PicoTux

[Peter P.]

Christopher Browne <cbbrowne at ...> writes:

> 
> On 9/7/07, Scott Elcomb <psema4 at ...> wrote:
> > On 9/7/07, SlackRat <slackrat4Q at ...> wrote:
> > > I was wondering if there are any useful applications that can be run
> > > on what is advertized as "The worlds smallest computer"
> >
> > That'd be the "world's smallest _Linux_ computer."  The fact that it
> > can be used as a webserver might prove very useful for (incredibly!)
> > tiny appliances.
> >
> > If there were an easy way to expand it's memory, say with USB 2, the
> > device would probably be invaluable for appliance manufacturers.  As
> > it is, I don't think (but don't quote me) that Perl or PHP could be
> > installed on the device, so all web scripts would have to be compiled
> > C/C++ or Fortran.  (Never heard of web scripts written in Fortran, but
> > can't see why it wouldn't be possible in principle.)
> >
> > The specs say there are "General Input/Output Pins(TTL)," but I'm not
> > sure what kind of hardware interface that is supposed to represent.
> >
> > > I am quite intrigued by it.
> > >
> > > http://www.picotux.com/
> >
> > Damn but that's small!
> 
> There is a site that describes how to reconfigure it...
> 
> http://daduke.org/picotux/
> 
> In principle, it *could* run PHP and such, if all the code (including
> binaries) was being hosted on an NFS mount.
> 
> You'd still want to keep sizes of things down to minimize the degree
> to which network bandwidth kills performance.

The firm that makes them also makes larger versions (4MB Flash). Based on what I
know from shoehorning applications into small ramdisks and embedded routers I'd
say that running php or perl on that is not a good idea, but something smaller
and lighter like tcl or lua should work fine.

I have had an eye on the *wireless* version of very similar modules from Mouser
etc for some time now - also ARM based (in fact I think that it is the same one)

  http://www.digi.com/products/embeddedsolutions/digiconnectme.jsp
  http://www.digi.com/products/embeddedsolutions/digiconnectwime.jsp

These are also sold by Mouser Electronics (2007 pdf Catalog p. 22).

Peter P.


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