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Trim-Slice Arrived - First Steps
- Trim-Slice in UPS Package
- Trim-Slice unpacked
- Trim-Slice First Boot into Ubuntu 11.04
Last week, I read again some forum posts about the Compulab Trim-Slice and.... Yes, I ordered one Trim-Slice Pro directly from Compulab in Israel! It costs $370 including shipping to Germany.
It was quite fast with UPS Saver in Dresden. Compulab shipped it on Sunday, 31th July and it arrived today on Tuesday, 2th August. Yesterday, UPS from Cologne called me to get my customs-tariff-number. I have never heard about this but I applied for one and this was enough for UPS and the customs. I only had to pay the import VAT (19%) but this will be refunded later.
Puh, it was quite easy to start the Trim-Slice. I just connected my monitor with an DVI-HDMI-cable, plugged the power and after approximately 2 minutes the Ubuntu desktop was seen. There is no boot-logo, splash-screen or text console to follow. I don't know yet, howto edit e.g. the u-boot parameters. I will see later.
The system works, even wireless seemed to work at the first glance. But later I noticed that it is quite unstable with my WPA2 protected network. I'm not sure why, but I started to compile the trimslice-kernel and to replace the included rt2800usb driver with the rt2870sta from RaLink. With no success until now :-(
At the moment, the Trim-Slice seems to be slower than my Fit-PC2 and it's getting hot because the power management is not working yet. Unfortunately, I cannot measure the power consumption at the moment. This and many other details will follow in this blog.
So stay tuned!
Update:
Accessing the u-boot is so easy. That's why the Trim-Slice has an ordinary serial port! Connected with a null-modem-cable and an USB-serial-converter, you can access the console with minicom. There you follow the boot process and you login automatically as root user. Great! My own, native compiled kernel is working now.
Upgrading fit-PC2 to Ubuntu 10.10
I've just upgraded my fit-PC2 from Ubuntu 10.04 to 10.10 and it is still running fine with the poulsbo driver!
The update process did most of the part automatically. I had to remove manually the driver xserver-xorg-video-nouveau which was installed before the update could be run. Don't ask me why...
After upgrading it is very important to reactivate the psb driver repository by hand in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gma500-ppa-lucid.list
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gma500/ppa/ubuntu maverick main # Bei Aktualisierung zu maverick deaktiviert
Otherwise the psb driver gets lost and your xserver won't work. Don't forget to do by hand a
sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade
After a reboot this was nevertheless the case but happily the console was working. The reason for this failure was the xorg.conf which changed back to the one using intels iegd. I copied the old one to xorg.conf and now it's working again.
fit-PC2 running with psb ("poulsbo") driver in Ubuntu 10.04
In my first post about my "fit PC 2", I mentioned my problems with the GMA 500 graphics and the closed source driver by Intel (iegd). Recent iegd version doesn't work with up-to-date X.org-server 1.7 in Ubuntu 10.04.
Today, I tried it again because of a post in the "fit-PC2" forum. User "fly" describes the steps you have to follow to use the psb ("poulsbo") driver with Ubuntu 10.04 on the "fit-PC 2". The following steps is only a copy of his howto:
- Install Ubuntu 10.04
- Install latest updates (will be done automatically if you use the GUI upgrade tool)
-
Add ppa:gma500 repository
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/ppa && sudo apt-get update
-
Install patched poulsbo drivers
sudo apt-get install poulsbo-driver-2d poulsbo-driver-3d poulsbo-config -
Use Compulabs xorg.conf
wget -c "http://fit-pc2.com/download/ubuntu/files/xorg.conf"
sudo mv xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf - Reboot
Unfortunately, the screen was black after the reboot and the keyboard didn't work :-(
My solution was the following:
- login via SSH on the running fit-PC2 with the black screen. Of course you should enable the sshd before upgrade!
-
rebuild the psb driver for the new running kernel 2.6.32-24-generic:
dpkg-reconfigure psb-kernel-source - Reboot
Now the 2D works perfectly for my needs. Only with audio I was fighting a short time, and suddenly it worked. Unfortunately I don't know why :-(
Tiny "fit-PC 2" Replacing Old Desktop PC
Recently I bought a "fit-PC 2" from CompuLab to replace my desktop PC at the Weltcafé reception. The predecessor was a Fujitsu Siemens computer from 2003 which replaced itself for a short time my VIA Epia EN1200.
I made a photo of these three computers and I measured approximatley the power consumption. And it's really estonishing: the tiny "fit-PC 2" is the fastest of it all and consumes only about 10 W even during watching youtube-videos.
Inside the metal box is working a single core Intel Atom Z530 with Hyper Threading at 1.6 GHz. It's equipped with 1 GB DDR2-RAM, a Samsung 250GB hard disk and even a RaLink RT3090 wireless card. There is only a HDMI-output but CompuLab includes a HDMI-DVI connector. With my DVI-VGA adaptors I cannot see any analog output but I don't need it at all.
The "fit-PC 2" comes preinstalled with Ubuntu 9.10. Of course, I tried to upgrade immediately to current Ubuntu 10.04 but afterwards the graphic output was slow and my special resolution (1440x900) failed :-(
Reason for this is the Intel Graphics inside: a GMA 500. For this you need the Intel Embedded Graphics Driver (iegd) for X.org. But this driver is closed source and it's not available yet for xorg-server 1.7 which is used in Ubuntu 10.04.
So, I had to reinstall Ubuntu 9.10 which was quite easy: download desktop ISO-image, write it with unetbootin on a USB-memory stick, boot and install. And now I'm waiting for Intel and follow the "fit-PC 2" forum for a release of Ubuntu 10.04 for "fit-PC 2".
I like this tiny device. It's sufficiant fast for my needs, it's silent (you only here the hard disk a little bit), has low power consumption and it's perfect small.
I bought my device from in Germany from SH EDV Vertrieb for 406 EUR including VAT and shipping to Germany.
Here is a /proc/cpuinfo for people like me googleing for it:
ab@ab-fit:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 28
model name : Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU Z530 @ 1.60GHz
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 800.000
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat
clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc
arch_perfmon pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3
xtpr pdcm movbe lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 3191.90
clflush size : 64
power management:
processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 28
model name : Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU Z530 @ 1.60GHz
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 800.000
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 1
apicid : 1
initial apicid : 1
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat
clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc
arch_perfmon pebs bts pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2
ssse3 xtpr pdcm movbe lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 3191.94
clflush size : 64
power management:
Via Epia EN1200 cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : CentaurHauls
cpu family : 6
model : 10
model name : VIA Esther processor 1200MHz
stepping : 9
cpu MHz : 1196.946
cache size : 128 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge cmov
pat clflush acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 tm pni est tm2 rng rng_en ace ace_en ace2
ace2_en phe phe_en pmm pmm_en
bogomips : 2393.89
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 32 bits virtual
power management: