PCMCIA Computer Project Aims Even Higher (and Cheaper) Than Raspberry Pi

lkcl writes "An initiative by a Community Interest Company Rhombus Tech aims to provide Software (Libre) Developers with a PCMCIA-sized modular computer that could end up in mass-volume products. The reference design mass-volume pricing guide from the SoC manufacturer, for a device with similar capability to the Raspberry Pi, is around $15: 40% less than the $25 Raspberry Pi but for a device with an ARM Cortex A8 CPU 3x times faster than the 700mhz ARM11 used in the Raspberry Pi. GPL Kernel source code is available. A page for community ideas for motherboard designs has also been created. The overall goal is to bring more mass-volume products to market which Software (Libre) Developers have actually been involved in, reversing the trend of endemic GPL violations surrounding ARM-based mass-produced hardware. The Preorder pledge registration is now open (account creation required)." Of course, the Raspberry Pi is not only only much further along, but has recently announced an expansion module (the Gertboard).

Comments

Great

[Hatta]

I'll buy one of each.

Re:Great

[lkcl]

good man! feel free to fill in the preorder form http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/orders/ i'm a bit reluctant to do it on your behalf [aitch tee tee pee slashdot dot org slash tilde hatta]

please do bear in mind that in the early stage we're *not* going to sell completely untested cards in mass-volume right away, that would be foolish. we're going to follow the process that Dr Schaller has been doing on the development of the GTA04 - http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GTA04_revisions as have various other projects, OpenPandora included.

so, early alpha boards go out to people prepared to take a risk, but who have the money spare (under $100, gosh, wow, break the bank why not) to consider "what the heck, this is cool, let's support this initiative" but at the same time have some expertise in embedded GNU/Linux development, and they might actually get something that works perfectly first time, and they're the ones that got it, before anyone else.

beta boards go out to people who want something that, hardware-wise, is pretty much guaranteed to work 100%, but maybe the software's not all there, and they might have to (gosh) get involved and help write it.

stable boards go out to people who really would "just like something that works, thank you, where's the debian distro image, where's the instructions for putting everything onto an sdcard, heck, where can i buy a pre-loaded MicroSD card so i don't have to do that, even".

so it's a known trade-off: the principles of Software (Libre) Development as applied to hardware: release early, release often. exactly the sort of thing that you never normally see in the development of hardware products, and i think it's pretty damn cool to be able to witness and be part of something that *isn't* GPL-violating. at bloody last.

Re:Great

[hairyfeet]

Okay I'll bite....why? What's the point? Not the third world, as they are bypasssing our " program it yourself" early 80s phase and going straight to smartphones, see several Indian and Chinese companies that are trying to outdo each other in dropping smartphones for the third world for examples, and the first world? We have more damned chips than we know what to do with, so why?

I'm sure this will find a teeny tiny niche like Beagleboards or Arduino, which i'm trying to get the local college to use for their rocketry program, but most people aren't building rockets. Now I could at least understand the goal of OLPC, since they wanted to hand out preloaded Linux laptops that could be filled with books, now THAT made sense, but a $15 circuit board? Sorry but I don't get it other than a "for the fuck of it" kind of reason that is.

Re:Great

[lkcl]

allo mr hairyfeet - good question. much of the reasoning _is_ "for the hell of it", but it is definitely more than that. what i haven't mentioned is that my associates have contacts with very very large PRC manufacturers. we really really are in a position to go, stage by stage, from a prototyped system all the way to massive-scale production that would dwarf even Dell (because companies such as IBM and HP actually use one of the PRC manufacturers that we are in communication with). now this is *not* "bragging" - i'm mentioning it because you asked, even though there is the risk of many people reading this to go "we don't believe you, who the hell do you think you are??".

if we were planning this to be a "tiny niche" product, we would have picked SO-DIMM form-factor, not re-use of legacy PCMCIA. SO-DIMM form-factor is perfect for R&D purposes: look at the pricing and functionality of modules from colibri, or directinsight and so on. they're expensive, and they don't scale into mass-production (sadly).

but, the other thing that you're missing is that when you match up low-cost china-based factories with the kinds of retail pricing expected by Software (Libre) Developers and so on, using pricing levels set as a precedent by things precisely like the BeagleBoard, Arduino or better the Leafpad Maple, you actually make quite good profit margins.

i'm not sure if you're aware of this but the profit margins on mass-volume products, especially at the consumer-grade level, are pretty damn small. like... a few dollars small.

ironically, therefore, the profit margins of medium-volume sales would be about the same order as the mass-volume sales! if we get this right, we can transition from one to the other, *without* having "the usual" massive NREs associated with having to do *complete* product redesign each and every time (thanks to the modular design).

so it's a complex strategy, based on bootstrapping up from zero NREs, which, itself, is far from being silly or impossible, is again _part_ of the strategy of keeping the overall costs down.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

A humble suggestion... the preorder form could probably use a X quantity at Y unit price, or just a $Z USD total intention. Lots of people are trying to figure out how to communicate that, in various ways, in the qty field.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmm. Bite the raspberry pi...

The raspberry pie is a very small, very cheap computer runs a pretty standard flavor of linux. It isn't solder-it-yourself or program-it-yourself. It can run stuff that is already out there. It connects to stuff you already have. This could make computers available to people who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford one. It could also open the door to build stuff for which you might not want to risk your $500 laptop. Add a "real" computer for robotics. Use it as a flight-nav system and launch it into space. Use it to download images from the internet to burn onto your toast in the morning... At twenty five bucks the question is - "why not"?

Re:Great

[Raenex]

If you're going to right paragraphs of text it would help if you used conventional capitalization. I know it's common in the instant/text/tweet messaging world to forgo them, but they really help with readability in longer texts.

Re:Great

[lkcl]

i know, raenex - i've discussed this at some length, and have good justifiable reasons for sticking with what i'm doing. when writing "full articles" for publication, i do exactly that: use formal language. thanks for understanding.

Re:Great

[symbolset]

Don't be discouraged. Every post on slashdot has to have a number of folks who disagree. I think the idea is wonderful and will probably buy a few when they're available at retail.

Re:Great

[Raenex]

I don't understand, and I don't read long texts without capitalization. Your comments may not be "full articles", but they are long texts publicized for a wide audience.

I consider it rude to not follow basic conventions, as it places a burden on the reader and diminishes the value of conventions used in language.

Re:Great

[lkcl]

ephhh, you're right - i'm trying to figure out the best way to express it! there exist patches for forms (using YAML) in ikiwiki but the version that's on there is "stable", running multiple sites, so... i kinda settled for a manual form for now. if this went ballistic yeah i think i'd be in trouble, and would probably convert to a python wiki, which at least i can safely/happily program in.

Re:Great

[Pioto]

If you are going to write a response to nit-pick someone's grammar, spelling, etc... you should check yours first!

Re:Great

[Raenex]

I do check, and I missed it, and it was an honest mistake. That's a huge difference from intentionally not following the basic convention to start sentences with capitals.

Re:Great

[lkcl]

ok thanks, i finally got it, and added "max budget" field.

Re:Great

[lkcl]

thanks symbolset.

Re:Great

[tftp]

good man! feel free to fill in the preorder form

How can I even consider buying the product if your "web site" (which is just a Wiki) doesn't offer specifications, interfaces, power needs, thermal considerations, mechanical drawings, software, and many other things that are required to seriously consider using your product? Have you passed FCC testing, for example? If not then you probably can't sell the thing to the public at large.

It may be that your company just wants to announce a product and have thousands of backorders the very next day. But you need to at least explain to your customers why they should buy your product. Make a rendering in SolidWorks if you don't have a prototype. This is a technical product for geeks, so you need to supply all the appropriate pr0n.

Here is a good example to follow.

Re:Great

[Thing 1]

Yeah, I'm another who doesn't understand. How does your muscle memory work correctly? You need to keep two patterns now, one for shifting and one for not. My little finger works by itself at the beginning of a sentence; forcing it to not do that would require extra effort on my part.

But, perhaps you think that it's saving some energy on your part. If that is the case, I would counter with: forcing your readers to work harder just to save a little ATP does not seem to align with the goal of maximum efficiency, and it means that your writing may reach a smaller audience. If you're okay with that, well, what can the rest of us do except read less of your output?

It's also somewhat rude to respond to Raenex saying "I've written at length about this before, thanks for understanding" without a pointer to the writing you have performed at length explaining why you think that breaking a convention is helpful/useful/not deserving of ridicule.

Re:Great

[lkcl]

tftp, thanks for the heads-up. insight: i'm using openscad and mm3d: solidworks had better have the source code available before i touch it. that may give you a clue :) i'm a software (libre) developer, so this initiative is targetted at software (libre) developers. hence the quite deliberate decision to use ikiwiki as an open web site. i did actually add a CSS file, that's quite... that's quite something, that is, in software (libre) terms :)

specs are on the page; interfaces are on the elinux.org wiki; power requirements i've discussed on arm-netbooks (it's a PCMCIA card) it's max 5.0 watts; thermal considerations likewise (it's a PCMCIA card) max is probably about 3.5 watts, possibly pushing 4; mechanical drawings: it's a PCMCIA card, period - the mechanical non-interoperability requiremetns are on the elinux.org wiki; software is to be developed by software (libre) developers.

so the information's there - just not all in one neat place.

Re:Great

[tftp]

I have to run in a moment, so just a few more comments.

First, you can't design hardware products with F/OSS. Not because I'm in any way against libre s/w but just because it doesn't cut it. Sorry, but it's highly impractical. Hundreds of man-years of hard work went into SolidWorks, you can't expect a similar investment (or an efficiency breakthrough) from a F/OSS developer.

