Over the last several weeks – it actually seems like months, but it is really only weeks – I’ve been prototyping software running on an i.MX27 reference board using embedded Linux and LTIB.
Words really cannot describe just how completely sucky that processor and development environment are. In order to do anything useful, you have to spend several weeks cobbling together a kernel and root file system that contain support for the various features (like, for example, the SD card reader, the USB port, the mouse, touchscreen, and so on) that the board supports. To do that, you need cross-compiler. This is all *supposed* to be easily done with LTIB but, as pretty much everyone who has tried it has discovered, it really is an amazingly large pain in butt to accomplish.
So, essentially, I hate the i.MX27 and all it stands for. Which means that sometime late last week I got really motivated to show people an alternative and that led to me going to Best Buy and getting myself a bright shiny new Asus Eee 1000 PC with the sole intent of showing people just how much faster even a slow Atom processor was than that POS ARM926EJ-S. How does 78ms compared to 500ms for the same prototype sound to you? Oh yeah, the Atom blows that motherfucker away in performance and isn’t very far behind it in TDP.
Thinking of prototypes, seeing my new shiny toy getting all grubby and dirty sitting on the table, and watching Kerry sewing clothes got me to thinking that I needed to go native and start designing netbook sleeves.
So here I am, a couple of hours later, with a prototype netbook sleeve made out of old sheets. Tomorrow, the real product release will occur.
February 28th, 2009 | 
