arm-netbook May 2015

arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk

16 participants
7 discussions

15in laptop casework progress
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 01 Jul '15

01 Jul '15

http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/laptop_15in/news/ getting there. redesigned the central spar to be more structural support, to help prevent torsion and to give the back edge part something to get its teeth into. a beefy touchpanel holder worked out well for keeping the front edges in place, so this was replicated at the back as well. l.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] CHIP - The World's First Nine Dollar Computer by Next Thing Co. — Kickstarter
by Paul Sokolovsky 13 May '15

13 May '15

Hello, I managed to receive whole 2 private mails asking for details, so I'm replying to the list, hoping it would be good intermedia between EOMA project news. As a disclaimer, I don't know deep details of 802.11 standard, so someone with more knowledge may find bunch of things to correct. Stylistic otherwise is so it was fun for me to write and fun for you to read. Caveat emptor. On Tue, 12 May 2015 16:15:30 -0400 Derek LaHousse <dlahouss(a)mtu.edu> wrote: > Hey, I don't know any better, but why would a vendor want to block AP > mode? Sure, the end user on a windows machine isn't gonna use it, but > isn't that more effort to block it? You may laugh, but Windows supports that for ages. My random google-up shows this for Windows 7, http://www.firewall.cx/microsoft-knowledgebase/windows-xp-7-8/968-windows-7… , but I won't be surprised if some WinXP update allowed that either. Of course, Microsoft did that years after hostapd https://w1.fi/hostapd/ was available for Linux. Is Microsoft the only commercial vendor brave enough to offer such feature? Certainly no, from a certain version of Android "wifi hotspot" is a standard feature. The technical story which made this possible is: Once about a time there was cute WiFi industry with its WEP security standard. Turned out, that WEP was a complete sieve, and not a security. Well, cute WiFi industry was just happy to sell you WEP2, but turned out, the impact was too big. CIOs didn't want to buy that WiFi thing which could leave them exposed after any vulnerability. So, pundits at IEEE (which are of course guys from cute WiFi industry) sit and thought how to not be laughed at again. What they figured is that they split authentication and authorization out of core protocol (unlike it was with WEP). So enterprises could have better security than a password written on a wall, and most importantly, so they can deliver a promise that if something is cracked, there should be a firmware upgrade, instead of requiring thousands of APs off the walls and replacing with other ones. History is silent regarding the fact whether it was IEEE or some particular vendor was smart enough to figure out that the easiest way to implement those requirements is to make a chip pass complete raw 802.11 packets to outside, and get such from outside - then chip can stay simple (cheap, competetive), and complex and ever-changing crypto can be done in that "outside", like a main CPU user already has. That's the idea behind wpa_supplicant https://w1.fi/wpa_supplicant/ . And surprisingly, ability to pass raw packets has many other interesting uses, like implementing AP mode. And that's the idea behind https://w1.fi/hostapd/ Now, could that not work? Sure, vendor could (possibly) allow only subset of raw packets, or maybe go way of 90ies and WEP and implement it all on chip. Why? Horizontal segmentation. Selling the same chip for $2 without that feature, and for $10 otherwise. Problem: nowadays that's pretty insane. Suppose a user buys an adapter with such chip and tries to enable standard Windows feature of virtual AP. And if it doesn't, it cries in twitters and facebooks "MicroSoft suxxxx!!111". Microsoft doesn't like vendors who do such things to them, and look at them like sh%t. Or someone builds a phone with such chip and comes to Google for Android certification. And they respond: Are you bullocks? A phone can generate only so much 3G/4G traffic. But if we let a notebook connect to it, a lot of traffic will be wasted. Without AP mode, your device simply cannot generate enough revenue for our mobile industry sponsors, so don't waste our time with it. And that's the morale of it - at one point, having a closed system is less beneficial than open, for everyone in the industry - from a user to various types of vendors and integrators. That's what happened to AP mode for a WiFi chip - it's stupid to not support it now. That's what we (subscribers of this list) look for in regard to "mobile" video/graphics drivers, and other drivers of SoC systems. And what Luke tries to drive, too bad he doesn't have same kind of leverage as Google and Microsoft. > > Taken off list because it's not really on-topic, feel free to bring > back. > > On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 3:31 PM, Paul Sokolovsky <pmiscml(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > > Hello, > > > > On Tue, 12 May 2015 18:38:38 +0000 (UTC) > > Derek LaHousse <dlahouss(a)mtu.edu> wrote: > > > >> Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross <maillist_arm-netbook <at> aross.me> > >> writes: > >> > >> > really good marketing and a well made original video. however > >> > they dont give much info like what wifi chipset they use > >> > -weather its software freedom friendly-. > >> > >> From their kickstarter page, it's: > >> - A realtek 2-in-1 Bluetooth 4.0 + WiFi b/g/n > >> > >> Based on that, it's probably an rtl81xx. Yes, that's a big family > >> and I don't know any better. But they all require non-free > >> firmware. Bleh. > > > > Did you expect anything else? > > > >> > >> The page claims the wifi supports AP mode. Neat. > > > > *Any* wifi chip supports AP mode. Or put in another way, a vendor > > needs to go out of their way to block it (some do, yeah). > > > > > > -- > > Best regards, > > Paul mailto:pmiscml@gmail.com -- Best regards, Paul mailto:pmiscml@gmail.com