Second, you need to make a one-pager (PDF) where all these specs are in one place. You must have a rendering. Perhaps POV will do it, since you insist on F/OSS.

The power of 3 to 4 watts is too much for the PCMCIA card. Note that the card cage has no interfaces for conductive cooling, even if you put some gap filler from Bergquist under the card shield. The cooling will be nonexistent! You need to look into this ASAP. You are looking at commercial temperature range ICs (+55C perhaps) and your temperature rise from the die to the ambient can be easily 30C - this means that the card will be failing at room temperature! But it will be hotter inside the card cage. Get your hands on some CFD software (FlowTherm, CosmosFlow, etc.) and get busy.

That's all I can think of. You have a long road ahead :-)

Exciting

[inglorion_on_the_net]

This is really exciting. Personally, I can't wait for the Raspberry Pi to start shipping and I will definitely get a few, but if Rhombus can pull this off, that will be fantastic, too!

Re:Exciting

[hattig]

I'm amazed at the cost that some of these ARM SoCs are being priced at. $7 is really rather cheap, especially for a 1.5GHz ARM Cortex A8 (sure, it's an older design, but next year's $7 SoC might have a dual-core ARM A7 instead) with ARM Mali 400 graphics, "2160p" video decode, and so on.

However the Raspberry Pi will probably be out a lot sooner than this hardware, and then I guess they'll start work on the Raspberry Flan or something.

Why PCMCIA?

[bcmm]

Why use the PCMCIA form-factor? It appears they aren't actually using it for PCMCIA. Is it very difficult to design a connector, or is it to do with using existing manufacturing tools originally designed to make PCMCIA cards?

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[Nerdfest]

PCMCIA seems to be what happens when a marketing droid forces design constraints on something. "It needs to be the size of a credit card"! If if smaller and thicker, connectors would have been much sturdier.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[LinuxIsGarbage]

PCMCIA has been obsolete for like 15 years replaced with identical form factor Cardbus cards. Not only that but Cardbus has been obsolete for 5 years replaced with Expresscard, which itself isn't that popular because most people use USB for add-on peripherals these days.

So really they are comparing it to an old obsolete format.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[mikael]

I'd guess it's for upgrading a laptop. PCMCIA would give the board a chunk in memory-map space, as well as being in a robust form-factor. USB dongles tend to end up having damaged connectors to the point they are unusable.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[petermgreen]

PCMCIA was originally designed as a memory card form factor. It was later thickened up for use as an expansion card form factor.

Also I think being thicker would have doomed it sooner as laptops got thinner.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[hawguy]

I'd guess it's for upgrading a laptop. PCMCIA would give the board a chunk in memory-map space, as well as being in a robust form-factor. USB dongles tend to end up having damaged connectors to the point they are unusable.

I have never mangled a USB connector badly enough to make it unusable, but I have to fix up my laptop's PCMCIA connector a few times after bending pins while inserting a card. One pin broke off completely when I was trying to straighten it. And I plug/unplug my USB peripherals *much* more than I ever plugged in a PCMCIA card.

What are you doing to mangle your USB connectors? Stepping on them?

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they're just using the physical PCMCIA connector, not the PCMCIA pin-out. I think it's so that the entire thing can be plugged in to a variety of hardware devices: small form-factor computers, TVs, tablets, whatever. There are benefits to that approach. Wouldn't it have been nice, for example, if you could have upgraded your original iPad by simply ejecting the motherboard and inserting a new one? There might not have been any reason to replace the screen and battery. This sort of modular approach resolves that. And it opens up opportunities for hardware manufacturers if they know they can get a whole computer in a known form-factor. It would relieve them of an otherwise huge part of the product design.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[lkcl]

http://rhombus-tech.net//faq/#index4h2 - re-use of *existing* connectors, housings and assemblies keeps the price right down. yes you're absolutely right: expecting a complete new design of connector to be reasonably affordable is impossible.

the whole initiative is based around leap-frogging over the normal barriers to entry for products. use Software (Libre) Developers for the software engineering. use off-the-shelf parts as much as possible. do a deal with the factory ["we won't charge you for software engineer time if you won't charge us for hardware engineer time"]. use pre-existing casework designs from China-based Industrial Flea Markets (don't get the wrong idea, here - these Markets are the size of football pitches and 7 stories high!) and so on.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[lkcl]

I think they're just using the physical PCMCIA connector, not the PCMCIA pin-out. I think it's so that the entire thing can be plugged in to a variety of hardware devices: small form-factor computers, TVs, tablets, whatever. There are benefits to that approach. Wouldn't it have been nice, for example, if you could have upgraded your original iPad by simply ejecting the motherboard and inserting a new one? There might not have been any reason to replace the screen and battery. This sort of modular approach resolves that. And it opens up opportunities for hardware manufacturers if they know they can get a whole computer in a known form-factor. It would relieve them of an otherwise huge part of the product design.

exactly! now, why did you say this as an anonymous coward? :) the problem with the above is that what end-users would love is exactly what consumerism hates! planned obsolescence is what it's called, i believe. we don't like that sort of thing round here, y'all :) hence the initiative is being done under the umbrella of a Community Interest Company, because it removes the absolute requirement to maximise profits over-and-above-all-else [CICs just have to not make a loss, and there are *no* Shareholders, and no dividends to pay out]. thus, there is no driving force, for example, to justify planned obsolescence, nor is there a justification to remove the dual motherboard design, because to do so would result in larger profits through the argument that "when it breaks people will spend more money with us, buying a whole new one, profit is higher".

the other reason for the modular approach is that there are now restrictions on air-shipment of explosives (lithium batteries being an explosion hazard). so by having a modular design where there is a battery compartment that can take AA or AAA batteries, and you can upgrade later to a lithium pack, Mass-Volume Hypermarket Retail Stores can do "Just in Time" ordering of the main parts of the device(s), get them shipped in by Airfreight, as well as stock up on Sea-freighted modular battery packs in large volumes which, if they truly run out or don't arrive in time, doesn't matter because the sales staff can direct people to buy the bit of plastic that holds standard AA/AAA batteries.

we've thought this through from lots of different angles. really :)

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[bcmm]

It's just the form-factor/connector. TFA says it won't be electronically compatible with PCMCIA and will be physically keyed to not fit in a PCMCIA slot (though otherwise identical).

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[hairyfeet]

Then what we really need to be shooting for is CRFF or card reader form factor because frankly i haven't seen any express card or cardbus slots in a while on anything sub $1k but they ALL have card readers now. Sure that doesn't give a lot of space but that is why everything is going nano right? tell them white coats to get on it!

And while I love your idea of bringing standardization to mobile sadly it will NEVER happen, and here is why: all those PCs companies (with the exception of the fruit company and their world famous RDF) found that with standardization comes commoditization and razor thin margins and they don't like that, hence why there isn't jack shit interchangeable anymore if they can help it. I'm sure they miss the days of "Compaq RAM" that was 3 times the price but you had to buy if you had a Compaq, or Dell PSUs that were just funky enough they wouldn't fit in a normal case, and that is what they have now with mobile. After all how could they gouge you on a battery if you could just run AAAs? How could they get you to buy a whole new unit if the tiniest part fails if you could easily just buy the part and DIY or take it to the local shop?

Sadly the corps have figured out "designed for the dump" gives them their biggest profits hence why everything is so flimsy and easily broken now. Personally I wish the FOSS guys all the luck in the world, i'd love a cell phone or laptop where parts were as easy to get and interchange as your average desktop but I doubt the corps would ever let that happen, it'd cost them too much profit.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[Nethead]

Hairy,

They are using the form factor of PCMCIA to use existing parts. They are going out of their way to make sure it can't plug into a laptop PCMCIA slot as the electrical pin-outs are no where near the same. They just want a cheap connector that is small but with lots of pins.

In the old days we made homebrew computers with DB25 connectors for I/O even though we were never going to use it for serial or Centronics printer connections. It's just a cheap connector available everywhere.

PS: I just used Ninite to build an XP box for my stepdaughter. What a cool service. Thanks again.

-Joe

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[lkcl]

Sadly the corps have figured out "designed for the dump" gives them their biggest profits hence why everything is so flimsy and easily broken now. Personally I wish the FOSS guys all the luck in the world, i'd love a cell phone or laptop where parts were as easy to get and interchange as your average desktop but I doubt the corps would ever let that happen, it'd cost them too much profit.

we've spoken to several of them, already. the profit margins anticipated by the large companies are, exactly as you surmise, too low. thus, we have no competition. question for you: tell me where you can get a GPL-compliant 1ghz+ ARM Cortex laptop with 1gb or 2gb of RAM, anywhere in the shops with a 1280x800 LCD or better for $150 and i will quit working on this and go buy it.

ok, that's just one point covered - i've said quite enough on this discussion already, i'll leave it for a while, ok? :)

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[jawtheshark]

I could ask the same about you and PCMCIA cards. I have had many, SCSI, NIC, modem, Wifi, and USB 2.0 and used them extensively and interchangably. I never managed to bend any pins. Same thing with USB, though.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[hawguy]

I could ask the same about you and PCMCIA cards. I have had many, SCSI, NIC, modem, Wifi, and USB 2.0 and used them extensively and interchangably. I never managed to bend any pins.
Same thing with USB, though.

I blame poor tolerances in the computer's PCMCIA slot - too much clearance let the card shift enough that the pins didn't quite line up. This seemed to be a common problem back in PC cards were popular - we always ended up with a computer or two at the office with pins mangled so badly that we had to replace the PCMCIA slot module.

