[9fans] Mini PCs

[9fans] Mini PCs

[Comeau At9Fans]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 735 bytes --]

Ok, so, unless I was asleep at the wheel following these
discussions, there's been a few "mini PCs" to come about lately:

* Raspberry Pi
* Cotton Candy
* Mele A1000
* MK802

We have a small number of the latter (MK802 running Android 4.0,
which claims to have a Allwinner ARM A10 1.5Ghz Cortex-A8 processor)
for sale FWIW.  I mention this as LINUX is making its way onto some
of these devices, er computers, so I expect that Plan 9 has possibilities
here too.

--
Greg Comeau / 4.3.10.1 with C++0xisms now in beta!
Comeau C/C++ ONLINE ==>     http://www.comeaucomputing.com/tryitout
World Class Compilers:  Breathtaking C++, Amazing C99, Fabulous C90.
Comeau C/C++ with Dinkumware's Libraries... Have you tried it?

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1015 bytes --]

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Richard Miller]

> * Raspberry Pi

At least two 9fans are in the order queue for one of these.

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Matthew Veety]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 332 bytes --]

On Jun 11, 2012 10:03 AM, "Richard Miller" <9fans@hamnavoe.com> wrote:
>
> > * Raspberry Pi
>
> At least two 9fans are in the order queue for one of these.
>
>
I think three including me actually. The drivers factor might only make it
a good cpu server methinks. I would totally love one as a terminal though.

--
Veety

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 458 bytes --]

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[erik quanstrom]

> I think three including me actually. The drivers factor might only make it
> a good cpu server methinks. I would totally love one as a terminal though.

sadly, the 10/100 ethernet is provided through a flakey usb hub
(http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=7380)

for me, that's three strikes (less than gbe, usb, flakey) but in this
case the first strike was enough to exclude it from consideration.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Comeau At9Fans]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1205 bytes --]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 11:46 AM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>wrote:

> > I think three including me actually. The drivers factor might only make
> it
> > a good cpu server methinks. I would totally love one as a terminal
> though.
>
> sadly, the 10/100 ethernet is provided through a flakey usb hub
> (http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=7380)
>
> for me, that's three strikes (less than gbe, usb, flakey) but in this
> case the first strike was enough to exclude it from consideration.


I think that's a significant point, if similar turns out to be the case
with many of these devices, certainly for use with something "critical".
 That said, I also think there's nothing wrong with these kind of "stick"
PC's for lots of purposes, even if for fooling around.  That said :),
enough stuff is already flakey that has mass appeal/use, etc (not saying
these have mass appeal, just just sayin').

--
Greg Comeau / 4.3.10.1 with C++0xisms now in beta!
Comeau C/C++ ONLINE ==>     http://www.comeaucomputing.com/tryitout
World Class Compilers:  Breathtaking C++, Amazing C99, Fabulous C90.
Comeau C/C++ with Dinkumware's Libraries... Have you tried it?

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1768 bytes --]

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Nicolas Bercher]

On 11/06/2012 16:03, Richard Miller wrote:
>> * Raspberry Pi
>
> At least two 9fans are in the order queue for one of these.

+1, I received mine a few days ago.  I can't wait to give a try to Plan9
on it!

Nicolas

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 18:19:20 -0400
Comeau At9Fans <comeauat9fans@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ok, so, unless I was asleep at the wheel following these
> discussions, there's been a few "mini PCs" to come about lately:
>
> * Raspberry Pi
> * Cotton Candy
> * Mele A1000
> * MK802
>
> We have a small number of the latter (MK802 running Android 4.0,
> which claims to have a Allwinner ARM A10 1.5Ghz Cortex-A8 processor)
> for sale FWIW.  I mention this as LINUX is making its way onto some
> of these devices, er computers, so I expect that Plan 9 has possibilities
> here too.
>

I'm still waiting for the Zaurus port somebody did last year or so. ;)
Well, I'm not exactly waiting. He said something about "performance
problems" which I can believe. Use a couple of pipes (foo|bar|baz) in
the Z's native Linux and it about halves the useful performance, so I
can't imagine Plan 9 doing well on it. Inferno would probably do better.

