Custom PC - UK (2020-08)

g g, q

ane-marked‘smart’cableanda PD-or

QC-compatiblepowersupply.

Bootedfromtheon-board eMMC, the Rock

PiN10runsa variantofAndroid 8 – taken,

interestingly,fromtherivalRK3399-based

Toybrickproject.Thisis functional, at best,

beingbuiltontheAndroidOpen Source Project

andlackinganyintegrationinto the wider

Googleecosystem.

Alternativeoperatingsystems abound

though.Raxadaoffersimages for Ubuntu

Server,Debiandesktop,Fedora desktop and

TestingunderDebianrevealeda surprisingly

slick system – Raxada, for example, offers

its own software repository to make adding

custom packages, such as that for controlling

the NPU, as easy as possible. There were a

few flaws, though, including a lack of hardware

3D acceleration.

There are few resources for using the NPU

too. Bar instructions for switching it on and

updating its firmware, you’ll find little support

on the Raxada wiki. The CPU side, thankfully,

is a better story. Having six cores, even if four

are lower-performance ones, means the Rock

Pi N10 can fly through the usual benchmarks

• outperforming the Raspberry Pi 4 and
  drawing neck and neck with the Orange Pi 4 B
  in most tests, including an impressive showing
  of just 38.403 seconds in the GIMP image
  editing benchmark.
  Drawing 2.4W of power at idle is also
  impressive, being a full watt below the
  Raspberry Pi 4, but under load, the Rock Pi N10
  needs a hefty 8.8W, explaining why Raxada
  opted for USB Power Delivery as the input. It
  also explains why the CPU throttles at around
  six minutes into a ten-minute torture test,
  despite the hefty heatsink.
  If you need the performance, and are willing
  to go hands-on with Rockchip’s RK3399
  Toolkit to drive the NPU, the Rock Pi N10 is
  easy to recommend. For general use, though,
  its high price is an issue. The Rock Pi N10 Model
  A is available now from seeedstudio.com
  priced at $99 US (around £86 ex VAT).

Rämixx500aims to

bring back Amiga 500

Developer Sukko Pera has launched

a project to recreate the Commodore

Amiga 500 motherboard in open

hardware form, as a means of bringing

damaged systems back from the dead.

‘There are other projects like this one

out there,’ Pera writes, ‘but none of them

is Open Source and none of them comes

with both schematics and board. This is a

bigadvantage,sinceanyonecanmodify

theboardandmakenewimproved

versions,aslongastheyreleasetheir

modificationswiththesamelicence.’

Thecurrentdesign,whichPera

warnsis ‘untested[and]might

notworkatall’,is availablefrom

github.com/SukkoPera/Raemixx500

N EWS I N BRI EF

anda lowercurrentis moreforgivingfor

longerorthinnercabling,butitrequiresboth

Android 8 , anyoneofwhich

canbeflashedtoamicro-SDcard.

Not surprisingly, there’s

a Raspberry Pi-like GPIO

header, but the PoE header

comes as a shock

M.2 slots offer high-

speed expansion,

although drivers

aren’t ready for much

hardware yet