OLinuXino, a serious Rasberry Pi competitor?

[Nico Coesel]

The USB 2.0 spec only allows for 500 mA maximum current after the device
has been configured. Unconfigured devices are only allowed 100 mA. For

Sorry, but that is pure theory. In reality 99% of the PCs will happily
deliver >1A through their USB port. Current regulation circuitry and
controlling it adds extra costs and customers might think their PC is
broken because the devices are not working or are not getting charged.
Manufacturers want to avoid that extra hassle.

I just tested a USB port of my PC with a dummy load and it supplies
over 1A without a device attached.

 

[Nico Coesel]

Exactly. What I'm looking for is the Embedded Linux Computer with FPGA
connected directly to the CPUs bus and to 0,1" headers, so that my
students could deal with different peripherals (implemented in the
FPGA)

Don't count on connecting a CPU bus. Those days are long gone. The
speeds are too high. DDR and flash memory usually have dedicated
busses. Even if you could craft something that resembles a memory bus
there are many issues to work out. Especially if you would make the
bus go over headers. Nowadays you'd use GPIO, I2C, SPI or USB.

 

[[email protected]]

Sorry, but that is pure theory. In reality 99% of the PCs will happily
deliver >1A through their USB port.

The only computers I've seen complaining about USB current consumption is
Macs, both desktops and laptops, and running both OS X and Windows. You get
this nice loop where the OS turns off the host port, pops up a warning
dialog, automatically turns the host port back on, turns it back off again,
pops up another dialog etc. I was still dismissing dialogs for almost a
minute after yanking out the device.

-a

 

[[email protected]]

Yes you do as IT services will not allow loading of packet sniffers
practicals with network addressing, subnets and a myriad of other things
done to those systems.

The Model A that is intended for classrooms does not have on-board Ethernet.

-a

 

[Nico Coesel]

On top of that it needs 5V *stabilized*.
That is a big problem, it should have been 7 to 20 V unstabilized,

Is this a hard spec or do they just say that to make it simple. I see
a 3.3V regulator close to RP's power connector.

 

[Paul]

The Model A that is intended for classrooms does not have on-board Ethernet.

-a

What is intended and what will be bought for various curricula is
different, as I have dealings with ICT/Computing teachers in UK
most are actually interested in Model B not A, hard wired LAN is easier
as lots of building have no wifi or wifi blackspots.

Anyway adding wifi may seem cheap until you lose opne or two a lesson
and more bits to check in and out.

--
Paul Carpenter | [email protected]
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/> PC Services
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<http://www.badweb.org.uk/> For those web sites you hate

 

[Paul]

The only computers I've seen complaining about USB current consumption is
Macs, both desktops and laptops, and running both OS X and Windows. You get
this nice loop where the OS turns off the host port, pops up a warning
dialog, automatically turns the host port back on, turns it back off again,
pops up another dialog etc. I was still dismissing dialogs for almost a
minute after yanking out the device.

-a

In last two years seen at least three Win PCs complain about it.

--
Paul Carpenter | [email protected]
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/> PC Services
<http://www.pcserviceselectronics.co.uk/fonts/> Timing Diagram Font
<http://www.gnuh8.org.uk/> GNU H8 - compiler & Renesas H8/H8S/H8 Tiny
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/> For those web sites you hate

 

[Don McKenzie]

Preliminary schematic of the iMX233-OLinuXino has been uploaded to GitHub.

This is very rough and will have lot of changes. These changes will
possibly be uploaded on Monday.

https://github.com/TsvetanUsunov/OLINUXINO/blob/master/HARDWARE/iMX233-OLinuXino-Rev-A.pdf

A new user group has been set up for this board at:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/olinuxino/

This is one of two new Linux low cost boards, that will be produced by
Olimex. First one has 64Mb of ram, second one will be the same CPU speed
as RPi, and have 256Mb of ram.

======================
Question:
Like the idea, some sort of raspberry pi. What kind of android version
would be supported since it only contains 64mb ram ? incl. TV out ?

Answer: OLIMEX Ltd says:
March 7, 2012 at 10:05 pm

sorry there are few projects in my mind indeed 64MB memory is too low
for Android, but there is another project with 256MB and different
processor which is too early to announce now
======================

Cheers Don...

===================

--
Don McKenzie

Dontronics: http://www.dontronics-shop.com/

DuinoMite the PIC32 $35 Basic Computer-MicroController
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/the-maximite-computer.html
Just add a VGA monitor or TV, and PS2 Keyboard.
Arduino Shield, Programmed in Basic, or C.

 

[Jasen Betts]

Is this a hard spec or do they just say that to make it simple. I see
a 3.3V regulator close to RP's power connector.

the core runs off that regulator, the USB socket and the expansion
connectors have the input power directly connected. The ethernet and
the onboard USB hub may need 5V.

 

[Nico Coesel]

The Model A that is intended for classrooms does not have on-board Ethernet.

No problem. A USB to ethernet converter works just as well. There is a
big chance the onboard ethernet works through USB. Many SoCs don't
provide a MAC because mobile devices don't need one.

 

[Nico Coesel]

Why do you think so? E.g. in a board based on AT91SAM9G45
( http://www.atmel.com/Images/doc6438.pdf ) you can easily connect
DDR
RAM to dedicated pins (DDR_A* DDR_D* etc.) and use separate EBI
pins to connect FPGA.

That device is relatively slow. IIRC about the same device is used on
Conitec's Eva board.

