Possibly the cheapest PC Ever... If the I/O was standard.

[Opencircuit74]

Hello everyone, I think that I found one of the cheapest computers that will run Linux. The computer I am talking about is the SA2410D Techsol Medallion Module, a low-power device meant for portable applications. Coming in at a blisteringly fast 266 Million Hertz, the single-core ARM chip from 2004 will handle all of your computing needs.

 

Coming back to reality, I picked this board up at an electronics surplus store for $3. This is all good, but there is one main problem. The I/O on the board is proprietary, although it does support several USB ports, along with anything else you might need, such as LCD and stereo. What I am asking is your help to figure out what the I/O on this board is and, if we can find it, we can crush Linus' attempt to a $69 gaming PC by having this as the backbone, add an SD card, and "RGB ALL THE THINGS!!!" to win the competition. Let's do it!

 

BTW - this was made in Canada so we should be able to find this out no problem.

[Lord Nicoll]

12 minutes ago, Opencircuit74 said:

Hello everyone, I think that I found one of the cheapest computers that will run Linux. The computer I am talking about is the SA2410D Techsol Medallion Module, a low-power device meant for portable applications. Coming in at a blisteringly fast 266 Million Hertz, the single-core ARM chip from 2004 will handle all of your computing needs.

 

Coming back to reality, I picked this board up at an electronics surplus store for $3. This is all good, but there is one main problem. The I/O on the board is proprietary, although it does support several USB ports, along with anything else you might need, such as LCD and stereo. What I am asking is your help to figure out what the I/O on this board is and, if we can find it, we can crush Linus' attempt to a $69 gaming PC by having this as the backbone, add an SD card, and "RGB ALL THE THINGS!!!" to win the competition. Let's do it!

 

BTW - this was made in Canada so we should be able to find this out no problem.

I think the raspberry Pi would be even better, although that's like $50, it is however  pretty capable little PC, so maybe try one of those instead. 

[yathis]

More support for Raspberry Pi too, plus it tastes nice

[Lord Nicoll]

Just now, yathis said:

More support for Raspberry Pi too, plus it tastes nice

In a way that board was a very early Raspi concept, certainly a similar product. 

[Opencircuit74]

3 minutes ago, Lord Nicoll said:

In a way that board was a very early Raspi concept, certainly a similar product. 

Yes, I certainly agree with that. The reason that I shy away from the pi (apart from the price) is that this is a really good way to build a mini PC, providing that the I/O is accessible. In addition to the mini PC thing, if we need more power and figure out the I/O, we can (hopefully) connect a bunch of them together and make a Beowulf cluster. I almost want to send an email to the email listed on the website, but the last update to it was in 2012, leading me to believe that it is no longer a valid email.

[Lord Nicoll]

5 minutes ago, Opencircuit74 said:

Yes, I certainly agree with that. The reason that I shy away from the pi (apart from the price) is that this is a really good way to build a mini PC, providing that the I/O is accessible. In addition to the mini PC thing, if we need more power and figure out the I/O, we can (hopefully) connect a bunch of them together and make a Beowulf cluster. I almost want to send an email to the email listed on the website, but the last update to it was in 2012, leading me to believe that it is no longer a valid email.

In a normal PC case you could probably fit a hell of a lot of Pi's, ergo the clusters are still quite small

 

[Opencircuit74]

5 minutes ago, Lord Nicoll said:

In a normal PC case you could probably fit a hell of a lot of Pi's, are the clusters are still quite small

 

Price! PI's are expensive, running me about $35 for the RPI3. The board that I got was $3, and the store had a pile of them. I need to figure out the pinouts of this board so that I can experiment with clusters of them.

[Lord Nicoll]

2 minutes ago, Opencircuit74 said:

Price! PI's are expensive, running me about $35 for the RPI3. The board that I got was $3, and the store had a pile of them. I need to figure out the pinouts of this board so that I can experiment with clusters of them.

Super computers are never cheap haha, I have 5 rack servers and holy hell, even 2011 vintage has cost me a whack load. 

[.Ocean]

Check out the DevKit page

 

http://medallionsystem.com/other-products/DevKits.html

 

looks like the easiest and quickest way to unlocking the secret of the I/O would be to get your hands on a working dev kit.

[You_are_a_cunt]

A raspberry Pi is cheaper and easier to set up.

An even cheaper alternative is getting an old laptop and running Linux on that (With a bit of hunting, you can find fairly decent spec laptops for as low as $40 and most they need is basic maintenance to get up and running. Laptops with broken displays are also nice to find, assuming you want to run them on an external display)

[Indus Monk]

Why did nobody speak of the Raspberry Pi Zero W?

[Opencircuit74]

On 6/17/2017 at 10:14 PM, .Ocean said:

Check out the DevKit page

 

http://medallionsystem.com/other-products/DevKits.html

 

looks like the easiest and quickest way to unlocking the secret of the I/O would be to get your hands on a working dev kit.

One problem. I checked all over their website, and I found a picture that linked me to google maps. Their office building was for lease in 2015. This means that they left or went out of business. A google search led me to believe that they changed their company logo and focus, and I will try to get in touch with them. Why not just get a raspberry pi? Everyone does that! It would be a lot more fun trying to get a $3 computer board to work and call that a gaming computer.

 

So far, I think I found the ethernet connection. It is 10 pins, 2 of them are ground, and the rest are a mystery.