Or Questions!

Good evening Ladles and Jellyspoons, Horses and Mules, and all the Ships at sea. This new blog will be a place for conversations even more informal than the ARMWorks Andahammer.com home page. We can gather information and code and questions and answers that fall outside the realm of support by ARMWorks, Inc.

It is always a bad idea for hardware companies to announce new products before they are ready. The infamous example is Osbourne Computer, which announced a new generation Osbourne with a warehouse full of the current model. Sales dropped to near zero, there was no money to build the new systems and pay employees and they were out of business in about six weeks. However, it seems to work for software companies like Microsoft.

I won't be talking about coming products. But there is nothing wrong with making wish lists! I have one now. I want to make a Mini2440 variant. Maybe something like this: CPU S3C2410, 2416, 2443, or 2450. About the same size as a Mini2440, and with I/O for industry. The COM ports will have RJ11 jacks for twisted pair phone cable and RS-485 drivers. Each port can then run at least 1,000 feet over twisted pair and multi-drop network to 254 devices. Are you familiar with CAN-bus? Is it needed? It was rather popular in automation a few years ago. 

Anyway, remove the on-board push buttons and LEDs.  Use uSD/TF card slots - two if possible for loads of data storage (are book codes unbreakable?). Add a USB hub chip and a pair of stacked USB sockets for 4 or 5 USB ports. SOme people need them. WHat if the hub chipp plus ports was in an attachable add-on? Real-timers need good support under Micrium uC-OS, and how about TimeSys real-time Linux? I'm partial to fast A/D and D/A with DMA with good resolution. 14 bits or better? What to add and what to remove? Should we go with a header style smaller than 2mm? Cat5 cable has 4 unused wires. Is there a smaller cable and connector that would be good for Ethernet?

I would also like to hear about reliability. I have many times seen blogs and comments by people who will refer to the Mini2440 as a "Chinese knockoff". I often wonder "Knockoff of what?" When I decided to start selling the QQ2410/QQ2440 as a distributor outside China, it was because there was nothing like it in the States or Europe. Yes, there were boards with ARM9s and there were boards with displays and they all looked like some kind of prototype with connectors sticking in all directions and maybe an awkwardly mounted little display and with a price tag that would require medical attention if you took it seriously. The QQ and later the Mini have singularly fine quality layouts. One of the first things I noticed when I bought a QQ off a Chinese web site was layout for equal length traces in critical areas and a great deal of attention paid to the esthetics and usefulness of the board shape and the I/O positioning. I had worked at Apple, and I know good when I see it.


We have sold thousands, nay, tens of thousands of Mini2440--gotta get a total. The return rate is so low that we can't get any statistics. Yesterday I saw a display with 1 bad pixel. This is the 3rd or 4th I have ever seen out of all those boards. If you discount the obvious failures at start up from a broken connector or missing socket (anything that would not show when Linux is loaded and tested in China), we basically never see them again, even the ones we know are used in the hundreds or thousands on projects in deserts or the Arctic. Once installed and passed initial test, they just don't fail. I can't count ones owned by hobbyists and developers. We all know the things that can happen on the lab bench or while removing and reinstalling in prototype equipment. The upshot is, the Mini2440 and Mini35 are awesome! Your opinion may differ, and I would like to read about it here, then erase it if I don't like it :-)