My awesome new micro computer =D

[dale00474]

Just put in my order for a new bit of tech today. Its called a Raspburry Pi. No kidding this little bastard is about the size of a credit card and is a single board thick. It comes equipped with 2 USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, HDMI port (with audio), SD card slot (for the OS) and an audio port. It runs a ARM processor capable of about 800MHz and 512 ram. I know that isn't a huge amount of power. However, if you want small media boxes on your home network going to every TV capable of HDMI video and supporting external USB HDD's with most versions of Linux OS's supported you can't go wrong. Want to know the most kick ass part about the whole unit? The board cost me only $38 bucks. I picked up a few of them along with a few cases and some SD cards pre-loaded with Debian 6 Linux Operating System. I spent about $120 on the whole order. This little thing is bad ass. Forget taking just your USB drives with you...take an entire computer. =D I had a play with one at a buddy's house who works for HP. Love this thing. The company making it is a non-profit mob from the UK and have some nice future plans for the computer. I've included a link below so any of you guys interested can have a suss at it.

http://au.element14.com/raspberry-pi/raspbrry-modb-512m/sbc-raspberry-pi-model-b-512mb/dp/2191863?ICID=ap-rpi512-hwb

[rolyd90]

haha When you brought up MythTV before, I found this recentley!
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Rasberry_Pi

Ill have to see the final product, was intrested in how cheap/what they can do


EDIT: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Raspberry_Pi Instead

[dale00474]

Nice page for specs on the unit. I got my specs from the raspberry pi site. The Pi site goes into loads of details about the board. The only bad thing is it is a bit difficult to get good detailed spec sheet on the processor and a few other components due to NDA's from the various companies. The big thing is pricing is expected to stay as it is. Since they are a non-profit organization they sell the unit at cost and have stated on their site they absolutely can't do any deals such as bulk order deals. Apparently the board is highly popular. Element14 where I've purchased mine has over 10,000 on order for shipping in November. They've already sold that many of the Model 2 board (Only an increase from 1 to 2 usb ports and an extra 256 ram increase.) The model two has been out just over a month.

I've looked at other boards from element14 such as the ones from Texas Instruments. Those boards are typically just as capable but price around $200-$400. Here is the HUGE push away for most people...they can't run windows. Theoretically it is possible with the power. However, Microsoft currently doesn't have any agreements with Broadcom or these other companies for development. Their are youtube videos of people who have gotten Win7 and Win8 to run on these. The bad thing is it is emulated from within a Linux build and their would be so many compatibility issues it wouldn't be funny. Ubuntu has said that due to the recent release of the most stable build of their OS they won't be able to jump on board with full support of the Raspberry Pi. However, many enthusiast say it runs with minimal issues if any so that's a good sign.

I did manage to find a build a guy did with the expansion port. He managed to build an interestingly powerful PC from one of these. The only drawback was he had to design his own heat-sink for it. They also have plenty of cases (one design) in a huge range of single and dual-tone colors. This thing looks promising. One huge problem with technology over the years is we make huge pushes forward and then tech advancement slows down to a crawl. Experts say we've started to hit a limit on size vs. capability. In the past 6 years I suppose we've tried to fit as many cores onto a single chip as we can. Many manufacturers worry that you can only fit so many cores onto one chip and still make the price feasible. I know this thing isn't a huge powerhouse but its development at the cost it is being offered at is very promising. =D I bet in 5-10 years we see motherboards hit mainstream markets that are the same price as today's best boards but only the size of a deck of cards. =D Now that would be sweet. When mine comes in Roly I'll bring it into work and show it to you. I'd say it will be in a good 3-4 weeks though coming from the UK and me having to wait for the next delivery.