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Offline HeiroglyphTopic starter

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Beagleboard-xM
« on: August 01, 2011, 10:35:00 PM »
Any Beagleboard owners here?

Mine just came in today and although it is hardware, it didn't fit in the Amiga hardware forum.

What are you doing with yours?  Running Linux or what?

I'm wanted to play with ARM CPU's.  They seem to be everywhere these days, so I figured this was a good general system for learning.
 

Offline commodorejohn

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #1 on: August 01, 2011, 11:03:25 PM »
How easy is it to get up and running? I have an Efika MX dev board I got from a coworker because I wanted to play with ARM, but it's been such an absolute bitch to get running that I'm considering just throwing it out and looking at one of these.
Computers: Amiga 1200, DEC VAXStation 4000/60, DEC MicroPDP-11/73
Synthesizers: Roland JX-10/MT-32/D-10, Oberheim Matrix-6, Yamaha DX7/FB-01, Korg MS-20 Mini, Ensoniq Mirage/SQ-80, Sequential Circuits Prophet-600, Hohner String Performer

"\'Legacy code\' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling." - Bjarne Stroustrup
 

Offline HeiroglyphTopic starter

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #2 on: August 01, 2011, 11:12:58 PM »
Not sure yet, it arrived today and I'm still at work counting the minutes.

It doesn't sound too bad to get linux running, but the devil is in the details.  They never tell you how hard it really is.

I've heard that there are RiscOS, Haiku and Aros (Linux hosted) builds too, but I'm not sure what the status of those are.
 

Offline Halabus

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #3 on: August 01, 2011, 11:23:02 PM »
I have a beagleboard rev C.4, i got it for pretty much the same reason as you. First i ran Angstrom on it, then tried Ubuntu. Ubuntu took forever to boot and never really settled to a usable state where i could tinker with it. But it was quite a bit of fun messing with a serial terminal and figuring out how get it to run at 700mhz.
 I haven't messed with it in months (work and other crap), but i hope to do something useful with it at some point.:lol:


http://www.elinux.org/BeagleBoard  got me up and running pretty quick, although i don't see much about the xM there.

Good Luck
 

Offline yssing

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #4 on: August 01, 2011, 11:41:58 PM »
how much did it cost?
 

Offline HeiroglyphTopic starter

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #5 on: August 01, 2011, 11:47:50 PM »
I got the xM from Digikey for $149.

I tried to find a Pandaboard for $179, but those are hard to come by.  There was one available at Mouser the night before I ordered, but by the next day it was gone :(
 

Offline HeiroglyphTopic starter

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #6 on: August 02, 2011, 12:54:29 AM »
I'm posting from it right now!

I just plugged it in, booted the microSD card it came with and logged in here.

It's a little sluggish, but I think a lot of that is the disk speed (microSD card) and running Gnome.  Yuck...

With a lighter OS I suspect it would be fine for daily use.

John
 

Offline commodorejohn

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #7 on: August 02, 2011, 01:13:06 AM »
Yeah, GNOME'll do it...you might try Window Maker instead; the Efika I was using had that before it gleefully hosed itself, and it ran quite manageably on a 800MHz A8.
Computers: Amiga 1200, DEC VAXStation 4000/60, DEC MicroPDP-11/73
Synthesizers: Roland JX-10/MT-32/D-10, Oberheim Matrix-6, Yamaha DX7/FB-01, Korg MS-20 Mini, Ensoniq Mirage/SQ-80, Sequential Circuits Prophet-600, Hohner String Performer

"\'Legacy code\' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling." - Bjarne Stroustrup
 

Offline HeiroglyphTopic starter

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #8 on: August 02, 2011, 05:27:09 AM »
I can't get over how small it is.

It's floppy size, but has HDMI, 4 USB, audio in and out, S-Video out, 10/100 ethernet, serial port, plus expansion headers.
 

Offline commodorejohn

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #9 on: August 02, 2011, 05:59:29 AM »
Wow. That's even smaller than the promo pictures made it look.
Computers: Amiga 1200, DEC VAXStation 4000/60, DEC MicroPDP-11/73
Synthesizers: Roland JX-10/MT-32/D-10, Oberheim Matrix-6, Yamaha DX7/FB-01, Korg MS-20 Mini, Ensoniq Mirage/SQ-80, Sequential Circuits Prophet-600, Hohner String Performer

"\'Legacy code\' often differs from its suggested alternative by actually working and scaling." - Bjarne Stroustrup
 

Offline M.farrell

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #10 on: August 02, 2011, 01:46:53 PM »
i use mine for acorn os, as i always wanted a a7000 when they were new
but never could afford in those days
http://www.riscosopen.org/content/downloads
 

Offline HeiroglyphTopic starter

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #11 on: August 02, 2011, 02:51:32 PM »
You got lucky, Acorn left a pretty good legacy in place to build on, it just took a long time.

It's sad when you can buy one of these for $149 but the only new Amiga PPC motherboard is $1000.

The SAM has potential that this doesn't (slots, sata), but this is still a complete 1ghz system with OpenGL, SDCard, hardware video decoding and 512MB RAM.  Stick this in an A600 style case with ARM AmigaOS and you've got a cool little usable computer.

I know hindsight is always 20/20, but it's too bad Hyperion doesn't seem interested in any other CPU options these days.

Weren't there MorphOS ARM rumors?
 

Offline yssing

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #12 on: August 02, 2011, 03:28:11 PM »
Nice.. Its alot of computing on a small board..
Looks alot better than atom based PCs
 

Offline takemehomegrandma

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #13 on: August 02, 2011, 07:36:15 PM »
Quote from: Heiroglyph;652594
Any Beagleboard owners here?

Mine just came in today and although it is hardware, it didn't fit in the Amiga hardware forum.

What are you doing with yours?  Running Linux or what?

I'm wanted to play with ARM CPU's.  They seem to be everywhere these days, so I figured this was a good general system for learning.


Why on earth didn't you buy an Efika MX Smarttop?!?

Well, I use mine (Efika MX, I have both a Smarttop and a Smartbook) for web browsing, e-mail, etc, i.e. the same things I spend 80% of my computer leisure time doing, using PC and MorphOS machines. I'm running Ubuntu Linux. :)
MorphOS is Amiga done right! :)
 

Offline HeiroglyphTopic starter

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Re: Beagleboard-xM
« Reply #14 on: August 02, 2011, 07:50:32 PM »
Quote from: takemehomegrandma;652730
Why on earth didn't you buy an Efika MX Smarttop?!?

Well, I use mine (Efika MX, I have both a Smarttop and a Smartbook) for web browsing, e-mail, etc, i.e. the same things I spend 80% of my computer leisure time doing, using PC and MorphOS machines. I'm running Ubuntu Linux. :)

Simple, I didn't know anything about them and I thought Genesi were pretty much out of the picture these days.

Now that I look, other than the hardware hackability, it looks like a decent machine and suggested retail is $20 lower than the Beagleboard-xm.

The hardware hacking was a big draw to the Beagle for me though, I'd probably still make the same decision.

Edit: Looking at the website, Genesi USA is about 5 miles from my house.  Who knew?
« Last Edit: August 02, 2011, 07:57:19 PM by Heiroglyph »