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AdvantageSix Promises a Tiny ARM-based Computer
oberondarksoul writes "Drobe, one of the leading RISC OS news websites, is reporting that AdvantageSix have displayed an in-development version of their forthcoming A9home system. Running on a 400MHz Samsung ARM9 processor, and measuring approximately 6.6x4x2 inches, this ought to be a cheap -- and reasonably powerful -- RISC OS-based alternative to small form factor PCs or the Mac mini."
Can the rest of the world have those measurements in units we can understand?
Now how much is that in CM?
My hacked site
They're old/crap even by ARM standards!
The processor seems to be rather large. This kind of measurements have lately been seen in adult industry, not in home electronics.
This new market sector of small, stripped-down PCs (a la Mac Mini) I foresee becoming extremely popular. The costs are low, therefore people who have given that excuse to not owning a computer will be happy to buy. Usage is simple, which will appeal to the same group of people. They will be useful for clusters (ie. Beowolf) as they are not made more costly by monitors, mice, et cetera. It is easy to take one and install an alternate OS on it (again, a la Mac mini). As well, they will be a hit with developing countries. Cheapness without the ambiguity of a white-box.
Looking at the specs sheet and the expected price It really is not any competition for the Mac mini, so its expected to retail for around 499GBP+vat(17.5% on top of that) in the UK (if UKP means UK pound ?, ) which is already alot more than the price of the 1.42ghz g4 based mac mini , which comes with double the ram , double the harddrive .It will probably make a great ARM development machine but i don't think its trying to compete with SFF PCs and MacMinis.
-Comparing it to a macmini is really doing it a great dis-service
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I don't see an ethernet port on this thing.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
499 UK pounds is almost $912. And you don't get extras like a keyboard.
For that kind of dough, you can get a pretty fancy Intel computer.
OK, the architecture is "elegant." And the form factor is really tiny. How else is this useful?
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
168x103x53mm in a blue metal box
400MHz Samsung ARM9 processor
Embedded graphics processor
128M SDRAM
8M VRAM
10/100MBit network
40GB hard disc
4 x USB sockets
Microphone in
2 x PS/2
RS232 serial
5V power supply, 20W power
Thanks :)
So there is a world outside USA border.
My hacked site
The mass produced machine will probably be smaller, if it ever does reach mass production stage. It'll have to be *really* cheap to make it into any significant number of homes.
Deleted
2 main reasons , ARM development and Risc OS development . Perhaps also it would make a rather nice router if you have money to burn , or an internet booth type thing if you wanted.
Its really not a product your average user would want.
I really don't see why the artical refers to as an alternative to A MacMini or SFF PC , it just leads to alot of confusion.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Yes when you spend $3000 to buy extras.
My hacked site
There are loads of pictures and videos of the A9home - including comparisons to a 50 pence coin and a Mac Mini - on The Iconbar's show report:
http://www.iconbar.com/news/wakefield2005/report/
Because the Mac Mini doesn't run RISC OS. There is, however, a RISC OS emulator being developed for the Mac OS, which was also previewed at the show. http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk/
...NetBSD?
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
6.6x4x2 inches = 0.033x0.020x0.010 rods
This doesn't ship with Linux - it runs RISC OS. A relatively cheap native system such as this has been a long time coming, plus it has the advantage of being very small indeed.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
It's what you do with it.
RISC OS is just a little bit more efficient than Windows, MAC or even Linux. Where 256Mb is a struggle for Windows + GUI apps and 128Mb a struggle for a MAC or Linux + GUI apps, ITYF that we're talking 16Mb being the lower limit for RISC OS + GUI apps.
You're really comparing melons and apples to cherries.
Deleted
I'm a bit confused about what problem this product is trying to solve. It's not really smaller, cheaper, or faster than a Mac mini or other currently available "mini pc". It definitely gets points in the "neato" factor, but I can't picture many people buying one unless one or more of the points above changes. Cheers,
I was trying to work out why these people continue to use this platform, and it can only be a manifestation of that sadistic quality that is present in so many geeks - the one that leads us to defile a beautiful Mac mini with the installation of, say, Slackware 7 or Red Hat 5.2, just to be difficult, or why we tunnel PPP over SSH to create VPNs (because IPSec and PPTP are for lusers). I looked at a few screenshots, read some articles - one which particularly amused me was that which opined the lack of full and decent internationalisation (it seemed so prehistoric) - but it was somewhat reassuring.
There is still a group of individuals who run scared from the Macintosh, and who belittle those that use it, although their numbers are declining, and rightly so, because the Mac's superiority in all fields bar gaming is so resplendent ("Que le flamewar commence!"), but I like to think that having seen this, Mac users' choice seems a little more rational - at least their OS-du-jour is better than the standard (i.e. Windows). RISC OS just sucks.
So I really can't bring myself to coo over the specs of this machine. It's about as big as the Mac mini, yet:
- it lacks an optical drive;
- the processor is about as powerful as modern-day PDAs;
- it's fucking expensive for what it is;
- less RAM, VRAM, disk space, etc. but on the plus side you do get an RS232 serial port...
Call me a philistine or a cynic, perhaps, but what's the point? There are plenty of us who've got a Windows 95-era machine somewhere, and for those of us that don't but still want the same "feel", there's always KDE. So why am I going to fork out five hundred quid for this...?iqu
This story reads like someone's paranoid MRD.
