[Arm-netbook] Another Interesting Tegra2 Board

[Bari Ari]

On 05/23/2012 10:41 AM, Gordan Bobic wrote:
> You're seriously putting me off just by mentioning Advantech. I bullshit
> you not, when I queried why they didn't implement CPU core voltage
> scaling (part of Intel Enhanced Speed Step spec) on an Atom N450 board I
> bought (tested by the fact that power draw doesn't change when you
> change the VID at full speed between minimum and maximum - and it also
> doesn't de-stabilize) I was told it wasn't implemented because it is an
> "overclocking feature". Not to mention other gems such as options in
> BIOS that don't actually do anything:
>
> 1) There is an FSB toggle between 667 and 800MHz, and regardless of what
> you set, it always runs at 667MHz.
>
> 2) There are options to set the RAM timings manually, but whatever you
> set them to, it will always use the settings it reads out of the SPD on
> the DIMM.
>
> Of course if you don't test these things, you are likely to assume it
> just did what you told it to.
>
> Did they concede they screwed up and offer a refund? Of course not.
>
> If I never hear of them again it will be too soon. Not to mention that
> the motherboards were substantially overpriced to begin with (no - you
> don't get anywhere near what you pay for).
>
>
That's why coreboot got started. Broken BIOS by vendors that don't care. 
Or imagine trying to change a BIOS setting on 1,000 or more nodes in a 
cluster and the only way to do it was with keyboards and monitors.

-Bari