Apparently I'm not the only one to have this problem, since the howto guide on fixing the pins mentions the problem:

http://www.ehow.com/how_8690286_fix-bent-cardbus-pins.html

However, the pins in the slot where the card connects can sometimes bend, making it impossible to insert the card into the slot. Forcing the card to insert will only make the problem worse and can bend other pins

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[lkcl]

I blame poor tolerances in the computer's PCMCIA slot - too much clearance let the card shift enough that the pins didn't quite line up. This seemed to be a common problem back in PC cards were popular - we always ended up with a computer or two at the office with pins mangled so badly that we had to replace the PCMCIA slot module.

Apparently I'm not the only one to have this problem, since the howto guide on fixing the pins mentions the problem:

http://www.ehow.com/how_8690286_fix-bent-cardbus-pins.html

hey guess what, dude? if you manage to mangle it irretrievably, then thanks to the modular design you've only got one part to replace, not the entire device, eh? is that good apples or what? :)

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[pedrop357]

When I first saw this article, I wondered if they were making PCMCIA/Cardbus or ExpressCard form factor computers that could go into expansion slots.

I have to admit that the possibility of plugging a cardbus computer into my 9 year old laptop would be sweet (and completely unnecessary).

Moving to the present, the expresscard computer could act as a nice coprocessor or ASIC.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[mikael]

First time was when I had an USB TV stick on a laptop. Lifted up the laptop and was about to sit on the sofa, when the cat decided it wanted that seat :) Laptop slipped backwards, and straight onto the USB TV stick - bent the connector off the circuit board.

Other time was USB headphone adapter stick that has a pair of standard audio connector headphones. Tripped over the cable and stretched the USB connector again.

Simple because the PCMCIA sockets are on the side and not back alleviates thes problems. For audio I now use Bluetooth headphones.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[jawtheshark]

Guess, I must have computers with good tolerance then. I'm still not convinced though. I liked the PCMCIA form factor very much.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[zippthorne]

Yeah, I'm sure "planned obsolescence" is the reason why you can't separate the screen from the mobo in the iPad, and not the fact that to make something modular and still sturdy, it would have to be much thicker and heaver, and not really be the same device at all..

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[mikael]

Having repaired a laptop several times, the screen is the most expensive part. A company called Nextronics used to do a "part-exchange" program. Exchange your old WUXGA screen with them and they'd give you a discount of $200 on the $800 - $1200 for a new screen. Looks like they've gone out of business in that market now.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[lkcl]

hi pedrop,

yeah we thought about that, but ExpressCard means PCI-e. so we investigated how many SoC "embedded" CPUs have PCI-e and it's like about... 5. several from marvell, but they're the high-end "server" style ones, with power budgets wayyyy over the reasonable limit.

then we looked instead at PCI-e "PHY" chips. there's _one_: it's a PCI-e to USB converter, which says it all, really.

the other option is an FPGA: they're just... horrendously expensive. something like the Zynq-7030 would be able to do it in hardware using the on-board FPGA, but that's not out yet.

the only other option would be bit-banging! updating multiple GPIO pins to emulate a 33mhz ISA bus *shudder*. ... yeah overall we just went "ok, forget it - let's just take over PCMCIA at the connector/header/socket level".

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[lkcl]

CRFF? you mean CompactFlash? i'd not thought of that one - damn good idea. let me think... it would be ideal... except it's only 44 pins (it's IDE, basically - see hwtools.net they have converters). 44 pins is not enough. thinking about it, we miiight be able to get two CF slots side-by-side, but who's going to make a double-sized case? naah, 68 pins by a jammy coincidence is just enough, _and_ we can still use the 3.5mm stainless steel off-the-shelf cases. jammy, huh? :)

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[lindi]

For this reason I often use a cable-style USB hub with my laptop. It means I don't need to worry about the connector nearly as much.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[tftp]

if you manage to mangle it irretrievably, then thanks to the modular design you've only got one part to replace, not the entire device, eh? is that good apples or what? :)

Well, since the pins are on the motherboard side of the connection, the easy part is to simply open the laptop up, quickly desolder a 100-pin surface mounted connector with a hot air rework station, then take a new one out of your desk drawer, position to plus-minus 5 mil and solder all pins using infrared reflow. (You can't use the soldering iron in many cases because the pins are under the card cage.) That only requires a simple piece of equipment that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars but now, thanks to cheap Chinese manufacturing, can be had for just $1K.

Or, alternatively, you throw the laptop in the trash and tell your boss to buy you a new one :-)

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[hairyfeet]

I know they are using the form factor, doesn't change what I said. personally i'd love to have all kinds of cool little cards i could plug into a card reader the way we used to use PCMCIA. Nowadays unless you spend out the wazoo they simply don't include anything other than USB and while USB is great (hell my dad now has 23 USB ports on his PC, he believes EVERYTHING should be USB) it would still be nice to be able to just plug in say a little digital tuner card or other device through the card reader that every unit seems to have now.

And i'm glad you like Ninite, its a Godsend for those that need to load up a new box or laptop as you found out. i hope you don't mind another suggestion, but if you put together a machine more than once or twice a year WSUS Offline is your friend too. With WSUS Offline you can have ALL the Windows updates PLUS Service Packs PLUS .NET PLUS any version of MS Office updates ALL in one easy to use handy dandy tool. it'll make an offline updater out of a thumbstick or DVD, no "install reboot install" mess, you can tell it with a single checkbox to shut down or reboot when its done, just a nice little tool to have. I have everything from XP - Win 7 X64 in mine, just run it once a month to get the latest updates which since it has all previous updates it takes very little time to get it current.

Oh and one other final bit of advice, well two actually. 1.- if you need a cheap CPU upgrade for an older box? Go here as their service is top notch and the chips are some of the cheapest prices around. I can't count the number of machines I've upgraded thanks to Starmicro chips and you can't beat a place that has Pentium Ds for $18 and AMD quads starting at $55. 2.- If you or anybody else here runs into the "No device under sound" problem in windows, even though you KNOW you've installed the driver? Feel free to email me, i have a simple reg file that fixes that problem instantly. It simply resets the Windows sound server back to its default state. simply clicky clicky, reboot and voila! Instant sound. I've had this little reg file for years and I can confirm it works on ANY Windows from Win2K- Win 7 X64. Just put in the subject line "Sound reg file" so i know what its about.

Anyway i'm glad you enjoyed Ninite, its the little handy dandy tools that make life so much easier, and i hope your stepdaughter enjoys her new PC! I'll be using Ninite myself the middle of next week, i'll be building my GF a nice AMD quad for Xmas and she'll be getting the full Ninite treatment. man I can't wait until she sees it, all black and red and silver, it'll be the first new box my baby has had in something like 6 years.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[tftp]

re-use of *existing* connectors, housings and assemblies keeps the price right down

lkcl, before you jump into production please make sure that you don't want your SATA and USB work. Because they aren't very likely to; the PCMCIA connector is not a controlled impedance part, and your pinout requires 90 Ohm differential for USB and 100 Ohm differential for SATA. Ethernet is also 100 Ohm, but it has plenty of margin. Even if the board works on the bench, it's not the right thing to do. You need a proper differential connector, something that you can get from Samtec, for example.

I really don't know how much you are an expert in manufacturing, but I built a number of professional designs, and I strongly suggest that you don't pick an old, obsolete connector just because you think it is cool. You need to consider the other side of the connector. How many PCMCIA cages can you find at Digikey? How many of them are easy to solder by hand? Hell, this connector would give *me* trouble, and I can solder 0402 all day long under the microscope. This connector has pin spacing of 0.635 mm, and practically none of your customers can solder it.

I still don't quite understand the business idea of your product. By "business" I don't mean making money; I mean "delivering value," making good things. What value do you expect to deliver if nobody can connect to your board? Your super-small form factor is a problem here. Very few electronic enthusiasts are so much concerned about size and space. They are far more concerned about being able to see the parts without using an electron microscope. If you'd ask me, I'd say you need to think how your customers are going to use your product.

The talk about standard connectors ... if you want it done right, use COM Express. These modules are interchangeable and your product would actually fit into an existing market. You can actually sell the thing without Slashdot. Inventing your own standard, using an obsolete connector and breaking the electrical signaling requirements will not do you any good. You are not large enough to establish a competing standard, and your design is not as good anyway. But if you don't want to deal with COM Express (which is not a pleasure to solder either, I admit) then just forget the unification and use plain vanilla 0.1" headers for everything except high speed interfaces. Or include a CardBus breakout board with your CPU board.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[lkcl]

http://www.usb.org/developers/usbfaq#sig6
http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_Serial_ATA.html
the other link i found, on fciconnect, the impedance stated "100ohm minimum".

so, thank you for pointing out that it's critical to find good connectors!

we didn't pick PCMCIA because "it's cool", we picked it because it's still a mass-volume part (Conditional Access Modules) but is legacy as far as portable computers are concerned. and because it's user-removable. and because, quite simply, there isn't anything better. yes i looked at MiniPCI, i found _one_ image of a removable MiniPCI with ejector assembly: could i find who made it? could i hell.

