Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
The Ben NanoNote offers OpenWRT Linux pre-installed, and the device can also boot over USB. (OpenWRT is a small footprint distribution commonly found on routers.) Other components in the distribution include the Uboot boot-loader, although one of the many project pages on Qi Hardware notes that the eventual plan is to move to the lightweight Qi boot-loader."
Posted Mar 16, 2010 21:04 UTC (Tue)
by proski (subscriber, #104)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Mar 16, 2010 22:37 UTC (Tue)
by jmm82 (guest, #59425)
[Link] (1 responses)
Google says you can get one for 40 bucks. I have never seen or used a sd wifi card nor have I ever had a reason to.
Posted Mar 17, 2010 16:45 UTC (Wed)
by proski (subscriber, #104)
[Link]
Posted Mar 16, 2010 22:40 UTC (Tue)
by jmorris42 (guest, #2203)
[Link] (8 responses)
It is a device built in 2010 that has zero connectivity, a very low res display and a RAM spec straight out of 1995. Ok, $99 for quantity one is neat but what do you DO with it?
Posted Mar 16, 2010 23:20 UTC (Tue)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link]
It is about 4x3 inches and a quarter of a pound. This makes it a 1 inch smaller then a
If your the type that carries around a messanger bag or backpack you can turn it into a
If your the type of guy that manages a bunch of headless servers then you can use it as a
Maybe you don't have a system with a MIPS processor and want to fill out your collection of
A 'carputer' you can leave on 24/7 without worying about draining the battery?
It may be a interesting 'companion' device for a smart phone. I'd rather type on that
I donno. Whatever a person decides to do with it it's going to be a _very_ nitch product.
Posted Mar 17, 2010 2:26 UTC (Wed)
by neilbrown (subscriber, #359)
[Link] (3 responses)
But most importantly: have fun hacking. Get familiar with the device, it's strengths and limitations, so that when the next model comes out with more connectivity you will have all the ground-work done and will be ready to make use of the new features.
Posted Mar 17, 2010 9:28 UTC (Wed)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Mar 19, 2010 17:42 UTC (Fri)
by zlynx (guest, #2285)
[Link] (1 responses)
That system used a 16 bit depth and 800x600 resolution on a Matrox VGA card. I think it had a 2 MB video buffer.
The Sun pizza box I used to do work on had only 16 MB RAM I think and it ran X11 and CDE.
I think the biggest problem with current software is how much of it has gone to double buffering and doing bitmap rendering in application RAM in order to look pretty.
You have to drop all that pretty double drawing, Unicode fonts, transparency and SVG icons.
But X11 was *designed* to run on things like NEC X Terminals with 2 MB of RAM.
Posted Mar 25, 2010 12:29 UTC (Thu)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link]
There are some small-memory Linux distributions (eg. DeliLinux), but they generally are poorly maintained one-man projects, and even they nowadays typically need something like 100mb to run. Their maintainers always find at some point that adding features is more fun than serious shoehorning, or lose interest.
Posted Mar 17, 2010 9:21 UTC (Wed)
by renox (guest, #23785)
[Link] (1 responses)
I wonder how much it would cost with 256MB of RAM, Ethernet + Wifi?
Posted Mar 17, 2010 10:29 UTC (Wed)
by drag (guest, #31333)
[Link]
Posted Mar 26, 2010 17:12 UTC (Fri)
by Epicanis (guest, #62805)
[Link]
Originally, I felt the same way most other people seem to - without some kind of built-in networkability it's "useless"...but that, I think, is a problem of thinking of this as a tiny netbook. Instead, try thinking of it this way:
It's like a $99 "iPod® Nano®", but with a real (if tiny) keyboard, more processor power, and a huge increase in flexibility and openness.
When I describe it that way, I start wanting one...
Posted Mar 16, 2010 22:42 UTC (Tue)
by fragmede (guest, #50925)
[Link] (6 responses)
Much less open but still in this form factor (but with wifi), and able to
run Linux is the Zipit Wireless Messenger Z2(wikipedia).
Posted Mar 17, 2010 6:16 UTC (Wed)
by dufkaf (guest, #10358)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Mar 17, 2010 17:07 UTC (Wed)
by PO8 (guest, #41661)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Mar 17, 2010 18:28 UTC (Wed)
by dufkaf (guest, #10358)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Mar 17, 2010 18:37 UTC (Wed)
by dufkaf (guest, #10358)
[Link]
Posted Mar 18, 2010 5:51 UTC (Thu)
by jmorris42 (guest, #2203)
[Link] (1 responses)
The only way to see what that connector does is if you first agree NOT to make any commercial use of it without their permission. Feh.
