote67]

I know I'm going to be trolled for this. I know I'm generalizing. I know a lot of you are going to think I'm a douche. Thats fine. I don't care. Here goes.

You guys are a bunch of douches. This is the same bitching I heard from you people when the xbox came out. Oh it can't run linux. Blah its M1cro$oft. Look.People. This is an amd product specifically designed for a specific purpose. Its not running linux because AMD doesn't want it to, not because Microsoft is paying AMD off so AMD could then pay them. Thats just retarded. Yes I know they did that with PCs but THIS IS NOT A PC. if AMD wants to release a system thats made for a specific reason they have every right to. If they think that windows is a good solution (since they are targeting this for people that need to learn about computers and how to use them, it only makes sense that they would put windows on it if the majority of the world is using it)then thats their call. Its like bitching at Palm because they don't let you put a linux iso on a sd card, pop it inside a t5 and install linux.
If you want linux on this thing, put it on yourself. Figure it out. Stop being a lazy bitch and do something. It took 6 months with a xbox, I'm sure a few of you in here could do it faster and better.

Now put your hands back on the keyboard and get to work.

And just _who_ the fuck are _you_?

[Ayanami Rei]

Care to inform anyone else about AMD's intent today?
What are you, on the fucking development team?

Your comments remind me of a Penny Arcade cartoon.
That's not a good thing.

Running from flash

[DeBaas]

If you want to run an os from flash, I think Damn Smalllinux is the best.
Damnsmall has the option to perform a 'frugal-install' This will install the live cd on the cd on such a way that it runs exactly like the live cd. That way, no writes are performed if you use it. Since flash don't like to many writes, that important. Also it allows to add extra apps through the MyDSL system and allows for restore state partition (yes that means writing, but only just prior to stopping the system).
So you even though it's a live system, you can still update and save stuff.

Re:"Take a step back and shut the fuck up for a se

[Darth Hubris]

This device needs to have a TV out feature as well. Not everyone has a $100 monitor laying around, but may have a TV. Linux would certainly be a good idea, but I imagine that MS charged only a nominal amount for CE.

Most Likely Scenario: Rural village with perhaps one TV in a community hall. They use it to watch instructional videos transmitted via satellite. This machine, the big, green, AMD Lozenge[tm] will be used to search for weather forecasts, crop prices, some medical info for the local medic/doctor, downloading lessons for the K-12 schoolteacher, correspondence with officials in far-away local government centers, etc.

It may well be a 50/2015 proposition, but this device might serve 20-30 poeple. Before The shrieking and wailing starts from the left, there are areas in the US that look an awful lot like third-world countries. These devices would be a boon and a leg up for developing areas.

These would be fun boxes to hack and play with, no doubt. If you think that no one wants an internet appliance, check the gospel according to Cringley this week. These units were a bit ahead of their time in aticipation of need, but are perfect for right now and the near future.

Re:Paperweight.

[hkb]

Since when is free software not for poor people?!?

It's the hardware, stupid.

During your laughably ignorant rant, you forgot
that most of the price of the PIC is the
hardware.

How could limiting software choice possibly add value to those devices?

It reduces the company's (and thus the
customer's) cost for support issues related
to people mucking with their PICs and trying
to put Brown Shat Linux on it and then
calling up AMD for help on getting Windows CE
back.

Your moaning sounds like the indignant soup kitchen owner who is upset because the poor won't eat your rancid swill, prefering to feed it to their hogs!

Such is the way of the low-cost solution.
If you don't like it, I suggest you donate
your money and time toward the causes that
bother you the most.

sounds like they invented...

[zogger]

...a new and shiny version of the WebTV! Browse, email, media, type letters, and I know you can IRC and IM on them as well. Same deal as this new computer from AMD at any electronic gadget store, plus you got a big screen if you want it, your home TV!

Really, with those specs and "features", I'd rather get a used webtv for 25$ someplace and hook it to the bigscreen box and sit on the couch and surf..

go read

[alizard]

the "Findings of Fact" from the MS monopoly trial.

You'll see that the description is both dramatic and accurate.

For the document... Google is your friend, right?

Re:go read

[benzapp]

I didn't see any facts in that particular post, just unnecessarily emotive hyperbole and the most base form of rhetoric.

Such nonsense only hurts your cause, and makes it appear as if you have everything to hide by obfuscating facts with adjectives and poetic metaphors.

