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Hardware

ARM-Based ATX Mobos 118

Posted by emmett from the cheap-and-reliable dept.
mirko writes: "Chalice Technologies has released an ARM-based ATX motherboard : the CATS. The CATS supports SDRAM, USB and PCI among other features, which makes it easy for anybody to assemble a reliable computer with low-cost equipment. Regarding their price along with their ability to run both ARMLinux or NetBSD, these boards are an interesting alternative to set up a cheap but powerful server."
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ARM-Based ATX Mobos More

ARM-Based ATX Mobos

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  • ouch (Score:2)

    by djweis ( 4792 )
    too expensive! not to mention the only dealer that carries them has a total of about 3 html pages on their site not labeled as under construction...

  • These boards ought to be able to outperform a cheap Pentium with one clock cycle tied behind its back. ARMLinux, though still limited to kernel 2.0, is fine. The combination of these boards and ARMLinux should be perfectly suitable to inexpensive servers or network gateway machines.
  • a motherboard suited for my BDSM needs... wait a minute, BSD? Oh damn, got my hopes up...
    "God is dead." - Nietzsche
  • It's apparently going to run about $550 US if my conversion from uk pounds are correct. Ouch. And that's just for the board + CPU...

  • netbsd (Score:2)

    by Frac ( 27516 )
    BSD question. I know that FreeBSD is meant to be optimized for x86, and OpenBSD is built for security, and NetBSD is meant for cross-platform, but does NetBSD provides a lacking set of tools and features compared to FreeBSD?

    What about software? How much free software is supported out of the box for NetBSD?

    Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)

  • Oh, and of course these ARM-based boards can't run Windows, which could be considered (heh) a good thing...

  • Cheap? (Score:2)

    by Kaa ( 21510 )
    How cheap? Cheaper than plugging a Celery into a BX motherboard?

    This looks like a platform for ARM-based prototyping. You probably can build a server (or a workstation) out of it, but why?

    Kaa
  • A dramatic price drop in full-featured networking devices is going to take quite a lot of time to drop below a couple hundred dollars... with no strings attached, and no service fees.

    ----

  • A little bit more $$$ in my bank account, and this would be a great little system to develop projects on.
  • Wow... I might have a pick up a couple... :-)

    The ARM is best at integer math right? I am looking for a cheap platform for doing image processing on a massive scale. Might need DSP's... do'h.

    Anwho, looks like it would make a nice web/ftp server... or maybe a firewall...

    Yup.

  • Compatibility (Score:3)

    by Grimwiz ( 28623 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @11:43AM (#972633) Homepage
    I've just bought one of these faster processors
    for an Acorn PowerPC. Had this system been RiscOS
    compatible I would have begrudged paying top
    dollar for the upgrade, but when dealing with
    users your primary driver for the computer is the
    applications it will run.

    RiscOS is an operating system which gives MacOS a
    run for its money in the usability stakes.
    These creatures are fast and silent (no fans
    on the CPU, hell, not even a heat sink :-) )

    Unfortunately I believe this particular
    machine's battle for survival will be
    lost over applications and device drivers, no
    matter how good the motherboard is its not much
    use when you have nothing to run and can't plug
    devices in.
  • Ouch is right... I can build a dual celeron system for just about 600 bucks... if they sold it for about 200... then we could talk. :-)
  • I don't know much about the ARM family of processors. How does a 233mhz ARM compare to, for example, a 233mhz Pentium II?

    LK
  • What's the overclocking potential of a system like this? Could this be the "next big thing" for the overclocking crowd?

    233 seems too low a number for a "modern" machine...how long until someone makes it into a 500mhz monster?
  • hey, it's still a Strong ARM... that might be useful for your BSDM needs.

  • The CATS supports SDRAM, USB and PCI among other features
    ... An interesting alternative to set up a cheap but powerful server.

    Will they have to pay RAMBUS royalties?
  • Why don't they make these thing's to run RiscOS anyone know?
  • x86 boards barely run Windows anyway. Of course, in most cases that has nothing to do with the board....