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[rod]

Well, I'm the zaurus 'somebody'. You're welcome to the kernel source,
and I can provide some help with getting it going. For my purposes,
performance is pretty sprightly. I still use it for writing or reviewing
the odd bit of code or text editing. Yes, viewing pdf's is slow
but I assume that is because of the floating point emulation.

The kernel boots from the flash in place of the linux one. I
formatted the internal microdrive with kfs. Wifi with wep works
ok on a cf card. Sound playback works (the internal speaker is
pretty poor!). Cache coherence problems defeated me on the usb
drivers, but I very nearly finished a driver for the sdcard, and
got some way with a flash driver, which would have been useful to
update the kernel from within plan9. It is all based on the bitsy
code, so is probably some way out of line with the current
arm developments.

-rod

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Comeau At9Fans]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1718 bytes --]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 12:08 PM, Ethan Grammatikidis
<eekee57@fastmail.fm>wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 18:19:20 -0400
> Comeau At9Fans <comeauat9fans@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Ok, so, unless I was asleep at the wheel following these
> > discussions, there's been a few "mini PCs" to come about lately:
> >
> > * Raspberry Pi
> > * Cotton Candy
> > * Mele A1000
> > * MK802
> >
> > We have a small number of the latter (MK802 running Android 4.0,
> > which claims to have a Allwinner ARM A10 1.5Ghz Cortex-A8 processor)
> > for sale FWIW.  I mention this as LINUX is making its way onto some
> > of these devices, er computers, so I expect that Plan 9 has possibilities
> > here too.
> >
>
> I'm still waiting for the Zaurus port somebody did last year or so. ;)
> Well, I'm not exactly waiting. He said something about "performance
> problems" which I can believe. Use a couple of pipes (foo|bar|baz) in
> the Z's native Linux and it about halves the useful performance, so I
> can't imagine Plan 9 doing well on it. Inferno would probably do better.
>

I'm not trying to compare Plan 9 with LINUX here but saying this, and, I'm
still trying to get syncronized on the story, but at least LINUX can
survive on the MK802.  There has been some complaints about speed, however,
I also understand that was with the first generation of them and that the
current lot being released this week addressed that.  We shall see shortly.

--
Greg Comeau / 4.3.10.1 with C++0xisms now in beta!
Comeau C/C++ ONLINE ==>     http://www.comeaucomputing.com/tryitout
World Class Compilers:  Breathtaking C++, Amazing C99, Fabulous C90.
Comeau C/C++ with Dinkumware's Libraries... Have you tried it?

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2311 bytes --]

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Winston Weinert]

On Sun, 2012-06-10 at 18:19 -0400, Comeau At9Fans wrote:
> * Raspberry Pi
> * Cotton Candy
> * Mele A1000
> * MK802

Some other _pricier_ products to consider (and a larger variety of
integrated components):
* Beagleboard
* Beaglebone
* Pandaboard
* Pico-ITX formfactor x86 motherboard

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[John Floren]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 1:14 PM, Winston Weinert <winstonw@lavabit.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2012-06-10 at 18:19 -0400, Comeau At9Fans wrote:
>> * Raspberry Pi
>> * Cotton Candy
>> * Mele A1000
>> * MK802
>
> Some other _pricier_ products to consider (and a larger variety of
> integrated components):
> * Beagleboard
> * Beaglebone
> * Pandaboard
> * Pico-ITX formfactor x86 motherboard
>

Some of these should work already; /sys/src/9/omap/beagle seems to
indicate that you can already boot a beagleboard, for instance. As for
anything not based on the supported SoCs, well, until people stop
sitting on ass saying "boy that would be a nice terminal" and actually
start PORTING the damn thing, it'll never be more than Yet Another
120-message 9fans Thread.

I got the Efika Smarttop through quite a bit of the early boot over
the course of an afternoon, before finally getting pissed off at
having to re-write an SD card every time I iterated the kernel. It
shouldn't be *too* hard to get a minimally functional system, the code
in /sys/src/9 is quite good. Oh, there's another thing, for the love
of god don't buy a system that can't netboot, it's just not worth it.

