THEC64 Mini Small Commodore C64 Replica is Now for Sale for $80

THEC64 Mini

Mini versions of retro computers and game consoles are now really a thing. After Nintendo NES Classic / SNES Classic, and Sony PlayStation Classic announcement, all of which are smaller versions of popular older consoles with modern interface like HDMI, Retro Games has now unveiled THEC64 Mini (apparently no typo) that is a small scale replica – half size to be exact – of Commodore C64 computer launched in 1982. THEC64 mini specifications based on Sunxi Wiki and official product page: SoC – Allwinner A20 dual core Cortex-A7 procesor System Memory – 512MB DDR3 Storage – TBD NAND flash Video Output – HDMI 1.4 output at 720p USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports Misc – Power button Power Supply – 5V/1A via micro USB port Dimensions – 205 x 105 x 35mm You may notice a keyboard on the photo, but that’s just for aesthetics, as the keys are […]

NanoPi NEO4 is the Cheapest & Smallest RK3399 Board So Far

As you should be well aware the RK3399 SBC market is quite crowded these days, and FriendlyELEC had already released two Rockchip RK3399 boards with NanoPC-T4, and NanoPi M4 boards. But the company  has now announced another board – as expected – with NanoPi NEO4, the smallest and cheapest RK3399 board on the market at this point. NanoPi NEO4 board specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3399 big.LITTLE hexa-core processor with  2x Arm Cortex-A72 @ up to 2.0GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.5GHz, a Mali-T864 GPU with support OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1, OpenVG1.1, OpenCL, DX11, and AFBC, and a VPU with 4K VP9 and 4K 10-bit H265/H264 decoding System Memory – 1GB DDR3-1866 Storage – eMMC module socket, micro SD card slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4K @ 60 Hz with HDCP 1.4/2.2 support Camera – 1x 4-lane MIPI-CSI connector for camera up to 13MP Connectivity – Gigabit […]

Beelink X55 Review – An Intel Gemini Lake mini PC Tested with Windows 10 and Linux

Beelink X55 board

The Beelink X55 is very similar in style to Intel’s NUC7PJYH NUC reviewed earlier except that it is not a kit but a fully functional Windows mini PC. It is physically small consisting of an approximately 4.5″ by 4” case about 1¾” tall with a front panel that includes the power button and a couple of USB ports and a headphone jack with the rest of the ports including two HDMI (2.0) ones at the rear: The specifications include: The key highlights are that the Beelink X55 comes a 128GB mSATA SSD with pre-installed Windows 10 Home together with 8GB DDR4 RAM (soldered and is non-expandable) and space plus a connector for an SSD. Starting with a quick look at the hardware information shows it is mostly aligned to the specification but see the note below about the memory: As usual I ran my standard set of benchmarking tools to […]

Texas Instruments To Finally Launch a 64-bit Processor with AM654 SoC

Sitara AM652 Block Diagram

Texas Instruments has a wide portfolio of Arm-based processors targeting industrial control with their Sitara family. So all their models, including the latest Sitara AM57x family, were based on 32-bit Arm cores. But a somewhat recent Linux mainline kernel commit reveals the company has been working on a 64-bit Arm processor family, namely AM65x family, and one the first processor will be TI AM654 “Keystone III” quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 + dual lockstep Cortex-R5F processor. The AM654 SoC is said to be a lead device of the K3 multicore SoC architecture targeting both the broad market and industrial control. Some of the key features and specifications include: CPU – Quad ARMv8 A53 cores split over two clusters GPU – PowerVR SGX544 GICv3 compliant GIC500 Configurable L3 Cache and IO-coherent architecture Dual lock-step capable R5F uC for safety-critical applications High data throughput capable distributed DMA architecture under NAVSS 3x Gigabit Industrial Communication […]

Baikal T1 MIPS Processor – The Last of the Mohicans?

Last MIPS P5600 Development Board

CNXSoft: Guest post by Blu about Baikal T1 development board and SoC, potentially one of the last MIPS consumer grade platforms ever. It took me a long time to start writing this article, even though I had been poking at the test subject for months, and I felt during that time that there were findings worth sharing with fellow embedded devs. What was holding me back was the thought that I might be seeing one of the last consumer-grade specimen of a paramount ISA that once turned upside-down the CPU world. That thought was giving me mixed feelings of part sadness, part hesitation ‒ to not do some injustice to a possibly last-of-its-kind device. So it was with these feelings that I took to writing this article. But first, a short personal story. Two winters ago I was talking to a friend of mine over beers. We were discussing CPU […]

More Details about Rockchip RK3399Pro SoC, and RK1808 NPU

RK3399Pro Block Diagram

First announced in January 2018, Rockchip RK3399Pro was supposed to be a pin-to-pin compatible with Rockchip RK3399 processor, and adding a Neural-Network Processing Unit (NPU) capable of delivering 2.4 TOPS for acceleration A.I. workloads. Shortly after Pine64 announced they’d be offering Rockpro64-AI board in August, and later on Vamrs unveils ROCK960 PRO at a Linaro Connect event with an expected Q2 2018 launch. But none of the RK3399Pro boards are available, as there have been delays with RK3399Pro, and some commented an external NPU would be launched first with further details.   But today – courtesy of Vamrs – we have some more details about RK3399Pro features, a likely explanation for the delay, and some information about Rockchip RK1808 NPU chip. Contrary to the CES 2018 announcement, Rockchip RK3399Pro will come in a 27x27mm FCBGA1372 package instead of the 22x22mm FCBGA828 package for RK3399. So pin-to-pin compatibility is out of […]

Realtek RTD1296 U-boot & Linux Source Code Released, RTD1619 Cortex A55 SoC Shows up in Code

RTD1296 Linux Source Code

Media centers based on Realtek RTD1295 or RTD1296 processors have been around for a few years. They usually run both Android and OpenWrt operating systems for respectively media functions (4K video playback, HDMI input recording…), and NAS functions like file sharing. media downloads, etc…. SinoVoIP also unveiled Banana Pi BPI-W2 board powered by RTD1296 last year, but so far I was not aware of any source code for the target. Synlogy actually released a Linux 4.4 tarball a while ago, but more recently SinoVoIP released Linux 4.9.119 and U-boot source code for RTD1296 in Github. You’ll find instructions to build from source, and flash the resulting U-boot and Kernel image from the Github page. There’s also some mainline Linux support for RTD1295, but maybe this release will help further speed up mainline support. Beside code for RTD129x (RTD1295/RTD1296), we’ll find references to RTD139x (RTD1395) a cost-down version of RTD1295, as […]

Khadas is Working on more RK3399 / RK3399Pro Boards, Projector Development Kit, AR Kit

Khadas Edge-V vs Khadas Edge

Shenzhen Wesion had already unveiled their Khadas Edge board that works both as a system-on-module and a standalone SBC thanks to an MXM3 connector on one side, and traditional HDMI and USB ports on the other. The Rockchip RK3399 board will be launched on Indiegogo a little later. But the company is working on a few more boards and development kits all based on Rockchip RK3399 or the upcoming RK3399Pro processor with neural processing unit (NPU) for AI workloads acceleration. First we have Khadas Edge-V, very similar to Khadas Edge but with a 40-pin IO header replacing the MXM3 connector, and following Khadas VIM form factor and ports, so for example we get an Ethernet port as well as an extra USB 3.0 port instead of USB 2.0 on Edge. As mentioned in Khadas Edge announcement, the company is also working on Khadas Captain carrier board with MXM3 socket. So we […]

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