[Arm-netbook] MarsBoard

[Joe Michael]

On Wed, 2013-03-06 at 08:08 +0000, luke.leighton wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 8:02 AM, luke.leighton <luke.leighton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 7:15 AM, Paulo Louro <paulo_louro at msn.com> wrote:
> >> Funny, they didn't even change the webpage information..... just a copy &
> >> paste from Miniand website
> >
> >  ... and it's 85 x 55mm (not 85 x 35 - check the picture).  that's
> > exactly the dimensions of the rev 0 eoma-68 CPU card.
> >
> > hmm, i wonder where they got the board from?
> 
> http://www.marsboard.com/images/marsboard_upper.jpg
> http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/news/2012-12-14.17.22.05.png
> 
> no, it is different.  good for them.  i wonder if they brought the
> VGA-OUT signals out to the connectors?
> 
> hmmm... no sign of an AXP209 though.  how do they do USB-OTG, and how
> do they manage the power / current properly?

Switch mode regulators near the power socket by the looks of things.
'manage power' is not an issue if you got multiple switch mode supplies.
The only thing you would need to manage power 'properly' is to scale
back the clocking of the chip to reduce power consumption. The switch
modes are 80%+ efficient most of the time, and you could switch them off
with a simple pFET if so desired. The advantage of APX is that it
has many power supplies and manage recharging batteries and report on
battery level. Not really needed if you got a DC socket for power.


Is the board an open sourced project?

Same price as cubieboard and no design files yet - but cubieboard has
released its designs and OS images for same price (less the shipping).
Long way to go to beat cubie.

If the designs look similar it probably would have been designed as a
derivative of your board by Wits.