    --

  • When comparing ARM chips with Intel chips its
    extremely difficult to cater for the differences
    in operating systems.
    Even a 30MHz ARM feels significantly faster than
    a 300MHz Pentium when comparing RiscOS to Windows.
    When running a similar operating system I suspect
    that the ARM chip may be double the speed of the
    intel at the same clock speed.
    The Intel processor will carry out more complex
    instructions in more clock cycles, but with
    parallelism in the newer processors the
    optimisations from a good compiler may make a huge
    difference in favour of the intel chip.
  • While in all honesty, I haven't used NetBSD much, AFAIK, NetBSD has plenty of software for it, since it is just a form of BSD that was written to be portable to multitudes of systems. Plus: Don't most FreeBSD tools come as source code? That'll compile anywhere you install NetBSD with a compiler. Plus it has all sorts of cool emulation tricks (so I've heard).

  • Re:netbsd (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A lot: Take a look at the NetBSD Packages Collection [netbsd.org]

  • No AGP slot? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How do they expect this thing to make it in the desktop market w/out including an AGP slot? W/out AGP support this thing is just going to be relegated to the server market, and there's no way it will out-perform a dual Celeron on a cost/speed basis.

    Also, even if they can make a go of it as a server (and remember that the server market is atrophying quickly in favor of massively clustered Linux boxes), they don't offer RAID support OR onboard SCSI.

    I don't think this thing's gonna fly too well.

  • yes, with that in mind, they are an ARM and a leg above the competition.
  • except celerons are almost impossible to get hold of here in the uk at the moment unless you're willing to pay shed-loads :(

  • ARM eh... (Score:3)

    by delmoi ( 26744 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @12:03PM (#972647) Homepage
    I thought the whole point of ARM was for making low-power devices. Doesn't slapping one on an ATX board kind of defeat the purpose? I mean, people don't usually worry about power consumption in desktops, and the CPU fan isn't what makes that much noise.

    And as far as 'low cost', if this board+chip is more then $60, it still won't beat out a AMD k6/Celeron or even a 'duron' solution in terms of price. And if the chips aren't faster then about 400mhz (well, or way faster in terms of ops/clock), Then they still loose to a k6/Celeron. How fast can these chips go, anyway? The fastest I've ever heard was 200mhz, has that changed?

    Anyway, this might sound interesting to hardware geeks, but as far as a general purpose, cheap-ass server x86 still sounds like a better solution to me.
  • Like everyone else, I'm reeling from the sticker shock. From the posts I've seen on the capabilities of the ARM processor, a PIII CPU/mobo at the same price would blow the ARM out of the water. Now, if it had another advantage, like ran on a couple of AAAs, or would crack 56bit DES encryption like it was nothing, then you would have something here. As it stands, the economic benefits of the PIII outweigh any engineering benefits of the ARM processor

  • not exactly cheap (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    350 pounds for mobo+cpu+32mb+cdrom and 750 pounds
    for a whole system. Not a good price if you just
    want to build a server. Probably good for embedded applications or developing for ARM single boards.
  • Unfortunately, for the price, ARM chips suck for use in workstations. They lack a decent FPU, they're slow, and hideously overpriced.

    I'd rather pay (last month's prices) £75 for a celeron 533 than £more for a slower ARM chip.

    However, they do come into their own in terms of power consumption, but putting one into an ATX case doesn't really seem to suggest that that's what you really bother about ;)
  • http://www.chaltech.com/images/atx_large.jpg

    I like the nature approach. Makes me wonder if these motherboards are really "rock solid"...

    :)

    ---
  • It's a prototyping board , meant be used whilst developing software for embedded StrongArm applications. It's not a desktop machine!
  • I thought RAMBUS claimed their patent covered ANY synchronous DRAM access from a processor.
  • Yeah, but if I sign up for 3 years of MSN I can get $400 off! /me bitchslaps himself
    Dissenter
  • Even a 30MHz ARM feels significantly faster than a 300MHz Pentium when comparing RiscOS to Windows.

    Well, that's probably beacuse windows is a bloated chunk of crap :P. It needs to be, beacuse if M$ makes your old computer seem slow, then 90% of the people out there will buy a new computer... and a new windows licens with it.

    No one who would buy one of these boards would do it for the UI speed, witch dosn't really have much to do with the CPU.
  • A "cheap pentium", definitely. Unless you need FPU performance, an ARM chip will whoop the ass of a similarly clocked x86. BUT you can pay under £40 for one of those - how much does the ARM cost, and is the LEG a freebie? ;)
  • Motherboard? I think you're thinking of the Call-Me-Mommy-Board actually!
  • Why would they have to pay rambus royalties if they are using SDRAM? Rambus is RDRAM.