COM express - saw that one. it's not user-removable - factory only. that defeats the object.

remember also: we're aiming for *mass-volume*. "enthusiasts" happen to be a critical link in the chain to bootstrap our way _up_ to mass-volume.

in other words, by the time we get _to_ mass-volume, we can always go and either raise some funds or spend existing funds raised by that point to get a proper impedance-matched PCMCIA connector specially made. or, say "what the heck" and get something else made.

regarding 0.1" headers: PCMCIA's 68-pin connector was designed for repeated insertion/removal. 0.1" headers are not. yes i looked around, tried to find a low-cost connector that would go onto the end of a PCMCIA card (in place of the 68-pin one). couldn't find one. if in your experience you know of something that would work, here please do tell me!

the other thing to take into account is that by sticking to PCMCIA 68-pin connectors we can even re-use pre-existing casework.

*sigh* absolute absolute last resort: both the SATA _and_ USB2 can be ramped down in top speed. SATA i think you can do as low as 150mbits/sec, something like that. i did look this up as part of the evaluation process. didn't quite do as experienced a job as you, though, so thank you for the heads-up.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[Phoghat]

+1 Insightful

PCMIA ? Didn't that die out with the passenger pigeon?

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[hattig]

For some reason they are using a physical PCMCIA interface, but electrically it's completely different, with USB2, video, ethernet, misc I/O, I2C, etc being carried over the pins.

I guess it's prettier than a 60-pin header.

But at some point it needs something to plug into that makes it into a system that can be used.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[tftp]

yes i looked at MiniPCI, i found _one_ image of a removable MiniPCI with ejector assembly: could i find who made it? could i hell.

JAE makes these connectors. I'm afraid you aren't trying hard enough. The job that you are about to undertake requires a lot of effort. You can't just take the path of least resistance.

COM express - saw that one. it's not user-removable - factory only.

I'm unsure what you mean by that. I have COM Express boards and connectors right here, and I assure you they are perfectly removable. There are many docking station connectors that are of similar size and pitch.

remember also: we're aiming for *mass-volume*.

You don't have the story to manufacture anything in mass volume. In essence, who are your customers, outside of Slashdot?

PCMCIA's 68-pin connector was designed for repeated insertion/removal.

The most popular RF connector, called SMA, is usually rated for about 100 mating cycles. The message here is that you need to realistically assess how many insertion/removal cycles are really needed. Yes, PCMCIA is more rugged, but it comes at a price. Reliability is one of components of that price.

we can even re-use pre-existing casework

But is it worth it to lose a business just to reuse a couple of simple fixtures?

I clearly am not in on your business discussions, and perhaps I'm missing something very obvious to you. I just don't see who would be your customer, and I haven't heard anyone in the last decade (until you showed up) arguing for the PCMCIA connector. If you build the card it will have to be plugged into similarly proprietary backplane.

There is one thought, though, that you might find useful. There are thousands of ARM boards on the market. Yours would be yet another one, with no significant difference. However there are very few cheap x86 boards. The lowest cost you can find is still two or three hundred dollars after you add the m/b, the CPU, the heatsink and whatever else might be needed. Can you fix that?

The reason is simple. Many customers must run WinXP, whether they like it or not. I think I mentioned my USB-connected weather station, with proprietary USB drivers. Performance is not as much required as low power and reasonably small size. Maybe you can find a good x86 CPU, maybe you can run it in a VM on the ARM - whatever. But if you build a board that is capable of running XP at some reasonable speed, all under $50 (or $100, in a box and with WiFi) then you have a winner.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[lkcl]

i'm the boss: i rebelled at the request [from myself] :)

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[lkcl]

(tftp, apologies, slashdot screwed up, i had to rescue this reply, without formatting)

JAE makes these connectors [jae-connectors.com]. I'm afraid you aren't trying hard enough. The job that you are about to undertake requires a lot of effort. You can't just take the path of least resistance.

ah! i got all excited, then i saw the number of mating cycles: maximum of 50. we're looking for something that will be reliable when removed and re-inserted by the average person, potentially several times per day

COM express - saw that one. it's not user-removable - factory only.

I'm unsure what you mean by that. I have COM Express boards and connectors right here, and I assure you they are perfectly removable. There are many docking station connectors that are of similar size and pitch.

you're not a mass-volume end-user. the ultimate target is not the occasional 1k or even 10k units: the ultimate target is multiple orders potentially in excess of 500k per month (inside china, where we "lowly" rest-of-the-world people happen to get the crumbs swept off their table in the form of lower pricing).

in that context, a COM Express board card simply won't do.

remember also: we're aiming for *mass-volume*.

You don't have the story to manufacture anything in mass volume. In essence, who are your customers, outside of Slashdot?

sorry, that's confidential. there is one abbsolutely massive one in china, some retail stores in the UK and one deal in turkey. every one of them depends on us having samples paid-for entirely *by us*, because they are such large customers they _expect_ to be served up with "free samples". hence the "bootstrap" process.

PCMCIA's 68-pin connector was designed for repeated insertion/removal.

The most popular RF connector, called SMA, is usually rated for about 100 mating cycles. The message here is that you need to realistically assess how many insertion/removal cycles are really needed. Yes, PCMCIA is more rugged, but it comes at a price. Reliability is one of components of that price.

i'll take it. (see above).

we can even re-use pre-existing casework

But is it worth it to lose a business just to reuse a couple of simple fixtures?

yes. we're running this as a CIC not a Ltd Company. profit maximisation is not the be-all and end-all.

I clearly am not in on your business discussions, and perhaps I'm missing something very obvious to you. I just don't see who would be your customer, and I haven't heard anyone in the last decade (until you showed up) arguing for the PCMCIA connector. If you build the card it will have to be plugged into similarly proprietary backplane.

it's been over two years of research, negotiations, discussions, and conversations and phone calls with my associates for at least 1 hour a day, often longer. it's a long _long_ story :)

There is one thought, though, that you might find useful. There are thousands of ARM boards on the market. Yours would be yet another one, with no significant difference. However there are very few cheap x86 boards. The lowest cost you can find is still two or three hundred dollars after you add the m/b, the CPU, the heatsink and whatever else might be needed. Can you fix that?

ah... no. i looked at it. actually i'd forgotten that i'd evaluated all of the x86 options available, with the exception of the transmeta (is that still dead?). we even looked at the new MIPS Loongson Leemote (upcoming) which will have 200+ hardware-based "acceleration" instructions suited to running x86 assembly code with only about a 30% performance penalty. as the new MIPS leemote is planned to i think it's a quad-core version initially, 1ghz, with the single-core version later, and even the vector processing unit being 512-bit wide on the single-core version will be capable of 1080p video decode at 100fps, i'm really excited by the possibilities on that... *if* they can get the bloody power down.

anyway: i updated the faq

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[zippthorne]

I somehow doubt that apple is putting $1200 screens in their $600 tablets....

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[mikael]

Stupidly, I have one, but kept it it stuffed in the PCMCIA slot rather than using it for such purposes.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[Anonymous Coward]

You need One of these

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love those places. You can get anything electronic, assembled or not and half the stalls have connections to get contract PCB work done for you too. If you ever wanted a whole box of obsolete MIPS CPUs there'll be someone who has them. Lord knows why you'd want em but they're there

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[lkcl]

hattig, hi,

the CPU card planned to use the allwinner a10 is pretty functional, and the reference platform recommends something called the AXP209 which can handle USB-OTG power, 3.8v lithium battery packs, as well as straight 5.0v input. so we *can* do a complete stand-alone computer, which then can either plug straight into another machine and draw power, or plug in to a USB-OTG-powered hub and basicallly be completely independent from then on (it's got HDMI out, headphones etc.).

with the _added_ advantage that yes, you then plug it into other systems when they're available, including an 8-way rack-mounted server and including a 24-in all-in-one LCD TV / Internet / Computer "thing". lots and lots of options, here.

Re:Why PCMCIA?

[Coren22]

They also aren't putting WUXGA screens, and OMG, they aren't laptops. Did you read his post? He is saying: If you could swap out the CPU, Storage, Memory in one module, and keep a screen, battery, blah part of it, it becomes dead cheap to upgrade, and allows for swapping around of the main part of a computer between multiple devices (a laptop shell, tablet shell, desktop shell). How sturdy it is is not a big factor, many tablets come with a MicroSD slot, how much more space would need to be allocated if you removed the storage, CPU and RAM, and made it a PCMCIA style slot instead?

No competition, yet

[LtGordon]

The Raspberry Pi is expected to ship to mainstream customers early Q1 2012. Per the summary, this group is still in the "could end up in mass production" phase. They can hardly compete if this one isn't being sold.

Re:No competition, yet

[lkcl]

yaa, who said anything about competing? :) feel free to buy a 700mhz ARM11 unit for $25 when it's available. we're going in incremental stages. if you've seen what happened to projects like the OpenPandora, the OpenMoko and so on, you'll appreciate why. http://rhombus-tech.net//faq/#index2h2

Re:No competition, yet

[Broolucks]

At that price I'm going to end up buying a bunch of each anyway!

Re:No competition, yet

[Anonymous Coward]

We've seen what happened to the open pandora.
That's exactly OP's point. It sold years later, and by the time it finally went to sale, it was already too late. It inferior to pretty much everything else on the market, and was very expensive for what it is...

Raspberry pi doesn't beg for money (pre-orders or such), they actually had alpha production, the product does exists and it is in the fabs at this exact moment.

I hope that the pcmcia thingy is not vaporware, but at this stage, no one can know for sure.

Re:No competition, yet

[Anonymous Coward]

it was supposed to ship last month, then this month. last i heard they're charging double for the first run of them and afaik we don't have a release date... other than they'll go to production in january.

so by the time you'd get a raspberry pi at the intended price of $35 (b model with ethernet), this group could be shipping alphas on a faster, better, cheaper devices.

Re:No competition, yet

[LtGordon]

I should probably clarify that it wasn't my intention to imply anything about the relative worthiness of the platforms. More that it's way too early to talk of the two "competing", which is the implication of the summary.

