[Coco] Single board Pentium computer... "CoCo4" or Drivewire server material?

[jdaggett at gate.net]

Frank

With the memory on board the Beagle board could run Windows CE. Still a port of Linux is 
already there. What is interesting is Samsung has a versionof the Cortex A8 that runs at 1 
GHz and the ARM consortium is close if not already have out a dual core Cortex call the A9 
that will run at speeds up to 2GHz. 

The Cortex series of chips are nice for small embedded systems. Apple in their I-Phone is 
using the A5 and Motorola's new Droid is using the A8. There is some rumors that Apple may 
start using the Samsung verstion of the ARM Cortex SoC. 

What makes it a dual yeah/boo is that all the processor and graphics and memory controller 
is all in one chip. 

It hard to pick from what is out there. The technology advances just fast enough that if you 
play the waiting game, you will never proceed with what you intend to build. 

The mini ITX boards do offer an advantage in that they will runWIndows XP and most likely 
Vista. That is a decent plus. Still look at the cost of OS plus the board and the Beagle Boards 
does not look so bad after all. XP is still going to set you back about $75. Vista even more. 
Linux is very very low cost and MESS is not all that bad though I do prefer VCC. Now a port 
of VCC to Linux would be extremely nice. 

james

On 12 Dec 2009 at 18:00, Frank Swygert wrote:

> I took a look at some of the videos on YouTube. Looks like it would definitely work! Stick one in a CoCo case, replacing the CoCo motherboard, using a mini USB keyboard and you'd have a real powerful computer. You'd have to use the MESS based emulator though, as the DOS based one doesn't support USB, and the Beagle doesn't have enough power for Windows. But would it run in 128MB? The 256MB of Flash is nice... would be especially wonderful if the OS/emulator software would all fit, freeing the SD slot for storage only (and maybe OS-9). I see that it has S-video as well as DVI, which might be a better approach for some. Cost is a bit more than those little single board computers (not the backplane, the others... I was a bit intrigued by the backplane due to extremely low price). 
> 
> As far as a new device goes, a Mini ITX with Atom or VIA processor is probably the best way to go, several out there for around $100 (such as this one for $76.95, http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=BOXD945GCLF2D-DT&cpc=SCH). Still have to add RAM, but 2GB of DDR-2 (max it supports) is under $50. So for $under $130 you have much more power and flexibility than the Beagle. At 6.7" square and quite a bit taller it won't fit in a CoCo case though! For a "CoCo4" any number of small ITX cases would be great. 
> 
> ---------------
> Date: Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:59:04 -0500
> From: jdaggett at gate.net
> 
> Frank:
> 
> have you ever considered a Beagle Board? It uses a 600 MHz Arm Cortex A8 processor and 
> a version of Ubuntu has been ported to it. Even Symbian OS is now avaialble for it. It has DVI 
> output. Stereo input/output, MMC/SD card interface, I2C, I2S, SPI, 256MB nand flash, 
> 128MB LPDDR Ram and some more. All for $149. The board size is 3 inch square. 
> 
> www.beagleboard.org
> 
> -- 
> Frank Swygert
> Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
> Magazine (AMC)
> For all AMC enthusiasts
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> 
> 
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