    Anyway, the board+chip is like $500 or so, so it wasn't cheap to begin with (a good x86 board+chip could be had for double digits)
  • RAMBUS royalties are a tiny percentage. Most consumers won't even know the difference; RAMBUS is counting on volume (almsot every new Intel motherboard uses SDRAM or RDRAM) to make them money.

    So your answer is yes, they will have to pay royalties, but not, it won't make it that much more expensive.
  • I thought RAMBUS claimed their patent covered ANY synchronous DRAM access from a processor.

    Maybe they did. But the 'S' in SDRAM stands for 'Super'. See, it's SuperDynamic RAM. It was probably named in Japan :)

    We don't know how bad things are in north korea, but here are some pictures of hungry children. -- CNN
  • The ARM chip used to be one of the fastest chips around. The Acorn Archimedes A300 when it was released was virtually a supercomputer.

    The birth of the StrongARM once again put ARM into the performance tables, but sadly they've done bugger all since.
  • Well I think thats more the OS then anything. I mean my Amiga 3000 is a very responsive computer and its based on a MC68030. It really shows its lack of speed these days when its rendering (heh - not so long ago I used to be able to show up the Power Mac people in sheer rendering performance) or playing quake. As far as the user experience feels it does feel like your using a 600+ mhz P3 - I mean it switches tasks instantly (yes - it will switch tasks as fast as you can click the mouse), opens windows pretty fast too.
  • actually I do recall somebody once making an entire arc (no hard drive) run from some 9v batteries...
  • A board like the Mac MultiProcessor Boards [slashdot.org] for StrongArm's would bring more bang for the buck
    in the long run, by using less power, creating less heat (less costs for air conditioning, case fans),
    and possibly cheaper motherboards/processors.

    Arun

  • Re:Looks great! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Agreed, with regard to cost. These motherboards have been referenced on the NetBSD website for over a year now, and I've been lusting after them for that long. But the price is up in the range for prototype/reference-design grade hardware. I was hoping that this /. article was going to point out something new, like a drastic price reduction. Still waaay to expensive for me at this point. I wrote to them almost a year ago about it. Oh well.

    Anybody have tips where one can purchase inexpensive fairly open ARM hardware to run NetBSD? (the NetWinder seems nice enough, but is pretty much a sealed/proprietary device)

    Schnedt McW (not logged on at work.)
  • ISA slots?

    Why even bother with ISA Slots?

    I guess you have to include them if your system is supposed to be a low cost solution. But why more than one? For compatibility purposes?

    Is there a reason it has to have ISA????

    Sorry if i missed something obvious...

    -Sleen
  • It's all about MicroChannel, isn't it ;)

  • Re:Please pardon my ignorance, but (Score:4)

    by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @12:29PM (#972668)
    I don't know much about the ARM family of processors. How does a 233mhz ARM compare to, for example, a 233mhz Pentium II?

    The ARM will burn far less power, will (probably) be comparable for integer operations, but will be much, much worse at floating-point (earlier versions didn't have a FPU; that might or might not still be the case).

    ARM chips are targetted at embedded integer applications and things like PDAs that require low power and don't require strong floating-point performance.
  • How cheap? Cheaper than plugging a Celery into a BX motherboard?

    ...

    You probably can build a server (or a workstation) out of it, but why?

    Well, if nothing else, a bit more security. From the worst kind, but still. By using a "different" enough system, you are more immune to script-kiddies, just as by using a lesser-known distribution instead of red hat i386..

    Or... remembering the F0 0F Intel-only specific bug, would you believe AMD owners were really happy that they don't have a Pentium? :) By using a less common platform, you are more protected, just as you are left out from the Outlook/exchange/VBS virus madness when you use mutt.

    With Linux, and full source, you basically should not care what architecture/platform you are running on. If it can use commodity hardware (IDE, DIMM, PCI), the better.

  • Yes, I read. I had even called the friggin US distributor to get a price!

    It's a prototyping machine that happens to be in a desktop form-factor, and as such is usable as both. But it is a prototyping machine first and foremost!
  • Remind me when was the last time you installed Analog modem in Linux?? do you think that PCI based modems are as easy as ISA modems? they're not. most of them are Winmodems (so the lucent linux driver won't work - it's ARM, not X86), so you'll need an ISA modem..

  • And damn heavy, too.
  • You sure do, you-sure-do.


    Why win9x really sucks [cjb.net]
  • Aha thats right...

    Actually I have not installed a modem under linux yet because I'm spoiled with great network connections. My bias.

