[GTALUG] glittery cheap but useless toy computers

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

I'm still tantalized by cheap Android boxes from unknown manufacturers.

The best current chip (SoC)found in TV boxes is the Rockchip RK3399.  It 
is fast and it has very nice things like USB3.

So I've looked for cheap ones.  For some reason, all that have the RK3399 
are quite expensive ($150 or more).  Like: three times the cost of ones 
with the Amlogic 905x, which itself is a reasonable chip.  I have no idea 
why -- I'm sure that the SoC itself doesn't cost anywhere near $100.

There are a few Pi-like boards being released that have the RK3399.  Like 
the RockPro64, Khadas Edge, Nano Pi M2, NanoPC-T4, etc.  You can read 
cnx-software.com for news about these things.

Still another choice is the somewhat old Reaktek RTD1395 / 1396 chips.  
These can do SATA and are used in several NAS boxes.  But Realtek has been 
violating the GPL very badly on these so they are not open enough to be 
interesting.  This development seems likely to be too little, too late:

<https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/09/23/realtek-rtd1296-u-boot-linux-source-code-rtd1619-cortex-a55-soc/>

At US$54, this would be interesting if you could pour something open into 
it:

<https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/09/16/lake-i-home-cloud-tv-box-hdmi-input-discount/>

Anyway, all these seem inferior to some little boxes based on the Atom.  
Sad.

| From: D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
| To: Toronto Linux Users Group <talk at gtalug.org>
| Date: Fri, 4 May 2018 13:49:48 -0400 (EDT)

| BUT.  The raw hardware for these cheap boxes is interesting.  Faster
| than a Raspberry Pi.  And these come with a box, remote control, and
| power supply.  Expandability and openness in general is a lot worse.
| 
| The worst thing is that all their GPUs are proprietary (and a few other 
| things too) so you cannot drop an ordinary Linux on them.
| 
| I think that they all use uboot and device tree, but in an idiosyncratic 
| way, adding to the difficulty.
| 
| I bought a (less) cheap S912 box that I intend to play with.  Apparently 
| you can run Linux on these if you don't need video output.  I won't give 
| links because I don't know which efforts are the best.

I still haven't played with it.