Linux On A Stick

July 5, 2004

Measuring a mere 20 by 80 by 8 mm, the gumstix 400x single-board computer is powered by a 400-MHz PXA255 XScale processor. It comes complete with 64 Mbytes of SDRAM and 4 Mbytes of flash memory. The 400x consumes less than 250 mA, suiting it for battery operation. In sleep mode, it uses under 50 mA. The 4 Mbytes of flash are programmed with the u-boot-1.0.0 loader, the 2.6.4 Linux kernel, and a root file system.

The boards contain two serial ports, a USB client, and support for an MMC/SD flash memory card. The gumstix incorporates a JTAG interface and works with the usual open-source Linux tool chain.

The gumstix 400x costs $139. A 200-MHz version runs $109, and the tiny 200x kits start at $139.

www.gumstix.com

See associated figure

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William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

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