arm-netbook September 2018

arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk

12 participants
12 discussions

Laptop LCD Touch Pad: Display KB Layout Idea
by Alexander Ross 25 Mar '19

25 Mar '19

On the laptops lcd touch pad. Here’s a idea for a feature. When leaning new keyboard layout. Say dovrak for example. The trouble is learning where the new keys are. For me at least, one could do with a constant reminder. What if the lcd touch pad displayed the current pressed keys? Maybe on a image of the keyboard, meaning some way of representing where the key you pressed is relative to other keys. So if its the wrong one you can see where the right one is. This info is only displayed while the keyboard is in use. When the touch pad is in use it switches to a relevant display for touch pad use. As for when the user is using not the touch pad nor the keyboard? What then? display keymap? If playing video display: video controls, time left, is internet speed fast enough for this stream? etc.

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Schedule Updates?
by Paul Boddie 09 Oct '18

09 Oct '18

Hello, I was reviewing the last update on Crowd Supply for the EOMA68 campaign [1], and taking information from that and from discussions on this list, it seems that the following timeline was being followed: 15th June: Crowd Supply update, prototype tested, DRAM tested and ordered, HDMI not tested Late July: DRAM manufactured ("about a month to have the 8 Gbit 1600 MHz DDR3 x8 RAM ICs manufactured"), assembly begins (working from "three months after getting the cards back from assembly before shipping begins") Late October: "delivery of the first units" (presumably "delivery" is the same as "shipping", meaning "dispatch" from Crowd Supply) I hope that things have been proceeding as anticipated. August was a quiet month on this list, and I imagine that Luke has been very busy with all his projects, but I wonder if there is any news about whether the DRAM manufacturer came through, whether assembly could start, whether testing might have begun (and was hopefully a success), and so on. I imagine that there is also the awkward matter of getting the boards from China to the US, related bureaucracy, and other complicating factors. Anyway, I hope everything is going well, that Luke isn't overworked, and that I didn't miss something that would have made the current state of the schedule a bit clearer. Paul [1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/2-7-5-samples-rece…

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Wikipedia policy change, list might care about
by Jean Flamelle 29 Sep '18

29 Sep '18

I wrote a proposal for a major policy change, which establishes conditions for acceptable conditions to cite a primary or biased secondary source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Wikipedia,…. Once in the past, Luke had trouble with a wikipedia article on EOMA that got user-ified, because rigorous news coverage for eoma lacked. Luke definitely noted a little known hypocrisy on wikipedia, which stems from the official policy lagging with the convention on wikipedia on general exceptions to reliability. Since Luke came off as a special interest, perhaps undue scrutiny came about and the rulebook got thrown around a bit. I didn't read to deeply into the conversations back then and I got inspired to write this proposal from my experience learning wikipedia by reading the rules first before editing, noticing many potential caveats, and arguing around the rules too effectively and realizing I would only need to push criticisms and loopholes for probably about a month of pointless back-and-forth on already made points before letting it sink in that otherwise unreliable sources give credible information in this case, for transparent or inferrable reasons. -- CC0

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libre-riscv.org 3d gpu project
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 27 Sep '18

27 Sep '18

long story, there's a new project underway which is to create a 3D GPU (and associated complete processor) entirely as a libre project, using RISC-V as the basis. there's a lot to get done: the roadmap is quite straightforward: http://libre-riscv.org/3d_gpu/roadmap/ it'll be a vulkan3d *software* driver written in rust and using llvm. where and if absolutely strictly necessary intrinsic inline assembler will be placed into the rust code: for the rest it will be straight to llvm, and from there using a hardware-level parallelism API called "SimpleV" which will take care of, at the hardware level, a variable-length "vectorisation" aka variable-size SIMD (which is a really *really* misleading way to describe it but SIMD and vectorisation is what most people know). for the most part this is a *software* project not a hardware one so if anyone has software engineering skills, documentation skills or anything else, do get in touch. mailing lists: http://lists.libre-riscv.org l.

