ARMiniX experience?

Hi all.

I’ve been away from RISC OS for a long time, but I’m being “inexorably” drawn back to ARM/RISC OS land again and again… :) (working with Windows on a daily basis tends to do that to you…)

Recently, I came across the ARMiniX computer, and although it would be possible to build much of it oneself, I was drawn to a “turn-key solution”, as well as additional features and functionality (including a proper computer case), so I’ve sent a request for information about how to order it to R-comp. Buying one also encourages companies developing ARM/RISC OS-based computers.

I’ve got a BeagleBoard (standard) from before, so I feel this would be a nice upgrade.

Does any of you have experience with this computer, how it feels like performance-wise, and regarding stability and software compatibility?

I’d really like to get back to programming on RISC OS, and I think this one may be my ticket. :)

Regards,

Terje

Hi Terje,

Sounds like a familiar story, thankfully I largely work with UNIX though, but there’s no escaping Windows these days.
I’ve got an ARMiniX, I upgraded from a pi.
Performance wise it’s quick, the only time I’ve noticed any “slowness” isn’t due to the CPU more the applications, and those are network based or I/O ones [they need better polling techniques] so CPU isn’t the issue.

I’d generally say things are pretty instant.
Not had any compatibility issues with the PandaLand ROM, there are issues with the dev rom and amulor – maybe that’s just me?
There is a slight issue with colour weirdness at 1980×1200 above 40Hz.

Those are the only issues I’ve come across, apart from those it’s rock solid. Messenger Pro, Artworks, Easiwriter, Sparkfs, and all the commercial applications work fine without any issue that I’ve tried.
Obviously all RComp software is fine.
I’ve tried most of the PD software and no problems.
Even the “old school” games work on either !AcornMode (aka !ArcEm) or aemulator, I can’t get saloon cars to work though, but stuntracer 2000 does :-D

For me it’s rock solid, and well worth the upgrade ( I did get a lovely 1980×1200 monitor as well from RComp to go with it :-D )

RComp are in the Netherlands at the moment doing a show I believe.

PS. I am biased to RComp, personally I think with good reason. Nothing against any of the other vendors, it’s a combination of history and great customer service – which I am sure all of the RISC OS supplies provide. I haven’t heard any negative feedback from any of the others and no reason to suspect there is any.
Just thought I’d clarify my bias isn’t based on bad service from anyone.

Hi Terje.

Have you considered the PandaRO? We have a few additional wrinkles and options to our Pandaboard offering and are cheaper than the ARMiniX!
Please see www.pandaro.co.uk for details.
n.b. The web site doesn’t have the latest upgraded specs yet. I will try and get that done tomorrow.

Chris

Hi Malcolm.

Thanks a lot for your thoughtful reply.

Chris: Wow, I didn’t even know there were multiple PandaBoard-based offerings available… I’m happy that several companies now have picked up the torch after Castle… :)

I’ll look into the PandaRO, thanks.

Malcolm is right. RComp will be tomorrow at the RISC OS eXperience 2013 in Koog aan de Zaan (just north of Amsterdam. So if you live near to Amsterdam you could bring them a visit.
More info about the RISC OS eXperience is here

Hi Leo.

Yes, I was told by RComp that they would be there. Unfortunately, I can’t be there this weekend, and having been away from the community for a few years, I wasn’t even aware of that there would be this show in Amsterdam.

I’m happy that the community seems more vibrant than ever, with several “turn-key” computers being offered. A few years ago, the only way to get a RISC OS system up and running was the BeagleBoard/PandaBoard, but now you may get them as “proper computers”.

I’m still very fond of ARM/RISC OS, and I’d liked to get back to projects with it, such as this.

This would help prepare the way for RISC OS running on 64-bit ARM processors…

I’m also happy that we now have an OpenGL implementation for RISC OS, if only using software rendering for now.

Going back to ARMiniX vs PandaRO:

I notice that the latter has as an option a 16-160 GB SSD drive and SATA. One of the things I noticed about the BeagleBoard was a rather slow I/O with the hard drive over USB. The bottleneck may well be in RISC OS, though (certainly the synchronous file operations makes the computer itself much slower than it would need to be during I/O, but it shouldn’t affect the I/O speed itsefl), but does anyone have an idea about, or experience of, how much, if any, use of SSD, and SATA in particular, may help increase I/O performance for these computers?

We haven’t really advertised the RISC OS eXperience abroad.

About the SATA interface: The pandaboard website does not mention a SATA interface, so I think it must be added by CJE (possibly as an USB<→SATA thingy). But that is just a guess. If you want the SATA performance boost (and not be throttled by USB) I would ask Chris about this.

Thanks for your insights, I’ll ask CJE about it.

SATA: I for one will be interested in CJE’s response. At the moment my RISC OS platform of choice is RPCEmu0.8.10 running RO5.19, which which on my Win7/64 PC gives approx. 98MB/sec HD reads, and 71MB/sec writes under RISCOSmark 1.01 (1MB file in each case). OTOH the ARMiniX/PandaRO CPU performance would be much better – I’m getting 610k MIPS.

The answer I got was that it’s a USB-to-SATA bridge, so it won’t give speed advantages over using USB.

On native hardware the best “disk” perfomance is by using SDFS (or FAT32fs on another partition) and a suitably quick SD-Card.

The limitation is the size as the maximum size of SD-Card that the PandaBoard ES can handle is 32GB in total.

Various of us that have gone down the DIY route have posted up speeds in other threads in these forums.

Project posh and Project cool (my DIY RISC OS PandaBoards) just use 8GB cards and I store everything else on a NAS as the ethernet is also over USB so there’s no point in having a local large hard drive.

Thanks for that update, Keith.

Does anyone have a link to postings about performance for various types of SD cards?

Personally I use 45MB/sec 32GB Sandisk Extreme.
Reliability is also a problem with SD cards, so bear that in mind.
Hence I also store most of my important stuff on a NAS like Keith.
As regards the USB to sata for CD, it’s not 100% reliable (heavy load seems to bork the whole thing)- I certainly wouldn’t recommend the USB drivers for reliable storage devices at the moment.
I would love to have a quicker and little bit more native network filesystem that works with linux.
I’ll add that to my list of projects, not sure where that will come in the list though, I’ve enough to keep me going for a few years at the moment!

I use hard drives in all my RISC OS computers as the main storage system for daily use. On my BB C4 since 2010. No problems and the writing speed is faster than on my NAS.
I have tried different 16 and 32GB cards without HD, since SDFS works. Two cards are now complete death. Not repairable.
Furthermore, I use some DVDWriter with CDVDBurn. No problems since 2010. All CDs are still readable, also some MP3 CDs for my car.

I just wanted to touch base again and say that I’ve now received my ARMiniX computer, and I’m very happy about it. :)

Hi Terje, it’s a fantastic machine with a kick ass OS!
Enjoy :-D

Hello

Are there any major issues regarding compatibility?

Regards

Are there any major issues regarding compatibility?

I haven’t had a chance to do extensive testing of it, yet, but it appears that more or less what’s listed as compatible in the Cortex A8 compatibility list works here, as well.