[Arm-netbook] simplest internet connection

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 11:13 PM, Nick Hardiman
<nick at internetmachines.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi, I saw the 'Earth-friendly EOMA68 Computing Devices’ crowd supply page
> a couple hours ago and have been trawling for more information for the last
> couple hours. I’ve got a question (apologies if I’ve missed something in front
> of my face).

 hiya, welcome nick.

> What is the simplest way to hook up a card like this to the Internet?

 $5 USB-Ethernet dongle.  okay, $5 if you're happy to get onto amazon :)
 if you investigate what thinkpenguin is selling, those are the kinds of
 products you will know will "just work" - no firmware needed, they're
 "pure hardware" usb-eth dongles.  i'm using a qca9600 and axis ones,
 they work out-of-the-box with the right linux kernel module compiled.

 you'll also need one of the cable kits... you don't necessarily need the
 HDMI cable... you could pick up the original one on amazon that we
 ordered and tested... oo, oo, how exciting it's gone down in price by one
 whole cent :)

 https://www.amazon.com/Micro-Cable-Power-Samsung-Player/dp/B00CXAC1ZW/

 it was $1.64 last week haha.  ok so that gives you a way to power it
 through the OTG port and also at the same time plug in a USB Ethernet
 dongle.

 then you need a bog-standard off-the-shelf Micro-USB-OTG
 "Tablet / phone / anything" charger that's available pretty much anywhere,
 and you're set.

 depending on how many of these you're looking to get, it might be
 easier to get a micro-desktop housing simply so that you are in a
 position to investigate things (pop out the "Server" SD Card, put
 in the "Desktop" SD card, check that the hardware's okay).

 you'll almost certainly need a Micro-USB-OTG cable but those come
 with those OTG chargers usually.  i won't assume you've already got
 one because i use a Nokia 3310 :)


> This seems like an excellent approach to next-generation on-premise computing.
> But the videos, the mail archive and web pages I’ve viewed are all focussed
> on tablets and workstations.

 we figured that this would be the majority of people, but i actually
 *want* people to consider doing co-located hosting using these
 as ultra-low-power "micro blade" servers.


> I’m basically a server-side computing guy, and I’d rather know about ethernet than KVM.

 cool.

 well, if you're considering using them as space-saving 3 watt rack-mounted
 blade servers, the idea was discussed in-depth a number of years ago
 and keeps resurfacing on a regular basis.

 the only thing is: to do remote boot management (if the OS or bootloader is
 corrupted) then unless you created a special PCB to plug these into it would
 be necessary to do physical recovery (unplug the card and put in a
 temporary replacement) but given that these are 40 gram cards it's not like
 you're replacing a 20kg 19in metal... Beast ... or anything :)

 but, a special PCB for doing rack-mounted EOMA68 blade servers is exactly
 what i want to do at some point.

 yeah, great.  really pleased to hear that you're considering these
for server-side.

 l.