Order of the Butterfly
Posts: 301 from 2003/2/24
From: Genesi
Quote:
SATA is there, as well as usb2.0. The features of the E2 are set by te 5121.
Ram will be more than 128MB, an additional slot will make the design just more expensive.
From the 5121E specs, there is one SATA PHY on the controller. You get one port. Maybe in future revisions this could go up to two. We don't know if it supports port multipliers, but considering the realities of the chip design and target markets, probably does not.
Adding a RAM slot does not make the design more expensive but it does mean the design has to be larger - after all a RAM slot needs space on the PCB for the physical slot.
What it does with cost is makes the price an economic fallacy - you may get a "$99" board but you will need to spend anywhere between $15 and $50 on a RAM module to even get it to boot. It is therefore not a $99 board anymore.
Genesi and it's OEMs can buffer consumers (that's you) from RAM module prices (which are crazy at certain times of year) and also get far better pricing on the chips than you will ever get on the modules.
Quote:
Integreted gfx are bound to the capabilities of the 5121 - and that is limited to 1024x768. If you want mare add a gfx card.
I don't see any reason why we should be looking at external graphics cards. The actual capabilities of the chip are 1280x720 - which is high enough resolution for the products at hand. You are not going to be playing Quake Wars at 1600x1200 on this system, after all.
It also contributes to the economic fallacy - for a board with integrated graphics, why would we want to recommend a $25 graphics adapter as essential for operation? Why would we want to subject users yet again with the markedly less than available 3.3V PCI and AGP graphics adapters on the market today?
The design I have on paper, here, solves all the problems of the original Efika - we did pay attention - and a little more, but in the end some decisions you may not like at all and some are based on chip features being more important than giving you "desktop expandability".
Just be advised.. this is a small board using an embedded chip, just as the original Efika.. if it is not in the 5121E then it is not worth the BOM cost adding it since most of the features you would ask for will cost more than the SoC itself, and I would not start justifying "well, the chip does not do it but you can always install an add-on board" just yet.
Matt Sealey, Genesi USA, Inc.
Developer Relations
Product Development Analyst