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Microdesktop v1.7
by Richard Wilbur 25 Sep '18

25 Sep '18

By the way, what is the status of the microdesktop design v1.7? Have you already invested in parts (specifically the 2x10 header) and/or circuit boards?

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Oscilloscope or bust?
by David Niklas 23 Sep '18

23 Sep '18

Hi, I need help here. I was designing the power supply of my laptop and I noticed that some power bucks and step up/down converters (Which both seem to do the same thing. Please tell me otherwise.), produced a more stable power supply than others. In order to find out if they are truly suitable for suppling power to sensitive electronics I've heard that I need an oscilloscope. I currently own: 1. #222634543946 "DC-DC 10/12/15/20A 150/250/300/400/1200W Step up Step down Buck Boost Converter" 2. #152710861245 "2A DC Boost Step-up Adjustable Converter Module 3v-24v to 3.3v 5v 6v 9v 12v 24v" After learning that some guy with an oscilloscope reviewed these, I'm planning to get: #122923215542 "6 Pack MP1584EN ultra Small DC-DC 3A power Step-Down Adjustable Module Buck M2H3 6 Pack MP1584EN ultra Small DC-DC 3A power Step-Down Adjustable Module Buck" I've seen many oscilloscopes online on crowd funding campaigns. I've never been certain of which to get, if any. The real professional ones are out of my budget range of about $100. *I'll pay more if I must*, but I already did not anticipate the need to actually evaluate what should be solid products. I probably should find a solid adjustable DC power supply to test these with vs. an old laptop power pack or some batteries. What I need some of these things to do is to take a dynamically variable voltage as input (Li-Ion batteries in series), and produce a constant voltage as output. Others I need to just convert to the correct voltage from the old laptop power pack. Thanks! David

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Logos
by John Luke Gibson 22 Sep '18

22 Sep '18

I would highly recommend avoiding any logos, without proper historical reference. One of the problems with traditional Linux icons, are that they are very un-iconic. It's better to be textually based, in my opinion, than to use disorienting imagery. At this point, most of the clay has already set so referencing/alluding-to other gnu projects [such as blender] wouldn't be detrimental, however ascii has a very richer history of use by "hacktivists". Referencing some historically relevant (to "hacktivism") ascii iconography either overtly or subtly, kindof more or less as a hat tip to communities which support said historical events will cause the logo a greater likelihood of being regarded as iconic. I wish I had specific examples, but possibly using cloister black font would be a subtle hat tip to anonymous for some individuals use of various letters in that font as copy-cat of L from Death Note. Another thing of note, would be that we need to be careful who we tip our hats to, to be careful of who in the future people might assume us to endorse. A font is innocuous enough, that it can be adapted later due to circumstance (should a need arise to disassociate) without damaging the recognize-ability of any logo. The universal and modular style of blender, is a good point to mimic. A solid dot in the center of the "O" would probably be a subtle enough correlation to the blender logo. This is the pattern of thinking we need in developing logos and "slogans". Thinking about what sounds catchy only correlates us with random corporate culture. We don't need to be entirely original as we have a history to fall back on. However originality might also help distinguish us from our predecessors, the last thing we want is to fail to distinguish ourselves from your neighborhood corporation. I would recommend Luke to contact Wenqing Yang a.k.a. "Yummei", using the notability of the project to attract their attention. I would like to point out that despite being a cultural figure (famous artist) in the hacktivist community they previously lauched a multi-million dollar successful indiegogo which caused them much heart ache (per their blog) over legal controversy with so-called partners and their personal admonishment that they failed to do enough. >From: Alexander Ross <maillist_arm-netbook(a)aross.me> >To: Linux on small ARM machines <arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk> >Cc: >Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2017 16:07:15 +0000 >Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] Logos >this all these efforts, got me to have a play around too. :) > > i was started having a go at one idea of letters inserting into each > other kinda like a module. > > I had put E and O in side the M. it then kinda looked like/spelled Meoo > like a cat. > So what about a darn cat logo? maybe a cat playing with a eoma68 card in > its paws? > > sry for the yet another internet cat image type of suggestion, never > thought id be making one heh.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Logos
by John Luke Gibson 21 Sep '18

