SparkFun Forums

[spacewrench]

I just found this link on a website I frequent:

Wholesale packs of 6 Juice Box machines

The Juice Box is a hackable ARM machine with some buttons, screen, case, etc, and a Samsung ARM7TDMI S3C44B0 processor.
Cheap, too: about US$25 for 6 of 'em. I don't know how many are available, but there's no "High Sell-out Risk" tag on the listing at the moment.

(I have no connection to Overstock.com -- except as a first-time customer -- and have no financial interest in whether or not you order some of these.)

[bertrik]

Never heard of them, but indeed looks like a nice hacking project.

Some links I found while searching around:
* Linuxdevices.com article: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7467429921.html
* Slashdot.org article: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl ... 01/1651220
* Picture frame: http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/20 ... frame.html http://joevennix.blogspot.com/
* eBook reader: http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/20 ... ks_on.html http://myvogonpoetry.com/wp/index.php?p=57
* Belt buckle (?): http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/20 ... uckle.html http://www.flickr.com/photos/lepow/sets/467505/
* http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/20 ... axori.html

Apparently this thing can also run uCLinux, but the project website for that seems to be down.

[prpplague]

they are sold out, but if you did get some, or buy some off ebay, don't foget:


http://www.elinux.org/wiki/JuiceBox

[spacewrench]

they are sold out, but if you did get some, or buy some off ebay, don't forget:
http://www.elinux.org/wiki/JuiceBox

Good resource, but very slow responding for some reason. I ordered an MP3 kit for $12.99 from Walker Electronic Services (again, no connection with). But I have a question about the eLinux Wiki information:

I'm not clear on the relationship between the MP3 kit contents, the xD card, and the SD card. Is the xD an adapter for SD, or is it a different Flash memory format? Will I need anything besides what's in the JuiceBox MP3 kit? It seems like it would be relatively easy to produce a PCB for fabrication using the SparkFun fab that has board-edge fingers and an SD socket, so that you don't have to cut up the JB MP3 module. Maybe it's not worthwhile. But if you could make a clean plug-in module that can hold an SD card, plus a Linux toolchain that can prepare the SD card to boot, then the JB would be a lot more flexible & useful.

[edit]

After looking at the pictures again, maybe I'm confusing two different types of cartridge. Is the one you show chopped up with gray wires, a non-MP3-kit cartridge modified to hold an xD card? As I understand the JB, people were supposed to buy videos and music on ROM-like cartridges (but of course there was only a poor selection). So maybe your hack is to convert one of those pre-recorded carts? OTOH, the MP3 kit looks like you load your own music on an SD card, then put the card in the adapter. Correct? So if I can get the right data format on an SD card, I can get the JB to boot off the MP3 adapter cart?

[prpplague]

Good resource, but very slow responding for some reason. I ordered an MP3 kit for $12.99 from

yea we had almost 20000 hits yesterday. i've been looking at moving it to a hosting service.

I'm not clear on the relationship between the MP3 kit contents, the xD card, and the SD card.

that is a common question, not sure why my document isn't very clear.

basically we are using some NAND flash in the form of a xD card to trick the juicebox into running custom code. when combined with the sd/mmc socket this allows us to boot the juicebox with a custom bootloader from the xD card, which then reads a custom kernel and root file system from the sd/mmc card.

the UMDcart i made from an existing mp3 kit was simply to test the design with a minimal amount of work.

After looking at the pictures again, maybe I'm confusing two different types of cartridge. Is the one you show chopped up with gray wires, a non-MP3-kit cartridge modified to hold an xD card?

yes there are two different variations on the hacked cartriidges, one that has both sd/mmc and nand flash, the other only nand flash.

As I understand the JB, people were supposed to buy videos and music on ROM-like cartridges (but of course there was only a poor selection). So maybe your hack is to convert one of those pre-recorded carts? OTOH, the MP3 kit looks like you load your own music on an SD card, then put the card in the adapter. Correct? So if I can get the right data format on an SD card, I can get the JB to boot off the MP3 adapter cart?

close, the bootloader code in the juicebox only allows booting custom code from the nand flash movie cartridges, not from the sd/mmc card. thats why we have a dual function card. nand flash to boot the custom code, the sd/mmc for removable media .



additional discussion on building a custom cartridge can be found at :

http://www.linux-hacker.net/cgi-bin/Ult ... =&Session=


and interactive discussion can be found on irc at irc.freenode.net on the #edev channel

[prpplague]

just a note, overstock.com has them on sale again:


http://www.overstock.com/cgi-bin/d2.cgi ... ID=2039880