Re:No competition, yet

[Anonymous Coward]

if you've seen what happened to projects like the OpenPandora, the OpenMoko and so on

GTA04 is what OpenMoko became, and they're shipping on Monday.

Nothing wrong with PCMCIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Theres nothing wrong with PCMCIA or Cardbus FTM. Remember the REX line was in PCMCIA form factor and it was very successful.
Granted it was a while ago, but adequate hardware in pcmcia form factor would still be useful even today.

Lotsa Talk

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been a lot of talk about these ultra low cost(and low power) computers recently. But, until something ships, meh.

Where is my Raspberry Pi?
Where is my Chumby NeTV?
So far, the only ones to ship have been the Plugcomputers and they haven't been cheap.

How is this any better than the Raspberry Pi?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell, it's got the exact same problem: It's not running open spec hardware, esp for the GL stack, and there's no open source software stack available for it.

Maybe it's just me, but that makes it just as much of a non-starter as the Pi itself.

(And for anyone who goes, oh hey, there's mali GPL code up on the arm website: No, there's drm code there so much like the past few companies trying, they hope to get the drm code into the kernel without actually released open source GL libs/userspace drivers that actually support it.)

not a fair pricing comparison

[pz]

"Mass-volume" pricing is manufacturer speak for wholesale prices, as in buying thousands of units at a time. You expect those prices to be half or less of retail. So a $15 OEM price will be about $30 at retail, generally speaking. That compares reasonably well to the $25 retail pricing of the Raspberry Pi, given that this new board has somewhat higher specs.

Re:not a fair pricing comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

See their wiki page. They estimate the mass-volume component cost to be 5-6$. So 15$ most probably is the retail price.

Re:not a fair pricing comparison

[lkcl]

"mass-volume" is code usually for 100k+ pricing. the pricing quote for the raspberry pi is equally based on mass-volume (100k) pricing. the pricing quote for the raspberry pi equally excludes profit, shipping, tax, packaging, delivery, handling, tax, customs duty, tax on customs duty, agent shipping handling fees, tax on agent shipping handling fees, customs duty on tax on agent shipping handling fees and so on. whilst that sounds like a joke it's not: each and every one of those costs _does_ actually exist.

now, in the case of the raspberry pi, because they are a not-for-profit foundation, they are *not allowed* to make a profit (definition of "not for profit"), thus there is no room for expansion or for investment. as the front page explains, and i think i put it on the FAQ as well, sales of products for this initiative is being done via a "Community Interest Company", thus, when we say "it's possible that all profits can be fed directly back into R&D for further products to the direct benefit of Software (Libre) Developers" or "a decision can be made to spend an entire years profits on buying modules and giving them away to charity or to Software (Libre) Developers for strategic purposes", you know that we really MEAN that.

if Rhombus Tech was a "Ltd Company" and tried that kind of "stunt", the shareholders would be absolutely screaming blue murder and would want the Directors' heads on a platter. CICs are pretty misunderstood and under-rated, but they're a much better vehicle for what is being planned.

Re:not a fair pricing comparison

[jockm]

I think you misunderstand the meaning of “not for profit”. It doesn't mean you can't make money, or turn a profit, it means that those profits must be reinvested in the activities of the company.

So of course a not for profit like like Raspberry Pi can have “room for expansion”, and while they cannot have investors who expect dividends or to get a share of the profit; they can have backers who will invest in the company in exchange for access to the IP, or for more favorable sales terms, etc.

Re:not a fair pricing comparison

[lkcl]

jock, thanks for the clarification: i didn't explicitly mention it before, but it's worthwhile now, having made the mistake of not mentioning it earlier. the book that i read which describes the differences - patiently and in-depth - is Professor Yunus's book "Creating a World without Poverty". Professor Yunus is an Economics Professor, formed the Grameen Bank, pioneered "Micro Loans", and is the joint winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. his book is just awe-inspiring, but crucially it describes why Ltd Company, not-for-profit and charity is not as appropriate a vehicle as a CIC. ok i leave it at that :)

Re:not a fair pricing comparison

[lkcl]

nonono, nooo :) that's _just_ for the tiny micro-engineering-board which is an *extra* board! sorry if that wasn't clear on the elinux.org wiki page.

I'll wait until ...

[petes_PoV]

... there's a website that I can order one from at that price, which will deliver with 7 days.

Until that time it's just vapourware - same goes for the Raspberry Pi, unless you want a keyboard sticker, they've got nothing on the market.

Re:I'll wait until ...

[lkcl]

... there's a website that I can order one from at that price, which will deliver with 7 days.

pete: done. we have a deal :)

please feel free to fill in a preorder which says exactly this. you want "Stage: stable". if you think it would be better to have a stage "7 day delivery at the stated price" then please feel free to say so, but bear in mind that it may be better for you to wait until the product's in Hypermarket Retail Stores and you can buy them off-the-shelf (literally). of course, you miss out on all the fun that way... :)

Re:I'll wait until ...

[michael_cain]

Let's be honest; you haven't provided the information the grandparent post is asking for. No date for "Stage: stable"; no predictable quantity-one price. The Raspberry Pi has made a commitment to a known quantity-one price: $25 w/o Ethernet, $35 w/, shipping date unknown but Feb 2012 looks like a reasonable expectation. The beaglebone has a quantity-one MSRP: $89, and I can order from Digi-Key USA at that price today.

I have multiple small projects in mind for which this type of system on a card would be useful, but the hardware and the software need to be stable and reliable. The question, "When can I buy one such board, and what will the price be?" is reasonable, and so far as I can tell, not yet answered.

Re:I'll wait until ...

[lkcl]

michael, hang on dude! you're asking me to try to run before we walk, ok?

if you're not familiar with the way this stuff works... ok: the only thing we can do - *right now* - is set an "upper bound" based on known costs.

so *right now*, and *at this stage*, which is "alpha stage", we can say that, based on the fixed NREs of $USD 2,000, the more people that place preorder pledges, the more that we can subdivide those costs across the total number of people.

*right now* we have approximately 30 pre-order committments which, if they were all "alpha" committments, that $2000 would mean $75 per person.

what we _do_ know is the "upper bound" as well - based on the $15 figure from the SoC manufacturer, which is $15.

in between those two values the costs are a *direct* relation to the size of the order.

i've explained this - clearly - on the preorders page. i hope. i think. if it's not clear, please do say so.

but if you absolutely want a fixed price i'm sorry, that's just simply not possible. ok, it is, but you'll have to place cash on the table to get it.

do you have cash up-front that you can put on the table? because if so, then that's absolutely fine: i can then go to the Factory and say "we have a cash order for NNNNN units, please can you quote an *exact* figure for us?" they will then ask for a deposit - which you will have to pay - before they proceed with the work.

do you see how that is a completely different kind of deal from the one that we're doing? what we're doing is to *collaborate* with the Factory. we've done a deal which summarises as "we won't charge you for software engineer time if you don't charge us for hardware engineer time", and ensuring that the EOMA-PCMCIA CPU card can fulfil both *their* customer requirements as well as our mass-volume sales opportunities *and* fulfil the requirements of Software (Libre) Developers... ... you see how radically different that is from the "standard" business deal of "pay a factory in china to get it done (y'all), add that to the product retail cost and multiply up by some margin equals profit"?

it's... _complicated_, michael :) i'm doing my best to keep it simple, but also following the lessons learned from other related products like the PixelQI screen (they borrowed factory time at christmas of a taiwanese LCD manufacturer) and Goldelico's GTA04 product, designed by Dr Schaller. (Dr Schaller deliberately picked components that are available right down to Qty 1).

ok i'll leave it at that, hope that helps clarify.

p.s. it turns out that we do have someone who is willing to place an order for 1,000 units. i've asked - and will keep pressing - the factory for a quote based on those quantities. when it's available, i'll update the pages accordingly.

Re:I'll wait until ...

[petes_PoV]

The point about delivery within 7 days is that implies the product is in stock, sitting on a shelf somewhere, ready to be picked, packed and shipped. I've done the early adopter thing (you can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their backs :)) and generally it doesn't work - you end up as a beta tester and spend too much time working around shortcomings and "version 1" bugs.

Likewise, I've bought promising sounding products, only to have them disappear (TINI, anyone?) when they should have taken the world by storm. Right now I'm happy to wait until I can see some reviews from actual users (not magazines that just parrot the spec list and award it the default 9 / 10 or 5 stars) and get some confidence that I will spend at least three quarters of my time developing a usable end result - not groping around trying to get the IDE to work, waiting for V1.1 firmware, or cutting tracks and patching hardware.

Sorry for the skepticism, but my days as an uncritical fanboy of anything are long gone.

Re:I'll wait until ...

[lkcl]

pete - i get it, i really do. the thing is, i've been waiting around for companies to stop doing GPL violations, and they're just not getting it. in this article, i haven't described how much of a god-awful mess the situation in china is (see the other article comments a few days back, link at top of page).

there are plenty of people left in the world who still find what you've done (and i too) really exciting. they _like_ getting their hands mucky :)

we'll get to where you want to be, i promise. i'm gonna be soo pissed if doesn't happen :)

Computer on a PCMCIA card

[rossdee]

Great, so this low cost computer can be plugged into the PCMCIA slot of a laptop. Or you couyld just use the laptop. Am i missing something here?

Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you stupid or are you pretending?
Does "PCMCIA-sized" have to mean that it is an actual PCMCIA card? Do computers even have PCMCIA today? No. Good.

Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card

[Anonymous Coward]

Sup dawg, I herd yo like computers...

Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA before posting

Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card

[Rennt]

They are just using a cheap connector with plenty of pins. FTFA:

These pinouts make no attempt to be electrically or electronically compatible with the legacy PCMCIA standard. 16 GPIO pins, 24-pin RGB/TTL, USB2, I2C, 10/100 Ethernet and SATA-II interfaces are included in the Version 1.0 specification.

Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card

[Man On Pink Corner]

Perhaps the project leaders should instead think before writing marketing copy.

Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card

[lkcl]

Great, so this low cost computer can be plugged into the PCMCIA slot of a laptop.

ah NO! :) the mechanical design prevents insertion of EOMA-PCMCIA CPU cards into legacy PCMCIA slots:
http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/PCMCIA#Deliberate_Mechanical_Non-interoperability

if you tried to force it in, you would mechanically damage the laptop and/or the card, and once you'd done that, the chances are that you'd blow up the card and/or the laptop as well.

Or you couyld just use the laptop. Am i missing something here?

you're missing something :) the design concept is that the EOMA-PCMCIA CPU card *is* the laptop... but only when the modular CPU card is plugged into an EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant laptop Motherboard that's *designed* to take these CPU cards. see example motherboards here: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/PCMCIA#Example_Motherboards

to have an x86 CPU in a laptop already (cost of $300+) and to then put in an extra low-cost CPU card that does pretty much the same job as far as 98% of computer users are concerned, well... that would just be silly. why not just have a modular mass-volume laptop plus CPU card that can retail for about $95, eh? :)

Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card

[lkcl]

been doing that for 2 years, dude. consider yourself lucky that i'm a software (libre) developer, not a marketing droid. mwahahahah all your base are belong to us, we are Ltd Company pathological liars who will do annnnything to get your moneyyyy mwahahah. http://www.thecorporation.com/

Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure he called it a "PCMCIA-sized modular computer", I only read the summary tho.

I think what you meant to say was "the slashdot headline could be misleading." Yes, they sometimes are.

Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card

[Osgeld]

no one said it would be plugging in, its just the same size and credit card sized is so 1980's

RTFS

Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA before posting

Normally I would, but there are 7 articles linked from the summary, (8 if you include the editors comments).

Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card

[Anonymous Coward]

USB on the panaboad is meh... and the SD slot is utter garbage :C I speak from experience that slot ate at least 3 cards two of them were brand new frist was probably because it has trouble with SHDC the other two were regular SD cards I'd RMA the board if it were mine however it was for a school project.

It's likely the cards ate themselves. Flash memory sectors (especially the cheap kind used in SDs) can only take so many write/erase cycles before they wear out. You need a card with a good wear leveling controller if it's going to withstand intense use. However, few SD cards have this, because they're cheap semi-disposable camera storage, not real SSDs. If you boot Linux off SD cards and frequently write small files, expect the cards to be consumables.

Great for 3rd world countries, if they success

[Clarious]

There isn't many detail now, even their website is just an wiki page. Nevertheless, I hold high hope for this one, living in a 3rd world country, I have always interested in fighting illiteracy and connecting people with the power of the internet. Of course there are many projects like that, both by the government and other organisations, but they aren't very successful. One of the reason for their failure, IMO, is that normal desktop PC requires proper maintenance, especially in remote areas where the weather aren't very friendly with electronic devices. The fact that many projects re-use old PC doesn't help either. Most 'computer room' just sit there gathering dust after the local get bored with playing games, chatting and half of the computer dies. LTSP is another choice, but we still need someone to be there to fix in case problems arise, and there isn't many FOSS technician here.
So we need some kind of computer that is really cheap, require little maintenance (for both software and hardware), easy to deploy. Actually Intel promised us that kind with their Atom CPU, but AFAIK an Atom-based PC still in 200~250$ range, which is not cheap at all. And now this project seems promising.

Re:Great for 3rd world countries, if they success

[unixisc]

This stuff about these solutions being good for 3rd world countries is just a fantasy, first thought out by god knows who! The only way it would be of any use to 3rd world countries is if they had high computer literate population - and by that, I mean that an average citizen of one of these countries is as knowledgable as the average /. poster. Only then would it make sense - you give some average citizen in Malawi or Cameroon a PCMCIA or Raspberry Pi, and next thing you know, you have a whole bunch of websites w/ plenty of software and other fun things based on these platforms coming out of those countries. Or you'll have Linus being flooded w/ kernel fixes and suggestions from these places once such things become popular. Guess what - it's not going to happen.

Essentially, any product would have to do a minimum of what an average phone or tablet can do - be a calculator, a GPS, a planner, a notepad and maybe a few games. If not, why will anybody pick those when most phones are already enough? Oh, and I'm assuming that they will have an easy to use UX - not something one factors in when one thinks of a $25 unit, which they're probably imagining will be good enough to run emacs or bash.

Re:Great for 3rd world countries, if they success

[lkcl]

yeahh i have a friend who went across the border into... i think it was the phillipines. there's something INSANE like a 140% tax on luxury goods. regarding the NGO efforts: you should read professor yunus's book "creating a world without poverty", he says that in comparison to CICs, NGOs have a disincentive to success. very very interesting book. thanks for the support, clarious.

Blob?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this one have closed hardware parts like the GPU in the Raspberry Pi?

Come on Tim, proof read!

[Anonymous Coward]

"...only only..."

Re:Reptiles are among us!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a member of the Illuminati, I can assure you that we have no reptilian DNA at all. You are confusing us with some of our experiments.

Please leave your Faraday cage, then we can reprogram you with correct ideas.

Re:Reptiles are among us!

[oodaloop]

I am a reptilian illuminati, you insensitive clod!

computer in your wallet

[Iamthecheese]

I think a computer that can fit in your wallet would be extremely useful. Once ubiquitous they could be carried everywhere by everyone and connected to available monitors. Add secure cloud storage and everyone has a laptop at all times without the hassle.

Re:computer in your wallet

[nyctopterus]

You mean.. like a phone?

Re:computer in your wallet

[unixisc]

iPod touch? iPhone? Android phone or tablet?

Re:computer in your wallet

[maxwell demon]

iPod touch? iPhone? Android phone or tablet?

Which of them fits in your wallet?

Re:computer in your wallet

[lkcl]

ah, but then can you take the CPU out of the phone and put it into a low-cost beowulf supercomputer cluster? yes, seriously: one of the options that's possible with these little CPU cards, because they have SATA-II interfaces (proper ones) and also use such little power, is to plug them into a massive rack, 1gb RAM, 1ghz CPU speed, NEON instruction set per CPU, hell you'd have an ultra-low-power supercomputer in no time! if only bloody ARM would release information about how to use the GPU on the MALI 400 MP for scientific purposes we'd be laughing.

Re:computer in your wallet

[spasm]

Seriously. I don't think we're that far away from a 'phone' which gives you a touchscreen gui oriented towards phone/mobile use when unplugged but a desktop gui when plugged into a cradle with a monitor & keyboard attached.

Re:computer in your wallet

[lennier1]

Probably more like connecting a wireless display and keyboard to turn a phone into a tablet, netbook or low-power laptop, depending on the situation.

Re:computer in your wallet

[unixisc]

The iPod touch. Even though I don't have much cash in it, my wallet is big enough

I've never had Raspberry Pi

[glutenenvy]

I did have a Blackberry crumble after falling down the stairs and Apple crisp up a lapboard after it was on a few hours.

Open platform

[unixisc]

Had it been running an open spec hardware, it would have been more expensive. If you want an open CPU, ARM is not it - the only one I can think of is OpenRISC. One idea - take the OpenRISC CPU (essentially Verilog code that one would implement on an FPGA), take another FPGA to contain all the interface and support logic it needs, and then add whatever the appropriate amount of RAM and Flash it needs. Once all that is there, port something like Minix on top of it (so that the resource consumption is not much) and you'll have a purely open system.

However, it will not be anywhere near as cheap as $35, at least initially. First of all, it's not something just a couple of guys will do - one would need whole engineering teams to do various things

• Write a complete spec on both the hardware and the software
• Make the tweaks to the design that are necessary for it to be supported on any fab, process & lithography, and work w/ the fab on ensuring acceptable yields
• Procure the other supporting chipsets or design needed to make a complete system
• Port an existing FOSS platform to this reference design - the OS, the UX, and everything else
• Produce bundles based on different requirements - from low price to high functionality - which can then be sold in the market
• License that entire design - hardware & software - to whoever wants to manufacture, market and sell it
• Work on price reductions

The above exercise would enable a company to produce a bunch of products that can be spec'ed @ difference performance points, and targeted towards various market segments - from home hobbyists and education going right up to smart phones and tablets.

Re:Open platform

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not the ARM core - the core hardware is proprietary but all the information you need to work with it in software is freely available. It's the broadcom graphics stuff that's tacked onto the side (although technically it's the other way around) which is the big problem - broadcom are about as tight-fisted as you can get when it comes to actually using any of their stuff. They're a damn hardware company, so if I've bought their damn hardware, why am I not allowed to know how to actually use it?

Re:Open platform

[lkcl]

yes. now, what's really cool about the idea of doing an open hardware CPU is that when it succeeds, and when the rhombus-tech initiative succeeds, there will be a ton of compatible motherboards sold as mass-volume products that end-users, who don't want to go to the trouble of reinventing the laptop wheel or the tablet wheel can just go "yes! i'll have one of those, and now i have a laptop with an open hardware CPU" and even "yes! i have a smartphone with an open hardware CPU".

try that with anything other than a modular architecture and see how far it gets you.