Or we could ignore all these and, in grand 9fans tradition, start
talking about a port to some hardware platform that's been dead for
over 5 years. SPARC64 et al are sorta played out by now, but I've got
a PDP-11 just sitting around...


john

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Tharaneedharan Vilwanathan]

what about teg2 for which geoff announced support recently?

btw, i have two raspberry pi at home now. i would like to run plan9
and inferno (at least emu) on it as soon as possible.

dharani

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 2:07 PM, John Floren <john@jfloren.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 1:14 PM, Winston Weinert <winstonw@lavabit.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 2012-06-10 at 18:19 -0400, Comeau At9Fans wrote:
>>> * Raspberry Pi
>>> * Cotton Candy
>>> * Mele A1000
>>> * MK802
>>
>> Some other _pricier_ products to consider (and a larger variety of
>> integrated components):
>> * Beagleboard
>> * Beaglebone
>> * Pandaboard
>> * Pico-ITX formfactor x86 motherboard
>>
>
> Some of these should work already; /sys/src/9/omap/beagle seems to
> indicate that you can already boot a beagleboard, for instance. As for
> anything not based on the supported SoCs, well, until people stop
> sitting on ass saying "boy that would be a nice terminal" and actually
> start PORTING the damn thing, it'll never be more than Yet Another
> 120-message 9fans Thread.
>
> I got the Efika Smarttop through quite a bit of the early boot over
> the course of an afternoon, before finally getting pissed off at
> having to re-write an SD card every time I iterated the kernel. It
> shouldn't be *too* hard to get a minimally functional system, the code
> in /sys/src/9 is quite good. Oh, there's another thing, for the love
> of god don't buy a system that can't netboot, it's just not worth it.
>
> Or we could ignore all these and, in grand 9fans tradition, start
> talking about a port to some hardware platform that's been dead for
> over 5 years. SPARC64 et al are sorta played out by now, but I've got
> a PDP-11 just sitting around...
>
>
> john
>

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Nick LaForge]

> sadly, the 10/100 ethernet is provided through a flakey usb hub

I think the 'cheap arm dev board' bandwagon will always suffer in this
regard, since the phones these SoCs were designed for don't even come
close to needing gbe

On 6/11/12, Tharaneedharan Vilwanathan <vdharani@gmail.com> wrote:
> what about teg2 for which geoff announced support recently?
>
> btw, i have two raspberry pi at home now. i would like to run plan9
> and inferno (at least emu) on it as soon as possible.
>
> dharani
>
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 2:07 PM, John Floren <john@jfloren.net> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 1:14 PM, Winston Weinert <winstonw@lavabit.com>
>> wrote:
>>> On Sun, 2012-06-10 at 18:19 -0400, Comeau At9Fans wrote:
>>>> * Raspberry Pi
>>>> * Cotton Candy
>>>> * Mele A1000
>>>> * MK802
>>>
>>> Some other _pricier_ products to consider (and a larger variety of
>>> integrated components):
>>> * Beagleboard
>>> * Beaglebone
>>> * Pandaboard
>>> * Pico-ITX formfactor x86 motherboard
>>>
>>
>> Some of these should work already; /sys/src/9/omap/beagle seems to
>> indicate that you can already boot a beagleboard, for instance. As for
>> anything not based on the supported SoCs, well, until people stop
>> sitting on ass saying "boy that would be a nice terminal" and actually
>> start PORTING the damn thing, it'll never be more than Yet Another
>> 120-message 9fans Thread.
>>
>> I got the Efika Smarttop through quite a bit of the early boot over
>> the course of an afternoon, before finally getting pissed off at
>> having to re-write an SD card every time I iterated the kernel. It
>> shouldn't be *too* hard to get a minimally functional system, the code
>> in /sys/src/9 is quite good. Oh, there's another thing, for the love
>> of god don't buy a system that can't netboot, it's just not worth it.
>>
>> Or we could ignore all these and, in grand 9fans tradition, start
>> talking about a port to some hardware platform that's been dead for
>> over 5 years. SPARC64 et al are sorta played out by now, but I've got
>> a PDP-11 just sitting around...
>>
>>
>> john
>>
>
>

