I just read that the Asus Tinker Board has the same pinout at the ribbon connector as the Pi. Will the software for the ARpiCADE work with the Tinker? Would it be a plug n' play upgrade to go to the Tinker? From what I've been reading, it's nearly twice the speed of the Pi 3...
http://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/asus-tinker-board
Tinker Board
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Tinker Board
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Re: Tinker Board
Disapointingly, no. The software would not run on the Tinker as it uses different chipsets. It may be that it would work well with RaspberryJAMMA but it would need it's own software/ version of ARpiCADE. It's also possible it is not suited, maybe the GPU cannot do low res or is limited in some other way.
I may pick one up to have a fiddle with but I have doubts it will be practical to use. I didn't see the video chip specs, hopefully it would be possible to boot up in low res, assuming it can do low res. Hopefully the GPIO would be documented and not just the same Pin layout. The end of the artical sums it up really: "However, the quality of the software and support is nowhere near what you get with a Raspberry Pi. The Pi’s Raspbian OS is slick, finished and well documented, while Tinker OS feels unfinished and documentation is minimal. The Tinker Board may appeal to hardcore tinkerers who may be able to fill in the software gaps themselves, but most people, in particular beginners, would be far better off with the cheaper Pi 3"
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When it was released I purchased an UP! board. Same basic form factor and GPIO as an RPi but with Intel chips, much more power than a Pi3, built in NAND storage and support for SATA drives. It cost 4x the price of RPi3. Software documentation/support was non existant. The video chip being used behaved like a desktop video card, forcing the BIOS to boot in certain resolutions (changing boot resolutions would require changing BIOS, risking bricking a very expensive single board computer reflashing the BIOS). Changing something as simple as the splash screen had to be done by the manufacturer and would double the cost of the board. There was zero documentation regarding their GPIO (when I looked) making porting the joystick driver much harder than it should be. At this point my UP! board is in it's box again, it looked really cool attached to the RaspberryJAMMA but had too many issues on the software side. (also NAND storage is less user freindly than swappable SD cards)
The Raspberry Pi Foundation does a great job supporting their hardware with software and documentation. The community working on RPi stuff dwarfs every other single board computer community. This is how RPi stays at the front of the pack even though it has never been the most advanced and fastest hardware available. The most powerful chipsets in the world are useless without documentation and software available.
I may pick one up to have a fiddle with but I have doubts it will be practical to use. I didn't see the video chip specs, hopefully it would be possible to boot up in low res, assuming it can do low res. Hopefully the GPIO would be documented and not just the same Pin layout. The end of the artical sums it up really: "However, the quality of the software and support is nowhere near what you get with a Raspberry Pi. The Pi’s Raspbian OS is slick, finished and well documented, while Tinker OS feels unfinished and documentation is minimal. The Tinker Board may appeal to hardcore tinkerers who may be able to fill in the software gaps themselves, but most people, in particular beginners, would be far better off with the cheaper Pi 3"
--------
When it was released I purchased an UP! board. Same basic form factor and GPIO as an RPi but with Intel chips, much more power than a Pi3, built in NAND storage and support for SATA drives. It cost 4x the price of RPi3. Software documentation/support was non existant. The video chip being used behaved like a desktop video card, forcing the BIOS to boot in certain resolutions (changing boot resolutions would require changing BIOS, risking bricking a very expensive single board computer reflashing the BIOS). Changing something as simple as the splash screen had to be done by the manufacturer and would double the cost of the board. There was zero documentation regarding their GPIO (when I looked) making porting the joystick driver much harder than it should be. At this point my UP! board is in it's box again, it looked really cool attached to the RaspberryJAMMA but had too many issues on the software side. (also NAND storage is less user freindly than swappable SD cards)
The Raspberry Pi Foundation does a great job supporting their hardware with software and documentation. The community working on RPi stuff dwarfs every other single board computer community. This is how RPi stays at the front of the pack even though it has never been the most advanced and fastest hardware available. The most powerful chipsets in the world are useless without documentation and software available.