Re:Open platform

[Narishma]

You single out Broadcom, but all the other SoC providers are just as "tight-fisted" as you call them. They all require a proprietary firmware and closed source drivers to work with their GPUs. The only companies that release the specs of their GPUs are Intel and AMD, and they don't make embedded stuff.

Re:Open platform

[drinkypoo]

If you want an open CPU, ARM is not it - the only one I can think of is OpenRISC.

There is also OpenSPARC...

Eight is enough!

[Anonymous Coward]

So many links I don't know where to start. (Eight is enough!) Oh well I'll just wait for the Raspberry PI. It's easier than reading all those links!

But I really want a good CPU/GPU with:
1. One or Two Mini-PCI Slots (mounted at a 45deg angel to the main board!)
2. One or Two Mini-PCI-E (mounted at a 45deg angel to the main board!)
3. Min of four or more USB.
4. Some GPIO.
5. On board temp sensors! And air temp sensors! And Humidity Sensors! (a must have for real data acct and system monitoring.).
6. On Board Power Supply. (10V to 18V Range with Shutdown control with delay) (Think Automobile Apps. or maybe just Solar.)
7. BlueTooth!
8. GigaBit Port. At least one. (must be full bus bandwidth!)

Note: WIFI! It is just to easy to add the WIFI chip of choice via USB, miniPCI or miniPCI-E.

Beagleboard?

[ikedasquid]

Doesn't this already exist as the beagleboard? Arm cortex A8 @ 1GHz, 512 MB RAM, USB host/OTG, DVI out, SD slot, Ethernet, RS232... It's not as small as a Rasberry Pi or a PCMCIA but it's still pretty small (about the size of a 3.5 inch floppy). Draws about 1/2 amp at 5V at full load. Can be powered off USB as long as it's own USB host is not used. Lots of projects already going on it and it's open HW, schematics for everyone! It's trivial to get one up and running with several flavors of Linux (I've been using Ubuntu). Plenty of other options as well.

Re:Beagleboard?

[LuxuryYacht]

There is a possibility that a design very similar to the BeagleBone will be spun with this new Embedded Open Modular Architecture/PCMCIA standard as well as other ARM soc designs. It will probably be at much lower cost than the BeagleBone $89 USD. http://beagleboard.org/bone

This new standard allows you to plug in whatever cpu module you wish that is compliant.

Re:Beagleboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

From http://rhombus-tech.net/

"The second idea under consideration is to adapt the beaglebone, which has full CAD/CAM schematics, publicly available under Open Hardware Licenses. The reason for considering this CPU is that in mass-volume it is as low as $USD 5. Placing this into an EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant format would provide a low-cost second option, and use of the AM3357 instead of the AM3358 would allow products that used the AM3357 to be FSF Hardware-endorsed."

Re:Beagleboard?

[Osgeld]

yea arm on board is nothing magical and the world is allowed more than one (especially if it cost less than HALF of the beagleboard)

Re:Beagleboard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Beagleboard is around 100 US$. It's not about the specs, it's about the price. If you can get a whole smartphone for a few hundred bucks, why it's brain costs equally?

Re:Beagleboard?

[lkcl]

i think the difference is illustrated by the following: i actually did seriously evaluate getting a beagleboard into a low-cost laptop (15in, 1920x1080 LCD). it was impossible. we had to find a massive "gaming" laptop with a 1in case that would normally have a huge fan in it, to give the height clearance sufficient to fit the beagleboard, comfortably. in the end we gave up with that one.

but yes: bari (one of the subscribers to arm-netbooks) has volunteered to convert the beaglebone, or any other board with open HW schematics such as the IMX53QSB, to EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant format, *if* there is enough community interest. personally i really like the AM3357, it's about the only low-cost decent CPU that would do for FSF Hardware-Endorsement. http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/2011-December/001155.html

Good step in the right direction

[lennier1]

I work in a company where some of our products are basically Full-HD TFT displays with integrated ARM-based computers (glorified nettop components) running a company-internal Linux distro.

Having one of these to replace/upgrade their computer like you'd switch the optical drive in a business laptop would certainly cut down costs.

Re:Good step in the right direction

[lkcl]

I work in a company where some of our products are basically Full-HD TFT displays with integrated ARM-based computers (glorified nettop components) running a company-internal Linux distro.

Having one of these to replace/upgrade their computer like you'd switch the optical drive in a business laptop would certainly cut down costs.

oo - lennier1, i want to talk to you :) i'd love to know how much these cost (the product your company has) because esp if it's gnu/linux based and has a decent amount of RAM i'm sure it would be desirable by many Software (Libre) Developers. please could you email me, to talk more? thanks!

Re:Good step in the right direction

[lennier1]

It's tied to a lot of paperwork for proprietary hardware but I'll see if I can establish any official contact.

These systems are used in a variety of ways, airport arrival/departure displays, conventions, concerts, in-store advertising (e.g. fashion shops book advertising slots in nearby stores), events, ...

Pricing depends on the size of the project/company. A supermarket in a shopping mall (1-5 displays plus license for the necessary application) is of course a different kind of project than, for example, a mid-size airport who buys/leases a ton of them and orders custom-made modules for our proprietary applications to boot.

@topic:Take a small project like a shopping center with 50 of such displays and now imagine how easy this makes the upgrade process from single-core to dual-core modules with more RAM and better graphics, followed by a flash update.

Re:Good step in the right direction

[lkcl]

thanks lennier1. yes we have someone in the same line of business, he's looking at placing an order for 1k units, precisely because the cost of development of what is effectively the major bit of the work - the CPU card - is so much lower. then, they can do a 2 to 4 layer board for the remaining bit, covering all the peripherals. that way, they've just got themselves a decent profit-margin back, even on low-volume production runs of their product, because the main CPU card is a "consumer-grade" off-the-shelf part.

Re:Good step in the right direction

[iplayfast]

What exactly does a company internal Linux distro mean, when you are selling the displays that are using the distro? I thought the point of GPL was that if you sold the hardware that used the software you also needed to provide the source for the software.

Re:Good step in the right direction

[lennier1]

It means the company chooses which packages make up the OS that's running on those devices, maintains its own forks where necessary, submits patches upstream and each shipment includes the sources which were used (minus the proprietary applications). Only way of avoiding something like the Gnome3/Unity clusterfuck on a deeper level.

exposed email

[Anonymous Coward]

yeh sweet, i'd preorder a few...but to leave my email address sitting out in plain view for anything to scrape...no thanks.

opensource

[yupa]

Yes it is opensource, the but code look very ugly : http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=arm-netbook/arm-netbook.git;a=commit;h=fe9f45a106b84dacf86117a5953b5efa57bae223 Good luck to people that will work with these drivers !

Re:opensource

[lkcl]

ahh, you've dealt with SoC manufacturers rushing things out the door before, i see? :)

Re:opensource

[lennier1]

It's hardly limited to those. Even stuff like Realtek's network card drivers provide the occasional WTF moment.

poorly chosen connector

[Gravis Zero]

i've seen this idea for a modular computer before and the choice of using PCMCIA dumb.
1) There isnt an explanation for why they choose PCMCIA so it's quite arbitrary.
2) They talk about ejector assemblies for the cards as if you would be popping out the card on a regular basis which would be foolish. For one, i dont want some jackass popping out the core of my laptop and running off with it to sell on eBay.
3) Like someone said before, making PCMCIA cards is difficult because of the connector. Why not just use an edge connector that will reduce manufacturing faults?
4) It's not even a standard PCMCIA connector, it has "Deliberate Mechanical Non-interoperability" so that you cant put in other PCMCIA cards by accident.

A simple X pin edge connector (like what RAM uses) would simplify manufacturing and not require custom connection parts. Just opening a small panel with a couple screwed under your laptop and stick in the new edge connector based module would solve all these issues.

This idea for a easily popped out card is STUPID.

Re:poorly chosen connector

[LuxuryYacht]

I imagine the reason that they reused the PCMCIA design is for reuse of the tooling for the case and also the durability of the connectors. The PCMCIA connectors have durability ratings of 10K insertions. Many card edge connectors have only a durability of 100-200 insertions. The simply made fascia plate keeps these new cards from being inserted into legacy sockets. The cpu card might be swapped from a laptop to a desktop, set-top-box, car PC, cluster rack, etc etc. You could make devices with a simple cover plate to keep the cpu module from being easily ejected if you wish. Devices such as laptops, set-top-boxes, etc might be easily upgraded to a newer or more powerful cpu or more RAM by simply swapping the cpu module.

Re:poorly chosen connector

[lkcl]

I imagine the reason that they reused the PCMCIA design is for reuse of the tooling for the case and also the durability of the connectors. The PCMCIA connectors have durability ratings of 10K insertions. Many card edge connectors have only a durability of 100-200 insertions. The simply made fascia plate keeps these new cards from being inserted into legacy sockets. The cpu card might be swapped from a laptop to a desktop, set-top-box, car PC, cluster rack, etc etc. You could make devices with a simple cover plate to keep the cpu module from being easily ejected if you wish. Devices such as laptops, set-top-boxes, etc might be easily upgraded to a newer or more powerful cpu or more RAM by simply swapping the cpu module.

*snort*. i wish i'd written what you'd written, it's spot-on :) can i borrow what you wrote, put it (attributed) somewhere on the wiki? seriously :)

Re:poorly chosen connector

[Gravis Zero]

even the article title says they will be really cheap, so the idea that you will need to swap it for every device is just stupid because if you can buy them for $20, why wouldnt you just buy one for each device? in the event that newer ones are expensive and you have to put a cover over it to make it hard to remove, what's the point of having it be PCMCIA? it's either cheap and you have multiple ones or expensive and hard to swap out. either way, you wont be removing it often.

it's good in theory but just not practical.