21 Sep '18

> The idea about a dot in the "O" of EOMA made me think of fonts where the > dot is in the 0 (zero) to distinguish it from O (capital letter O) As we > all are somehow computer related I would find such a design confusing. If it was really to be in honor of the modularity and progress of blender, one would want to make the "O" not really in any particular font, but to look exactly the shape blender logo, except without the flay or the color scheme: a perfect solid-color circle within another perfect circle. It wouldn't theoretically be confusing because the mark you are thinking of is a hollow circle in an oval. Letter-o'es and zeroes can only sometimes be confusing because in some fonts they are both written as vertical ovals, not just the zero. I'm not sure on the required dimensions of a certification mark, however, the solid-shape flag-esque convention I've noticed among popular one's, often seems to detract from the continuity of the design on the objects that bear them, making them seem particularly foreign and like they don't belong. The vaporwave-esque color palate which most of them choose only add to this affect, as if they themselves are trying to distance themselves on some subconscious level from their endorsements. As a side effect to this, it makes them harder to trust. Any symbolism of any significant body, displays historical awareness.. It's what tells people whether they can trust it, before reading or attempting to judge it. Therein lies the axiom, there is no such thing as an original thought, so, if by means of arbitrary work dedicated to make more concise and thoroughly plastered an announcement of what historical or cultural event may have inspired such thoughts and such work, people will then engage in the arbitrarily difficult work of judging whether the project is sincere or not. In other words, if we don't display more than necessary effort in our symbol that can be recognized with several magnitudes less effort than it took to generate, then no highly-self-valuing person will have any sane reason to take us seriously, because if they took every slightly promising project, which failed to create a Sybil-certificate reputation in this manner, then they would never find a single valuable project in their lifetime (obviously this is an exaggeration).

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So this is kind of interesting, I thought...
by Christopher Havel 18 Sep '18

18 Sep '18

https://hackaday.com/2018/09/17/a-1-linux-capable-hand-solderable-processor/ A (barely) hand-solderable Linux-able ARM SoC. US$1 each if you buy a full reel from a questionable supplier, and the package is a 176-lead LQFP (!) with half-millimeter pitch (!!) -- but still only ~US$3 for qty/1 from reputable sources, and it is /technically/ hand-workable if you've got a temperature-controlled iron with the right tip and a particularly steady hand. I'm impressed. The bad news, though, is that it's an Allwinner part with all of the usual baggage. The /worse/ news is that it's actually ~6yrs old and plods along at 1GHz. Somehow I just don't see it running Android 9.0 Pie without melting down spectacularly -- although, it might be adequate for running eg Linux Mint or something similarly lightweight... I wonder how cheaply one could manufacture a complete all-in-one PC with one of these...? Back-of-the-envelope calcs makes me think one could compete with those ~US$100-150 Atom z8300/z8350 MiniPCs on eBay and Amazon and AliExpress (none of which have screens built in, mind you), but I've been wrong before, for sure...

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Shout out to EOMA68 in new article
by Pen-Yuan Hsing 12 Sep '18

12 Sep '18

Dear list, Waaaay back near the end of 2017 I was invited to write a review of the book "The Hardware Hacker" (https://nostarch.com/hardwarehacker) by Bunnie Huang, the person behind the Novena project: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena My peer-reviewed review article was finally published here yesterday under CC BY 4.0: https://doi.org/10.5334/joh.11 I mention this because I managed to put in a shout out to the "the EOMA68 line of computing devices" with a link to its Crowd Supply page. First of all, please feel free to refer to this article via the DOI link above, and share it widely in whatever forum you see fit. Secondly, I'd appreciate any/all critiques of my article that you're happy to provide. I suspect the most direct way is to use the article's built-in Disqus function which you can see in the "Discussion" tab on the article's page (again, via the link above). I am by no means a hardware expert nor a seasoned veteran of the free software movement. So your constructive criticisms would be appreciated. I just hope that this will, in a small way, help promote the amazing work Luke has been doing. Thanks!

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arm-netbook September 2018