CherryPal/LimePC Architecture
For all you green gearheads out there interested in the CherryPal platform, here’s an interesting comment by Jack Campbell on TG Daily:
I designed this product while VP/Strategic Development for Tsinghua Tongfang. It was temporary prototype housing made in a rush to show LimePC brand products at CES 2008 — never intended for mass production. The ports are actually on the back, with the logo (for some reason) put on backwards.
For the curious, the hardware platform was engineered in cooperation with Freescale’s Austin-based R&D team in their Infotainment Division. It was never intended as a production device, but as a “superset” proof of concept system from which future devices could be derived. Also, it was never intended as a “cloud” device, instead aimed at supporting a streamlined Linux OS based load for lightweight desktop and multimedia chores.
The “CherryPal” iteration of this thing is a scraped together, low-buck abomination of what this platform could have been. I left THTF just prior to this deal coming in the door, so can only guess at the bad decisions leading to its commercialization. We had a radically unique new user interface/desktop OS version sculpted for this project, one that would have minimized the UI load on the little MPC5121e CPU, and that had a super high level of optimization work done to make the graphics/framebuffer/display subsystems use as few clock ticks as possible. None of that has emerged in the CherryPal. Instead, it carries a bog slow standard Linux build with standard desktop apps, and a browser touted as being a portal to a few server based apps. It was supposed to have a 2.5″ HDD, not NAND flash for storage… oh well.
Weird, pointless, and sad. This project had such a higher level set of goals. What you are seeing is a crippled, 30% version of what the original LimePC project was intended to deliver.
I disagree that the project was pointless – and I hope that CherryPal, LimePC, or something similar can get off the ground by some savvy company.
Nor CherryPal is Jack’s product, nor its revolutionary OS is:
http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6196&forum=11&post_id=61580
Oh, you mean this “Jack Campbell”, the well known Jack of the Mac community a few years back??? … http://www.macintouch.com/mactable.html .
You mean the self-admitted convicted felon??? ( http://aboutjack.com/faq.shtml )
Hi, I didn’t know how to reach you by email, but I posted a comment back in december about the fact that I couldn’t even log in to my defective Cherrypal.
Since then I have returned the unit (which they received on December 23rd) in exchange for a refund which I still haven’t received, despite an extremely detailed and extensive email exchange that we’ve had that I think is definitely worth posting.
This whole thing is almost literally a Ponzi scheme, as funny as that sounds. They even hinted at it in one of their emails to brand angels about how they “needed the cash right now”. Every dollar of “pre-order” is allotted to manufacturing the units of the earliest or largest customers first.
This company is an absolute joke, and I think that this exchange is definitely worth taking a look at. If you would like a copy of the exchange (which begins with me reporting the problem, through receiving the return label to return the unit, right up until last Friday when I was still being ‘guaranteed’ that I would receive a refund check and tracking number ‘on Tuesday’) let me know where to send it and I’ll forward it along (it’s very detailed, and I’d be happy to send it to you whether you decide to post it or not).
Thanks,
Andrew
Have you looked at the XPC line from Shuttle (http://us.shuttle.com)? They are “green” (low-power, small footprint, economical), yet still can use standard components (Pentium 4 or Core 2 Duo CPU’s), have very flexible configurations available, and can be customized easily.
What’s the latest on cherrypal??????????????????????????????????
Did it leave a last will and testament?
GaryB
GaryB: I think the correct term is “moribund”. The Princess Bride term is “mostly dead”, though it may really be “dead dead”. The CherryPal web site and Max Seybold’s blog are still there, but neither has changed in 6 months. The CherryPal community blog has been in maintenance mode for months. There are still snippets about MPC5121e at http://www.morphzone.org/modules/news/ (MPC5121e and Efika 2 threads), including a recent item about CherryPal unregistering itself as a UK company. On the other hand, there’s a guy selling LimePC’s (which are the same board as CherryPal) at eBay: http://stores.shop.ebay.com/TryTerra-Computers. Caveat emptor.
The buzz at MorphZone is that Freescale has given up on the MPC5121e in favor of ARM. That’s very possible: Freescale has far more chips than they can possibly support, so they have to concentrate on the ones that sell in the largest quantities. I find it fully believable that they have lots of internal issues.
I find it all quite disappointing. I really like the specs on the MPC5121e, having been a big fan of PowerPC for a long time. I really prefer it to ARM on purely aesthetic grounds, such as being able to create a 32-bit constant in just two instructions. The prospect of an MPC5121e PowerPC motherboard on a chip is very exciting. However, I don’t see much point in developing for an orphaned product. For now, my BeagleBoard suffices for non-Windows applications.
The last I heard was that Max, the founder of CherryPal, had some sort of surgery or illness that stopped the progress on the business. I haven’t checked in for a while, but I will try to do so soon and post a report.
For those that might have interest. We actually are making, can ship, they work, a cloud computer/ internet appliance/ … It has no moving parts/ completely solid state. It is based on the Intel ATOM. It runs Ubuntu and comes loaded with everything needed to surf and use files as would be found on the net. Including OpenOffice for word processing and spread sheets.
We have solved the noisy and unreliable fan problem with passive cooling. The OS/ design is intended to be “self cleaning”. No user info is stored on the PC. If it gets totally trashed, turn it off and back on and a fresh reinstall of OS fixes everything.
Need data storage? Use a flash drive or the cloud.
We are selling it with good keyboard and mouse for $325+tax/ shipping.
As it was designed as a workstation for Internet Cafes, it is affectionately named “Surfer Joe”(tm)
The web site will hopefully be up soon. Info gladly provided.