It wasn't that hard to find...

[Ayanami Rei]

http://www.bwi.com/scripts/site/site_product.php3/ id/8722/

Search for "geode embedded" in google. OH LOOK.

Re:It wasn't that hard to find...

[ryanr]

Hmmm... I see. And that would be, not the same thing at all. That is in fact a motherboard.

Seriously, if you know where I can purcase one of these system in this article, or the less locked-down one you describe, I'd be interested to know.

Re:It wasn't that hard to find...

[vincecate]

The one I have is a 1 Ghz Geode NX 1500. You can see the motherboard here: http://www.amd.com/us-en/ConnectivitySolutions/Pro ductInformation/0,,50_2330_9863_10837%5E11090,00.h tml

Re:It wasn't that hard to find...

[vincecate]

The board I have again with a real html link.

Re:Paperweight.

[pi_rules]

What you're missing here, dave420, is that while the device isn't INTENDED of us geeks it would behoove everybody involved if they released an uncrippled version that would actually run our geeky crap. -I- might actually find a use for such a thing with that small form factor and come up with some nifty projects for one.

$200 is a drop in the bucket for a lot of us geeks. With a different BIOS it'd be usable by us.

What you don't seem to understand is that there isn't a limited supply of these things. On the contrary the prices for the 3rd world would DROP as it became more cost effective to make them as supply state-side to geeks increased. You are aware that as things are manufactured in greater quantities that the prices naturally drop, right?

It's all in one...

[Ayanami Rei]

So put it in something (search for mini-itx or pc-104 enclosures).

Come on, man! If you don't want it locked down, you can't expect the whole thing delivered to you on a plate... there's no market there.

Re:"Take a step back and shut the fuck up for a se

[mrchaotica]

Sooner or later, even non-geeks are going to want to install some application. The indispensability of computers is a direct result of their extendibility and programmability.

Coool...

[Ayanami Rei]

how much was it and who was your reseller?

Re:Coool...

[vincecate]

Arrow electronics 408 727 2500 NX-DB1500 $589

This is a developer board, so it is more expensive. I ordered it about 2 months ago. It took them about 6 weeks to ship and then 3 weeks to get here (I use a forwarder in Miami so I have a US address for people to ship to, but this takes longer).

There ought to be a regular retail board by now, but I did not find it in 1 minute on google.

Inexpensive != Subsidized. Low cost design

[billstewart]

This isn't a charity project - this is a system designed to cost less because it's got less legacy clutter on it, plus it can use less memory / disk / CPU because it's running a less bloated operating system. They're still paying for WinCE, though the PDA market price points means that they probably pay less for WinCE than for WinXP, and Linux would still be a bit cheaper.

Low Cost != Subsidized - it's a design thing

[billstewart]

These machines aren't low price because some company is subsidizing them as a charity for poor people - they're low price because they've been designed for a lower cost, leaving behind some of the excess parts of the legacy PC design for something that's not fully PC-compatible and running a lower-priced OS. They're also running a less bloated OS than WinXP, so they can get by with a slower CPU and less RAM and disk, though they could of course have done that with Linux or ucLinux.

They're intended for markets where people can't pay as much for them, and there's probably less profit per box in them than in higher-end machines - but as other posters have pointed out, if rich people buy them, AMD can just crank out more of these, because they're Making A Profit on each one (or at least, they're making a Marginal Profit on each one; total profit depends on whether they sell enough of them to cover their initial development costs.) If rich people turn these things into X-terminals for their kids or whatever, that's just more sales, which is a Good Thing.

Vince Cate, the author, lives in Anguilla

[billstewart]

Vince Cate, the author of this article, lives in Anguilla. He's a well-known ex-USAn cypherpunk who moved down there a number of years ago, and runs offshore hosting services and such. Anguilla's not a big place, maybe 10000 people, and while it's not rich, it's also not dirt-poor, and some things are expensive because of ridiculous import taxes (like many third-world countries), or because of inherent costs (electricity there is expensive and doesn't sound highly reliable.)

welcome to slashdot

[justins]

Just because they are Microsoft and therefor inherently evil doesn't mean they can't be incompetent as well.