    Sorry.

    Is that the only real reason?????
  • If someone wonders why ISA or why only 66MHz and no 100 or 133MHz SDRAMs: This board has been released 2 years ago!

    (NetBSD has support for the CATS since Oct. 17th 1998 in the tree, so it's probably a few months older.)

  • Re:Sticker Shock! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, just about anything is possible with enough 9 volt batteries. At my last job, we have a whole barrel full of semi-discharged 9 volt batteries. I plugged them criss-cross until I had about a hundred in series.

    Then I wanted to see what kind of an arc it would draw. Boy was that an experience. 900 volts with several amperes (peak) behind it is a formidable force. Probably enough to electrocute an Elephant.

    Don't try it at home, boys and girls.

  • They're not that cheap (Score:3)

    by [Xorian] ( 112258 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @01:00PM (#972677)

    I looked at these a few months ago. If you check the only distrubtor Chalice mentions [simtec.co.uk], these things come in at 350 pounds bare which works out to about $527 for us yanks. Compared to x86 motherboards, that's an awful lot. (OK, it's not completely bare, it has a 32 Meg DIMM and comes with a CD. That doesn't make it worth it.)

    I'd love to build a StrongARM machine, but that's more than 4 times what I just paid for a new dual-processor x86 motherboard (the Abit BP6). I couldn't justify the expense.

  • By using a less common platform, you are more prone to expose a bug or "feature" that hasent been already washed out of the system.
  • I might build one "on a whim" if I could get mobo and CPU for $150.

    But for $550, just for the mobo/cpu, I suspect it'll see few takers outside of people that need test beds for developing embedded systems.

    Actually, I seem to recall seeing this site referenced, probably on Slashdot, a few months ago as a "source of StrongARM motherboards." Based on RCS logs, I've had a link at My Linux VAR page [hex.net] since January 14, 2000, which probably means that this purported "news" is actually "olds," likely mentioned at Slashdot in early-to-mid-January. I noticed then that the pricing was "a bit frightening."

  • Don't forget that includes the price of 32MB ram. You're getting mobo, cpu, ram and their (non-free?) software in that price. Their price works out to about $1050NZ (maybe 1100) and I paid a similar price for my mobo + 2 celerons + adapter cards + 128M memory. Not really all that bad (though still expensive), but then they're probably selling in low volumes.
  • Any word when will we see Transmeta based m/boards? Anyone know any manufacturers looking to attract the general desktop market rather than portables?
  • Because, simply, RiscOS isn't up to the task of being a modern operating system any more. Don't get me wrong, I used to use it all the time, and I love its look, feel and the way the whole system worked, but it's in need of serious work.

    • No pre-emptive multitasking - multitasking is co-operative. That is, the OS (actually, the window/desktop manager) gives control to each task, which has to return it to the OS when it's done what it wants to do. Most of the time it works quite well, but if something hangs, there's a good chance that it's reboot time. And running daemons becomes rather tricky (the HTTPD will stop serving pages if something pops up an error screen, for example).
    • Little support for modern PC hardware - PCI? Maybe. USB? No chance. And, unless they've done something about it, it won't work with your graphics card, sound card, ethernet card, etc...
    • Little software/support/development - I fear the Acorn is going the way of the Amiga. It's pretty much acknowledged to be dead, but there's still a small but loyal fan base, there's still software being developed (and sold) for it, and they're still developing the OS. But, realistically, it'll never make a big comeback.

    I think I'm going to go and fire up ArcEm...

  • Don't worry about lack of tools or programs for NetBSD. Practically anything that compiles for FreeBSD or OpenBSD (assuming it doesn't use x86 assembler or
    other such stuff) will compile for NetBSD without changes. On some platforms (x86 at least), it has the ability to run Linux binaries too, if you have Linux libraries installed as well.

  • Every reference I can find on the Web defines it Synchronous DRAM.
  • Yep. Just ask all those Mac and Linux users how they felt about Melissa, ILoveYou, et al...

    Haven't heard of a Linux virus as of yet, but I'm not very dilegent about checking the security sites... And the worst thing I've heard happening to the Mac in a LONG time was the QuickTime autostart worm... but all that needed to happen was for users to set the quicktime not to automatically launch programs on CD's.

    As far as Windows goes... by your reckoning, it should be the most secure? No... I know, I know... it's not secure because it's not open source....

