Although quite a bit OT, i would like to coment a bit on the topic of application processor boards, as there seem to be a lot of handwaving in this area.
On Mon, 1 Jul 2013 08:14:55 -0700 Chris Albertson <albertson.ch...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks. I didn't know there were two kinds. This is more useful for only > $5 more. There are actually 4 kinds of the beagle family: Beagle Board Beagle Board xM Beagle Bone (White) Beagle Bone Black The Board and Board xM are more of the "let's replace a PC" kind of design, while the two Bone variants are more experimenter, development boards, similar to the idea of arduino. A word on the different boards there are out there: Please keep in mind that most of these boards are using CPUs designed for other uses than most people will use them for. the Beagle Board and the Beagle Bone White use processers that orignally come from wireless (aka cell phone and similar stuff) business. While the xM and the Black use one from the industrial division. You can see that clearly in the features that they support. For comparison, the Raspberry Pi CPU was meant for video applications. That's why you have a humongus GPU whith a tiny CPU attached to it. The CPU was not meant to run an OS, but to support the GPU. Hence the weird USB design, where the USB "controller" generates interrupts every start of frame (aka every 125us) and the CPU has to do every low level stuff USB needs in software, instead of the hardware doing it (i guess it was cheaper to design that way). Which leads to a lot of problems when doing more than just a little bit of communication over USB. It also explains why an ARM9 processor does not have an hardware ethernet MAC. Similar things can be said about boards like the cubieboard, which uses an AllWinner A10, or A20 for the cubie2. These are CPU designed for tablets and settop boxes. Thus each of the design has their own set of advantages, disadvantages and quirks, depending on where the original CPU design came from. Also keep in mind that you will not run the board without software. The quality of the software package and how easy it is to customize is very different for the various boards out there. General rule of thumb: if lots of people are using it, there is a better chance to find good support for it. The Odroid/hardkernel boards are a nice negative example in that regard. Another rule of thumb: being able to compile the whole software package yourself is not just a nice feature, it's a must have. Stay away from any board that needs any binary only stuff or where you cannot compile everything from source. Also, if you don't get full schematics, that should make you suspicious. HTH Attila Kinali -- The people on 4chan are like brilliant psychologists who also happen to be insane and gross. -- unknown _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.