That's where I disagree. There's nothing "evil" about what they're trying to do. Insofar as Microsoft has helped bring technology to people who didn't have it, they're generally doing good. Their "evilness" has always been limited to contract law and the way they relate to other companies, which isn't relevant here and is a pretty mild form of evilness, in the scheme of things.

We can measure the "evilness" of energy companies, mining companies, industrial, or whatnot, in terms of bodycount. Microsoft's evilness seems to involve making life a little more difficult for competing software companies, while bringing largely unoriginal but effective solutions to consumers. You have to have a really myopic view of the world to view that as "evil."

Re:welcome to slashdot

[anum]

Very true, all of Microsofts "evil" comes from competitive board room decisions. The "inherently evil" above is intended to be sarcasm based on /.'s "M$ is the Devil" BS. It didn't come across well but there you go.

For the record: MS does not hire child or slave labor; MS does not dump toxic waste; MS does not poison ground water; MS does not encourage unsafe working conditions involving nasty chemicals.
MS DOES crush competitors and they don't care if the competitors product is better, this is called capitalism and it is generally good for us, the consumer. Without MS (and Compaq, and others) we may all be forced to pay thousands more for our computers and many of our embedded devices (including things like the iPod) wouldn't exist at all.

Troubles arise when a company gets big enough that their normal competitive behavior begins to impact an entire industry. Think Standard Oil or even IBM. We have laws to stop this from happening but the important thing to remember is that even the worst monopolist is rarely Evil, usually they are just really good at the job. In this sense MS is a monopoly and controls have kicked in to control the damage they can do.

The important thing with regard to this discussion is that MS is big enough to throw Millions at a project in the hopes of a very tenuous return on investment. I suspect that the low cost PC in several forms is something MS has gambled quite a bit on in the hope (slim though it might be) of locking in new markets before Linux can take over. You and I will look at this and think, why throw millions away on an idea that has almost no chance. MS looks at it and says, why not put a few million on a long shot that could generate billions.

It doesn't hurt ME to have them take this stance and with all those hard working hackers out there I might have a lot to gain (small, low power, low cost media PC for the car or kitchen running Linux or even a hacked CE.net, sounds good to me) but remember competition can drive a company to stifle other efforts. Bribing the leaders of "emerging markets" to standardise on your product can certainly be seen as bad if not evil. Especially if you manage to secure a contract which forces a small country to spend more on your stuff than they can really afford. MS could be seen as evil if they are taking advantage of their power and position in a way which increases suffering, but even if that happens you can bet it will be inadvertent and indirect.

On an only vaguely related note, don't you find it amusing/sad to hear people talk about the horrible violence in cartoons when not that long ago we lived in a society where people were regularly hanged in public? Just for being the wrong skin tone! That is evil, MS isn't. They may act like a big blundering bull in a china shop sometimes but that's a different story.

Re:welcome to slashdot

[justins]

Ah, we're in agreement then. :)

Mistype...

[Svartalf]

This little box uses the GX series of chips. I meant to type GX there. Look at the piccies- it's a GX2 CPU.

You missed the point..

[Svartalf]

Just the other day, we had a $100 machine discussed on Slashdot that was more powerful and consumed just as little in the power department- less actually.

A SolarPC lite is a more powerful computer with the same advantages and is nearly half the price.

Re:You missed the point..

[Aggrazel]

Well, I haven't seen a Solarlite for sale yet, I tend to reserve judgement on products until I can actually have it in my hands.

But seriously, I actually like the idea of locking down the OS so you can't tamper with it. makes things easier.

Considering...

[Svartalf]

That you can actually GET a machine of this calibre assembled for about $250 or so off the shelf at Fry's with the locked down OS and all- I wouldn't doubt that VIA's made a purpose built Eden setup for them at that price-point. If you've seen a VIA EPIA M-6000 or better, you've seen the SolarPC for all intents and purposes.

It's a hell of a lot better than the Geode GX2 and it also provides mediocre support for 3D and superior support for MPEG2 decode- in the same general price range or less. Now, regardless of what you might think, it's not vapor- and it IS more powerful overall than the Geode based offering from AMD. Again, had they based this off of the NX series, it'd be a different story altogether.

Tyan making Geode Motherboards

[vincecate]

So Tyan is coming out with Geode motherboards for like $80. The only problem with the mini-itx Geode motherboard I bought was the price, since it was a developer board. Now it will be cheap to make a powerful fanless computer.