Depending on your point of view, GOLE 10 is a mini PC with a touchscreen display, or a really thick tablet with an inclined display. I’ve already received a sample, and had a look at the hardware in the first part of the review, so in the second I tested the performance and stability, and thought about and test some use cases for this type of products. GOLE 10 (aka F6) Setup and System Info There are various way to use the mini PC, either as a standalone screen without any peripheral connected using the touchscreen, or as a mini PC with USB keyboard and mouse and potential other accessories, or in a dual display setup with the device connected to an HDMI TV or monitor. I decided to connect it to my “test” TV, add a USB 3.0 drive, USB keyboard and mouse, Ethernet cable, and of course the […]
Ikascope WS200 Oscilloscope and ScanaQuad SQ50 Logic Analyzer & Pattern Generator Review – Part 1: Unboxing
IkaScope WS200 WiFi oscilloscope fits in your hand like a pen, and works with devices running desktop or mobile operating systems, namely Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Android, and iOS. I covered the tool last September, and IkaLogic – the French startup behind the project – has now sent me a sample for review, as well as their ScanaQuad SQ50 4-channel logic analyzer and pattern generator. Since I had never checked out the latter, I’ve decided to start the review with an unboxing post, before reporting my experience actually using the tools next month. IkaScope WS200 Wireless Oscilloscope Probe The oscilloscope comes with a ground clip, a micro USB to USB cable for charging, and a getting started guide with a QR code to download IkaScope program or app. Once you open it, it really looks like an over-sized Stabilo highlighter. The only needed hardware connection needs is the ground […]
MINIX NEO N42C-4 Pro Review – Part 3: Ubuntu / Linux
In the second part of MINIX NEO N42C-4 review (and on linuxium website), we looked at the device and the performance using Windows. In this third part, we will look at how to install and the performance of using Linux (Ubuntu). The BIOS does not include an option to select Linux as a boot OS and a standard Ubuntu ISO written to a USB will not boot. So to install Ubuntu to the eMMC as dual-boot first it was necessary to respin a standard Ubuntu ISO using my ‘isorespin.sh’ script with the ‘–apollo’ option, and which after creating a LiveUSB using the ‘dd’ command was used to boot and install Ubuntu. First let’s remind ourselves of the hardware configuration by running some standard Linux commands:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 |
linuxium@N42C-4:~$ lsb_release -a Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 17.04 Release: 17.04 Codename: zesty linuxium@N42C-4:~$ linuxium@N42C-4:~$ uname -a Linux N42C-4 4.10.0-19-generic #21-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 6 17:04:57 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux linuxium@N42C-4:~$ linuxium@N42C-4:~$ inxi -Fc0 System: Host: N42C-4 Kernel: 4.10.0-19-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: N/A Distro: Ubuntu 17.04 Machine: Device: desktop Mobo: MINIX model: N42C-4 v: Default string serial: Default string UEFI: American Megatrends v: 5.12 date: 11/14/2017 CPU: Quad core Intel Pentium N4200 (-MCP-) cache: 1024 KB clock speeds: max: 2500 MHz 1: 897 MHz 2: 2394 MHz 3: 1333 MHz 4: 2319 MHz Graphics: Card: Intel Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series Integrated Graphics Controller Display Server: X.org 1.19.3 drivers: modesetting (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) tty size: 204x62 Advanced Data: N/A for root Audio: Card Intel Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series Audio Cluster driver: snd_hda_intel Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.10.0-19-generic Network: Card-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: r8169 IF: enp1s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: a0:1e:0b:09:64:59 Card-2: Intel Device 24fb driver: iwlwifi IF: wlp2s0 state: down mac: 5e:8e:91:6c:84:80 Drives: HDD Total Size: NA (-) ID-1: /dev/mmcblk0 model: N/A size: 31.3GB Partition: ID-1: / size: 9.8G used: 5.8G (62%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/mmcblk0p5 RAID: No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 47.0C mobo: N/A Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A Info: Processes: 212 Uptime: 7 min Memory: 633.4/3796.5MB Client: Shell (review-tests.sh) inxi: 2.3.8 linuxium@N42C-4:~$ linuxium@N42C-4:~$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on udev 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /dev tmpfs 380M 6.3M 374M 2% /run /dev/mmcblk0p5 9.8G 5.8G 3.6G 62% / tmpfs 1.9G 12K 1.9G 1% /dev/shm tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock tmpfs 1.9G 0 1.