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Universal Linux-based Internet Appliance
This is an interesting one:
3ilinux is working on a sort of generic embeddable Linux box. Basically, they've handled much of the engineering, and they'll help vendors who want to make low cost Embedded Linux routers and what have you's. The hardware is 386 or 486 based, and can have ether, modems, buttons, and LCD displays. And of course it runs Linux from 4MB of flash memory.
Now it's even (Score:5, Informative). What more is there to say?
At least there are PRICES for the 3ilinux box. There seems to be some kind of taboo against publishing PC104 component prices.
Well, yes, we do have a product called Internet Fax Box, based on the same hardare platform (see http://www.faxtel.com/ifb.htm). 3iNet is our parent company. But no, we do not make fax machines. We have been developing Linux software and embedded Linix and QNX for almost 4 years. Now we make this technology available to other companies working on embedded Linux devices. Ivo Zivkov 3iLinux
Female Prison Rape in NY
These pictures are one click away from the 3ilinux home page, with that link labeled "Pictures". Aren't Slashdot moderators able to find that link themselves? Incredible.
Try changing "perhaps" to only with in the above statement.
Imagine the possibilities otherwise- Someone writes a Thanksgiving script that cranks your oven up and down randomly. There goes the turkey!
Or maybe it turns your refrigerator off, or turns it into a freezer.
The general public hasn't really cared about system security because it has a limited impac on them. As long as their bank accounts don't get cracked, they don't care. Home computers connected to the internet 24/7 are a start, but the minute people become sysadmins for their home they might start to take notice of these things...
-cwk.
M-Systems (the maker of the Disk on Chip) gives you the kernel patches if you ask for it. Been using DOC with Linux for a while now, and M-Systems has given the driver out for as long as I remember.
no. whether or not you have bought one, they have to give you the source. from the GPL:
1. [text missing] You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
[text missing] * b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
.. so they don't neccicarily have to put the source up on an FTP server for public download. They do, however, have to give out copies to _anyone_ who asks and charge only a nominal amount, which according to this post they are already doing.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
As of Linux 2.2, Linux has better networking capabilities than those others mentioned above. It makes perfect sense to use Linux in embedded hardware as long as there is enough CPU power and RAM available. And the Disk on Chip looks to Linux like a hard disk. You can partition it, and dont have to worry about flash drivers. It's a rather nice interface.
And it's all open source.
I haven't tried L4, but it's worth a look.
Or possibly hired a marketing person to handle their website and press release(s), etc.. and he only knows how to use windows.
Yeah, they're a bit cheaper than most PC-104 stuff. But why didn't they make their boards PC-104 compatible? It would make the products vastly more flexible -- would it add that much to the cost?
I will be one of the first to tell someone that those are GREAT OSes for deterministic applications- for most embedded apps, you don't need deterministic operation. That makes using something like OS-9 (which I used years ago as my primary OS (Tandy Color Computer 3...)), QNX, or Lynx major overkill. For these OSes, you'll spend lots of money on something you don't need and won't use- deterministic operation. Linux fills that gap very well (In fact, so well that the Lynx people are extending Linux for light-duty real-time applications and giving it all back to the community- using the support angle and the upgrade path to Lynx for the high-perormance systems angle to make money off of it.)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
PC-104 stuff's a bit pricey. If all you need is something like an integrated, does it all, mail gateway/web cache/firewall for something like an xDSL or Cable "Modem", they may have a better setup than a PC-104 board. It all boils down to what you're going for.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Try changing "perhaps" to only with in the above statement.
or read the statement "If you had verification and security, perhaps you could even do this remotely"
Now don't you wish English was LALR(1)?
The source for the ToolKit can be found here:
http://www.3ilinux.com/uibtoolktsrc.gz
I hope that helps you out. I'd be interested in looking at it, but heck, I don't do C++ . =]
HP Jetdirect print servers are very bad. They don't hold up under load, can crash when two computers send a job at the same time, no tools for management.
Get an Axis: robust engineering, very good print management.
They only have to give you the source if you buy one. Go read the GPL.
Please be careful dealing with this place. They would seem to be a tiny, potentially fly-by-night operation heavy on hype and short on products. As many have noticed, they're not exactly Linux geniuses, either... Sorry, don't mean to trash what may be a real product, but hyping this thing to 50,000 Slashdot users smells similar to when this guy hyped his stuff on the embedded-linux mailing list, forgetting to mention that he works for the company making them.
That's fun, but I'd rather see an ARM system. Much less power consumption, and there already are a bunch of Linux systems that use it, like the Empeg car radio.
i am also trying to get linux working on my nino...16 meg of ram and a 64 meg flash card... theres a good resource for linux on handhelds at www.linuxce.org check it out
they go around looking younger for a few days...then they neeeeed more
Hmm, what exactly is this? Does it mean that I can route my network with my microwave?? :)
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If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
This is all well and good, but, I wanna throw a linux distrib on my Philips nino. 16mb of ram/rom and a 15mb storage card. How cool would THAT be...
