Intel's homage to Raspberry Pi: The much pricier Minnowboard
Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)
Posts: 1,720
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/31/intels_homage_to_raspberry_pi_the_minnowboard_opensource_pc/
The huge popularity of the British-designed Raspberry Pi has caught Chipzilla's attention, and so you can now buy a similar bare-bones x86 PC named Minnowboard with a similar caseless design running an Angstrom Linux build.
Intel's Raspberry rival
The system runs a 1GHz Atom E640 processor with integrated graphics, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, and 4MB of Flash firmware. It supports USB, microSD, and 10/100/1000 Ethernet, all on a little four-by-four inch circuit board.
Expansion boards can be added to the device to give it additional functions, such as wireless connectivity, and Intel is hoping hobbyists and developers will design more for the system. Intel has made the Minnowboard compatible with the Yocto Projectfor Linux embedded development and sees this as a likely market.
"Where the Minnowboard really shines is in its I/O performance," said Scott Garman, embedded Linux engineer at Intels Open Source Technology Center. "Powered by PCI Express, you can make full use of SATA disk support and gigabit Ethernet for high throughput applications such as file servers or network appliances."
The huge popularity of the British-designed Raspberry Pi has caught Chipzilla's attention, and so you can now buy a similar bare-bones x86 PC named Minnowboard with a similar caseless design running an Angstrom Linux build.
Intel's Raspberry rivalThe system runs a 1GHz Atom E640 processor with integrated graphics, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, and 4MB of Flash firmware. It supports USB, microSD, and 10/100/1000 Ethernet, all on a little four-by-four inch circuit board.
Expansion boards can be added to the device to give it additional functions, such as wireless connectivity, and Intel is hoping hobbyists and developers will design more for the system. Intel has made the Minnowboard compatible with the Yocto Projectfor Linux embedded development and sees this as a likely market.
"Where the Minnowboard really shines is in its I/O performance," said Scott Garman, embedded Linux engineer at Intels Open Source Technology Center. "Powered by PCI Express, you can make full use of SATA disk support and gigabit Ethernet for high throughput applications such as file servers or network appliances."
Comments
The Making of the MinnowBoard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbr9QYFmzrU&feature=share
http://www.minnowboard.org/
GPIO Programming
http://www.minnowboard.org/technical-features/
http://www.minnowboard.org/static/pdfs/GPIO Programming on the MinnowBoard.pdf
I do see 8 buffered I/O pins.
http://www.minnowboard.org/expansion/
From the user Doc's:
GPIO on the MinnowBoard
The MinnowBoard provides a variety of GPIO(General Purpose Input Output),
some with a dedicated purpose. For the purpose of this guide, I will be concentrating only on GPIO(s) which are on the J9 expansion header as shown in
Figure - 4 . Please refer the table below to nd out how are the GPIO(s) actually referenced in the kernel and their default modes as well as values. Unless
otherwise stated the GPIO(s) on J9 expansion header are rated at 3.3V and can
source/sink a maximum of 10mA. Also, it can be seen from the table that the
GPIO(s) are by default set to be used in INPUT mode and have PULL-UP resistors enabled.
Sr. No. GPIO Reference number in the Kernel* Default Mode Default Value
1. 1 N.A. N.A. 3.3V
2. 2 N.A. N.A. GND
3. 3 244 Input HIGH
4. 4 245 Input HIGH
5. 5 246 Input HIGH
6. 6 247 Input HIGH
7. 7 248 Input HIGH
8. 8 249 Input HIGH
9. 9 250 Input HIGH
10. 10 251 Input HIGH
*For example GPIO-3 on J9 header will be referenced as gpio-244 in kernel
re : power supply
The power supply is included but it's still a crazy price, unless I'm missing something.
Contents of the box
When you purchase a MinnowBoard, the following items are included in the
box as shown in Figure -1:
1. MinnowBoard
2. 5V Power Adapter
3. 4GB microSD card preloaded with the Angstrom Linux Distribution(Yocto
Project Compatible)
If I'm looking for a ATOM motherboard, I can find plenty of them on Ebay for 1/4 the price.
The only reason I see for someone to buy is if they need x86 compatibility in a small form factor.