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/mmcblk0p2 96M 74M 23M 77% /boot/efi tmpfs 380M 172K 380M 1% /run/user/1000 /dev/mmcblk0p4 19G 17G 2.1G 90% /media/linuxium/309476E59476ACCA tmpfs 380M 0 380M 0% /run/user/0 linuxium@N42C-4:~$ linuxium@N42C-4:~$ lsblk -a NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT loop0 7:0 0 0 loop loop1 7:1 0 0 loop loop2 7:2 0 0 loop loop3 7:3 0 0 loop loop4 7:4 0 0 loop loop5 7:5 0 0 loop loop6 7:6 0 0 loop loop7 7:7 0 0 loop mmcblk0 179:0 0 29.1G 0 disk ├─mmcblk0p1 179:1 0 499M 0 part ├─mmcblk0p2 179:2 0 100M 0 part /boot/efi ├─mmcblk0p3 179:3 0 16M 0 part ├─mmcblk0p4 179:4 0 18.5G 0 part /media/linuxium/309476E59476ACCA └─mmcblk0p5 179:5 0 10G 0 part / mmcblk0boot0 179:8 0 4M 1 disk mmcblk0boot1 179:16 0 4M 1 disk mmcblk0rpmb 179:24 0 4M 0 disk linuxium@N42C-4:~$ linuxium@N42C-4:~$ sudo lshw -C cpu *-cpu description: CPU product: Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU N4200 @ 1.10GHz vendor: Intel Corp. physical id: 34 bus info: cpu@0 version: Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU N4200 @ 1.10GHz slot: SOCKET 0 size: 2399MHz capacity: 2500MHz width: 64 bits clock: 100MHz capabilities: x86-64 fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp constant_tsc art arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology tsc_reliable nonstop_tsc aperfmperf tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave rdrand lahf_lm 3dnowprefetch cat_l2 intel_pt tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase tsc_adjust smep erms mpx rdt_a rdseed smap clflushopt sha_ni xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves dtherm ida arat pln pts cpufreq configuration: cores=4 enabledcores=4 threads=4 linuxium@N42C-4:~$ linuxium@N42C-4:~$ sudo lshw -C memory *-firmware description: BIOS vendor: American Megatrends Inc. physical id: 0 version: 5.12 date: 11/14/2017 size: 64KiB capacity: 5056KiB capabilities: pci upgrade shadowing cdboot bootselect socketedrom edd int13floppy1200 int13floppy720 int13floppy2880 int5printscreen int9keyboard int14serial int17printer acpi usb biosbootspecification uefi *-memory description: System Memory physical id: 2e slot: System board or motherboard size: 4GiB *-bank:0 description: SODIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1600 MHz (0.6 ns) product: M471B5173EB0-YK0 vendor: Samsung physical id: 0 serial: 96537C8F slot: ChannelA-DIMM0 size: 4GiB width: 64 bits clock: 1600MHz (0.6ns) *-bank:1 description: DIMMProject-Id-Version: lshwReport-Msgid-Bugs-To: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>POT-Creation-Date: 2009-10-08 14:02+0200PO-Revision-Date: 2012-02-02 13:04+0000Last-Translator: Joel Addison <jaddi27@gmail.com>Language-Team: English (Australia) <en_AU@li.org>MIME-Version: 1.0Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bitX-Launchpad-Export-Date: 2017-04-04 11:54+0000X-Generator: Launchpad (build 18335) [empty] physical id: 1 slot: ChannelB-DIMM0 *-cache:0 description: L1 cache physical id: 32 slot: CPU Internal L1 size: 224KiB capacity: 224KiB capabilities: synchronous internal write-back configuration: level=1 *-cache:1 description: L2 cache physical id: 33 slot: CPU Internal L2 size: 2MiB capacity: 2MiB capabilities: synchronous internal write-back unified configuration: level=2 linuxium@N42C-4:~$ linuxium@N42C-4:~$ free -mh total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 3.7G 573M 2.4G 158M 744M 2.8G Swap: 472M 0B 472M linuxium@N42C-4:~$ linuxium@N42C-4:~$ sudo lshw -C network *-network description: Ethernet interface product: RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0 logical name: enp1s0 version: 07 serial: a0:1e:0b:09:64:59 size: 1Gbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=rtl8168e-3_0.0.4 03/27/12 ip=XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=1Gbit/s resources: irq:369 ioport:e000(size=256) memory:a1200000-a1200fff memory:c0000000-c0003fff *-network description: Wireless interface product: Intel Corporation vendor: Intel Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0 logical name: wlp2s0 version: 10 serial: 5e:8e:91:6c:84:80 width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=4.10.0-19-generic firmware=22.361476.0 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11 resources: irq:373 memory:a1100000-a1101fff linuxium@N42C-4:~$ linuxium@N42C-4:~$ dmesg | grep "MMC card" [ 2.456272] mmc0: new HS400 MMC card at address 0001 linuxium@N42C-4:~$ linuxium@N42C-4:~$ lsusb Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 8087:0aa7 Intel Corp. Bus 001 Device 005: ID 046d:c52b Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver Bus 001 Device 004: ID 10d5:55a4 Uni Class Technology Co., Ltd Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1a40:0101 Terminus Technology Inc. Hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub linuxium@N42C-4:~$ linuxium@N42C-4:~$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series Host Bridge (rev 0b) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0b) 00:0e.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series Audio Cluster (rev 0b) 00:0f.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series Trusted Execution Engine (rev 0b) 00:12.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series SATA AHCI Controller (rev 0b) 00:13.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series PCI Express Port A #2 (rev fb) 00:13.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series PCI Express Port A #3 (rev fb) 00:15.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series USB xHCI (rev 0b) 00:1c.0 SD Host controller: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series eMMC Controller (rev 0b) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series Low Pin Count Interface (rev 0b) 00:1f.1 SMBus: Intel Corporation Celeron N3350/Pentium N4200/Atom E3900 Series SMBus Controller (rev 0b) 01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 07) 02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Device 24fb (rev 10) linuxium@N42C-4:~$ |
