Thinking about a Pandaboard ES

Title says all..

Would like to get a Pandaboard ES and use RISC OS on it. I saw that video issues might be present. Can I still use 1080p like my Pi? How do older games run.. say in Aemulor? What about the screen modes there? Primarily i’ll be using NetSurf and Fireworkz, Grapevine, etc. Not too much emulation but I am looking for more speed. any other downsides or pluses? Or should I get a Pi 2 and over clock it and call it a day? :)

Chris

1080p : Yes. Gaming, hum, 88 kHz sound can cause many problems. Low res screen modes too. But some games run, with or without Aemulor…

Since I have change my server ofr a Linux box, I have a few Pandaboard to sell on eBay (low price).
http://www.ebay.fr/itm/251936934841
http://www.ebay.fr/itm/251936936635

I still have one for me. A very fast computer :)

Would like to get a Pandaboard ES and use RISC OS on it.

Having bought an ARMX6, I also have one for sale in a Mini ITX case (same case as the ARMiniX – but it is NOT an ARMiniX!). Comes with a 32GB Class 10 SD Card pre-loaded to run straight out of the box. Email me at andy hyphen marks at tesco dot net if you would like more details and photos.

Might be worth contacting R-Comp too — I’m pretty sure they have a second-hand ArminiX (Pandaboard) for sale. The advantage there is you get their support with problems and the knowledge it’s been tested and set up properly.

I can confirm that we (R-Comp Interactive) have several pandaboards and chassis/machines in stock, new and second hand.

We also offer our new ARMX6 kits, although they are more expensive, if you’re looking for something more capable (eg. native SATA, gigabit ethernet etc).

Panda makes a great step up from Pi, most certainly. But equally, the majority of the posters on this thread are on ARMX6 now, for what it is worth. RISC OS is blessed with much wonderful hardware now :)

Seriously? Nobody wants a Panda ES for around thirty four quid?

http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/251951002508

David is listing it for €30, with €16.50 P&P, which ebay translates as being £21.54 and £11.85 respectively.

There’s also the slightly slower Panda (regular) – http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/251951000282 for about twenty six quid.

A quick look shows his two are the best offer in town right now – http://m.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?nkw=Pandaboard&_pgn=1&sop=15 ; I’d get one of them myself if I wasn’t saving for a Pi2 (and repaying the contrôle technique (MOT)).

There’s 22 hours left on this auction.

RISC OS is blessed with much wonderful hardware now :)

Certainly is!

I was thinking about this, and those who want to stick with their older RiscPC machines and, OS differences aside, there seemed to be several good reasons to think about upgrading, even if the version of RISC OS doesn’t include “your favourite widget”:

• I’m not going to talk about processor speed. If your main use of the machine is stuff like word processing, the only difference between a 40MHz core and a 1GHz core is in how many cycles the machine can waste between each keypress. It may be more interesting to you if you want to play mp3s, use a modern web browser, etc…

• No longer are you constrained by what you can eke out of 2MiB VRAM. Want 16 million colours on a 1440×900 display? No problem for a Pi!

• Better support for more commonplace hardware. SD cards? USB sticks? 100mbit ethernet? No problems. I use all three between my Pi and PC. However when talking to the RiscPC, it’s floppy discs and 10baseT time. [USB and 100mbit exists for older machines, but it isn’t cheap!]

• Now here is the one that I really noticed. What is the average current draw of a RiscPC? Compare that with a Pi, or indeed any of the SBCs. The Beagle xM I run off an old iomega power pack, the Pi runs off a tablet charger. When they’re on, you can barely notice the electricity meter turn. I’ve not measured the draw but I think you’ll find that not only is a modern device able to waste many more cycles between keypresses, it does so much more efficiently. In the end, a cheaper system to run.

• Plus, obviously, this is where the action is. ;-)

I’ve sent you an email Andrew..

Chris

I really like how efficient my Pi is running RISC OS. I really need something with more ooomf for movie playback and web browsing. I can’t imagine an ArmMini or ArmX6

The Pi works quite happily with 720P HD video, subtitle overlays, etc – and ought to cope with 1080P FullHD though my video adaptor didn’t like it when I tried (configuration issue?).
The problem is that the software to do this sort of thing comes as a binary blob on Linux so it isn’t a lot of help to us… :-(

Speaking of video, one of the Belgian RISC OS folks brought some MPEG4 test files (and others) to the Dutch show last weekend. His Pi (RISC OS) was struggling at about 2-seconds-per-frame (MPEG4 TV clips/trailers). They ran smoothly on ARMX6, even from his USB stick. I would imagine Panda to be in the same ballpark (untested). There’s a huge gulf between Pi etc, and another huge gulf between Pi and RPC.

Chris C. We also have PandaBoard based RISC OS systems at extremely good prices including Baby PandaRO’s which are small and I think amazing value! My email address is chris@cjemicros.co.uk

They ran smoothly on ARMX6, even from his USB stick.

Is the ARMX6 decoding the MPEG4 in software? The pi will be if it’s only 2 frames per second. Doesn’t the pi have hardware video support which isn’t used? I wouldn’t expect USB performance to be much better on an ARMX6 so with hardware video I’d expect the pi to play the same video.

It would be nice to get videos played in netsurf.

To play videos Netsurf’ would have to support HTML 5—which it doesn’t.

On the Pi, using Raspbian, the Epiphany web browser supports HTML 5 and uses hardware graphics acceleration. Also on Raspbian, omxplayer can be used to play videos using the hardware.

Doesn’t the pi have hardware video support which isn’t used?

from Rick earlier:

The problem is that the software to do this sort of thing comes as a binary blob on Linux so it isn’t a lot of help to us… :-(

That’s referencing the use of the GPU in the Pi.

Sort of ignoring the tautology in “binary blob”.

ISTR that Broadcom released the code to the VideoCore element of the Pi’s hardware—so it would be theoretically possible to make use of this on RISC OS.

One of the disappointing things on the Pi is that although the GPU accelerates video, it doesn’t accelerate GL (under X)

I’ll look after Davids Pandaboards.

Another question.. i’d like a partition greater than 2GB as on my PI. If I get a 128GB SD card, do you partition it for the full size, drop the neccesary boot files and then you are good to go? Or do you need a boot partition with the RISC files on a different partition?

Chris

ISTR that Broadcom released the code to the VideoCore element of the Pi’s hardware

No, they basically released a set of shims for the API and dressed it up as “an open source driver”.

In the Linux world, there was an open source kernel driver, a closed source user-land bit of code, and a big binary blob that deals with all the GPU stuff (and since one could arguably say on the Pi architecture that the ARM is the co-processor to the GPU, that binary blob does a lot).
What was open sourced was the userland part. Basically the glue code between the kernel driver and the GPU’s closed driver.

It may have some application, but it is far from “the code to the VideoCore element”.

Sort of ignoring the tautology in “binary blob”.

The phrase implies that the “binary blob” is all you get, and it is generally used in a pejorative sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_blob

tautology in “binary blob”.

The phrase implies that the “binary blob” is all you get

Hum. Blob ==> Binary Large OBject

Tautology ==> Saying the same thing twice over in different words.

It is also a play on words, as “blob” is a word in English. Both interpretations are valid, though personally I ignore the “Binary Large OBject” as it sounds too much like a backronym.

PS: I know what tautology means. ;-) My link is more fun.

Only it’s not a tautology since the two words don’t belong to the same class. It’s a pleonasm.

It’s a pleonasm

I thought that was the name of the new assembler :)