  • Already thought of:


    http://www.dnaco.net/~kragen//sa-beowulf/ [dnaco.net]

    I don't know the current status of it, but both Chalice and Simtec were working on it.

  • He didn't say more secure. He said you'd be more likely to hit bugs using the less-popular architecture. Think about, given a new program, which is it more likely to compile more easily on: redhat i386 or netbsd on MIPS? And which is more likely to work correctly after it compiles?

  • Details on the THREE year old CATS board (Score:3)

    by Krisg ( 205438 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @01:51PM (#972688)
    The Cats board is about 3 years old, (I believe it was supported in about 96-97 by NetBSD (I think it was in version 1.3 ) That's why it has ISA slots.

    I believe it is actually supported by the latest linux's. I don't know for sure, my arm unix exp is from NetBSD, which it is supported by, people still have them on the arm32 list for NetBSD.

    I remember at the time thinking that cats boards were good value for money, these days they're not, but that's what time does for you. The reason for the price, cos they're made in low volume by a 2 man company at the time. I'm not even sure the company has survived after Acorn died a couple of years back.

    Something puzzling me is why is this getting posted as news? It's 3 years old or so...
  • Well, because I can get a celeron 500 for about $89 US, and there doesn't seem to be any shortage of them around here (San Diego, Ca, USA)

    A pIII 500 from the same store is $179.

  • strongarm beowulf [dnaco.net], though it sadly seems kinda deadish :(
  • They might because due to some twists of some patents Rambus is currently working over several major producers of SDRAM. From what I've heard Rambus found out a way to screw over everybody to jack up prices on SDRAM so we'd migrate to RDRAM. I believe it was in a previous /. post.

  • Re:cost! (Score:1)

    by Eil ( 82413 )

    $550, eh? I believe that's approximately how much I paid for my Athlon 750 + Mobo a few months ago...

    Where's the advantage of the ARM platform again? Certainly not cost/performance, I hope. :)

  • slickwillie's right on both counts.

    1) Yes, If Rambus Inc decide to (and most likely will) use their new patent ruling to charge insane lisense fees to SDRAM manufacturers and artificially drive up the price of SDRAM to make it more competitive with RDRAM, then part of your dollars will go to Rambus. The people making the motherboard won't, AFAIK, but the memory manufacturers will.

    2) It is Synchronous DRAM.
  • Unfortunately, what's less filled is your wallet, especially if you live in Saskatoon or (my favorite) North Battleford.

    The problem is that while the boards may outperform a "cheap Pentium," they're priced at the price of a motherboard and a 700 MHz Pentium III, which is not exactly a "cheap Pentium."

    If you're in Saskatchewan, you're probably looking at the motherboard and CPU costing you $1K CDN, plus whatever sales taxes get assessed.

    What it's suitable for is as a "test bed" if you are planning to design embedded systems based on StrongARM.

    If the plan is to deploy it in its own right, it's terribly overpriced.


  • delmoi, you just don't get it do you? You must have missed the following story that was posted two days ago:

    Hidden Consequences: Rambus And DDR SDRAM Prices [slashdot.org]

    I'd have moderated you down for being redundant, but I already posted to this article.
  • It's not really a Mac board - the only thing that'll run on/take advantage of the things is Linux.

    Mind you, if these things take off, especially if new Mac cases are made so that these beasts will fit in them (they're apparently a bit higher than standard PCI cards - hardly surprising), then it likely won't be long till someone works out a nice hack of the Darwin kernel...

  • 'cuz it's pronounced like that.

  • I thought the whole point of ARM was for making low-power devices. Doesn?t slapping one on an ATX
    board kind of defeat the purpose?

    I believe it's more of a development, hobbiest, tinkerer, workstation kind of thing. No one in their right mind would buy an ARM as a desktop system. (At least, not in this form.)

    And as far as 'low cost', if this board+chip is more then $60, it still won't beat out a AMD k6/Celeron or even a 'duron' solution in terms of price. And if the chips aren?t faster then about 400mhz (well, or way faster in terms of ops/clock), Then they still loose to a k6/Celeron. How fast can these chips go, anyway? The fastest I've ever heard was 200mhz, has that changed?

    As stated in pretty much every single thread in this list of comments for the story, it costs approxmately US$550. And like I just said, ARM was never designed to and never will compete with a K6, or a Duron, or an Athlon, or even a Celeron. They are targeted at embedded and mobile applications because while being decent at what they do, they also have very low power consumption, little heat given off (I don't believe they need a heat sink), and come in a relatively small package. As a consequence they also lack some of the things that every high-performance processor has these days, such as L1 and L2 cache, an FPU, and high-speed frontside bus.

