Build Your Own Freescale i.MX6 Quad Laptop

Andrew Huang (“Bunnie”) and others have been working on an open source laptop based on Freescale i.MX6 Quad processor since June, and they’ve recently got the motherboard. Beside featuring a powerful quad core ARM processor, the design files are also provided, so if you have the right skills and resources you can build it yourself. The open source laptop mainboard (Codename: Novena) has the following specifications: SoC – Freescale iMX6 Quad @ 1.2GHz with Vivante GC2000 GPU System Memory – 64-bit DDR3-1066 SO-DIMM, upgradable to 4GB Storage – microSD boot flash, SATA-II connector for hard drive / SSD, SD card reader and serial EEPROM (for storing crash logs and other bits of handy data). FPGA – Spartan-6 CSG324. It has several interfaces to the CPU, including a 2Gbit/s RAM-like bus. Internal ports & sensors: mini PCI-express slot UIM slot for mPCIx mobile data cards Dual-channel LVDS LCD connector (up to […]

OLPC XO-4 Touch Laptop Powered by Marvell ARMADA PXA2128

Last year, OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) announced their first laptop powered by ARM, with OLPC X-1.75 powered by Marvell ARMADA 610 single core processor (And sold over 100,000 since Q1 2012). The 2 new models – OLPC XO-4 and OLPC XO-4 Touch – will be upgraded to ARMADA PXA2128 triple core processor (2 ARMv7 Core + 1 Hybrid LPM (Low Power Mode) ARMv7 core), which the OLPC XO-4 Touch offering multitouch support. OLPC XO-4 laptop will look exactly like the OLPC 1.75 laptop pictured below. OLPC XO-4 will have the following specifications: SoC – Marvell PXA2128 (ARMv7 compatible) @ 1 GHz with Vivante GC2000 GPU System memory – 1GB or 2GB DDR3 RAM (Depending on configuration) Mass storage: 4 GB or 8GB NAND flash (eMMC) Internal microSD card slot for repair/replacement Externally accessible SD card slot; Display – 7.5” dual-mode TFT display with touchscreen (2 simultaneous touch max) Audio […]

Fedora To Give Away Raspberry Pis, OLPC 1.75 Laptops and Arduinos to Developers

Fedora will give away over 200 open hardware devices as part of its Summer of Hardware initiative to Fedora contributors. 150 Raspberry Pi boards, 50 OLPC 1.75 laptops and 20 Arduino boards and shields will be freely distributed to randomly selected candidates. In order to qualify, you must have a Fedora Project account, have signed the Fedora Project Contributor Agreement, be a member of at least one non-CLA / FPCA Fedora Group and be resident in one of the following country/region: Australia (excluding the states of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory), Belgium, Canada (excluding Quebec), Germany, India, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, or the United States (excluding New York and Florida). To apply, you need to fill an application form by the 15th of August where you select your preferred device and enter your full name, Fedora account information and […]

Make Your Own Raspberry Pi Laptop With a Motorola Lapdock

There is a very interested thread over the Raspberry Pi forums started by user veryevil where he explains how he built a Raspberry Pi laptop based on Motorola Lapdock (normally used with Motorola Atrix smartphone). This is actually a real hack, because the Raspberry Pi still have to sit outside and you need to make custom cables. But the result still looks great, and veryevil claims the system runs Linux smoothly with a resolution of 1366×768 and the battery can last for hours. Some other users have joined the party, and improved on the design with shorter cables. You can check that forum post for detailed pictures of each cables. Motorola Lapdock used to be an expensive piece of equipment, but Raspberry Pi users indicated it’s currently discounted to 69.98 GBP on Amazon UK and I found it for 81 USD on Amazon US (AT&T Version) which makes it somewhat […]

Installing Ubuntu 12.04 LTS in Acer Aspire One D255E Netbook

I previously installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on my Acer Aspire One D255E network (Atom N455 with GMA3150 GPU), and there were quite a few issues to solve with Ethernet, Wifi and the SD Card but eventually, everything worked fine. I have now upgraded it to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, using the instructions I posted yesterday. The good news is that WiFi and the SD card worked right after the installation, but Ethernet would not work and there were 2 new issues: The system was very slow The touchpad would not work It might be possible that the touchpad and Ethernet issues do not occur by doing a fresh installation with Ubuntu 12.04 ISO, but I haven’t tried. Improving Ubuntu 12.04 Performance I noticed that if you just moved the mouse over the launcher, compiz (composting window manager handling 3D acceleration via OpenGL) would use 100% CPU. I ran glxinfo to verify […]

Sunlike UMPC-1021: 85 USD AllWinner A10 Based 10.2″ Android 4.0 Netbook

Sunlike, a Shenzhen-based manufacturer, showcased their UMPC-1021 Android 4.0 netbook at the China sourcing fair last week. This netbook is powered by an AllWinner A10 (ARM Cortex A8) processor with 1GB RAM and 4GB flash and features a 10.2″ LCD display (but not a touchscreen), a 1.3MP front camera and a 2100mAh battery. Here are the specifications of Sunlike UMPC-1021 Android netbook. CPU AllWinner A10 @ 1.2 GHz Operation system Android 4.0 ICS or WinCE Memory 1G RAM Storage Device 2/4/8G NAND Flash LCD 10.2″ PANEL 16:9 wide screen. 1024×600 Resolution LAN 10/100M Ethernet WIFI 802.11b/g USB Port 3x USB 2.0 Host External Storage SD Card Slot Build-in camera 1.3 MPixel Audio Build-in stereo speaker Microphone Dimensions 280 x 189 x 25 mm Battery 7.4V 2100 mAh – 3 to 5 hours usage The company also explains that this netbook can be used for 5 hours with the “default” 2,100 mAh battery, but they can extend that to 10 hours with a 4,000 mAh battery. Watch the video below to see […]

Shenzhen Wabook EPC1029 ARM Netbook Runs Android 2.3 / 4.0

Shenzhen Wabook Technology, a manufacturer with a factory based in Zhuhai, China, showcases their Wabook Netbook at Cebit 2012. The Wabook EPC1029 is a netbook running Android 2.3 (upgradable to Android 4.0) on a Rockchip RK2918 (ARM Cortex A8) @ 1.0 GHz. The device features a 10.1″ TFT LED display (16:9 aspect ratio) with a resolution of 1024×600, 3 USB host ports, Ethernet. No other technical specs are available yet. Only Android is available, but it might be possible to hack Ubuntu or another distro to run on it. You can watch the video below by Charbax of armdevices.net to see the device. Don’t worry pink is not the only color as white and black are also available. The price for 1,000 pieces (MOQ)  is 93 USD and it takes around 25-30 days to get your order. They have already sold tens of thousands to a company in France. With […]

Texas Instruments OMAP 5 Reference Design

Texas Instruments announced it was developing the OMAP 5, the first Cortex A15 processor, in February 2012. This year at CES 2012, Texas Instruments unveiled OMAP 5-based reference design / development platform running Android 4.0.1 to Engadget. Remi El-Ouazzane, VP of OMAP at Texas Instruments, explains: “This is the greatest platform on Earth right now… way ahead of Apple, and it’s the first Cortex-A15 (which runs 2x faster than the Cortex-A9) product on the market. When running two Cortex-A15 chips at 800MHz, it’s more or less the same performance as running two Cortex-A9s at 1.5GHz. You’ll see [commercially available products] ramping up with this stuff in late 2012 or early 2013. We are also running Windows 8 on the latest OMAP; it runs perfectly well, and we’ve been working very closely with Microsoft. We’re working on multiple form factors — tablets, thin-and-lights — and we think ARM is going to […]

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