New Part Day: A $6 Linux Computer You Might Be Able To Write Code For
The latest news from the world of cheap electronics is a single board computer running Linux. It costs six dollars, and you can buy it right now. You might even be able to compile code for it, too.
The C-Sky Linux development board is listed on Taobao as an ‘OrangePi NanoPi Raspberry Pi Linux Development Board” and despite some flagrant misappropriation of trademarks, this is indeed a computer running Linux, available for seven American dollars.
This board is based on a NationalChip GX6605S SoC, a unique chip with an ISA that isn’t ARM, x86, RISC-V, MIPS, or anything else that would be considered normal. The chip itself was designed for set-top boxes, but there are a surprising number of build tools that include buildroot, GCC and support for qemu. The company behind this chip is maintaining a kernel, and support for this chip has been added to the mainline kernel. Yes, unlike many other single board computers out there, you might actually be able to compile something for this chip.
The features for this board include 64 MB of DDR2 RAM, HDMI out (with a 1280 x 720 framebuffer, upscaled to 1080p, most likely), and a CPU running at just about 600 MHz. There are a few buttons connected to the GPIO pins, two USB host ports, a USB-TTL port for a serial console, and a few more pins for additional GPIOs. There does not appear to be any networking, and we have no idea what the onboard storage is.
If you want a challenge to get something compiled, this is the chip for you.
9 thoughts on “New Part Day: A $6 Linux Computer You Might Be Able To Write Code For”
Nice review Brian. Next time why don’t you actually buy the board, compile something and try it out?
but that’s not the usual MO of less facts more speculations.
LOL. Right! Were talking about Brian here
Might be an interesting board for Micropython.
Or for porting Maximite BASIC.If you have Linux, why use Micropython instead of Python Python?
FYI specs from: https://www.cnx-software.com/2018/11/12/c-sky-linux-development-board-gx6605s-media-soc/
* SoC – Nationalchip GX6605S C-SKY ISA V1 CK610M 32-bit processor @ 574 MHz with 64MB DDR2 RAM, built-in DVB-S2/S demodulator
* Storage – 4MB SPI flash for bootloader and media player program
* Video Output – HDMI output up to 1080p; framebuffer resolution (for UI): 1280×720
* Video Playback – H.264 up to 1080p
* USB – 2x USB2.0 host ports
* Expansion – 5-pin header with 3x GPIOs, 3.3V, GND
*Debugging
– JTAG via XX32F103C8T6 USB-JTAG chip (micro USB port)
– UART console via CH340g USB-UART chip (micro USB port)
*Misc – 5 user buttons, reset button, 4x LEDs
*Power Supply – 5V/1A via micro USB port (JTAG or UART)XX32F103C8T6, eh? I wonder whose slightly unauthorized tribute to the STM32F103C8T6 that is. And whose USB-JTAG firmware it’s running, and whether or not any of the pins wired to the CPU can be muxed to non-JTAG roles. A companion STM32 could be handy for a lot of things, but I don’t expect that they provided enough connections to realize that potential.
just by reading the specs i can almost feel the slow and laggy UI of the cheap set-top box this thing was designed for.
“…Yes, unlike many other single board computers out there, you might actually be able to compile something for this chip…
A lot of the readers and hackers of Hackaday are not aware of some of the limitations which come with their favorite single-board computer, whatever that device might be.
In the interests of increasing the general knowledge of our reader base, how about commenting on the limitations of some of the more popular single-board computers?
I’m not talking about, “It doesn’t have enough I/O” as much as I’m referring to, “You can’t compile…”; or, “A computer like this ought to have…”.
Let’s keep this positive; you can disagree with someone (design decisions) without being disagreeable.
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