where to start?

[Bernd Walter]

On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 02:57:29PM +0000, Anton Shterenlikht wrote:
> I've been using fbsd on i386, alpha, ia64 and sparc64.
> I'd like to see what fbsd ARM can do for me.

A very good question.
I don't know every available arm board, so other may want to corrrect
me here.

> I can see some systems here http://www.simtec.co.uk/,
> but not sure what is possible to do with those.
> 
> For example, can I have a graphical thin client
> built on ARM? This would be a box with some keyboard
> and a mouse, with full ports tree on some disk, and with
> X server running. Of course there must be a good
> ethernet connection to the server. Does this make
> sense at all?

I pesonally would just take an Atom based system.
Atom Systems are widely supported and easily available with many
different feature sets.
There are arm systems with VGA headers, but my impression is that
those are just more exotic than existing x86 hardware.

> Or what about a portable ARM computer to be used
> for making presentations, something one can use
> instead of a laptop?

There are many PDA classed arm systems.
I don't know which of them (if any) we support.
The main problem with them is that you spend a lot of time to
get them running, just to see that the vendor has upgraded to
a new hardware release.

I personally see arm as a good architecture for home automation
controllers, small routers and such.
Using self build hardware or hardware which is available over
years without major changes, so you are not wasting time to get
everything running.
At least some of them are less power hungry than x86 alternatives.
My own boards for example include an ethernet switch and take power
in the 1.5W to 2.6W range, while small x86 systems typically are
in the 5W to 20W range.
I've build my boards exactly to the features I needed and
if I need something else I can produce a new PCB on the existing
design, e.g. add an FPGA for special purpose, or high speed ADC
with special sensors.
If you are not into self building boards you can easily source
one of those many arm systems which have almost every pin routed to
a header.

If you want mainstream features then it is probably best to stay
with mainstream hardware, since it has better availability and support.

-- 
B.Walter <bernd at bwct.de> http://www.bwct.de
Modbus/TCP Ethernet I/O Baugruppen, ARM basierte FreeBSD Rechner uvm.