Hands On With The Atomic Pi As A $35 Intel Atom Alternative To The Raspberry Pi

[LoveRPi]

It's torn innards from a failed robotics company that went belly up. It's not even designed to be an SBC.

[starshipeleven]

Sata!!!!! SATA!!!!! SATAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

Why does it lack SATA????!!!!!

why you need Sata in a SBC anyway.

[starshipeleven]

If I heard right, the current config doesn't have any spare PCI-E lanes for it. Someone speculated it was designed for either an IoT device or a vehicle.

The Atom SoC running this thing is tablet hardware. It has a single pcie lane (used for the wifi probably), a USB 3.0 port, eMMC and sdcard interfaces.

There is no Sata controller onboard.

[starshipeleven]

Hmm... The Raspberry Pi foundation really should have Trademarked the word Pi

In any case, I'm sure this is made in China with the usual ethical issues, where as the real Pi is actually made in Wales https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/fac...m-south-wales/

Where it's made is mostly irrelevant, 99% of the job is done by machines anyway. The photos there are propaganda. If you assemble SMB electronic boards by hand you are doing it wrong.

[starshipeleven]

The lack of SATA is a shame, but still, pretty f*cking impressive!...
I mean, with this board, you can actually watch youtube videos, right?

Why would you want to watch youtube videos with a SBC.

But yes it's a Cherry Trail Intel tablet, it can probably work

[starshipeleven]

It's torn innards from a failed robotics company that went belly up. It's not even designed to be an SBC.

Do you know more about this? It does seem likely, as it's very weird to not include a power connector on the main board if you design it from scratch.

[M@GOid]

why you need Sata in a SBC anyway.

This is the type thing that piss me off every time a new generic Pi like board appears here in Phoronix.

If you want desktop connections, get a fucking PC motherboard. There is no shortage of low profile, single 12V plug powered, Atom boards out there.

[cl333r]

China is a paradise for workers and companies:

https://www.economist.com/china/2018/11/29/why-only-2-of-chinese-pay-any-income-tax

UK is a tax hell.

https://taxhell.co.uk/

For once I agree with you. Yeah when comparing countries some things are better some are worse. People tend to think that any developed country will always be better for business than one in development.

[metallurge]

The Atom SoC running this thing is tablet hardware. It has a single pcie lane (used for the wifi probably), a USB 3.0 port, eMMC and sdcard interfaces.

The one PCIe lane is used for the Gigabit Ethernet. The RT5572 WiFi lives on one of the Atom's USB 2.0 channels, as does the XUF208 sound chip, on a different one.

There is also a single USB 2.0 port originally intended (and labelled for use) by the board designers for a webcam. But it's a general-purpose/standard USB 2.0 port if you wire the 5 pin JST header to a standard USB 2.0 Type A connector, as the "Enchilada" power baseplane/dev board does. One could make a tiny cheapo riser/adapter PCB with JST on the bottom and USB A 2.0 on the top if you wanted a simple solution without requiring the whole "Enchilada".

[Ironmask]

I can't get over that massive heatsink almost as big as the board. what is with every single Intel CPU being a nuclear power plant? I bet it turns into a space heater even in mild humidity.