New $149 NetBSD Single Board Computer Port

An Anonymous NetBSD User writes "NetBSD now supports a new ARM board, the Technologic Systems TS-7200. The TS-7200 is a low cost ($149!) mass produced embedded single board computer that runs on less than 2 watts of power."

Comments

Direct Link to the Board

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Here

Keep It Real, Lameness Filter(TM)

Funny this should come up

[skinfitz]

I've recently been looking at small / quiet form factor boards from places like Mini-ITX - I'm embedding an X terminal into my glass topped dining room table.

I've had it with desktops; time for the X table top.

Crack-influenced flash prices...

[rossifer]

The computer itself seems like a steal for the specs they're claiming but their prices on CF flash are more than a little silly. You can get Sandisk Ultra II 512MB for $60 from any online meta-retailer and these guys are offering an unknown 512MB CF card for $145.

I've seen this kind of thing from several of these kinds of suppliers and I don't quite get it. They don't seem to realize that things like flash are fully commoditized and are still thinking they can get away with a 100% markup...

Oh well, if they can actually sell CF at those prices, then they deserve the money. Kudos for such a sweet, low power, inexpensive computer either way.

Regards,
Ross

Re:Crack-influenced flash prices...

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at embeddedARM.com, we know we're aren't competetive on CF prices and even suggest to cost sensitive customers to go get their CF's from Costco or what-not. We sell them at all just so we can be the one-stop shop to customers if they need them with the board, and pre-installed with Linux, etc..

Also, some (not all) of our CF are inflated because they are the the "industrial" class CF's. These have extended rewrite cycles, higher G ratings, and work in extended temperature.

SBCs

[dmiller]

This looks like a nice SBC, but I am really happy with my little Soekris'. With case, the 4501 is cheaper than this ARM board (the board alone is more expensive) and has three ethernet interfaces.

Re:SBCs

[batobin]

I have to agree. All the networking guys I know love these things.

I've even talked to one guy who was using one at a remote radio tower which serviced an entire town of wireless users. He had a cheap solar panel hooked up to a little battery, both of which powered the soekris for years without problems.

Re:SBCs

[aivarsk]

Except that Soekris 4501 uses 5 times as much power as TS-7200. o.O

Re:SBCs

[Anonymous Coward]

(I work at Technologic Systems)

We are a company purely of computer engineers and cheap case design is not really our specialty. We are indeed investigating cheaper case designs and 2/3 ethernet variants and in the future will have no trouble undercutting Soekris. :-) This is somewhat of a new market for us as we have traditionally targetted industrial embedded uses (hence PC/104 and RS485 com ports), where 3 ethernets is a bit of an odd request.

True, but have you checked out the competition?

[epseps]

Here are some ARM based boards to compare:

Microcontrollershop.com

Here is a similar Atmel board but this is only 8 bit and $153. Atmel Ethernut Board

8MB or 16MB flash with 32MB ram on a 32 bit processor is a good deal in the world of small low powr computers. (but still expensive compared to x86 desktop)

Re:We can run Debian on it already

[LizardKing]

Which is why you should go with Linux, rather than NetBSD, since NetBSD's notion of "support" runs to "we can get it to boot on this hardware" rather than "works well on this hardware and supports all common drivers"

Your description of NetBSD's hardware support is a bit odd. Unlike Linux where the philosophy is "if it works on one platform include it", NetBSD is designed so that a driver written for one platform will work reliably on all those that support the same device. As for missing support for some devices, that's no more or less true than Linux. Compare the support for SGI MIPS for example - when it works in Debian it supports a similar subset of systems and devices. Likewise for the Vax, although here Linux supports a tiny suset of the systems and devices that NetBSD does. Linux has a large proportion of platforms that are only notionally supported (they booted once upon a time, but have languished thanks to Linus being primarily concerned with i386).

all things considered, Gentoo is a better bet

I don't know of a single embedded company using Gentoo (embedded boards being the subject of the original article), and all the embedded Linux kits I've used have been based on RedHat. I also know of no companies using Gentoo on their servers - again it is RedHat along with the odd SuSE box. I did encounter Debian once as a contractor, but the guy who had installed it was reputedly a loose cannon and ahad done it without auhorisation (one of my first tasks was to switch the machine in question to RedHat).

Re:We can run Debian on it already

[Anonymous Coward]

(I work for Technologic Systems)

I did both the Linux port and the NetBSD port to the TS-7200 so I am uniquely qualified on their differences. IMHO, to an engineer actually doing the work, NetBSD is a far superior OS to port to, at least to this platform.

The port is not a "we can get it to boot" port of NetBSD. There is installatium medium on a FTP site, a system installation program (sysinst), cross-toolchain support and even support for the ISA (PC/104) bus, which is something that is really impossible right now on Linux due to its x86 assumptions littered throughout ISA drivers. (Ever tried to use inb and outb on an ARM?, there is no such thing! ISA bus space is memory mapped and appears at a different spot depending on 8 or 16bit accesses)

Although you can run it on Debian, Debian does not support it. I had to do all that work myself, and Technologic Systems is supporting it on this platform. There aren't any TS-7200 kernels on debian.org.