Hi again, looking on the net I found this:
http://www.dilnetpc.com/emblinx9e.PDF

This may be one way to use the GPIO ports (a bit hacker-y in my personal opinion) another would be to see if the ports are supported under the GPIO module.

Hope that it helps

I've been also reading on this, so far this is what I have found:

-GPIO are in the SD slot, which means you have to choose SD or GPIO.
-Since this is a dev board, many things are disconnected (audio, MPEG_TS, SATA to name a few), probably the TWSI is also disconnected.
-I read a bit of GPIO control in linux, there is a module especially created for that: http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/gpio.txt

Now, since this needs kernel support, it may not be already integrated with the binary distros, and my sheevaplug is not yet here so I can't test.

Finally, looking at the diagram you linked to, it looks like the TWSI should be inside at some flex connector (in the dev board), so maybe if you open it there is some pin or pad where you can connect to.

BTW, check this file: http://www.marvell.com/files/products/embedded_processors/kirkwood/FS_88F6180_9x_6281_OpenSource.pdf

Well, there is ATAoE which allows to connect an ATA device over an ethernet connection, so it should be able to go to 40 mb/sec.
I guess your best option is to test if it works, otherwise wait for OpenRD which has a couple of eSATA ports (and a price tag of 200 usd).

Network should be no problem (it has gigabit ethernet, even with 100 mbps it should work), as for writing to the card, AFAIK writing to SD is fairly quick, but it will probably will be a bit slower than a HDD. However, if you plug in an external hard drive (self powered) then you'll get pretty decent speeds and should work just fine.

Hi, I am just wondering, is there any community ebuild repo? I understand that in the wiki there is a lin k to several pre compiled binaries, I would like to contribute packages once I get my sheevaplug.

oh, backorders should start shipping now, if anybody receives it, please post some unboxing pics

uhm, check globalscale and it looks like shipping date was moved to the end of april.

Yeah, it would be nice to see a complete plug with audio and video, however I still think it may not be enough, unless somebody adds some sort of HW decoder I don't think the 1.2 ghz CPU can decode HD content, but anyway, I may try to add a USB sound card I have around here, maybe it is worth a try.

Any update?

Here is what I plan to do with it:
-Buy it a 8 gb SD (or more)
-Install Gentoo
-Install SSH
-Install Python
-Install Xorg (if possible) and VNC
-Install windowmaker or xfce or something that runs on ARM
-Install Bittorrent/Transmission and hellanzb
-Leave it downloading and seeding all day and night!

So far I think I may be able to achieve that, however, there is no ebuild for transmission in ARM, so I may have to compile it from source. I am confident it may run since I know people that have managed to get it running in ARM based routers.
Is there anything you would add to that list?
Cya

Well, if you check the Datasheet you'll see most of that stuff is built into the chipset, so it should be fairly easy to have different versions. I would love to see a sheevaplug with Digital Audio and DVI (media center).
Also, check openrd, it cost the double but has VGA, audio, 7 USB ports and eSata, it’s a monster.