    Anyway, this might sound interesting to hardware geeks, but as far as a general purpose, cheap-ass server x86 still sounds like a better solution to me.

    Actually, as many will attest, ARM-based boxes make pretty decent little servers, though you are probably much better off buying a premade box such as a Netwinder, rather than building one yourself.
  • heh, that's what I paid for my almost complete athlon 750 system not even a month ago! (cpu, mobo, case, ps, memory, I had everything else already)
  • ARMLinux, though still limited to kernel 2.0, is fine.

    Huh? 2.2 and even the latest 2.4 test kernels run on a wide variety of ARM systems. Development happens mainly on 2.4 test.

  • How about a modem? Most pci modems are crappy winmodems anyhow. External modems suck because they cost more.

  • well (Score:1)

    by delmoi ( 26744 )
    that certanly sucks

  • This obscure company I've never heard of are selling an ARM ATX motherboard, and IBM/Motorola still can't supply POP motherboards/chipsets? Sheesh.

    I swear, it's like any platform that I get interested in, goes nowhere. :( Maybe I should get into Windows running on Pentiums.


    ---

  • Sorta like a LART? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This thing reminds of of the LART [tudelft.nl] devices, mentioned a little while back on /. I think. (This one looks like it has a big more horsepower, and it's quite a bit bigger, but the same idea.) While I'm not such a fan of the price, that's what you have to expect from the first one[s] on the market. It'll come down.

    I'm thinking of using one of these (either a LART or maybe one of these) in a vacuum environment to drive some CCD cameras. I've been led to believe the StrongARM chips run a whole lot cooler than the Intel chips, but I think they're a fair bit slower as well. I'll have to figure out what sort of speed I can accept. Regards, Brian

  • I don't think this thing's gonna fly too well.

    Like most everything else they have produced lately, it appears that their executive team went to the kamakazi school of customer relations.

    They will never make a server out of this, reminds me of MCA, what a flop.

  • Great for development. (Score:5)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Tuesday June 27, 2000 @04:48PM (#972706) Journal
    I believe it's more of a development, hobbiest, tinkerer, workstation kind of thing. No one in their right mind would buy an ARM as a desktop system. (At least, not in this form.)

    Things may have changed since I was dealing with this (a couple years ago)...

    If you are designing a system-on-a-chip ASIC and need a low-power, low-silicon-consumption, high-performance processor to embed, your choices were pretty much limited to the ARM and the MIPS families. And they were also limited by the fab you chose - most had one or the other available, few had both.

    There are several big advantages to doing your software development on a platform that runs the same instruction set as the target or a superset of it. Two big ones:

    - You can use the native development environment. (This was even more important a couple years back, because gcc's cross-platform support was badly broken.)

    - You can run most of the target code on the workstation.

    MIPS machines have been available with unix and linux for a very long time. Think SGI. (We bought a Cobalt Qube just to get a development environment for MIPS, after wasting more than its cost trying to get gcc/g++ to compile for a MIPS on a Sun. Found out later that we'd have needed a few hundred lines of patch from Cygnus to get cross-gcc to work.)

    This board, running the Linux or BSD environments, provides an equivalent for the ARM family.

    ARM cores tend to be smaller and lower power than MIPS for equivalent functionality. Being able to throw together an ARM development environment by stuffing this board into a PC case and loading Linux onto it is a great boon to garage-shop "fabless semiconductor companies".
  • Limited to 2.0 -- Huh? My Netwinder seems to be running 2.2.12 just fine.

  • You'd be better off with celerons+MMX (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Its very hard to beat the MOPS/cycle of cheap PC's. The only DSP's to come close performance wise are TI's VLIW DSP's, and those are hella expensive.

    Of course if size and heat are a problem you have to look elsewhere... the CPU/DSP hybrids are cool too (TriCore, SH3-DSP etc).
  • The advantage of the ARM platform is that it's a decent, high performance and low power embedded system. For example, if you wanted to build an in-dash MP3 player [empeg.com] you might want to use a StrongARM processor.

    At one point I was planning a StrongARM based embedded device and looked at these boards as a way to get the software guys up and running before my hardware was ready. I later settled on a MIPS [mips.com] processor before the project was scrapped.

