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Comment by drivebyacct2 | Hacker News Reader

Not to be a sour-puss but there are a large number of these boards available now. It's exciting, but there really are quite a few of them. I think XBMC may be entering an even newer phase of awesome with the ubiquity of these.

edit: How does one find out what video codecs are supported accelerated by the Mali 400?

Also, wow, that's a cheap wifi module.

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Yea, I am not sure if "quad-core Raspberry Pi" is that much of a selling point. CuBox is much more interesting with:

- gigabit ethernet

- e-sata port (with port multiplier)

- infrared receiver

- out of the box, already comes with a box

- comprehensive wiki for a development platform

By the way, a 150 Mbps wifi dongle is sold for about 5 USD here (I too was surprised by how cheap the wifi module is, and went to check the price list).

Any idea what bus the eSATA port is attached to? the DreamPlug is similar to the CuBox but the eSATA is hooked up internally via USB2, limiting its speed dramatically

It uses a Marvell Armada 510[1] SoC, which has a SATA port, so I assume its connected to that.

[1] http://www.marvell.com/application-processors/armada-500/

It says 3Gbps here:

http://www.solid-run.com/mw/index.php/CuBox_hardware_specifi...

I am just about to place an order. They finally have stocks, though the current price is 10 USD more compared to the pre-order price.

They do finally have stock? There was a thread just earlier this week where I mentioned this but there was a linked forum post where they've not been fulfilling preorders, etc.

Plus there's some straight up weird stuff on their Word doc exported "Spec Sheet".

I own a openrd platform, which isn't perhaps quite as up to date as the CuBox chipset, and it too has many of the features you mention.

But it is not a fast system. Gigabit ethernet? Sure, but good luck getting anywhere near that speed. Similar for the e-Sata port. Oh, sure, I can get a 60 mbps samba share up on the thing, but that caps out it's cpu.

The specifications for what it supports does not indicate what kind of performance it will have. The quad core Samsung processor will almost certainly dominate the Marvell unit's performance. Or maybe not: I don't have one. I've just been underwhelmed by what throughput Marvell has delivered me.

I was just thinking that yesterday: lots of small android/allwinner A10 based RPI competitors coming out, eg this one which i really want, after failing miserably at getting my rpi to do anything useful: http://www.dealextreme.com/p/ak802-mini-android-4-0-network-...

Its priced about the same as a rpi when you consider that it includes wifi and a power supply.

I have two, the company accidently sent 2, when we ordered 1. Boss bought me 1 to play with for fun.

>failing miserably at getting my rpi to do anything useful

Really? What are you trying to do with it? My RPI won't play 1080p video but I've got a tiny little app using omxplayer to play back HD content from my server very, very reliably.

Trying to get it to recognise a keyboard! Seriously i've tried 3.

Every keyboard I've tried works cleanly. Maybe you have weird keyboards that suck too much power: the RPi USB ports can't supply a lot of juice.

Maybe you got a defective unit. Hopefully you can get it going or get a replacement.

Good luck!

Agree on the $9 cheap WiFi module, but it seems not to be FCC certified and that has a strong impact on pricing.

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