Tuesday, May 01

Geek

Build Your Own Manabi-Style Datapad!

With the handy-dandy i.MX31!

It's the latest ARM chip from Freescale (nee Motorola).  ARM11 core with clock speeds up to 665MHz, includes vector coprocessor, hardware MPEG-4 encode and decode, camera sensors (two) and LCD interfaces (also two), 2D and 3D graphics hardware*, SD, Memory Stick, CF, PCMCIA and ATA interfaces, USB 2.0 host/device/OTG support, and a whole bunch of UARTs for various purposes.

All in a package 14mm square and using a mere... actually, they don't seem to specify the overall power consumption anywhere... and costing just $20 in 1k quantities.

No built-in networking or chip interconnects, but that seems to be the only real downside.

I'm thinking 128MB of memory, 512MB of flash, and a 6" 640x960 screen.  I'll take two.

* Though the 3D hardware isn't great by modern standards.  Somewhere between PS1 and PS2 performance, and closer to PS1 at that.  On the other hand, the graphics module uses 40mW at full speed.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:18 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 161 words, total size 1 kb.

1 aces comments are freezing again.  You got a log on comment action running, to see what it is that causes this?

Posted by: Wickedpinto at Tuesday, May 01 2007 02:31 PM (QTv8u)

2 I have a log, but it gets pretty big, and it doesn't actually stop logging stuff when the problems start.

Unfortunately, I'm not at home right now and access the server to reset the comment system.  I'll do that ASAP though.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, May 01 2007 02:35 PM (PiXy!)

3

I wasn't judging, I was just wondering if you maintained a log, so that if this becomes common, you might more readily view the cause.

I (nowhere near the stuff you deal with) used to "code" on a MUD, and everyone would get on me about carrying around so many "daggers" because what I did, was I ghosted my daggers to various !if's and stuff.  It was how I kept track of stuff. 

You are dealing with big shit, and you need a log, I was just wondering if you monitered them, though it wouldn't be a bad idea to start carrying daggers, if you know what I mean.

Posted by: Wickedpinto at Tuesday, May 01 2007 04:49 PM (QTv8u)

4

I don't know if you know about muds, but I'm sure you do.  but I always related to "code" as an object, so I created objects for every iffy bit of code, and if some piece of code failed, the dagger assigned to monitering that particular piece of code would disable me. 

Kinda like an automatic and un-relenting compiler error.  I couldn't move my mud character without fixing what was wrong.  Thats what I meant, or rather I couldn't move my character until I either fixed the code of the item I created, or without replacing my own error correction code that kept me from moving.

Posted by: Wickedpinto at Tuesday, May 01 2007 04:53 PM (QTv8u)

5 I thought about writing up a longer comparison of Manabi's PDA (or whatever the heck it is), a modern "convergence" PDA with cellphone, and OLPC. But it comes out somewhat dull. I wrote about most of its features before, e.g. that the design relies on the school IT infrastructure heavily, whereas OLPC does not. The only thing I'm really surprised that Manabi's unit does not have a keyboard of any kind. Maybe it has a Newton-style stroke recognition. It might even be easier with Japanese. Heck, my DS does it. In any case, it's a cool gadget. Unfortunately, it's school property.

Posted by: Wickedpinto at Tuesday, May 01 2007 04:58 PM (9imyF)

6
I wasn't judging, I was just wondering if you maintained a log, so that if this becomes common, you might more readily view the cause.
Oh, absolutely.  Unfortunately, this problem is uncommon enough, and the log files so large, that it's hard to track down.

Also, New Comments Thingy is a very old (in relative terms) version of the code.  The version I'm running here has much better logging, and much better control for stuck or dead processes.  So the sooner I can get Ace migrated to the new system the better.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, May 01 2007 04:59 PM (PiXy!)

7
The only thing I'm really surprised that Manabi's unit does not have a keyboard of any kind. Maybe it has a Newton-style stroke recognition. It might even be easier with Japanese.
Well, keyboards are kind of clunky for Japanese anyway, so stroke recognition or some sort of on-screen keyboard might not be a problem.

The thing I really want is the mid-sized screen.  Current PDAs are too small, and notebooks are too large.  There are micro-notebooks, but they run Windows, and Windows sucks on a small device like that.  And because Windows has certain base hardware requirements, the devices are far more expensive, heavy, and power-hungry than they would other wise be, so in the end the hardware sucks as well.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, May 01 2007 05:02 PM (PiXy!)

8

9miyf wasn't me.

Posted by: Bart at Tuesday, May 01 2007 06:31 PM (QTv8u)

9
9miyf wasn't me.
Yeah, I guessed.  That's a major problem.  I don't know why it's doing that, but I'll find it and fix it right away.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, May 01 2007 08:01 PM (PiXy!)

10 If it helps, the form fields are pre-filled for Wickedpinto right now in my browser (I'm going to change them). For example, his/her e-mail is his nick at gmail. I did not even look at the fields, just entered the comment.

Maybe a cookie hash collision or something?

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wednesday, May 02 2007 03:18 AM (9imyF)

11 It shouldn't be a hash collision - I'm suspecting a more boring but more statistically likely plain-old bug.  Specifically, a leak from the session data to the thread data.  That should never happen, but, well, something is certainly going wrong.

Thanks for confirming that it was showing up in the form fields; that's what I suspected, but it's always good to know for sure.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, May 02 2007 04:38 AM (PiXy!)

12 odd.  I feel even more schizo then normal.

Posted by: Wickedpinto at Wednesday, May 02 2007 01:34 PM (QTv8u)

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