If I got my hands on the pinout I'd post em. I have pretty bulletproof (as in a public library with a clueful director who believes in the whole free flow of information thing) webhosting in a case where I'm legally in the clear such as this. As long as I don't do their agreement I'm good reposting raw tech info as text (i.e. not reposting their document). Heck, post that and their super secret process to run a process from the SD and they could close down their members only section and save some bother. :)
Posted Mar 18, 2010 7:57 UTC (Thu)
by dufkaf (guest, #10358)
[Link]
Posted Mar 18, 2010 12:18 UTC (Thu)
by endecotp (guest, #36428)
[Link]
The keyboard is not bad, though I would have preferred to not have the digits in a square and if the keys had a bit more relief they would be easier to find. Networking is easy as its USB device port appears as a USB network interface when I plug it in to my desktop.
Anyone know how to install Debian?
I hope they will add WiFi and an external antenna connector on the next model. It's quite pointless to run OpenWRT on a system that lacks any network interfaces.
Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
I suspect it would be very flimsy. Since the device has USB, I'd rather go with a HiRO USB stick, which has an RP-SMA antenna connector. Too bad it requires a staging driver (rtl8192su). But having a connector mounted on the device would be a big plus.
Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
systems. They did a shitty job with the photographs and did not give it any scale. It just looks
like a munged up netbook. But the thing is actually tiny.
standard post card. So that puts it into the 'fit in your pocket' category of devices.
"Personal Area Network" server. Just add a battery-powered USB hub and you can have wifi
and all the storage you care to tote around.
serial terminal with the addition of a cheap USB serial adapter.
Debian architectures?
keyboard then a smartphone, I suppose.
What to do with a Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
Wikipedia (like the openmoko Wikireader).
But I also wonder about the RAM size. No mainstream Linux desktop software works in 32Mb (sad but true). The UIs will probably have to text based, or use some ultra-light, non-X11 toolkits. Would increasing it to at least 128Mb bring the cost up too much? That is about what smartphones have these days.
What to do with a Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
What to do with a Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
I too have used X11 on systems that have less power that todays pocket calculators, but that is rather beside the point. Current "off the shelf" (or "off the FTP server") X11 software needs > 200Mb to run comfortably. You have to do a huge lot of work to slim them down for the box in question, or else use very old versions (with associated bugs and security holes).
What to do with a Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
The thing seems to have USB host capabilities.
Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
It should have all the network connectivity you'd need, really.
Even if you don't want a big wifi dongle hanging off the back you can slap on one of those tiny
bluetooth adapters. That could at least net you about 1Mb/s performance over a PAN with EDR
and all that.
But I know I couldn't really find a use for a system with just 32MB of RAM: Not by itself. Busybox
+ KDrive X Server + standard command line stuff. Not much beyond that unless you want to
customize things a lot.
Hackable Linux clamshell goes on sale for $99 (LinuxDevices)
Similar to the Zipit
Not sure what "much less" means here. Zipit2 runs linux kernel out of box and at boot time it even checks for your shell script on SD card and runs it so hacking it is super easy. It has fairly stock ARM PXA270 hardware and the manufacturer is friendly (linux.zipitwireless.com). You can flash newer kernel and even reflash bootloader with uboot if you wish so. All this for $49. Wi-fi is a Marvell chip with driver in recent kernel. To me it seems open enough and much better deal than Ben right now. However the community and ideas around Nanonote look great so I hope their next device will be better.
Similar to the Zipit
It doesn't look like the Z2 has host USB, which the BenNote seems to have. This is a pretty big difference; there's an awful lot of things you can do with a device like that and USB gadgets. Now if only we had built-in 802.11 and host USB in the same cheap device we'd be so set. Given the choice, though, I'd strongly prefer host USB; maybe even $50 more.
Similar to the Zipit
AFAIK Ben does not have usb host, see http://sharism.cc/specs/ USB host is planned for next device.
As for Zipit 2 - it has docking connector with some interesting I/O - PXA camera interface (can be repurposed for generic GPIO), audio in and out, I2C and USB 1.1 (client, possibly switchable to unpowered host).
Similar to the Zipit
However for another $200 there is a developer board for their next device which DOES have usb host http://sharism.cc/shop/product_info.php?products_id=11 and twice the RAM
Similar to the Zipit
Similar to the Zipit
"The only way to see what that connector does is if you first agree NOT to make any commercial use of it without their permission. Feh."Similar to the Zipit
Oh, you're right. Forgot about that. So the hardware is more closed than I remember. They clearly want (or wanted) to prevent anyone to sell hw addons and repurpose the device to be something else.
Well, the super secret booting process can be figured out from various rescue and flashing memory card images available for years, one is http://linux.zipitwireless.com/wiki/Z2Shell
As for the docking connector, the features available were discussed on irc (http://linux.zipitwireless.com/irclogs) and in various blogs. However, I havent't found the the exact pinout freely available. Maybe with a multimeter and setting various PXA registers one could figure out which pin is which.
Got one...