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eoma68 open hardware laptop thingiverse link
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 13 May '15

13 May '15

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:823097

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CHIP - The World's First Nine Dollar Computer by Next Thing Co. — Kickstarter
by Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross 12 May '15

12 May '15

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-worlds-first-9-com… really good marketing and a well made original video. however they dont give much info like what wifi chipset they use -weather its software freedom friendly-.

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KiCAD autorouter freeroute has gone open source and stand alone
by joem 12 May '15

12 May '15

KiCAD autorouter freeroute has gone open source and stand alone For Ubuntu 12.04, install the default-jdk i.e. sudo apt-get install default-jdk The freeroute files can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/nikropht/FreeRouting/ Need to unzip and compile .java files for which there is a script The following needs to be put into a bash script - e.g. compile_freeroute.sh: #!/usr/bin/env bash # # Credits: http://www.freerouting.net/fen/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=255 # (A message written by forum user "foka" on 2014-03-23) # # This has been hacked together in a few minutes after reading the post above. # # 1. Check prerequisites: if [ ! -f /usr/share/java/jh.jar ] \ || [ ! -f /usr/share/icedtea-web/netx.jar ] then sudo apt-get install javahelp2 icedtea-netx-common fi # 2. Compile: if javac -classpath /usr/share/java/jh.jar:/usr/share/icedtea-web/netx.jar \ `find -type f -name "*.java"` then jar cfe fr.jar gui.MainApplication \ `find -type f $ -name "*.class" -o -name "*.properties" $` else echo "*** Some .java file was not compiled. See above" 1>&2 exit 1 fi # 3. Run: java -jar fr.jar Then run bash compile_freeroute.sh and you got stand alone freeroute! :) Related links are these: https://bugs.launchpad.net/kicad/+bug/1290022 https://github.com/32bitmicro/Freerouting http://www.freerouting.net/fen/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=255 Now you can make your own freedom CPU boards and design it with 100% free software and share designs! :) :)

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The future of EOMA-68
by gacuest＠gmail.com 05 May '15

05 May '15

I have seen that are developing several EOMA-68, but all have very little power or are old (like A20, JZ4775 or IC1T). This makes that many people that are looking for powerful hardware is left out of the EOMA-68 market. What is the future of EOMA-68? Any EOMA-68 with a powerful hardware (like Tegra X1 or Intel Bay-Trail)?

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video of laptop casework demo available
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 05 May '15

05 May '15

http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/laptop_15in/news/

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arm-netbook May 2015