    Bottom line - you can't beat an off-the-shelf PC motherboard and processor for price/performance. There's no way anything else can compete because of the volumes that PC stuff is made in.

  • Interesting to read comments about this being 3 years old. Odd that it had USB at that time?

    I also followed some links and saw it priced at 350 pounds, hardly low cost I would think, what's a 810 board and a cheap celeron cost today? Less than that, and it would perform better.

    If these guys produced a version with Intel's forthcomming StrongARM2 at 600MHz or so (sorry, can't seem to find the press releases) might be more attractive.
  • >Is that the only real reason?????

    No... cheap printer ports, serial ports, network cards, and other items sold at computer sales/garage sales are usually in ISA form. Really, an ISA printer port, 10 BT network card, or serial port isn't going to be any slower than a PCI version. Also, ISA soundcards are dirt cheap (again, at sales), and run just fine.

    Also, you can usually get a CGA/TTL monitor for free including card from lots of people. All those cards are ISA. For a cheap server, these are a fine choice, since running X on a server is a waste (not that X won't work on a hercules graphics adapter... ;-).

    And then there's all that legacy hardware -- Bus mouse controllers, proprietary UPS controllers, proprietary scanner I/F boards, radio boards, arcnet cards, network cards with specially burned EEPROMS, etc, etc...

    "Why buy more hardware just because it has a new bus if it offers no other immediate benefit to you?" is the way I look at it. Some people prefer the "But it has more crap that I don't need on it so I want it" approach... :-)
  • This is old news-

    the page [chaltech.com] is over a year old.

    Last Modified: Thursday, March 25, 1999 8:16:14 PM Local time
    Last Modified: Friday, March 26, 1999 3:16:14 AM GMT
    ---
    Interested in the Colorado Lottery?

  • Where in Saskatoon can you get these things?

    I'd like to try one sometime, see if I can get quakeforge running on NetBSD (I'm the OpenBSD maintainer for QuakeForge)
  • it wouldn't be a troll, now would it?

    Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
    Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
  • Wow. That is pretty cool. However, it doesn't cause the Linux equivalent of a "Blue Screen of Death". It will merely cause your web browser to hang.

    The windows link will completely crash a stock Win95/98 machine.

  • ... a Beowulf cluster of morons like this?

    Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
    Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
  • their web server isn't y2k compliant =]

    Ever get the impression that your life would make a good sitcom?
    Ever follow this to its logical conclusion: that your life is a sitcom?
  • ...the good ol' GUS MAX of course!! =)
  • Don't forget there's already a processor on the board!
    Comparing a complete system with a bare x86 motherboard is not really what I'd call fair.

    Ivo
  • I understand you are disappointed by the fact that Simtec web site is under reconstruction, thus only consisting of 3 HTML pages.
    We (The Acorn Users Community) have been knowing them for a long time and previously remarked them (e. g. for cooking a multiprocessor board in Acorn's RiscPCs along with coding the multithreading module required by RiscOS to benefit from it).
    Concerning the price, there is quite a big difference between a hand-made board like the CATS and an industrially produced Taiwanese board supposed to be replaced in 6 months because of obsolescence.
    BTW, would you use such an OEM board in an industrial device ? The CATS can also be used for this because of its low radio-electric emission level and its low-power requirements. It is thus the long-term investment that typical Acorn users are looking for to replace their old 10 year-old ARChimedes.
    Here you also pay for the opportunity to work troublelessly and silently (no fan required) with a reliable (Strong)ARM processor.
    --
  • You have to remember that these will be initial run motherboards. They won't have the volume in place and we'll still be paying for the initial development costs.

    The same will also be true of the POP PPC motherboards that should be available soon. The initial runs will be expensive.

    If they can get the volumes up then the price will become more reasonable. Will they compete with AMD/ATX? Don't know but they'll certainly run cooler and consume less power.

  • I rather doubt that there are many vendors of StrongARM motherboards in Saskatoon; it is not a city generally considered a "hotbed" of embedded systems development. They've got potash (somewhere), wheat, and some heavy oil. A whole whopping lot of roads to maintain, and with a not-increasing-very-quickly tax base, increasing demands by the Indian community, and younger folk apparently migrating to other provinces, this does not lead to good things. (My dad grew up in North Battleford, and moved to Ottawa "as soon as he could.")

    More likely is that you'd have to order it mail order, and thus have atrocious shipping and excise costs.

    Getting Quakeforge running sounds pretty cool, but I doubt it would be economically feasible...

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