I'm sure it'll steamroll the Windows XP juggernaut any day now. People don't listen to their computers anyway, so sound is of little consequence.
Crashing? Feh. That's just the "core dump wizard"
There are many many companies making small single board computers. Here's one example from the Circuit Cellar ads. (Yes, it runs X-Linux.) You have to slap it in a case with drive and power supply, but that's not a major Grail Quest. If it doesn't suit your computing power requirements, shop around somewhere else. (If you don't need horsepower, you can also make tradeoff and go smaller.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The only reason to buy this is if you absolutely must run RiscOS. That is its only real feature.
In every other detail it loses vs a SFF PC or Mac Mini. It's not smaller or faster. It's also much more expensive.
I'm not even sure this is a particularly great ARM platform either. I've seen other small ARM systems which were similarly equipped and much cheaper to boot.
I'm not sure RiscOS really reached any significant popularity outside the UK. It appears to me this is more of a nostalgia effort much like the amiga revival projects.
Anyone else find it odd that they were going for size and yet they still included PS/2 ports? Besides being physically smaller they are two less ports that are needed these days and can be removed for sinerios like this.
-Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
Who still actively develops for RiscOS? Isn't it pretty much dead?
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
That's not being debated. The Mac Mini will not run RISC OS, which is something wholly different.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
As dead as BSD ;) ,The community is very healthy and its still used in a fair few things , embeded enviroments etc./ RISC_OS/
http://www.planetriscos.co.uk/ http://www.planetriscos.co.uk/
http://www.vigay.com/cgi-bin/webring?ring=riscos http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Systems
etc etc there are still alot of folks who use RISC OS
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I really do not know why supporters of the BBC Micro and its descendants still bother, given that each successive generation eventually gets buried at a crossroads, but please someone get the flaming torches and the villagers with pitchforks, and put a stake through the thing's heart. It's sad and pathetic to see it flapping around trying to get off the ground, and even if it does its chance that anything will stay around long enough to be bitten in the neck is nonexistent. It was a good design for the 70s, folks, it was OK for the 80s, but this is the 21st century and we use those things for PDAs. If you want to build a competitor for the Mac Mini, there's the AMD 64 mobile technology just asking for a Novell/Suse 9.3 build. Please?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
1) It's very pricy. ARM cpus are dirt cheap compared to power or x86 CPUs, the rest of the components are pretty standard. The build cost for this machine should be less that 100USD in reasonable sized runs.
2) It draws A LOT of power. I don't think that any ARM machine I've worked with draws close to 20W @ 5V.
On the whole though, I think this is a cool idea - when I worked on a 200Mhz Xscale ARM running Debian, it was perfectly fine for web surfing, etc. Perfect for Mom and Pop if they just wanted to surf & do email.
Damnit - I wanted my nick to be "WouldIPutMYRealNameOnSlashdot"
That's interesting!
I tend to think in terms of desktop computing. Since it seems to revolve around either Windows or *x (OSX included) these days, RiscOS (like BSD) appears very low on the radar.
I can remember how enthusiastic I was when I first read about the Archimedes on BYTE.
We are in bad need of a bit more hardware diversity.
Still, At 499 pounds, it seems a no-no when compared to the Mac Mini.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Its a total no-no for the average user , however it is a very cheap way to play around with a modern version of RISC OS . /x86 market as so many people are using that combination(though thats changing day on day).
The industry is in real need of alot more diversity in many areas , but along with that we need alot more compatability , which is something we just wont get till we totaly get the diversity back . The OSS movment has been doing alot to further the causes of compatability(amongst other things) , but propritery vendors have no real drive to shift out of the Windows
this machine though is definantly one of these things where if you cant think why you would need it then you probably dont.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
It's got the same CPU as the HP-49G+ calculator, which sells for about £125 in the UK.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Heck with the Mac, this thing makes the folks trying to resurrect BeOS with a shonky binary and some new user interface look mainstream. Heck, there's even a more rational reason to try and resurrect Amiga now that it's going to be a realtime microkernel again.
As dead as BSD ;)
So there's RiscOS code in Windows and Mac OS X? Wow, I never knew that.
...You completly got that backwards , I was meaning that RiscOS is not dead .I was not implying that BSD is.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
The article says it will retail for 499.00 UKP (911.112 USD). That's not cheap in my book. You can get an "expensive" Apple computer for less than that. Although if you're looking for a RISC OS based device, it's probably a good deal. (The lack of 26-bit emulation kind of hurts though).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Sharp Zaurus SL-C* models have 400 MHz ARM CPUs... *and* they're cheaper, it seems. Not to mention more convenient. Unless these have better HDs, I'd rather import a Z than get one.
Luke-Jr
There are plenty of LCD's available for $200 now. Granted, that definitely won't work in the living room, and may or may not work in the bedroom, but it'll definitely work in the bathroom, kitchen, and computer room anyway.
In terms of what current hardware can and can't do, please read this. XBox, with a 733Mhz Intel Pentium-III, can decode and upscale to 1080i lots of stuff with no problem. However, it can't decode full-bandwidth (eg. 19 - 25 mbps) 720p or 1080i video. If you want to make sure you don't run into some video streams in the future that are too dense for your hardware, you simply want to get XBox2-era hardware.
If you really want to make some constructive comments, try RISC OS first - you might just like it.