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[John Floren]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 9:38 PM, Nick LaForge <nicklaforge@gmail.com> wrote:
>> sadly, the 10/100 ethernet is provided through a flakey usb hub
>
> I think the 'cheap arm dev board' bandwagon will always suffer in this
> regard, since the phones these SoCs were designed for don't even come
> close to needing gbe
>

Guruplug?

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Nick LaForge]

Sure.  But the Sheevaplug (same SoC) is now 3 years old, and it looks
like the whole 'plug-computer' thing never took off.  Since phones
seem to be the only consistent market for fast Arm SoCs, we're likely
to see one with usb3 before gbe.  But I'll shut up now in deference to
somebody with actual experience.

On 6/11/12, John Floren <john@jfloren.net> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 9:38 PM, Nick LaForge <nicklaforge@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>> sadly, the 10/100 ethernet is provided through a flakey usb hub
>>
>> I think the 'cheap arm dev board' bandwagon will always suffer in this
>> regard, since the phones these SoCs were designed for don't even come
>> close to needing gbe
>>
>
> Guruplug?
>
>

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Kurt H Maier]

Evaluations of the Sheevaplug in particular revealed it tended to
overheat badly if you put any significant load on the networking
components.  Heating problems combined with poor quality control would
be my guess as to why that whole thing never flew.

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Lluís Batlle i Rossell]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 01:12:55AM -0400, Kurt H Maier wrote:
> Evaluations of the Sheevaplug in particular revealed it tended to
> overheat badly if you put any significant load on the networking
> components.  Heating problems combined with poor quality control would
> be my guess as to why that whole thing never flew.
> 

I'm very happy with my Sheevaplug. It works with heavy cpu loads (full gnu
system builds from time to time) for days, and works very good. It's serving me
very well already three years I think.

I've it connected to a 100Mbps switch though, no gigabit.

I've replaced capacitors in its power supply twice, though - they blew up. I
think the power supply is not very well designed, but those big capacitors are
cheap.

Regards,
Lluís.

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[David Leimbach]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1187 bytes --]

On Tuesday, June 12, 2012, Lluís Batlle i Rossell wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 01:12:55AM -0400, Kurt H Maier wrote:
> > Evaluations of the Sheevaplug in particular revealed it tended to
> > overheat badly if you put any significant load on the networking
> > components.  Heating problems combined with poor quality control would
> > be my guess as to why that whole thing never flew.
> >
>
> I'm very happy with my Sheevaplug. It works with heavy cpu loads (full gnu
> system builds from time to time) for days, and works very good. It's
> serving me
> very well already three years I think.
>
> I've it connected to a 100Mbps switch though, no gigabit.
>
> I've replaced capacitors in its power supply twice, though - they blew up.
> I
> think the power supply is not very well designed, but those big capacitors
> are
> cheap.


I have a guruplug I've got very little time for, but getting Plan 9 on it
was no problem.  I don't do anything with heavy CPU or network usage on
Plan 9 anyway.  I'm a bit surprised at the thermal problems, and I believe
there was a promise to address them, but I lost interest.

Dave


>
> Regards,
> Lluís.
>
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1564 bytes --]

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Lluís Batlle i Rossell]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 06:48:22AM -0700, David Leimbach wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 12, 2012, Lluís Batlle i Rossell wrote:
> > I'm very happy with my Sheevaplug. It works with heavy cpu loads (full gnu
> > system builds from time to time) for days, and works very good. It's
> > serving me
> > very well already three years I think.
> 
> 
> I have a guruplug I've got very little time for, but getting Plan 9 on it
> was no problem.  I don't do anything with heavy CPU or network usage on
> Plan 9 anyway.  I'm a bit surprised at the thermal problems, and I believe
> there was a promise to address them, but I lost interest.

