The Pepper Pad was a family of

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

-based mobile computers with

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

capability and which doubled as a

handheld game console A handheld game console, or simply handheld console, is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the cons ...

. They also served as a portable multimedia device. The devices used

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

and

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wav ...

technologies for Internet connection. Pepper Pads are now obsolete, unsupported and the parent company has ceased operations. The original prototype Pepper Pad was built in 2003 with an ARM-based PXA255 processor running at 400Mhz, an 8-inch touchscreen in portrait mode, a split

QWERTY QWERTY () is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard ( ). The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden t ...

keyboard, and Wi-Fi. Only 6 were made, and it was never offered for sale. The Pepper Pad was a 2004 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Innovations Awards Honoree in the Computer Hardware category. The Pepper Pad 2 was introduced in 2004 with a faster 624Mhz PXA270 processor and the screen was rotated to a landscape format. The Pepper Pad 2 was the first Pepper Pad offered for commercial sale. The Pepper Pad and Pepper Pad 2 both ran Pepper's proprietary Pepper Keeper application on top of a heavily customized version of the Montavista Linux operating system. The Pepper Pad 3 was announced in 2006 with as upgrade to a faster

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

Geode processor. The Pepper Pad 3 also used a smaller 7" screen for cost savings. Like previous versions, the Pepper Pad 3 had a split

button keyboard, built-in

microphone A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and publ ...

, video camera, composite video output, and stereo speakers, Infra-Red receiver and transmitter, 800x480 7 inch LCD touchscreen (with stylus), SD/MMC Flash memory slot, 20 or 30 GB hard disk, 256MB

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

, 256KB

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

, and both

(b/g) and

2.0. The Pepper Pad 3 used a heavily customized version of the Fedora Linux operating system called Pepper Linux. Unlike the Pepper Pad 2 which was built and sold directly by Pepper, the Pepper Pad 3 was built and sold under license by Hanbit Electronics.

Support

Pepper Computer, Inc. has ceased operations and is no longer providing support or sales for Pepper Pad web computers or Pepper Linux.

Software

Pepper Pads ran Pepper's "Pepper Keeper" software and suite of applications. Pepper's software was designed to be easy to use, and offered many features later found in devices like the iPhone and Android. The Pepper Keeper's home screen provided large icons for launching applications including a web browser, mail client, chat client, photo viewer, music player, video player, games, and a scrapbooking application. Pepper offered an application store, automatic software updates, and a simple way to share photos, music, and files with friends. The Pepper Keeper ran atop Pepper Linux, Pepper's custom version of the Linux operating system. Pepper Linux was ported to multiple devices including the One Laptop per Child.

Software ported to the Pepper Pad

FCE Ultra FCEUX is an open-source software, open-source Nintendo Entertainment System and Family Computer Disk System emulator. It is a merger of various Fork (software development), forks of FCE Ultra. Multiplayer support The Win32 and SDL versions of FCE ...

(

NES The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in American ...

emulator) * Adobe Systems/

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe System ...

Flash 7 *

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

* GTK+ * Mozilla

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current ...

RealPlayer RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimedia realm, including MP3 ...

Helix A helix () is a shape like a corkscrew or spiral staircase. It is a type of smooth space curve with tangent lines at a constant angle to a fixed axis. Helices are important in biology, as the DNA molecule is formed as two intertwined helic ...

Squeak Squeak is an object-oriented, class-based, and reflective programming language. It was derived from Smalltalk-80 by a group that included some of Smalltalk-80's original developers, initially at Apple Computer, then at Walt Disney Imagineering, ...

Hardware (Pepper Pad 3)

* Mass: 2.1 pounds (985g) * Size: 29 cm x 14.9 cm x 2.3 cm (11.4" x 5.9" x 0.9")

Mainboard

AMD Geode Geode was a series of x86-compatible system-on-a-chip microprocessors and I/O companions produced by AMD, targeted at the embedded computing market. The series was originally launched by National Semiconductor as the Geode family in 1999. The or ...

CPU, 533 MHz clock speed, x86 instruction set with MMX and 3DNow extensions, integrated north bridge, graphics controller and PCI bridge * AMD CS5536 Companion device (south bridge), USB 2.0 / IDE / IR / SMBus / APM interface
Wolfson WM9713
AC97 Audio / Touchscreen interface * 256MB DDR SDRAM (DDR-333 SO-DIMM) * 256KB BIOS ROM * Chrontel CH7013B NTSC/PAL TV signal encoder * IrDA and TvIR emitters/receivers

Subsystems

* Hitachi TravelStar 20GB 1.8" IDE disk drive * Atheros AR2413A-based mini-PCI 802.11b/g WiFi interface, with externally attached antenna (external to the card, internal to the Pepper) * Bluetooth 2.0
AU Optronics A070VW01
7.0" 800x480 TFT LCD * Integrated 62-key clicky keyboard, including 4-way cursor array and scroll wheel * 3800mAh Lithium-Ion Battery * Stereo Speakers * Microphone * 640x480 digital camera, fixed focus

External Ports

* USB 2.0 host port * USB 2.0 device port * 1/8" Stereo headphone out * 1/8" Composite video out * 1/8" Microphone In

Internal Ports

miniPCI Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) is a local computer bus for attaching hardware devices in a computer and is part of the PCI Local Bus standard. The PCI bus supports the functions found on a processor bus but in a standardized format t ...

(occupied by WiFi interface) * JTAG test-access port. *

Serial port In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. ...

with console

References

External links

* DOW
Pepper Computer, Inc.
* DOWN 2011-02-2
Hanbit America
hardware manufacturer website *
Archive of Hanbit America
Web archive of hardware manufacturer website * DOWN 2011-0202
Pepper Pad Community Forums
official discussion forums * DOWN 2011-02-2
Pepper Wiki
Pepper Pad information repository *
Web archive of wiki
Archive
Pepper Linux 4.0 Application Launching Preview
(Video) {{Linux devices Handheld game consoles Microsoft Tablet PC Mobile computers Linux-based video game consoles ARM-based video game consoles X86-based game consoles