What you should have bought instead of a Mele

http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Vizio-Co-Star-Teardown/10187/1

Vizio Costar has dual-core 1.2ghz processor, and a video coprocessor, more ram, hdmi in as well as out. It is close to the same price as a Mele, and it's sold in the US.

Most importantly, it is zMarvell like the Dockstar. The kernel is already mainlined.

The device needs hacking like the Dockstar. Nobody has done it yet!

. . .are you listening Jeff?

The A10's are best left to us masochists ;)

Thanks gnexus! can you believe it's already sold out?!

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can you believe it's already sold out?!

Hell yeah!

With the Mele only sold in China, and this with much better specs, a way better remote, and decent advertising, it should be extremely popular if they can get supply up before the hype wears out.

I think this box would make a much better server replacement for the Kirkwoods than a Mele. It has lots of advantages:

• Dual-core cpu at 1.2GHz
• large L-2 cache
• 1GB ram
• video - in
• Vivante GC1000 3D GPU - this is the same GPU as in the Armada-powered OLPC. So Linux drivers will obviously exist
• high-performance Gigabit Ethernet (dual support is in the SoC) with stable drivers that don't cripple your cpu like Mele
• the Armada SoC in this box has SATA 3.0 support and 7.1 spdif - not sure if we could get the SATA working
• ARMv7 compatible with Neon - so it supports all the newer armhf distros than Kirkwood does not
• Marvell Armada support is already in the mainline Linux kernel - there are already Armada-based servers available
• Well-built and stable kernel drivers and u-boot - unlike the funky A10 crap which is still a work in progress
• Build quality to an International, not low-end Chinese, standard

More from CNX about this chip:
The chip also offers VMeta, a multi-format video decoder/encoder/transcoder that can decode up to two simultaneous 1080p streams encoded with different codecs such as H.264, VC-1, MPEG2/4, VP8, AVS, etc… But there may be some issues with codec support.

It looks like all the Google TV devices will be based around this chip. One thing is worrying it that the SoC contains a "secure boot rom" component. But the Sony Google TV box has already been rooted. . .

If we can get Debian on it then, even without any working video at all, which is highly unlikely, it would be the new Dockstar! Since the Visio is currently a US device I think it would be a good project for Jeff.

Yes the platform seems great, Yes the marketing is nice, Yes i would like to try one for that price... but happiness never comes alone.

it's the same sales strategy as the raspberry pi... They are taking orders (and pre-orders for the most civilized companies) and will only go to production with a huge number of orders.
(i'm waiting for a Pi since 3 months). The real price of a Pi B is not $35, it's the price you could find it on ebay with a 5 day delivery around $65.

The shipping cycle goes stupid and they are ruining their product... time to market.

For now, i will stick with the A10. At least, Mele seems to provide.

Guillaume,

in respect of the pi, you should have no problems with orders now it seems to be taking a couple of weeks max now between placing an order and receiving it (in UK) thats what i found anyway when i bought half a dozen (RS) for the local primary school near where i live. The great advantage of the pi is that although the hardware is very CPU limited, it has fabulous professional support/community and the SOC maker (broadcom) takes a keen interest in it as well ... i hope they get on to a pi2 with a beefier spec which may very well sit nicely alongside the current model in their strategy.

The problem with the Mele (and all these Allwinner devices) is simply the fact that its the "chinese way", Allwinner does things in a quick and dirty manner with little support other than churning out a reference platform and limited drivers/support materials to a select few "customers" ... the likes of Marvell or TI have a totally different and far more professional and sustainable approach ..

for me i'm sure we will see pretty soon a small sub $100 tegra 3 quad core or similar with a decent linux source/drivers released alongside
- i live in hope anyway :-)

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the pi is that although the hardware is very CPU limited, it has fabulous professional support/community

Well, that was what I was trying to overcome by helping to jump start this forum. . . But to my dismay the response so far has been less than overwhelming, IMHO. We'll see what happens at a10linux.org, though, before I start to give up for good.

The A10 is superior in every respect to a pi, such as in performance and Open-source support, except the communtity. The Raspi people have done a very good job, with the help of Broadcom, at pushing such a low-powered device with a closed GPU. It is all down to Liz and Eben and their excellent marketing (and you can't tell me there is not a small profit motive for somebody - such as Broadcom and the UK govt., and the extra perks for Eben, in it)

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a small sub $100 tegra 3

But Tegra is also a closed GPU. . . Nvidia always disses the open source community - just ask Linus.

That is why I like the Google TV devices. Marvell has had their open-source issues themselves. But the GPU in the Google TV Marvell SoC is to be used also by OLPC. So it should have decent open-source support.

The A10 will eventually get full open source GPU support, and a new multi-core SoC is on its way. We'll see how that goes.

gnexus

IMHO the A10 is already on its last legs (allwinner will kill it off rapidly when they start to churn out en masse their new dual core part) , and the A10 opensource linux support is pretty poor compared to the likes of the plug computers .. the current A10 linux source is a mess of cobbled together android and linux bits and pieces with old and partially/non-working drivers thrown in here and there .. and as far as i can see theres one guy thats put in clearly a huge effort on GIT to pull it all together without any of Allwinner's help with drivers etc ... hes basically on a hiding to nothing ...

i suspect the reason you are not having the response you wanted, is that very few people that would hack devices actually have an A10 device ... remember the plug computer sold millions of the device (and the dockstar in a hp touchbook type firesale for $10 or less) by in large to people by virtue of the product would probably be interested in hacking it .. all it took really after this was a nice user friendly script from Jeff and it took off ..

I agree that MELE has much better hardware than dockstar and RPi, that is also the reason i bought one. But the linux hacking experience is much worse than either dockstar or RPi. I tried various images from the internet, no one gives me a stable boot into linux(Debian). I doubt that the community can get official support from A10 company for linux driver and etc.

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But the linux hacking experience is much worse than either dockstar or RPi

That is why this forum, and also http://a10linux.org, was created. If people participate in the forums, and describe the issues where there are problems, then they can be easily overcome. If that does not happen, well, you reap what you sow. . .

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I tried various images from the internet, no one gives me a stable boot into linux(Debian)

Have you tried the information and images from http://a10linux.org? They should be very stable. If there are issues with them I need to know what the issues are so we can get the issues fixed.

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I doubt that the community can get official support from Allwinner

That is correct. Allwinner will not support GNU/Linux, only Android, and only through the board vendors. The Linux support is up to us. But it has always been that way with most Linux platforms such as early x86 and also Dockstar. If people use the platform, and contribute their experiences, it will improve quickly since the hardware is completely open. If people do not contribute - then again they will reap what they sow. . .

If you wish to help then you should try the images from http://a10linux.org and then relate your experiences to help improve the stability and features. I will continue to support the platform, but if there are issues I need to know what they are.

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javatmn
I tried various images from the internet, no one gives me a stable boot into linux(Debian).

Unstable boot:
You probably have the u-boot bug, read this: http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?6,9527

And the sata bug, read this: http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?6,9597

Or wait for the new gnexus release ;-)

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Or wait for the new gnexus release ;-)

He may be waiting a very long time unless you help to answer my questions about the SPL. . .

From Visio store:

This item is currently in stock @ $99.

Somebody please get one, so we can start hacking!

I would buy one myself - but I don't have any $$$ - only €€€. . .