For what I know, they took back the first guruplugs, that got burnt soon. Then
they fixed them adding a fan.

And globalscale now advertises the DreamPlugs as "without internal
moving parts", in contrast to the fan they had to add to the guruplug.

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Stephen Wiley]

Another pretty good mini pc IMHO is the amazon kindle touch. Leetspete from #inferno helped me get inferno on it (and the graphics will probably work once I get twm on it too) it's supper cheap (the ad supported one costs 75 bucks!) and has a ridicules battery life. The firmware is also open source and there is a tool that let's you boot arbitrary images over usb on it :). I plan to give porting plan9 to that a shot at some point (in my "free time" :S)

--Stephen Wiley
swwiley@gmail.com

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Comeau At9Fans]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 926 bytes --]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 1:12 AM, Kurt H Maier <khm-9@intma.in> wrote:

> Evaluations of the Sheevaplug in particular revealed it tended to
> overheat badly if you put any significant load on the networking
> components.  Heating problems combined with poor quality control would
> be my guess as to why that whole thing never flew.
>

I also understand some of these other thingies have heating problems too,
but that they're being addressed and believe at least in the just sent out
batch of MK802's (I said second generation in the other message, that's
probably not a fair characterization) it is supposed to be either fixed or
at least alleviated.

--
Greg Comeau / 4.3.10.1 with C++0xisms now in beta!
Comeau C/C++ ONLINE ==>     http://www.comeaucomputing.com/tryitout
World Class Compilers:  Breathtaking C++, Amazing C99, Fabulous C90.
Comeau C/C++ with Dinkumware's Libraries... Have you tried it?

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1327 bytes --]

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[hiro]

On 6/12/12, Nick LaForge <nicklaforge@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sure.  But the Sheevaplug (same SoC) is now 3 years old, and it looks
> like the whole 'plug-computer' thing never took off.  Since phones

mhm, kirkwood right? I think the dockstars and it's competition on the
"small home server" market pretty much did take off.

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[hiro]

ah btw, my dockstar has gigabit ethernet. and my iomega iconnect does too.
the bottleneck is always USB 2.0 for me, but there are two-core NAS
nowadays at Aldi for 50 euros (with SATA and gige).

I think there's a lot to chose from if you're willing to write the drivers.
The mk802 seems very promising to me. I gave up on the rasberry scammers.

sent from my windows 98.

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Harri Haataja]

On 12 June 2012 16:29, hiro <23hiro@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 6/12/12, Nick LaForge <nicklaforge@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Sure.  But the Sheevaplug (same SoC) is now 3 years old, and it looks
>> like the whole 'plug-computer' thing never took off.  Since phones
>
> mhm, kirkwood right? I think the dockstars and it's competition on the
> "small home server" market pretty much did take off.

Here's another Kirkwood box with GbE that can run Linux apparently:

http://zyxel.nas-central.org/wiki/Category:NSA-310

http://forum.nas-central.org/viewtopic.php?f=249&t=5145

http://www.zyxel.com/products_services/nsa310.shtml

(I noticed because it was for sale here for less than the price of the
disk alone.)

-- 
I appear to be temporarily using gmail's horrible interface. I
apologise for any failure in my part in trying to make it do the right
thing with post formatting.

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Comeau At9Fans]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 957 bytes --]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 1:05 AM, Nick LaForge <nicklaforge@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sure.  But the Sheevaplug (same SoC) is now 3 years old, and it looks
> like the whole 'plug-computer' thing never took off.  Since phones
> seem to be the only consistent market for fast Arm SoCs, we're likely
> to see one with usb3 before gbe.  But I'll shut up now in deference to
> somebody with actual experience.


I'm pretty sure what you're saying is at least partially true, if not even
more.  I'm also still not sure even these current crop will suffice.  But
if nothing else, there is at least now a springboard, so at least whether
it make sense to jump off it will at least be more tested.

--
Greg Comeau / 4.3.10.1 with C++0xisms now in beta!
Comeau C/C++ ONLINE ==>     http://www.comeaucomputing.com/tryitout
World Class Compilers:  Breathtaking C++, Amazing C99, Fabulous C90.
Comeau C/C++ with Dinkumware's Libraries... Have you tried it?

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1378 bytes --]

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[erik quanstrom]

On Tue Jun 12 00:39:16 EDT 2012, nicklaforge@gmail.com wrote:
> > sadly, the 10/100 ethernet is provided through a flakey usb hub
>
> I think the 'cheap arm dev board' bandwagon will always suffer in this
> regard, since the phones these SoCs were designed for don't even come
> close to needing gbe

http://xkcd.com/731/

- erik

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Kurt H Maier]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 12:51:28AM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
> On Tue Jun 12 00:39:16 EDT 2012, nicklaforge@gmail.com wrote:
> > > sadly, the 10/100 ethernet is provided through a flakey usb hub
> >
> > I think the 'cheap arm dev board' bandwagon will always suffer in this
> > regard, since the phones these SoCs were designed for don't even come
> > close to needing gbe
>
> http://xkcd.com/731/
>
> - erik
>

Are you saying that if we are willing to drown, we can have cheap
reliable gigabit connections?

Why do I have to invent a point to your message?

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Charles Forsyth]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 138 bytes --]

"failure of vision"

On 12 June 2012 00:56, Kurt H Maier <khm-9@intma.in> wrote:

> Why do I have to invent a point to your message?

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 383 bytes --]

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Kurt H Maier]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 01:08:38AM -0400, Charles Forsyth wrote:
> "failure of vision"
>

I think a sunken ship and an unidentified attack vessel are about as
much use to a man stranded on a tiny island as high-throughput wired
networking is to low-power compute devices.

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[erik quanstrom]

On Tue Jun 12 01:14:34 EDT 2012, khm-9@intma.in wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 01:08:38AM -0400, Charles Forsyth wrote:
> > "failure of vision"
> >
>
> I think a sunken ship and an unidentified attack vessel are about as
> much use to a man stranded on a tiny island as high-throughput wired
> networking is to low-power compute devices.

the man says there's nothing to see here.  he does not say, there's nothing
useful here.

if you look back at the history of plan 9, they didn't say, "how could we possibly
use this slow worm storage," they figured out inovative ways to use it.

i'd aspire to be like that.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Kurt H Maier]

On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 01:47:17AM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
>
> i'd aspire to be like that.
>

I look forward to your hardware offerings

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[erik quanstrom]

On Tue Jun 12 08:26:30 EDT 2012, khm-9@intma.in wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 01:47:17AM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
> >
> > i'd aspire to be like that.
> >
>
> I look forward to your hardware offerings

release will be at vmworld in august.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Bakul Shah]

I have a different view on this.

Boards like the RaspberryPi are just fine as a hobbyist
hardware hacking/embedded platform.  At $25 to $35 a pop I can
buy a bunch of them and put them to different uses.

If you design any small board with a few ICs & a microproc, it
can end up costing in the same range or more in parts alone
(even if you make a few hundred to sell, per board cost will
not be much lower).  With the raspi I only have to add app
specific logic if needed. Sure, I wish they'd done a bunch of
things differently and I wish it was more open and the USB
core they used had proper documentation etc. but it has plenty
of good stuff I can alreay use that I can't get as cheaply
elsewhere.

But I'd rather run plan9 on it than Linux.  I am attempting a
port but don't let that stop anyone else from trying.  If you
are working on a port or you want to collaborate, please
contact me off the list. I can certainly use all the help I
can get and there is no point in duplication of effort if it
can be avoided.

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[erik quanstrom]

On Tue Jun 12 13:27:58 EDT 2012, bakul@bitblocks.com wrote:
> I have a different view on this.
>
> Boards like the RaspberryPi are just fine as a hobbyist
> hardware hacking/embedded platform.  At $25 to $35 a pop I can
> buy a bunch of them and put them to different uses.

good points.

