Sponsored By
Efika 5200B Project
End-user Evaluation of EFIKA, desktop testing, articles etc.in category Other
proposed by ironfist on 5th February 2006 (accepted on 11th February 2006)
Project Summary
Since I am no programmer I would use the EFIKA in my work for one of the biggest (the biggest?) Pegasos-portals around -
Pegasos.org. I would evaluate the platform for end-user needs.
Many want the EFIKA as a desktop, is it enough for desktop
usage? Or will it feel way to slow in modern Linux distros?
If approved - I will give you the answer.
Project Blog Entries
Last weekend, June 15-17th, me and my friends behind Pegasos.org arranged a computer party for everyone using other operating systems than Windows. It was a successful meeting with people from not only Sweden, but also Norway and Denmark.
We had a great time. Genesi was kind enough to send us an Open Client Plus to show off. People were impressed with GNU/Linux on XFCE4.
MorphOS developers Bigfoot and CISC were both there with their EFIKAs. They showed us MorphOS 2.0 running smoothly on these tiny platforms. There was a big difference in speed between MorphOS and GNU/Linux+XFCE4. The GNU/Linux machine had big troubles with playing movies, but the MorphOS machines played them alot smoother.
Pictures are available here.
Mikael Karlsson, the developer of Mupper, sent me a
little kernel for the EFIKA a while ago. I triedit, but it
didn't work. It was the second beta. The first beta
worked, and I wanted him to include more features
for the next update.
I know Mikael has alot to do with his new-found work,
but I'm sure he will release a final Mupper when we
least expect it. :)
Stay tuned and be sure to check out Pegasos.org
for the latest EFIKA news.
My girlfriend gave me a 120 W PicoPSU for Cristmas.
Why the 120W version? Well, it was the only one
available for express shipping to Sweden, a few
weeks before Christmas. :P
Anyway, I use it with a 12V, 3A power supply I
had lying around and these 36 Watts (V * A = W)
powers my EFIKA with 80 GB 2.5" HDD, ATi Radeon
9200 SE graphics card and an USB-stick for booting.
No problems at all. I even think I have plenty of
Watts to go before overloading the 36W PSU.
Incredible!
Right now I am doing a world update on newly installed
Gentoo on my EFIKA. Since compilation is pretty slow
on it I distribute it via DISTCC to my two Pegasos2
machines. It works perfectly and the compilations are
just flying! :P
This line in make.conf will optimize your code for the
603-core in the MPC5200 CPU:
CFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=603 -mtune=603 -fno-strict-aliasing -pipe"
A few days ago I wrote my first article about my first
impressions of the EFIKA.
That review was done using the Debian Installer from
EFIKA.info.
Stay tuned for more EFIKA articles.
EFIKA Mounting:
I have found a way to mount our beloved EFIKAs in any case:
You can purchase them here. The manufacturer is
Richco Inc.
The final specifications of the developer
board has been released. It is the original
data with no on-board graphics, but a PCI-AGP
riser instead. This will work out just fine
for my project. I have a Radeon 9200SE here
waiting for the EFIKA.
I'm sure this will be a very good and read
review.
Visit one of the largest Pegasos sites today!
There is also an EFIKA Developer Conference coming
up in Austin, Texas in late February. There are
discussions about holding an equal conference in
Europe. If they can do it in Europe Pegasos.org
will do our very best to be there.
Yesterday Bill and Raquel told us there will be different versions of the EFIKA. With and without PCI, FPGA and onboard graphics. For my end-user testing I would prefer the graphics-version with Linux-drivers.
Looking forward to the EFIKA.