[time-nuts] looking for low-power system for gps ntp timekeeping

Didier Juges shalimr9 at gmail.com
Tue Jul 2 15:11:22 EDT 2013


John,

The SD Card issue is serious but not unique go the BBB. I believe there are ways to configure any Linux distro to make the SD card read only, at the cost of losing logging and data every time you power off. Alternately, one could partition the SD card with a second partition just for data you want to save.

If you Google for Flash and Linux, you will get lots of suggestions for things to do.

Didier KO4BB

NeonJohn <jgd at neon-john.com> wrote:
>Before anyone wastes his money on a BeagleBone, I suggest you join the
>mailing list and read the hundreds of messages each day that pass
>through, most of them citing problems, mostly with the Linux
>implementation.
>
>Basically, the ancient implementation of Angstrom Linux is a POS.  Just
>barely enough code to be able to say, for example, that SPI works.  It
>does - sorta - but not well enough for any application where clock
>timing or jitter matters.
>
>I had intended to embed the BB white in my next revision induction
>heater.  After several months of frustration and a considerable amount
>of money to a kernel programmer to write drivers that actually worked,
>I
>gave up.  I could easily had a man-year in the application that I can
>do
>bare metal in a few months.
>
>The thing that finally canned the BB for me was the short SD card life.
> Even though the implementation uses a virtualized root file system, it
>still writes to the SD card about once a second.  The result is that
>even industrial grade SD cards rarely live over a year.  With the Black
>they tried to address the problem by putting some NAND memory on board
>but that only prolongs the problem and with components that are not
>easily changed.
>
>A final negative is the support.  The team member, a guy named Gerald,
>who provides official support on the mailing lists is one of the most
>hateful persons I've encountered on the net. No, I never personally had
>an encounter with him but I daily shook my head in amazement that TI
>would let such a person rep them.
>
>PS: Before you go to buy the Black, take a careful look at what all
>they
>left off in an effort to compete with the Pi.
>
>PSS:  I have a couple of Whites, one unopened, and a prototyping board
>for sale.  Cheap :-)
>
>John
>
>
>
>On 07/01/2013 11:14 AM, Chris Albertson wrote:
>> Thanks.  I didn't know there were two kinds.  This is more useful for
>only
>> $5 more.
>
>
>-- 
>John DeArmond
>Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
>http://www.fluxeon.com      <-- THE source for induction heaters
>http://www.neon-john.com    <-- email from here
>http://www.johndearmond.com <-- Best damned Blog on the net
>PGP key: wwwkeys.pgp.net: BCB68D77
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-- 
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