Quick Questions

[JeremyF]

Hey internet users!

I'm just someone who is interested in RPi with a few questions...

1. Instead of an SD card, can I run an operating system off a flash drive? (with a proper high speed USB hub)

2. What cooling fan, if any do I need?

3. When will the official case for the board be released (I understand it probably won't be for a few months after initial launch) and are there any good alternatives?

[tom_eaton]

Yes, although it will probably require modification the the bootloader on the sd card.
None, afaik.
No idea, build your own maybe? Mint tin and lego cases have been suggested.

[gsh]

OK, on your first point, no you can't boot the hardware from a USB drive...  But theoretically you could boot from it if you replace the kernel image with something like uboot.  But you'd still require the SDCard to boot from.

The 2835 has a lot of boot modes, but the only one you really have access to is SDCard, there is a USB boot but it is a device interface so that you can plug it into a PC and push code onto the device rather than boot from a MSD.

Sorry it took me a whole week to write the USB boot code for the synopsys USB OTG hardware, and that was a huge amount of fun, but I didn't have time (or ROM) to write a MSD driver, (In total I had to write the USB device driver in < 4K of code, that's proper programming...)

Gordon

[fireraisr]

There have been rumors that you may be able to boot off of usb eventually on the model A since the network chip won't be in the way.

You don't need a fan, the chip doesn't get hot even at 100% cpu. It's the same kind of chip a mobile phone uses and they don't have fans.

Best case IMO is a Altoids/mint tin until there is an official one.

[abishur]

Just to clarify, the model A is in the same boat as the model B and the network chip has nothing to do with anything (sorry fireraisr )

The chip in question is the LAN9512 which is a usb hub with usb to ethernet adapter built into the same chip.  It doesn't come into play at any point of the boot process and therefore doesn't make a difference when it's removed.

It should be able to boot via usb eventually, but as has been mentioned this would be accomplished by having it boot the boot loader off the SD card which would in turn boot to USB.

Cooling shouldn't be a factor as long as you don't run it on top of a heater

As for the official case it should be out at some point after the boards are released ! They have released the official dimensions so if you want to custom design your own case, but I've also seen some cases up on shapeways (though personally I dislike how expensive they are)

[fireraisr]

Thanks for the clarification Abishur. I was wondering about that.