[OLPC-AU] XS Mini - Ionics Plug (Hardware)

[Sameer Verma]

On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 8:55 AM, Sameer Verma <sverma at sfsu.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 7:43 AM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan <sridhar at laptop.org.au>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 20 June 2011 21:22, Mitchell Seaton <meaton.2v at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > Hi Sridhar/Jerry,
>>> > Thought this might be of interests as a potential hardware for XS Mini
>>> > application. Some of the specs are on this
>>> > address: http://www.ionicsplug.com/nimbus.html is being manufactured in
>>> > the
>>> > Philippines (my eKindling colleague mentioned it too me), it would be
>>> > really
>>> > suitable here for XS usage in some of our project (pilot) schools here
>>> > in
>>> > the Philippines. Seeing that the current version is running on Debian OS
>>> > it
>>> > may be suitable to likely run Fedora 11 or higher on this device, and
>>> > thus
>>> > XS Mini. The main issue of course would be storage into 512MB NAND. So
>>> > similiar to the old XS-on-XO.
>>> > Please let me know your thoughts, and if it is of good interest as a
>>> > target
>>> > device then maybe we could make one available for testing?
>>>
>>> Cool idea! It would serve better as an all-in-one device if it had an
>>> integrated wireless AP. Maybe we can look into running ejabberd on an
>>> OpenWRT-based device.
>>>
>>> A common difficulty with such devices right now is the CPU. In this
>>> case it is a "1.2GHz Marvell processor", which I guess means that it
>>> is ARM-based. All versions of XS are currently made for x86. I'd like
>>> to see that change, in light of the work done on the ARM-based
>>> XO-1.75. That'll take some work.
>>>
>>
>
> Robert Howard (OLPC-SF) has been working on porting the XS stack over
> to ARM. There are some roadblocks from what I understand with ejabberd
> and bios-crypto, but he'd have a better answer. Robert has been using
> the Open RD Client as a testing base.
> http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-35-openrd-ultimate.aspx
>
> The Nimbus is a model in the line of plug computers from Marvell. More
> plugs at http://www.plugcomputer.org/
>
> cheers,
> Sameer
> --
> Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor, Information Systems
> Director, Campus Business Solutions
> San Francisco State University
> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
> http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
> http://cbs.sfsu.edu/
> http://is.sfsu.edu/
>

Somewhat peripheral to this discussion, but the plugcomputing platform
came up last night at a talk I attended in an Francisco. This was
about the FreedomBox project (https://freedomboxfoundation.org/) and
they are looking at the DreamPlug as a starting point reference
platform. Their target distro is Debian, with a goal to be able to do
something like apt-get freedombox and get all the pieces installed and
configured. Right now, the project is a bunch of ideas, with some seed
funding (US$120,000 I think).

Use of the plug/ARM machines should go up rapidly in the near future.

cheers,
Sameer