Ho-Hum...

[Anonymous Coward]

Preorders? And the thing is in "schematic design stage"?

Then you need a PCMCIA connector to mate with the card, along with all the hardware connectors, consisting of

        RGB/TTL: 28 pins
        USB2: 2 pins
        I2C: 2 pins
        10/100 Ethernet: 4 pins
        SATA-II: 4 pins
        GPIO: 16 pins
        5V Power: 2 pins @ 0.5A per pin

Very nice at a proposed $15 price point, but when you've got to add the hardware to connect it to anything meaningful then it becomes rather less enticing. Have fun wiring up VGA, USB. Ethernet, SATA and power sockets to get operational. For $10 more, the Model A Pi is plug'n'play operational. And I'm more confident that the Pi will appear in January than the Rhombus appearing any time in 2012.

But what sticks in my throat is the idea of pre-ordering something thats nothing more than a statement of intent predicated off the back of the interest in Raspberry Pi.

"ME TOO" anyone????

Re:Ho-Hum...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's hardly off the back of the Pi. Designs like these have been in demand for several years but greed, power or mental illness have always gotten in the way.

The $15 Allwinner A10 module is not associated with Broadcom in any way. That is a big plus for many developers and they won't have to deal with binary blobs and lack of Linux support.

For $10 more there can easily be mating accessories for I/O to keyboards, mice, display and hard drives.

Re:Ho-Hum...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Allwinner A10 module still requires a binary blob for the GPU to show accelerated 3d graphics such like the Raspberry Pi. Not that I'm bothered by this. I'm pragmatic first, idealist second. However acting like the A10 is more libre than the the Raspberry Pi is disingenuous. Both will have open source 2d graphics drivers and peripheral drivers. Also I don't see a datasheet for the allwinner A10 anyway at this point just like another project...the raspberry pi. I do see datasheets for the ARM1176JZF-S processor on the Raspberry Pi though. http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.ddi0301h/DDI0301H_arm1176jzfs_r0p7_trm.pdf

Re:Ho-Hum...

[tftp]

The PCMCIA/CardBus connector alone will cost you $9.29 + shipping from Digikey. However you can't just "wire it up" because its pins are too small and fragile. So you need to make a PCB for it, that can't be much more than $100 or $120. Of course once you put the rest of the breakout connectors onto that PCB it becomes around $150. At this point it becomes cheaper to buy a small netbook or a small Atom-based motherboard.

This whole idea seems to be tailored for people who want to build a computer. However majority of people, by my observations, are far past that. Today I don't want to build a computer. I want to build a thing that uses a computer as its part.

For example, right now I need a computer that has a USB host interface to talk to my weather station. The weather station console plugs into a PC and runs very nicely; but I don't have a PC near the console, and I don't want to run a big, noisy and hot PC just for that. I want something under a couple of watts that generates network data. I'm willing to build something but I don't see much sense in building a PCB. If I do that I will then build my own network-ready system out of an AVR32.

What is this going to mean for me, the end-user?

[Robotech_Master]

I'm not a programmer or a hardware hacker. I don't know anything about soldering circuit boards. I'm just a guy who likes to surf the net, write stories, play games, hang out on-line, and so on. What is the availability of this $15 device going to mean for me?

I mean, at least (as far as) I know the Raspberry Pi is going to be producing fully-realized devices that I can buy, plug in a keyboard and monitor and Ethernet cable, and I'm done. It sounds like this project is just about building a circuit board. And while it's nice it will be 40% cheaper and three times as fast, I'd like to know what I could do with it if someone came up to me on the street and handed me one.

Re:What is this going to mean for me, the end-user

[LuxuryYacht]

Modules like these will support and industry of mass produced low cost devices that will interoperate with them. You'll be able to plug the cpu module into your desktop unit or set-top-box at home and surf the net, write stories, play games, hang out on-line, and so on. You'll also be able to take the module out of your desktop unit or set-top-box and plug it into your laptop unit and surf the net, write stories, play games, hang out on-line, and so on.

Sort of a truism

[bigsexyjoe]

Of course someone is working on something better and cheaper than Raspberry Pi. And of course there will eventually be something better and cheaper than Raspberry Pi. And in ten years, everyone is going to have PC hooked up to their tv. And most people will have one that costs less than $100.

This isn't a reason to not get a Raspberry Pi, but exciting nonetheless.

Re:What is this going to mean for me, the end-user

[lkcl]

I'm not a programmer or a hardware hacker. I don't know anything about soldering circuit boards. I'm just a guy who likes to surf the net, write stories, play games, hang out on-line, and so on. What is the availability of this $15 device going to mean for me?

I mean, at least (as far as) I know the Raspberry Pi is going to be producing fully-realized devices that I can buy, plug in a keyboard and monitor and Ethernet cable, and I'm done. It sounds like this project is just about building a circuit board. And while it's nice it will be 40% cheaper and three times as fast, I'd like to know what I could do with it if someone came up to me on the street and handed me one.

if they _literally_ handed you one on the street, you'd be able to plug in a USB-OTG-powered hub, then you could put in a keyboard and a USB ethernet, and also an HDMI monitor, and some headphones.

if they also included the "micro-header" that is also a planned product, you'd also be able to plug in an ethernet cable (without the USB internet dongle), and you'd not have to plug in that USB-OTG hub, you'd be able to put a standard hub on instead, and also power it from a 5V PSU, and you'd also be able to connect a standard (externally-powered) eSATA drive.

oh, and there's a MicroSD slot, so if the man-on-the-street had taken out its OS card before giving it to you, you'd be able to download ready-built standard GNU/Linux OS distros, shove them in and go.

so hell no, it's most definitely *not* about just "building a circuit board" - that's just the first step.

make a pcmcia accelerator

[unique_parrot]

Would be very nice to have a native arm accelerator as a pcmcia card, which could be used to drive the google avd's in the emulator. For $30 I would get one immediately !

Re:make a pcmcia accelerator

[unique_parrot]

As 2nd step could be an eclipse app to develop for android under android... For me android feels like a content consuming environment but not as much a contenct producing/productive environment... Hope you get what I mean.

Nothing wrong with PCMCIA

[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing wrong with PCMCIA or ExpressCard for that matter.
Remember the REX line ( By previously Xircom and then Intel ) had a PCMCIA interface and that was very successful. Had it had the hardware of today it would still be very useful.

What I would love to see is a REX line of today with the tools of tomorrow that fits both PCMCIA and Expresscard slots in one single interface.
Maybe even add a female HDMI port and microSD card slot.

Re:What is this going to mean for me, the end-user

[Anonymous Coward]

except if they're 15dollars a pop why would I want to do that?

That's like having a single set of AA batteries and sticking them in your tv remote or your pc keyboard depending upon what you want to do. If they cost 15dollars a pop there's little driver to arse about deciding if I wan to watch tv, use my desktop or use my laptop is there?

Is this a joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your domain name was registered two weeks ago.
The project is in brainstorm phase. There's no plan, there's no component list, there's only some sketches made in mspaint.
From what I can read on the wiki, there's no real engineers attached to it (or they do not express themselves on the wiki, because the technical talks is wrong on so many levels)
How can you realistically guess the price without even having blueprints or a board design?

And on top of that, the project already accepts pre-orders with upfront payment.

I want to believe you, but seriously...

datasheet

[fredan]

lckl,

where is the datasheet of the processor?

Re:datasheet

[lkcl]

hi fredan,

it's NDA confidential, but you could likely get one online if you looked hard enough :) the plan is to work information into a wiki, based on the source code and based on my access to the datasheet. everything that's needed _will_ be available so that people _can_ use these CPUs. if it gets really challenging and/or time-consuming i'll put in a request to the Board of Directors at Allwinner, ok?

I'm still waiting for my Open Pandora

[goldcd]

(the most powerful handheld blah blah blah).
I've got no idea how to design, market, distribute or support a product - which is why I don't attempt to do it. I fully intend to pick up a Raspberry Pi, and to be honest power isn't the reason. The reason I want it is because I believe it a) will appear and b) will be supported.
The secondary reason is that it looks (last time I looked) like it would become an XBMC reference platform - i.e. if I can't summon the intellectual ability to do something with it, I can at least ride on the coat-tails of those that can.

Re:What is this going to mean for me, the end-user

[lkcl]

do you know what? i think this is *precisely* why companies have rejected so-called "embedded" processors for mainstream computing. they look at the pricing, and go "wtf?? the CPU's _how_ much less than the cost of the LCD panel??" freak out and refuse to design it into a product.

a modular design makes no such assumptions or restrictions. if people want to buy a $15 CPU card and put it into a $400 17in laptop chassis with a 1920x1080 LCD and a 3.0TB Hard Drive, they're mooore than welcome to do so.

also you have to bear in mind that $15 FOB (free on-board) is *not* $15 retail.... :)

tempest in a tea pot

[Anonymous Coward]

I think, perhaps, that you are exaggerating the effects of reading uncapitalized sentences. I think, perhaps, that you are making a tempest in a tea pot.

about the board: I am curious about the specs but I guess I will just go and look at what is on offer. (GPU, sram, programming interface...)

Cool!

Re:tempest in a tea pot

[Thing 1]

No, I'm agreeing with the other poster that conventions are cool. For instance, I am hoping that their production conventions are significantly better than their communication conventions, otherwise you might not find it so cool to be an owner.