This shows the memory will be dual-channel once the second slot (bank:1) is populated and also confirms that the eMMC 5.1 (mmc0) is running […]
MINIX NEO N42C-4 Mini PC Review – Part 2: Windows 10 Pro
MINIX NEO N42C-4 is the first Apollo Lake mini PC from the company, which also happens to be their first one with a fan, using internal antennas for WiFi and Bluetooth, and offering user-upgradeable storage and memory thanks to M.2 and SO-DIMM slots. The device also features three video output via HDMI 2.0, mini DiplayPort, and USB Type C ports supporting up to three independent display. I’ve received a sample and already checked the hardware, and showed how to install an M.2 SSD and SO-DIMM RAM to the device in the first part of the review entitled MINIX NEO N42C-4 Triple Display Capable Mini PC Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Teardown, so I’ll report my experience with Windows 10 Pro in the second part of the review, and there should also be a third part specifically dealing with Linux support. MINIX NEO N42C-4 Setup, System Info, BIOS The device […]
How to Use Khadas VIM2 Board with VTV Expansion DTV Board as a Live TV Streaming Server
Khadas VIM2 is the first and only Amlogic S912 based hobbyist development board on the market, which makes it interesting by itself, but the company also added some interesting features such as an SPI flash for network boot, Wake-on-LAN support, and more. Last month the company sent me a sample of the Khadas VIM2 Basic (2GB RAM/16GB flash) together with VTV Extension DTV Board featuring a DVB-T2/C and DVB-S2 tuner. I’ve already checkout the hardware and shown how to assemble the kit, so for the second part of the review it seemed like a good idea to use the board as a Live TV streaming server broadcasting satellite, cable or terrestrial TV to devices connected to the local network. At first I wanted to use Linux operating system, because I could have run other Linux server services, but SuperDVB, the company that makes and supports the tuner board, only have […]
MINIX NEO N42C-4 Triple Display Capable Mini PC Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Teardown
MINIX NEO N42C-4 mini PC was first unveiled last September at IFA 2017, as the first Apollo Lake mini PC from the company. The device has some interesting features like the possibility to upgrade the RAM thanks to two SO-DIMM slots, and storage via an M.2 SSD slot, and support for up to three display via HDMI 1.4, mini DisplayPort 1.2, and USB type C connector. Just like MINIX NEO Z83-4 Pro model, the device is pre-loaded with an activated version of Windows 10 Pro, and includes a VESA mount. The company has now officially launched the device, with sales starting at the end of December for US$299.90 / 299.90 Euros on sites like Amazon [Update: NEO N42C-4 is now up for pre-order on GearBest]. MINIX has sent me a unit for review, so as usual, I’ll start by checking out of hardware, before testing Windows 10 Pro, system performance […]
QNAP QBoat Sunny Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Closer Look, and Initial Setup
We spotted the QBoat Sunny at QNAP’s booth back at CES in January and much has changed since then. Not only did QNAP change from an Intel based solution to an ARM based one, but the product seems to have shifted from being a development board to a strange kind of IoT server. The QBoat Sunny sample that QNAP provided for us to look at is based on the Annapurna Labs AL-314 quad core ARM Cortex-A15 SoC which is clocked at 1.7GHz. This has been paired with 2GB of DDR3L RAM (non-expandable) and 512MB of NAND flash that isn’t user accessible, much as on their NAS products. This simply contains the core parts of the QTS Lite OS. As such, you need to install an M.2 SATA SSD to be able to get started with the QBoat Sunny. QNAP provides a list of compatible SSDs on its website, although some […]
Zotac ZBOX PI225 Review – SSD-Like Mini PC Tested with Windows 10 & Ubuntu
What makes the Zotac ZBOX PI225 so interesting is that this is the first true ‘card’ form-factor mini PC. It is a mini PC that looks like a SSD. Whilst Intel replaced the ‘stick’ form-factor with a similar ‘card’ form-factor for their next generation mini PCs they also required a ‘dock’ in order to use them. The difference with the PI225 however is that it actually is a standalone mini PC and includes all the necessary input/output ports. Intrigued by this new form-factor I decided to purchase one and the following is my review of its performance and capabilities. The Zotac ZBOX PI225 is a fanless device which features an Apollo Lake N3350 SoC with 32GB of storage pre-installed with Windows 10 Home, 4GB RAM, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2, two USB Type-C ports, a micro SD card reader and a power connector. Importantly it comes with all the accessories you […]