Is It Worth Getting A Beagleboard?

[el_pango]

Hi all,

I have a Pandora project in mind, but I ordered last October, so I'm probably like 3997th in the queue, and as such, am partially blocked.

With this in mind, do you think it's worth getting a BeagleBoard in order to be able to start working in advance? Are they similar enough that if I get Allegro 4.2.x working on one, I get the target device for free*?

* for very large values of 'free'.
**(this topic has come up before, but I didn't want to do any thread necromancy)

 

[WizardStan]

Everything that I compiled and tested on my BeagleBoard worked almost perfectly when run on a prototype Pandora, if that helps any. Just had to adjust for the screen size. In one case it actually worked better on the Pandora than on my BeagleBoard . I was using SDL though. I'm not sure if Allegro has been built for ARM yet, but you're certainly welcome to give it a try.

edit: I should also say that I've found myself using my BeagleBoard for a lot of regular tasks as well, so you probably won't be out even after you've gotten your Pandora. It runs a constant copy of irssi so I can ssh into it to always be connected to IRC, and pidgin in vnc. It's a torrent server. I use cronjobs and mplayer to make it a radio recorder for a friend who recently started her DJ career. And it's just fun to play with in general.

 

[skeezix]

yeah Wiz, wheres that Bink pnd!!

jeff

 

[el_pango]

Meh, I caved in and ordered one. I have some other embedded-type stuff I want to build already, so I'm sure I'll find uses for it after my Pandora arrives.

According to this, there's an ARM port in the Angstrom* Debian repo, but it sounded like none of the drawing is accelerated. I'm hoping I can do some work on this.


*I fail at reading.

 

[Asiyura]

Just checked the beagle board website…
That new BeagleBoard-xM looks great : 4 USB, 10/100 ethernet onboard and much more.
I would love to get one of those.

 

[Gricey]

If it can stream DLNA and manage a RAID1 of a pair of 2TB SATA disks, it would replace my current media server which is a crappy athlon that just does that, ssh/tools and irssi. Waiting for the xM!

 

[torpor]

You could also get a Touchbook as well .. quite compatible. I have all 3 (Beagle/Touchbook/Pandora) and its turning out to be quite a good setup - might just sell my Macbook, heh heh ..

 

[kingoddball]

Seems like Pandora is the better option.
Bang for you buck that is.

IMO of course!

I plan to use my Pandora as a replacement for my Macbook. Not a permanent option, just to save me dragging out a laptop to fiddle with something.

 

[Kaniu]

I've been thinking about buying a SheevaPlug which would cost only $99, but I don't know how compatible ARM-processors are. Is 1.2 GHz Marvell Kirkwood 6281 ARM-processor compatible with the one in Pandora?

 

[second exodous]

Just checked the beagle board website…
That new BeagleBoard-xM looks great : 4 USB, 10/100 ethernet onboard and much more.
I would love to get one of those.

Wow, I just about ordered one the other day, I'm glad I held off.

This would be really useful if someone got XBMC, Myth, or some other media center software running on them. I know that XBMC runs slowly right now, maybe that will be polished a little bit. As far as hooking it to my monitor not with the OMAP3, my monitor is 1080p so for general computing just not yet. I really hope there is a OMAP4 Beagle Board, I have my fingers crossed.

 

[Caine]

I've been thinking about buying a SheevaPlug which would cost only $99, but I don't know how compatible ARM-processors are. Is 1.2 GHz Marvell Kirkwood 6281 ARM-processor compatible with the one in Pandora?

Me too. Be aware that here are a lot of complaints on their hardware forum about power supply failure.

I have to say, the new beagleboard is also looking very nice. Gigabit ethernet and some sata controller would have been nice though.

 

[fanoush]

If you are from Europe it might be cheaper to get IGEP V2 beagleboard clone due to beagleboard shipping price and additional VAT/customs fees.
It also has some additional hardware (and 512MB RAM) that you may like to have built-in. Even the no-wifi version is still good value. I got it when they did some promotion and discounted the no-wifi version to 105 EUR.

 

[Caine]

If you are from Europe it might be cheaper to get IGEP V2 beagleboard clone due to beagleboard shipping price and additional VAT/customs fees.

That looks quite nice, thanks for the link.

 

[Asiyura]

If you are from Europe it might be cheaper to get IGEP V2 beagleboard clone due to beagleboard shipping price and additional VAT/customs fees.
It also has some additional hardware (and 512MB RAM) that you may like to have built-in. Even the no-wifi version is still good value. I got it when they did some promotion and discounted the no-wifi version to 105 EUR.

Thank you!

I searched for a cheap european beagleboard clone and couldn't find one (okay, I may not have searched that well).

 

[Tor]

If you are from Europe it might be cheaper to get IGEP V2 beagleboard clone due to beagleboard shipping price and additional VAT/customs fees.

When I ordered my beagle from DigiKey the UPS shipping was free.
Had to pay VAT though, but then again I would've had to do that also if I had ordered from igep.

 

[NeBlackCat]

I have to say, the new beagleboard is also looking very nice. Gigabit ethernet and some sata controller would have been nice though.

I'm not sure it would make any difference tbh - the ethernet is implemented as part of a USBx4/ethernet hub chip, so it's working at USB 2 speeds and sharing the bus with whatever USB devices you might have attached.

But yes - the new BB looks great.

 

[metallurge]

I'm not sure it would make any difference tbh - the ethernet is implemented as part of a USBx4/ethernet hub chip, so it's working at USB 2 speeds and sharing the bus with whatever USB devices you might have attached.

Right. I noticed this also. It seems to me that TI OMAP is unfortunately I/O-constrained for this reason. I would love to see a real native bus on ARM; I have some projects in mind which would require more I/O throughput than OMAP's single USB 2.0 port would be capable of.
But then I have not thoroughly investigated the other extant ARM implementations besides TI's. Surely somebody is working on a decent-speed ARM with a real I/O bus?