[MinnowBoard] 4GB Ram need pcb rerouting?

[John Hawley]

On 06/16/2016 07:52 AM, Ken Tait wrote:
> I agree with Joe,
> 
> the emphasis on this product line seems to be 'cheap' and not
> functionality. The minnow boards are missing too many important hardware
> items to be useful as a product in the embedded world. The power supply
> for 1 is just meant to deal with the minimum issues. If you want this to
> be put in commercial products, then it needs to take 12V  which is what
> most industrial systems have available.

I wouldn't claim our emphasis or focus has been on "cheap", it's been on
getting an open source hardware development platform out and onto the
market that is specifically targeted at what software developers in the
embedded space want to see.  That's where a lot of our design decisions
and thinking comes from, and yes it's not a specifically industrial
focused view, and it does come with the added baggage of specifically
being very cost concious.

Agreed, most industrial systems use 12v, while we are using 5v which is
more a commentary on the differences in the SBC space (5v) vs. the full
industrial space (12v).  Different spaces have different needs, case in
point I regularly run demos on a Turbot off of a USB phone battery
(https://www.anker.com/products/A1271011 or various similar models).

There's also a couple of other things that we didn't do that make us
going into the major industrial space:

- The temperature range that the board is rated for isn't an industrial
range.  The SoC is industrial rated, but the components on the board
aren't.  Why?  Cost mainly, the components would all need to be replaced
with wider range, tighter tolerance, parts and those just cost more.

- Barrel jack for power doesn't meet most shock and vibe needs for
industrial parts.  That being said barrel jack power supplies are
readily available, and easy to get, and it wouldn't be a hard to swap
the barrel jack for something that had a locking connector to it if
someone needed.

- We don't have POE+ natively, which a fair amount of industrial has
moved to also.  There's splitters that will provide enough power (and
use POE+) for us to work, but it's not onboard.

> It should support 1 sata drive

We've got an onboard sata port, and the HSE we can pull out a second
SATA-II, which most folks are using for mSATA but could be used as a
second sata port (there exist mSATA -> SATA port converters).
Admittedly we don't have a good way to power a SATA drive directly off
the board, but I know quite a few folks who have sata drives running on
their boards.

> directly with no mickey mouse add on's.

I assume having to power externally is what you are referring to here?

> They should be better than a 'PI', not equivalent....
> As an ex Intel employee, I am very disappointed at what's been done...
> 
> Just my HO
> 
> Ken
> 
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