Interesting announcement

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 06:24:40PM -0500, Christopher Browne wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 4:43 PM, William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > This brings up one of my pet peeves...  I can download .iso files for ARM or
> > MIPS.  Then, what?  I don't have motherboard that I can play with.  Eg. For the
> > longest time, I want to try Slackware version for ARM processor.  The only ARM
> > hardware I can buy is "pogoplug" computer which has only USB and RJ45 port.
> > Pretty much useless as desktop computer.
> 
> Pretty fair, yeah.
> 
> There were some PowerPC designs that looked kind of interesting, but
> when the vendors were:
> a) IBM, who want to hawk AIX servers,
> b) Apple, who have *zero* interest in selling it without MacOS, and
> c) Some "embedded system" vendors that aren't really interested in
> talking to you if you don't want either thousands of units, or to pay
> $ thousands per unit,
> that you can "run Linux on PPC" is of rather academic interest.

BeBox, Pegasus, Motorola powerpc boxes, etc.  There were choices.

> MIPS and ARM have frequently been not terribly different.  For a long
> time, your choices were:
> a) Buy thousands of them, or
> b) Buy them for $thousands, MUCH pricier than an Intel/AMD motherboard.
> 
> The popularity of ARM for embedded disk arrays and network routers has
> changed this a little, though only a little, because the result tends
> to be a box that's mighty wimpy for doing anything more sophisticated.
>  You don't get to have video output, for instance.  PogoPlugs are
> pretty neat, but...
> 
> The new NVidia Tegra stuff *might* change that.  There's the would-be
> "game changer" that at this year's CES, there were machines being
> announced that were not "WinTel", in involving neither Windows nor
> Intel.
> 
> The relevant "neat thing" I saw today was this:
> <http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/25/compulab-makes-a-tiny-tegra-2-computer-for-the-lilliputian-commu/>
> 
> But it's still a story I have heard before too many times to believe
> without a large grain of skepticism.  Only if they start delivering
> little boxes to stores in Toronto will I truly believe it.
> 
> That's another dose of "warm stuff freezing" :-)  Not that I'd be
> disappointed to see it!  :-)

-- 
Len Sorensen
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