News Marvell announces Plug Computer 3.0

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/01/06/marvell-announces-plug-computer-3-0/1

 

limited use due to ARM IS, but I can see it being useful to some. need to see price though...

 

Wouldn't LAN over power lines have been a great inclusion in the networking side of things?

If they could fit a NET top into that form factor I'm sure there would be a market for it.

 

Not really sure why being ARM based is that limiting - aside from MS Webservers, etc. what would you use this for that can be done on Windows but not Linux?

Finally a torrent box to replace my eee 901

 

Or...

I'm currently using a hacked NSLU2 as an SSH gateway into my home network ... I still don't trust Remote Desktop exposed directly to the net.

This kind of thing would be a perfect replacement and allow better use of the bandwidth on the ADSL2+ line when copying big files...

 

This looks like just the sort of thing I could do with for a client at work. They want a screen mounted on a wall running some sort of presentation. (we are thinking probably flash based) depending on price, these would fit the bill nicely!

Although, does it have any sort of monitor connection!?

 

The CPU on the Sheeva at least does support VGA out, however the plug itself has a *very* limited subset of the ports that the CPU can handle (1xGigE, 1xUSB, 1xSD and thats it)

However there is a dev box version that includes all ports including the VGA out (http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-openrdcdetails.aspx). Of course this thing costs more though

I run one of the sheeva plugs at home - its quite handy - acts as an SSH gateway (tunneled RDC to my home Win7 box == win) and web services platform (including torrentflux). More onboard storage would be nice (currently I just have a USB HDD plugged in) and PoE would be awesome, but I'm guessing the platform, lean as it is, still draws more juice than PoE can handle...

 

Nice and stable linux + torrentflux + good internet = niiiice seedbox for almost nothing?

WIN!

 

They can only get so much in - I think they've done well to include the most popular Ethernet connectivity methods in a device that's the same size as most HomePlug adapters!

For anyone bothered about the ARM problem, Ubuntu has ARM ports as of Karmic (9.10) and broader support is surely to follow in Lucid (10.04).

Personally I'd love to use one of these with m0n0wall. Add a CDC USB Ethernet adapter and you'll have a, low-power, two port firewall/router with Wi-FI and IPv6 support amongst other things.

 

i don't see why people use these it would be much easier to set up a server using windows media server and use an eepc or a pc with a micro atx board with a terabytes hdd it should only cost about £150-200 for the hardware and for software there are loads of free alternatives

 

the way i see it, ARM may be a limitation at the moment, but if this does gain popularity support for the ARM instruction set will increase massively. I personally don't like the fact that x86 has remained the only mainstream instruction set for so long, everything else in computer technology is constantly changing, and i would be supprised if there were no way to make an instruction set more efficient than x86 is now. i know the difference probably wouldn't be huge, and i'm no expert on how instruction sets work, but technology isn't supposed to be static.

 

Two words:

Power.
Consumption.

'nuff sed.

 

I would dearly love to see something like this but with 4+ ethernet controllers. It would then make an awesome gateway.

I don't see ARM as being, in any way, a limitation. I know of at least one freely available cross-compiler so any perceived 'limitation' is down to the user IMHO.