exact reason why I'm getting one, except with me, my ps3 is a hassle to play 4gb+ 1080p videos. I was hoping a Roku set-top box could do it, but no goim gonna get one just to use as a media player since my xbox does not play mkv files
Raspberry Pi - 25 Dollar PC on a USB stick
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Prometheus
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Why couldn't the Roku do it, DM? The RPi uses almost the same hardware, as I understand it...
milkshake
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@Promethius its not the hardware preventing video 4gb+ its the OS/software/filesystem
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Prometheus
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Ahh, I see. Thanks, milk.
craigix
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I'm going to buy one simply to support the project. Actually I'm going to try to buy 3.
Prometheus
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^ The first batch is limited to one per address, Craig.
I'll be getting at least two myself, but not at the same time. The second one will be used for prototyping electronic plush, provided I can get my head around learning how to make things move (which is where their educational resources will no doubt come in).
I'll be getting at least two myself, but not at the same time. The second one will be used for prototyping electronic plush, provided I can get my head around learning how to make things move (which is where their educational resources will no doubt come in).
This is probably an obvious question (sorry) , but compared to the Pandora, the RPi seems to have packed awesome amounts of processing gumph relative to its cost*. Why?
* Even taking into account the cost of the Pandora's screen...
* Even taking into account the cost of the Pandora's screen...
craigix
Mega GP Mania
Firstly they are a charity backed by some serious muscle, secondly the board is bare basic. When you start to price in screens, cables, wifi, BT, SD slots, keyboards, controls, huge batteries, moulding costs, assembly, software etc. things start to sky rocket.
Thanks. ^_^
Prometheus
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It's also an older CPU - it's an ARM11, as opposed to the Cortex-A8 that the Pandora has. And I'm guessing that the fact that the founders of the charity work for Broadcom, who provides the SoC, doesn't hurt, either. (And nor does the fact the price is, apparently, cut right down to the bone.)
(And nor does the fact the price is, apparently, cut right down to the bone.)
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Miner49er
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craigix
Mega GP Mania
^ The first batch is limited to one per address, Craig.
This shall not stop me!
Asmo
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On the subject of mini monitors that would be an ideal partner for a weeny setup, if you know anyone who works in a supermarket or shop equipment supplier, or if you happen upon a fire/riot/Godzilla damaged supermarket likely to empty it's contents into a skip anytime soon, you would do well to call dibs on any cash registers being dumped - the newish ones, with the rather nice 4:3 ratio 6 inch displays on stalks.
I salvaged one from an NCR jobby a few years ago, and after extricating it from it's stalk it turned out to be an SVGA unit with a VGA cable on it. I wouldn't be surprised to find they come in higher res too by now, and HDMI to VGA cables are easy enough to come by. Another plus is the screens are housed in a very robust casing already.
I still wish I'd managed to bag one of the beautiful 6 inch NEC CRT monitors my local post office used to have behind the counter. A mini Mame cab with one of those............
I salvaged one from an NCR jobby a few years ago, and after extricating it from it's stalk it turned out to be an SVGA unit with a VGA cable on it. I wouldn't be surprised to find they come in higher res too by now, and HDMI to VGA cables are easy enough to come by. Another plus is the screens are housed in a very robust casing already.
I still wish I'd managed to bag one of the beautiful 6 inch NEC CRT monitors my local post office used to have behind the counter. A mini Mame cab with one of those............
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T.T.
Master of Lightning
another monitor you could use could be a psone screen, they're five inches and accept composite input, as well as RGB if your up for a little modding
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Prometheus
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Plenty of very useful information has been posted in a thread by one of the people behind the Raspberry Pi board - if you're interested in things like the RPi's boot-up config.txt, overclocking, L2 cache, SDTV and HDMI output settings, and so on, I'd highly recommend giving it a read.
Those familiar with the Pandora will readily recognise the caveats about overclocking and overvolting, I'm sure!
Those familiar with the Pandora will readily recognise the caveats about overclocking and overvolting, I'm sure!
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Prometheus
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Whilst this is not the "official" distro (that's all but been said to be Fedora - they're waiting on dealing with some legalities before outright talking about it, but have hinted that this is it), the Foundation has made available the Debian Squeeze image that's used for development, at this link.
Prometheus
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As far as I know, any that are supported by any Linux distro, the same as with the Pandora. It's come up on their forum a couple of times.
I mean, chances are that NTFS and HFS+ (Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X formats, respectively) support might have be installed later, as that seems to be the norm for Linux distros as far as I've found, but I don't know of any logical reason why the filesystem support would be any different to anywhere else.
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What I scooped up from their FAQ..
SOFTWARE
What operating system (OS) does it use?
We’ll be using Fedora as our recommended distribution. It’s straightforward to replace the root partition on the SD card with another ARM Linux distro if you want to use something else. The OS is stored on the SD card.
Will it run WINE (or Windows, or other x86 software)?
No.
What Linux distros will be supported at launch?
Fedora, Debian and ArchLinux will be supported from the start. We hope to see support from other distros later. (Because of issues with newer releases of Ubuntu and the ARM processor we are using, Ubuntu can’t commit to support Raspberry Pi at the moment.) You will be able to download distro images from us as soon as the Raspberry Pi is released, and we will also be selling pre-loaded SD cards shortly after release.
Will it run Android?
If someone in the community can port a version of Android to work with 256MB of RAM, then it’ll run on the Raspberry Pi.
Will it run <insert name of program here>?
In general, you need to look to see whether the program you want can be compiled for the ARMv6 architecture. In most cases the answer will be yes. Specific programs are discussed on our forum, so you might want to look there for an answer.
Will it run the new Windows 8 ARM version?
We are not partners with Microsoft, and their support would be required for porting Windows 8.
SOFTWARE
What operating system (OS) does it use?
We’ll be using Fedora as our recommended distribution. It’s straightforward to replace the root partition on the SD card with another ARM Linux distro if you want to use something else. The OS is stored on the SD card.
Will it run WINE (or Windows, or other x86 software)?
No.
What Linux distros will be supported at launch?
Fedora, Debian and ArchLinux will be supported from the start. We hope to see support from other distros later. (Because of issues with newer releases of Ubuntu and the ARM processor we are using, Ubuntu can’t commit to support Raspberry Pi at the moment.) You will be able to download distro images from us as soon as the Raspberry Pi is released, and we will also be selling pre-loaded SD cards shortly after release.
Will it run Android?
If someone in the community can port a version of Android to work with 256MB of RAM, then it’ll run on the Raspberry Pi.
Will it run <insert name of program here>?
In general, you need to look to see whether the program you want can be compiled for the ARMv6 architecture. In most cases the answer will be yes. Specific programs are discussed on our forum, so you might want to look there for an answer.
Will it run the new Windows 8 ARM version?
We are not partners with Microsoft, and their support would be required for porting Windows 8.
