New ION Boards Have Arrived
Posted on July 1, 2009 by Kristina
Filed Under General, New Products | 2 Comments
We are offering three new NVIDIA ION-based Mini-ITX mainboards at Logic Supply. Two are from ZOTAC and one is a Pegatron offering. Each is geared toward multimedia applications, offering HDMI, DVI, VGA, and digital audio. Although the back panel I/O is beefed up, the onboard I/O is pretty slender with just the bare minimum connectors to get by. Neither of them have IDE (no real surprise), but instead offer 3–4 SATA connectors. The ZOTAC features RAID 0, 1, and 0+1, while the Pegatron version has it disabled. We’re still trying to figure that one out…
Our ZOTAC ION selection is: ZOTAC ION B-E Mini-ITX Mainboard, IONITX-B-E featuring the Intel Atom 230 processor and the ZOTAC ION A-U Mini-ITX Mainboard, IONITX-A-U featuring the dual core Intel Atom 330 processor, onboard power, and pre-installed PCIe Mini wireless card with antenna. These boards are practically identical, with the exception of the onboard power, processor, and wireless card. And, of course the price.
Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Reconnaissance 2 (ROVER2)
Posted on June 2, 2009 by Guest
Filed Under Applications, Linux | 1 Comment
Guest blogger Andrew Boggeri from UCLA Robotics Club discusses his team’s project, the Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Reconnaissance 2 (ROVER2). The ROVER2 competed in this year’s University Rover Challenge (URC) hosted by the Mars Society. Logic Supply helped sponsor the project by donating Mini-ITX hardware.
I want to start by thanking Logic Supply again for their support of our team, the Robotics Club at UCLA. Due to Logic Supply’s sponsorship, our team has seen much growth and continued success.
The Robotics Club at UCLA is focused on enhancing its members’ education through hands-on experience. We have a team of over 30 students working on 2 projects. Our flagship project is the University Rover Challenge (URC), a competition hosted by the Mars Society and was scheduled for May 28-30, 2009 at their Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Hanksville, Utah.
The URC tasks teams with designing, building, and operating a Mars Rover-like system in a series of simulated Mars mission tasks. These tasks are described below:
- Site Survey Task: This “mapping” task requires teams to drive to a vantage point and identify the locations of white PVC markers on a target range.
- Construction Task: The construction task requires teams to tighten hex head bolts in a 3D assembly.
- Extremophile Task: This task requires investigating sites of biological interest. There is a list of target sites which teams must investigate and then present a report on which sites merit further investigation and why.
- Emergency Navigation Task: The emergency navigation task challenges teams to deliver an emergency payload to an astronaut in distress.
Custom A2000 FreeNAS Image
Posted on May 11, 2009 by david
Filed Under General | 6 Comments
We’ve been offering FreeNAS on the ARTiGO A2000 for a little while now. However, there were a few small issues that came to light that we wanted to fix. First, the Ethernet on the ARTiGO A2000 would only run at 100 Mb. Second, the SATA controller was only running at UDMA33. Fortunately we’ve fixed both of these issues with a custom FreeNAS image, thanks to help from the community (you guys!). You can download the image here (Note: this is the uncompressed image, so you don’t have to run it through gunzip before flashing). This will require re-flashing the CF card with the new image, which means you’ll lose your settings unless you save them prior to updating. Please let us know if you’re using the new image and how it’s working out for you!
UPDATE: I’ve updated the download link above to point to a new image that should solve the issues Burr (from the comments) mentioned related to UPS and iTunes/DAAP. If you installed the old image from the link above and you don’t care about the things Burr mentions then there’s no reason for you to update. Otherwise download the new image linked to above and reflash your CF card (remember to back up your settings first!).
First Glimpse at Intel’s New Mini-ITX Platform: D945GSEJT
Posted on March 25, 2009 by Kristina
Filed Under Industry News, New Products | 12 Comments
These are exciting times. Intel is planning to offer a Mini-ITX mainboard that suits our customers’ requirements. Intel’s new Mini-ITX form factor mainboard, the D945GSEJT (expected release mid Q2′09), is a low-profile, super-slim platform featuring an Atom processor and mobile chipset.
So far, the engineering sample we have offers DVI, VGA, onboard LVDS, Gb LAN, 2 SATA connectors, and a PCIe Mini Card slot for wireless connectivity. What really is neat about this board is the footprint—onboard power and a low-profile design (~20 mm from the bottom of the PCB to the highest point on the board).
Intel, however, does fall slightly short (in my opinion) with the processor/chipset combination. Our customers are waiting (pleading) for a dual core atom paired with a mobile chipset. We could even settle for Intel designing this board with the new Atom N280 (FSB 667) and the GN40 chipset (better graphics support) and really deliver a premium solution for our embedded and industrial customers.
Not officially announced yet, but it is available on Intel’s Web site here: http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/385826.htm.
How To: Build A Read-Only Linux System
Posted on January 27, 2009 by Forest
Filed Under General, Linux | 31 Comments
There seem to be a lot of people out there looking to run a custom application
on a Linux-based platform running on a solid-state storage device. From time to
time, we receive questions from customers looking to make their Linux platforms
read-only in order to maximize the longevity of their flash devices. I thought
I’d take the opportunity to create a blog post describing one way to do this.
There are a couple of different approaches to making a Linux system read-only.
Unfortunately, it is usually not as simple as using a conventional filesystem
mounted with the read-only option. Many programs assume that at least some
parts of the system are writable. In some cases, these programs will fail to
run correctly if this turns out not to be the case.
I’ll outline here what I think is the best approach for most applications. It is
similar to that taken by the current generation of live CD distributions.
Live CDs typically have read-only access to a root filesystem, which is often
compressed into a single file to be mounted later using a loopback device.
Knoppix broke new ground with its use of the cloop filesystem for this purpose.
More recent live distributions take this a step further by using a union
filesystem to make the root filesystem writable. This approach is quite useful
for our purposes, as well.
Read more