Tegra/Boards/Compulab Trimslice

Compulab's Trimslice is a small form-factor PC built around NVIDIA Tegra20 (Tegra 2). As of 2014/05/13, details are available at http://utilite-computer.com/web/trim-slice. http://compulab.com/ may also be a useful reference.

Trimslice was available at retail from Compulab's website and even Amazon.com, but is likely no longer available.

= Picture =



= Features =

The board exposes connectors for:
 * Power in
 * SD card
 * uSD card
 * USB A host
 * USB micro-B host/device (recovery port)
 * HDMI
 * DVI
 * Analog line audio in/out
 * S/PDIF
 * Composite video in
 * Ethernet (via PCIe)
 * UART via an adapter cable

The board has the following devices on-board:
 * NVIDIA Tegra20 (Tegra 2)
 * 1GB RAM
 * SPI boot flash
 * PMIC and RTC (I'm not sure if it's battery-backed)
 * Some models contained a SATA SSD or HDD via USB->SATA adapter
 * Some models contained a WiFi device
 * Some models shipped with a USB Bluetooth adapter

= Mainline Status =

All of mainline U-Boot, Linux, and tegra-uboot-flasher support Beaver.

The following board-level features are not currently supported in mainline Linux or U-Boot:
 * DVI
 * S/PDIF
 * Composite video in

The following additional board-level features are not currently supported in mainline U-Boot:
 * PCIe Ethernet

= Downstream Status =

Compulab provided their own L4T (Linux4Tegra) based distro. It might still be available from the websites linked at the top of this page.

= Entering USB Recovery Mode =

Trimslice does not have the typical (for Tegra boards) "Force Recovery" button. However, the same effect may be achieved through Trimslice's "Boot Select" button. This button is recessed in a small hole to the right of the uSD card slot, and may be hidden behing a rubber flap.

By default on Trimslice, Tegra's boot ROM boots from the SPI boot flash. However, if the user holds the "Boot Select" button while resetting Tegra, the boot ROM will attempt to boot from the uSD card instead. Irrespective of the boot device, if a valid BCT and bootloader image are not present on the selected boot device, the Tegra boot ROM will enter USB recovery mode. Hence, the "Boot Select" button acts just like a "Force Recovery" button if no uSD card is present, or if it does not contain a valid BCT and bootloader.


 * Ensure a USB cable is connected from your host system to the USB micro B recovery connector on the board.
 * Remove any uSD card from the device.
 * Press and hold the "Boot Select" button.
 * Remove power cable from the system if plugged in, and wait a second or so.
 * Plug the power cable in.
 * Wait a short time (e.g. 1 second) and release the "Boot Select" button.