At least a Linux handheld would be fast, stable and cheap...
Have a quick check of their HTML source and u will find a big ugly microsoft frontpage bit of java that gives the pengiun a flashing third eye.
:
;)
This raises a few questions
i. Why do some people who do the good job of promoting linux fall back on M$ apps ?
ii. Why is this bunch (along with PLENTY of ppl on the web) using a sledgehammer to solve a simple problem. ie, why not use and animated gif or better a png instead of a crappy script ?
PS: My homepage is broken. I forgot to pay the DNS, if someone wants to pay for me, i would be greatful
:wq ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
You know, look out or the big bad Internet will get your box and the evil hackers will DELETE YOUR COMPUTER! LOOK OUT! VIRII! HACKERS and CRACKERS (oh-my!)
(Gee Martha, We gotta get us one of those things)
btw, it's 2000 isn't it? Where the heck is my flying car dammit! We should all have them by now, and I've missed out! Must be y2k and problems with the e-car site ;)
I have an Internet "appliance" sitting on the other side of my room, it's a 386/25 laptop with 4 MB of RAM and a 170 GB hard drive that can run Linux. This came years before this new gadget talked about on Slashdot... So what?
There are so many other embedded OSes out there, designed from the ground up to be run out of ROMs, with very little memory.
Microware OS-9 is one; it's a fantastic, multitasking, multiuser, uses device drivers that put Linux to shame, and does it in as little as sixteen kilobytes of memory. And it uses dirt-cheap processors that draw next to no power (compared to 386/486 CPUs).
QNX is another, with real-time interrupt processing and, again, exceptionally small memory footprint.
In comparison to those two OSes, and several others, it doesn't seem appropriate to use Linux as an embedded OS. It's not even reinventing the wheel: it's taking sliced bread and bashing it into the shape of a wheel...
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The entire unit (jpg 51k)
With daughter board removed (jpg 59k)
With daughter board flipped over (jpg 61k)
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Any "Internet Appliance" will probably need A/D, D/A and digital IO to do anything useful. What does the UID buy you other then the drivers for the neat LCD, buttons and the included modem?
PC104 stuff has been around for years and has a good complement of add on cards for IO, ethernet and analog.
check out http://www.pc104.com or (sorry about the name, but they're in the same $300 price range) http://www.winsystems.com
It's not that difficult to roll your own with a boot/root image and loadlin. Most included software will take a floppy image and create a bin file to burn into eprom. If you are willing to do an initial M$DOS boot you don't even need any special drivers or kernels, a standard distribution boot/root/rescue works fine as a starting point.
all this needs now is a set of standards on how to interface an "object", or set of objects, in your household network, so you can throw a "turn yourself on" request at your toaster, or "close all the windows" at a general window controller.
:>
perhaps, with verification and security of some sort, this could even be done remotely. eg, while sitting on the train on the way home, tell the radiators and lights to turn on, and the microwave to start cooking the meal you left in it of a morning...
then of course, you could play a version of "Quake" along said lines too, with a webcam mounted on top of a vacuum cleaner, chasing household pets *evil grin*... but i digress.
Fross
The first problem (already solved, very expensively) was to find a way to set up a secure terminal server to access the console of my sun servers. Using a standard terminal server didn't quite meet my needs 'cause I couldn't find one that supported ssh. The best solution that I could find was to get a SCSI terminal server and attach it onto an old sun. This cost me over $1000 and an old sun. If I could have gotten one of these boxes with 16 serial ports, I would have gone with it instead.
The second application that I would use something like this for is a print server. Sure, you can get HP JetDirect cards or standalone print servers from HP, but from my experience they suck pretty bad. Any piece of hardware that makes me walk to it to reboot it more than once per year is begging to be replaced. One of these boxes with a couple parallel ports and an LCD panel to say whose job is being printed to which printer would be awesome.
finally a linux os based internet, etc. appliance. there have been way to many windowsish type OS for these damn machines and its really starting to get annoying. LINUX FOREVER!
"Documentation
...for the same reason they produce their documentation in M$ Werd
Click on the picture below to download the UIB Toolkit documentation in Word97 format."
Why?
It's good to see someone had modified the kernel to support the "Disk-on-a-chip", but where's the modified kernel source code then? Where are the patches? I believe a lot of us can have a use for it, there are nice boards on the market using these things, which emulate a hard disk completely, AFAIK.
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BluetoothCentral.com
A site for everything Bluetooth. Coming in January 2000.
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
These are all the same guys. They're a fax company that makes fax machines that decided to try linux as their OS. Big deal. ALL of their web pages are MS Frontpage BTW.
180 for single qty
to 150 in batches of 1000