Re: build a hack box of choice?

Brian Wilson wrote:
> Last night I spent some time looking at Openbrick and about 3 dozen
> other SBC's and can't find anything I really want to shell out my own
> money for. The disclaimer at the top of the Soekris price list says it
> all.  It warns that docs are bad and that you have to know what you
> are doing. Sort of the oppposite of documentation. And marketing. :-)

If you are having problems with a Soekris, talk to me.

The Soekris is basically a PC with no video, it uses the serial port
instead.  It's pretty brain dead to use, it will boot DOS right off a
flash as well as linux with the console=serial,... command line, and
just work.

You can develop on a normal PC with a CF->IDE adaptor, once it boots
there just snap it in the soekris.

The soekris *has* a BIOS, they just don't have a support infrastructure
for the real dummies who put in the CF's upside down and can't figure
out why it isn't working.

There is another similar board to Soekris, that is very long and thin
like 11" X 3.5" or something, about $20 cheaper in the case.  Kind of Silly
beacuse the 100Mhz soekris 4511 is damn near ideal, in terms of footprint
& capability.

> Back in the real world we'd hire an engineer and get him to learn the
> board inside out and the vendor would offer training to us because
> we'd be planning on buying 30,000 units. But here I am all alone and
> those are not options... I suspect that I am all alone with several
> thousand other people.

This is silly.  One of the main reasons I ignore all this other 68K and
Power & ARM stuff is for this very reason.  These x86 boards are identical
to an old AT/DX4/100 setup with 32MB RAM no video and a single serial port.
In fact . . .  I have an old Cyrix-150 with a 2S/1P serial card on my
bench that I use to test flashes on.  Don't feel like spending $100 on a
Cardbus rig for it, or I could take it all the way.  The soekris is a
PITA to get the CF's in and out of.

$200 is not a ridiculous amount of money.