Olimex OLinuXino and SlackwareARM

Olimex manufactures several ARM boards (SOC) rated "industrial grade" and the hardware is entirely open source. (unlike the RaspberryPI)

https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLin...ource-hardware

There are 4 types of boards, with several models each (having more or less hardware).

A13 (micro, normal and wifi models)

• CPU: A13 Cortex A8 processor at 1GHz, 3D Mali400 GPU
• RAM: 256-512MB
• VGA
• USB host

(one which you can modify/build yourself because the CPU package is eLQFP176 and does not require specialized soldering equipment)

A10-OLinuXino-LIME

• A10 Cortex-A8 CPU 1GHz and Mali 400 GPU
• 512MB DDR3
• SATA
• HDMI
• USB
• Ethernet

A10S-OLinuXino-MICRO-4GB (micro and micro-4GB)

• A10S Cortex-A8 processor at 1GHz, 3D Mali400 GPU, NEON
• 512MB RAM
• USB host
• 100MBit native Ethernet

the 4GB version contains 4GB buildin NAND flash with Android preloaded

A20-OLinuXino-MICRO (micro and micro-4GB)

• A20 Cortex-A7 dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 CPU and dual-core Mali 400 GPU
• 1GB DDR3 RAM memory
• SATA connector with 5V SATA power jack
• Built-in FullHD support (1080p)
• 2 x USB High-speed host with power control and current limiter
• HDMI output with ESD protectors
• VGA output on 6-pin 1.25mm (0.05") step connector
• 100MBit native Ethernet

the 4GB version contains 4GB buildin NAND flash with Android preloaded

All the boards also include various hardware features like USB OTG, audio out, mic in, dozens of GPIO pins, LCD interface, EEPROM, battery manager, microSD slot, etc

All this info I pulled off their website as an overview. I am not related to them.

I remember reading about the A10 on the mailing list here: http://www.mail-archive.com/armedsla.../msg01541.html

There is a guide for installing SlackwareARM-14.0 on the A10S board here: http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:hardware:armlinuxinoa10s

My questions are:
- Has anyone successfully installed SlackwareARM-14.1 on an OLinuXino board?
- Has anyone successfully played with any of the other OLinuXino models, other then the A10S?

Thank you.

I've not played with any of the OLinuXino specific products but I've played with an other Allwinner SOC based board and I got Slackware 14 running on it.
The kernel needs to be borrowed form somewhere else but the user-land works fine (and most likely the 14.1 user-land too).
I had some issues with getting all the USB peripherals I needed to work right but that may be specific to my tablet and not something that generally happens on Axx SOC.

I made a tool for creating a bootable miniroot SD image for generic Axx SOC based systems that should also work on the OLinuXino boards and documented it on docs.slacware.com
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:har...ad700_7_tablet
in that article the link to the image builder is berried in the middle of tons of other information ... here it if ypu can't bother reading the article:
ftp://ftp.slackware.org.uk/slackware...ple/louigi600/

Some other dude did some specific work on the OLinuXino A10S Micro
http://www.malaya-digital.org/settin...-from-scratch/

Hope this helps.

Thank you, luigi600.

If anyone else has experimented with OlinuXino boards, I am eager to know about your experiences.

Also, hopefully next month, I will share mine.

You're welcome
I might get an A10-OLinuXino-LIME myself ... currently I think it's one of the best values for your money concerning the ARM platform but I'm a little reluctant dew to the bad experience with USB peripherals on my A13 based tablet.
The beagleBone Black, Cuieboard and Pi are close competitors.
I was actually thinking of getting a BBB but it's out of stock in Europe right now.

Originally Posted by andrixnet Olimex manufactures several ARM boards (SOC) rated "industrial grade" and ...

I don't remember any of them work within the industrial temperature range, except for the iMX233. Maybe I missed something?

Originally Posted by andrixnet My questions are: - Has anyone successfully installed SlackwareARM-14.1 on an OLinuXino board? - Has anyone successfully played with any of the other OLinuXino models, other then the A10S?

I've been using iMX233 OLinuXino Micro for over a year and am running slackwarearm from squashfs images. The board works well with a 25x28x15 mm^3 heatsink attached to the SoC. However, I'm still running Linux kernel 3.9.11 because 3.10 or later versions don't boot. Because this board is not only a bluetooth music player of mine, but also my home gateway, I barely have chance to take it offline. This weekend my wife will go strip swimming thanks to the good weather so I hope I can take my home network offline then and find out what's wrong with the recent kernels.

EDIT: Linux 3.10 ... 13 not booting because of wrong initrd location. Worked around by deselecting CONFIG_ARM_ATAG_DTB_COMPAT. However, this makes the kernel unable to boot within qemu. Maybe I need a qemu upgrade? There are also two other (non-fatal) kernel bugs involved that need to file when I have time.

Slackware-14.1 system image for iMX233-OLinuXino:

microSD Image: http://rpc.suroot.com/slackwarearm-l...xino-sd.img.xz
Readme: http://rpc.suroot.com/slackwarearm-l....xz.README.txt
root password: darkstar

Everything including source: http://rpc.suroot.com/slackwarearm-live/
.

@guanx, is the microSD image (thanx btw), of the soft or the hard-float variety?

Originally Posted by rouvas @guanx, is the microSD image (thanx btw), of the soft or the hard-float variety?

It's soft float.

Greetings,
Guanx