[Arm-netbook] spear1310 dual-core cortex A9, SATA-II etc. etc.

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 3:57 PM, Justin King-Lacroix
<justin.kinglacroix at gmail.com> wrote:
>> http://www.phytec.com/news/ZT-Systems-R1801e-Server.html
>>
>> folks, many apologies: in the search for various Cortex A9s that also
>> have SATA-II i'd completely forgotten about the STmicroelectronics
>> spear1310.  ST have this strange habit of throwing money at CPU
>> designs in an iterative cycle.  the spear1310 they could only get up
>> to 600mhz, and decided to not do things like ooo put on a proprietary
>> 3D GPU engine... at all.
>>
>> so it would actually make an absolutely stonking FSF Hardware-endorsed
>> compliant platform.
>
> Do you know if there are any {Beagle,Panda}Board-like dev boards for this
> thing around? The only product I can find at all is the ZT server one.

 yes - which is expensive, not to mention exclusive to the company
that commissioned the ZT Server.

> Would love to turn one of them into a personal file server...

 ok - i've sent an enquiry to ST, to see if they would be interested
to create exactly such a board (if they haven't got one already).
i've also asked them if, should they go to the trouble of introducing
such a board, whether they'd like to create one that conforms to the
EOMA/PCMCIA proposed standard:
 http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture

ok... i have however found this:
http://www.ebv.com/en/products/categories/details/type/categories/category/mcu-peripherals/product/spear1310-spear1340-embedded-pc.html

 it appears to be something vaguely along the lines-ish of
{insertcodename}Board, but it's not like there's any links to a
corresponding wiki / forum / developer site / git repository, which we
know is critical to the success of such an effort.

 perhaps, justin, you might like to contact both EBV and also
spear-support-emea at st.com, to advise them of your needs?  likewise,
can i advise anyone else interested in these CPUs to do likewise?  the
more people that make themselves known, as well as informing the CPU
SoC manufacturers of their free software expertise which can be
leveraged to the SoC manufacturer's advantage, the better.

 that "embedded pc" using spea1340 appears to be available Q4 2011,
whilst the spea1310 (which we know was released earlier!) appears to
be available Q1/Q2 2012.  i think i know what's going on here: the
spear1310 made available to ZT Systems was a preview, and i heard that
it worked... sort-of :)  perhaps it did the job that was required, but
wasn't suitable for general release - now they've had another go at
it, off it goes into the big wide world.  all pure speculation of
course.

l.