BBC News: UK chipmaker reveals Raspberry Pi rival

[Mike O'Dell]

My UDOO Quad is *killer*. It is really spritely.
Quad-core i.MX6 PLUS an Arduino Due with the 
Arduino headers brought out with correct geometry
for all the shields.

you can run the 'duino IDE on the UDOO side and
squirt the code right into the Due and run it
without fooling around with JTAG stuff or 
hot-wiring a surreal port.

It has Wifi and HDMI and SATA port. It doesn't have
built-in Blooteeth but it does have multiple
USB2.0 spigots, camera port, digital and analog
audio I/O, the usual I2C and I2S and I'm sure
i'm leaving something out.  Oh yes - MicroSD card
is the boot device. 

i intend to put an SSD on the SATA port but 
i have a spare 1T "rotating rust" WD SATA drive
that i've cabled-up for the nonce. 

the only annoying thing about it is there is NO CASE!
a German chap has built a few moonlighting at his
engineering firm. They are incredible - laser-cut and
CNC drilled - but it's like trying to order something
from the tooth fairy. Every once in while he pops
up on the forum when a few people report having gotten
theirs and he sez he's still making them. but I've sent
email many times to the address he gives and it's 
obviously working into a dummy load. I even said to tell
me where to Paypal the money and no response. 

I did order a case from a guy in Brooklyn who is making them
on his 3D printer. When it came, aside from the bright green
color, it looked very nice. header cut-outs, cooling vents,
really well thought-out. But when I tried to put the board
in it, it wouldn't fit, no way, no how. I tried various
attacks like "which side first?" or "maybe if i bend the
case a little".   Nothing worked.  Then I held the box
up against a sheet of laser printer paper and realized
the box is not square! it's racked in two dimensions!

As I have said before, there are cheap 3D printers,
and their are good 3D printers, but there are NO
good, cheap 3D printers. sigh

I've been advised by several to just make a box
out of Legos. Harumph.

      -mo