[Arm-netbook] The Potential at Hand. (Was: device tree not the answer in the ARM world)

[Vladimir Pantelic]

Scott Sullivan wrote:

> In the care example, there is actually an interesting flip side in that
> the peripherals can be upgrade independently of the CPU.
>
> So lets for example take a car stereo.
>
> We've had changes in media formats.
>
> 8 Track -> Cassette -> CD -> USB -> .... (Future Personal Area Networking?)
>
> We've had changes in functionality.
>
> Radio -> General Media -> Phone -> Maps

yes, and again it was the "peripherals" that did not automagically 
upgrade themselves with a new radio. only FM antenna was there, so you 
needed to either live with crappy phone/GPS reception inside the car 
or run your own antennas somewhere outside. Sure, that is doable, but 
again far from just plug and play.

of course you had new things like USB or SD card slots on the "front" 
of the car radio, but that is like having extra interfaces on the 
front of the EOMA card - it defies the intent of just plugging a new 
"brain" inside an existing setup

in EOMA terms, you car would run all the audio, radio and display 
interfaces to a black box hidden somewhere and you could just swap the 
box - until the day that a new radio standard comes along on a 
frequency that your existing car has no antenna for ...

> have some common standards for housings of electronics and that is the
> DIN slot for car audio systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_7736

the DIN slot defines only the mechanical interface, it does not help 
you at all with wiring up your radio to the rest of the car.

then you have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_10487#ISO_10487 which 
was a nice to have in the last century, but it lacks stuff like 
phone/GPS or any interaction with the rest of the car electronics...