> If you design any small board with a few ICs & a microproc, it
> can end up costing in the same range or more in parts alone
> (even if you make a few hundred to sell, per board cost will
> not be much lower).

definately.

> With the raspi I only have to add app

unfortunately for me, none of the apps i've got in mind
work well with that h/w.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Wes Kussmaul]

> http://xkcd.com/731/

When you send an xkcd link to a large list, you make a dent in the
world's productivity. You can't look at just one.

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Yaroslav]

2012/6/12 Wes Kussmaul <wes@authentrus.com>:
> When you send an xkcd link to a large list, you make a dent in the
> world's productivity. You can't look at just one.

You have no idea how much right you are!

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Richard Miller]

> btw, i have two raspberry pi at home now. i would like to run plan9
> and inferno (at least emu) on it as soon as possible.

If the π is running linux, emu shouldn't be difficult to get going.
Try building with SYSTARG=Linux OBJTYPE=arm and see how far you get.

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Comeau At9Fans]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 783 bytes --]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 5:07 PM, John Floren <john@jfloren.net> wrote:

> ...As for
> anything not based on the supported SoCs, well, until people stop
> sitting on ass saying "boy that would be a nice terminal" and actually
> start PORTING the damn thing, it'll never be more than Yet Another
> 120-message 9fans Thread.....
>

That's not my thing at the moment, but, if anybody is serious AND capable,
I'm probably willing to provide an MK802 to that person once our second lot
comes in (I hope on Tuesday).

--
Greg Comeau / 4.3.10.1 with C++0xisms now in beta!
Comeau C/C++ ONLINE ==>     http://www.comeaucomputing.com/tryitout
World Class Compilers:  Breathtaking C++, Amazing C99, Fabulous C90.
Comeau C/C++ with Dinkumware's Libraries... Have you tried it?

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1244 bytes --]

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[crazyespia]

On Monday, June 11, 2012 6:19:20 AM UTC+8, Comeau At9Fans wrote:
> Ok, so, unless I was asleep at the wheel following these
> discussions, there's been a few "mini PCs" to come about lately:
> 
> 
> * Raspberry Pi
> * Cotton Candy
> 
> * Mele A1000
> * MK802
> 
> 
> We have a small number of the latter (MK802 running Android 4.0,
> which claims to have a Allwinner ARM A10 1.5Ghz Cortex-A8 processor)
> for sale FWIW.  I mention this as LINUX is making its way onto some
> 
> of these devices, er computers, so I expect that Plan 9 has possibilities
> here too.
> 
> -- 
> 
> Greg Comeau / 4.3.10.1 with C++0xisms now in beta!
> Comeau C/C++ ONLINE ==>     http://www.comeaucomputing.com/tryitout
> 
> World Class Compilers:  Breathtaking C++, Amazing C99, Fabulous C90.
> Comeau C/C++ with Dinkumware's Libraries... Have you tried it?
I preferred android os system, so I brought one piece MK802 mini android 

pc from http://miniandroidpc.com. It makes my TV to be a Internet/Smart 

TV.  So far it works well and I like it very much!

Re: [9fans] Mini PCs

[Comeau At9Fans]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 879 bytes --]

On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 7:03 AM, <crazyespia@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Monday, June 11, 2012 6:19:20 AM UTC+8, Comeau At9Fans wrote:
> I preferred android os system, so I brought one piece MK802 mini android
>
> pc from http://miniandroidpc.com. It makes my TV to be a Internet/Smart
>
> TV.  So far it works well and I like it very much!
>

Yes, and they're evolving so it'll be interesting to see how they take
shape, get used, etc.  We still have a few left (via
http://www.EnvyThisStuff.com ) and still have the offer to provide one to
somebody who is serious about and capable of porting Plan 9 to it.

--
Greg Comeau / 4.3.10.1 with C++0xisms now in beta!
Comeau C/C++ ONLINE ==>     http://www.comeaucomputing.com/tryitout
World Class Compilers:  Breathtaking C++, Amazing C99, Fabulous C90.
Comeau C/C++ with Dinkumware's Libraries... Have you tried it?

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1432 bytes --]