 

[wzab]

W dniu 09.03.2012 20:45, Joel Koltner pisze:

(In a modern PC, while things like PCI cards are memory-mapped, when
someone writes a line of code as simple as *MyDeviceRegister =
0xdeadbeef, what actually happens is a very complex transaction between
the CPU, its local bus, the north bridge, the PCI bus, and whatever chip
is on the target PCI device.)

Well, I know it. In our team we've dealed with PCI and PCI-e from both
sides - at PC level and at FPGA level.

However for didactic purposes it is good sometimes to let students to
work with hardware, which is directly coupled to the CPU bus
(like EBI in ARMs) before they start to deal with more complex
buses like PCI.

 

[[email protected]]

The mahority of USB wall warts people have are for phones in the 100 to
3000mA range to keep costs and weight down.

100mA would never charge a phone. 3000mA is much better. AFAIK, they try to
charge the phone at 1C.

 

[Andrew Smallshaw]

Yes you do as IT services will not allow loading of packet sniffers
practicals with network addressing, subnets and a myriad of other things
done to those systems.

It's only a couple of years since I did my CCNA at the local college
as evening classes. Their solution was quite simple: each time
you do an IT refresh keep back twenty or thirty old machines for
the tinkering classes. If a clean OS install is needed the student
does it themselves at the start of the class restoring from a Norton
Ghost image on DVD. Any network infrastructure or servers needed
for the class is similarly set up at the start of the class. This
was for all the courses, not just Cisco.

That worked quite well for them, where each class was at least a
couple of hours but I've imagine set up and tear down would take
up too much time for schools where a lesson is only an hour or
thereabouts.

 

[Don McKenzie]

Additional information -2012-03-10

We started the iMX233 project, the name is OLINUXINO as it will run
Linux natively.

The goal is EUR 30 single board linux computer.
This is complete open source, open hardware project which is to be
hosted on GitHub .

The specs are:

- iMX233 454Mhz ARM9 processor
- 64MB of RAM
- 2 USB hosts
- 1 100MB Ethernet port
- composite Video 640×480 pixels, color, with PXP graphics accelerator
for picture manipulations
- micro SD card for boot and disk storage
- headphones stereo DAC with 99dB SNR
- linear input stereo ADC with 85dB SNR
- UEXT connector
- 31 GPIOs for interfacing including UART,SPI,I2C,PWMs

Although this board will run Linux there is possibility DM-BASIC to be
ported on it and pre-estimated this MCU should run about 1 Million Basic
instructions per second, with 64MB RAM available for applications.

The very preliminary schematic is uploaded on GitHub, the goal is next
week to have complete schematic and routed board and in 2 weeks
prototypes for the developers.

Cheers Don...

============================

--
Don McKenzie

Dontronics: http://www.dontronics-shop.com/

DuinoMite the PIC32 $35 Basic Computer-MicroController
http://www.dontronics-shop.com/the-maximite-computer.html
Just add a VGA monitor or TV, and PS2 Keyboard.
Arduino Shield, Programmed in Basic, or C.

 

[Dombo]

Op 10-Mar-12 18:44, rickman schreef:

Cell phone chargers do not put out 3000 mA. They typically put out
0.5 to 0.7 mA... at least the ones I use do.

Considering cell phone batteries typically have a capacity of 1000mAh or
more, at that rate it would take more than 8 weeks to fully charge it. I
guess you are a very, very patient guy ;-)

 

[josephkk]

David> too little ram

64MB! (and promises it running Android!)

Even a programming language like Haskell, run from the command line,
needs more core than that. C++ programs can easy need 200MB+ of real RAM
to compile.

Um, not. That is the GUI/DE that eats all that RAM. The actual
functionality is maybe 5 to 10 % of that. Basic running interactively,
with a file system was done in 16 K on a 6502. You have heard of
bloatware.

 

[Chris Baird]

64MB! (and promises it running Android!)

Um, not. That is the GUI/DE that eats all that RAM. The actual
functionality is maybe 5 to 10 % of that.

Are you using the Hollywood edition of C++ with Gibson extensions
enabled? (Usually installed under the name 'Java'.)

Memory usage while compiling KDE4 C++ sources from the command line:

PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU CPU COMMAND
1333 root 25 0 332M 316M CPU/0 0:17 96.03% 57.03% cc1plus
1351 root 85 0 48M 32M pager_/4 0:00 2.47% 1.46% as

316MB in use by the compiler. C++ is Peeeg. And then there's Java, which
is Mrs Peeeeg after 8 years of marriage..

And it was said this proposed supercheap 64MB RAM RaspberryPi killer
would run Android and its Java systems. Uh, you need at least 768MB of
RAM for Android to be usable at all.

 

[Mark Borgerson]

I'm sure they wish they could sell 10,000 of anything in the first day
its on the market. Wouldn't we all?

Ummm-it's not too hard to sell 10,000 of anything if you spec it right
and don't actually deliver the product! ;-)


Mark Borgerson

 

[josephkk]

Are you using the Hollywood edition of C++ with Gibson extensions
enabled? (Usually installed under the name 'Java'.)

Memory usage while compiling KDE4 C++ sources from the command line:

PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU CPU COMMAND
1333 root 25 0 332M 316M CPU/0 0:17 96.03% 57.03% cc1plus
1351 root 85 0 48M 32M pager_/4 0:00 2.47% 1.46% as

316MB in use by the compiler. C++ is Peeeg. And then there's Java, which
is Mrs Peeeeg after 8 years of marriage..

And it was said this proposed supercheap 64MB RAM RaspberryPi killer
would run Android and its Java systems. Uh, you need at least 768MB of
RAM for Android to be usable at all.

The toolchain were not on the RPi. It was just the target. Just the same
your point has been made, those toolchains take gigs.

?-)