If it offer less than 5W, than it may be quite worthy
The thing is that I am a low-level hardware kind of guy and the GPIO interface is a huge disappointment when you are already used to what the 32 i/o pins on the Propeller will accomplish. Just getting hte GPIO to blink an LED is a major investigation in to system operations and care and feeding of the compiler tool chain. Corporate American computing has geeked out the geeks to extreme.
I don't need a big file system. I don't need multi-user Linux. But I do need something that I can actually set aside the documentation and get something programed without a hundred hours of study of an exotic tool chain that is hiding proprietary secrets. I don't need HDMI either or Android apps.
Try a Propeller Project Board and a SD micro card interface... assemble and load Forth. You might even find that you can teach your kids quite a bit. Total costs? Less than $50 easily, inluding shipping to most places.
So I am finding Forth on the Propeller with an SDcard interface are light-years ahead of what Intel or Atmel or whatthehell are going to offer to try to revive grassroots interest.
I am the kind of guy are enjoys owning a VW bug that I tune up myself and get 53mpg by doing so. I don't need to own a Porche and have to pay Heinrick to keep it running like a Swiss timepiece.
In sum, nice try Intel, interesting try Raspberry Pi. I just keep ending up back here... where knowledge is shared.... generously and easily.
I'm with you on this.
I bought a Raspberry Pi too a year ago. Pop it into the TV. Amazed and not amazed with it. Amazed that there's a mini computer. Not amazed is, there's not much to do on it. I prefer to play with the PIC or AVR (or other microcontrollers) where I can have full control of the system.
In the end, sold the thing to someone else who needed it more than me after a month. Best thing is, I still sell it at 80% of the full price I bought.
Stuffing a Unix OS clone on a cheapo SBC doesn't equal a retro system. The old systems were popular because you take them out of the box, turn them on and start playing with them. They were dirt simple, you didn't need to be sys-admin, worry about complex tool chains that only a few people can even configure or Make, etc. I remember my first computer, it was a Sinclair I got for Christmas, it was the cats meow for me. I was already programming within a hour of turning it on. Didn't need some Linux guru telling me what to do. I was just a kid learning and having a blast.
IMO the Raspberry fails at recapturing the spirit of 80's computers systems. Those systems were popular because they were simple but approachable and understandable by curious kids and adults. Even the Amiga and ST had a bit of that, the x86 clones running DOS were also easy to grok and access the hardware like the ISA and parallel ports. Pick up a copy of Turbo C or Pascal and it was off to the races.
The closet you can find today are homebrew systems based on the classic cpu's, PicAxe's, Stamps, AVR's etc. They still retain the simplicity of the original systems many had cut their teeth on.
If you need small, find an early EEEpc. Even one with a damaged video screen might do quite well. 4Gbytes of Solid state disk storage, a full battery backup system and more... it even has a case.
The minnowboard is truly a minnow.
I'm not sure we can capture the experience of 80's computers exactly. That was a unique time when for the first time in history the everyday man could have a computer. There was a lot of buzz around that.
I would say the Pi is doing quite a good job of providing a simple and cheap stimulus for kids and programming novices to get into computing. Just check the endless stream of projects that go by the Raspbery Pi Foundations home page and other places. I would not say that AVRs, Arduino's and the like are much easier to get started with. Besides if you want to be able to provide languages like Scratch and Python for beginner programmers you need something bigger. Those little MCU's have a different intent.
CuriousOne, Serious Propeller enthusiasts don't care that there are a billion programs available for x86. They want the Propeller for what it was designed for, to be a small, simple, powerful, cheap MCU suitable for easy interfacing to hardware projects.
Similarly serious Raspberry Pi enthusiasts don't care that there are a billion programs available for x86. They have all they need and more in the Linux ecosystem. Given the educational intent of the Pi all that closed source x86 code is what we are trying to get away from. To show that one can create as well as consume, program wise, with a computer.
Quite what the Minnowboard is targeted at I am not sure. At that price it is certainly not in the league of a Pi or increasing hordes of other ARM boards.
Touch
P.S. I owned raspberry pi, sold it on the 1st chance.
I also suspect a lot of the students you mention also have phones, tabs and Chrome Books that are ARM based. The Intel brand may be becoming less sacred. Of course "consumers" pretty much have no idea or care what CPU is in such things.
Seems the Pi was not for you. That's OK.
What the Intel board has though is real, proper SATA2 support (not common on ARM chipsets, except when strangled through some SDIO or USB internal I/O). And PCIExpress. But it's short of everything else.
-Tor