arm-netbook

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1076 discussions

modifying a 7 inch notebook cabinet to accept a pc card
by ronwirring＠Safe-mail.net 26 May '17

26 May '17

On another forum I asked about the practicability of modifying a 7 inch notebook cabinet to become pc card compatible. Lkcl rejected my suggestion. He argued, that keyboard, sound, batteri etc would require custom pcbs. Expenses worth thousand of eus. Doing it wrong and the computer could catch fire. I am not going to spend thousand of eus. I will try to modify a computer. I have no expectation, that I will be able to do it. I have come to think that the pc card is a raspberry pi. If your display is hdmi and other devices are usb, then you have a computer. On youtube I found a person who had turned notebook's touchpad into an usb touchpad. I asked him about modifying these notebook devices to usb: speakers -> use an usb soundcard mic -> use an usb soundcard camera -> notebooks camera may be an usb device. Else get an usb camera. touchpad -> many synaptic touchpads are usb compatible. I do not know what to do about the left and right buttons. keyboard -> that will be difficult. battery -> likely difficult. At least if you want to be able to charge and have the computer turned on at the same time. display -> either get a lvds to hdmi converter or get a hdmi display. I do not now if a 7 inch hdmi display requires separate power. It appears the keyboard is the biggest difficulty. On his website one person wrote about modifying a notebook keyboard to an usb keyboard. He wrote it is about getting a controller which will fit the keyboard's wiring. Then it is a matter of mapping the keys correctly. I do not know about powering the keyboard or rather the controller. I bought a 7 inch display asus eee pc 4g. If you get to use the battery cabinet, there ought to be space for the devices. Tell me what you say?

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mailing list settings
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 26 May '17

26 May '17

as an experiment i'm setting "content filtering", particularly the option to convert text/html parts to plain text, but it also strips multipart/alternativee and a few other things. the general idea is to make it easier to interact on complex multi-reply topics by enforcing text-only. replying to text-only should, by default in most mailers, result in the familiar ">"s for every single line, as per standard netiquette guidelines. i will test this shortly. test line test line test line test line test line test linetest line test linetest line test linetest line test linetest line test linetest line test linetest line test line test line test line test line test line test line test linetest line test linetest line test linetest line test linetest line test linetest line test linetest line test line

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Re: [Arm-netbook] mali gpu reverse engineering lkcl may ignore
by ronwirring＠Safe-mail.net 25 May '17

25 May '17

-------- Original Message -------- From: Pablo <pablo(a)parobalth.org> Apparently from: arm-netbook-bounces(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk To: Eco-Conscious Computing <arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk> Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] mali gpu reverse engineering lkcl may ignore Date: Wed, 24 May 2017 22:40:07 +0200 > On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 03:07:45PM -0400, ronwirring(a)Safe-mail.net wrote: > > If you reinterpret what I write then tell on what grounds. I think lkcl's reasons for not reverse engineering a mali are right. > It is difficult to follow your argumentation. You write that you agree > and disagree in the next sentence. No, I do not. First I list lkcl's reasons why he thinks reverse engineering is a bad track. I agree on his arguments. Next I say, why I believe it is better doing a reverse engineering. If you do not accept the principle of weighing arguments up against each other then that is your decision. I specifically wrote in an earlier post, that for me the arguments in favor of making a reverse engineering of a mali gpu are stronger than against. > >Weighing them up against the importance of getting a libre software gpu, I reach the conclusion that the reverse engineering should be done. > Before you plan a difficult crowd funding campaign and involve the FSF, please tell us your > counter arguments to Lukes reasoning on a technical and ethical level. I do not have any technical arguments about a reverse engineering. I have no insight about reverse engineering. To my knowledge it is one of the most difficult fields about computers. I asked if a reverse engineering can be done? Lkcl said yes. My political arguments align with those of libre software. Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag1AKIl_2GM I think it is important having libre software electronics which are able to match the performance of non libre electronics. We should have at least one libre software mali gpu we can ask people to buy. > For example to the following points I am quoting from Lukes email reply to you in > the thread about "firefly 3399 all source software disclosed?": > - "take one of the "open gpus" or parts of them and use that." > - "the sad fact of reverse-engineering: all that effort, with > *no guarantee of success*.... just to get something that's years > out-of-date." > - "well, with the same money it would be possible to make our > own libre processor, with enough extensions to be able to do 3D > graphics *without* paying anyone a cent." I have not heard about this option before lkcl wrote it. I have not heard anyone else mention this option. If lkcl's suggestion is practicable, it is another prove of the lack of coordination among libre software people. > > > There have been some remarks about the probability of a successful crowd funding. I mentioned the numbers 50000 people, each paying 5euro. Notice on this email list, people want to pay 5eu, if they get the software in question. > >It is safe to say more than 10 million people have gnulinux on their computer? A major part of them know about the importance of libre software and a part of them would want to act on it. > I don't know if your numbers are correct but it seems important to me to I do not know either. I do not think there are statistical numbers or questionnaires on this matter. My major arguments are, more than 10 million people likely know about libre software. If you asked them one by one, if in the same prize range, do you want to buy libre software electronics over non libre electronics, many would answer yes. Providing libre software electronics would require a very high degree of coordination. Every major gnulinux forum and organization should display the crowd funding at the same time. I have so far not seen a crowd funding about libre software electronics that would display no matter what entity on the internet people would watch. Proven is, on many areas of consumer electronics we cannot buy libre software devices. > point out that only a fraction of all GNU/Linux Users own a device with > a mali GPU. Only a part of that group would in principle support such a > campaign. Only some of the willing will actually fund the campaign... > > Pablo > > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook(a)files.phcomp.co.uk

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EOMA68 Router Ethernet Speed
by Erik Auerswald 25 May '17

25 May '17

Hi, on http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/router/news/, the text and picture feature Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. Just one sentence mentions 10/100 Ethernet in passing. IMHO that is misleading. AFAIU the QCA9531 provides Fast Ethernet only, *NOT* Gigabit Ethernet. Thus please change any occurrences of GBE/GbE/Gbe or similar with FE, perhaps excluding the very first sentence. While Fast Ethernet is good enough for most uses, it is not Gigabit Ethernet. Please correct the web page. Thanks, Erik -- Reality continues to ruin my life. -- Calvin

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On (potentially not) 3D printing laptop case parts
by Forest Crossman 25 May '17

25 May '17

Hi, all, The recent update on Crowd Supply (regarding the difficulty in mass-producing parts with 3D printers) reminded me of some RepRap/RepStrap innovations from a few years back: - https://web.archive.org/web/20150318000301/http://justindunh am.net/making-cast-resin-3d-printer-parts/ <https://web.archive.org/web/20150318000301/http://justindunham.net/making-c…> - http://reprap.org/wiki/Clonedel - http://reprap.org/wiki/Moldmaking_Tutorial This was before cheap, mass-produced 3D printers became widely available, so many people were bootstrapping their RepRaps by purchasing 3D-printed parts from others. At some point, someone realized that it was a lot faster to 3D print a set of parts, make molds from them, and then use those molds to make additional part sets, than it was to separately print each set of parts. I'm not sure how complicated the parts of the laptop case are, but if the parts could be re-designed to be optimized for resin casting, it might cut down on the production time. Of course, I've never done any resin casting before so I don't know how feasible this would be in practice. Also, I have no idea how fast modern 3D printers can run now, so the speed advantage might not even exist any more. Anyways, I just though I'd mention this on the off chance it might help speed things along. Keep up the good work! -- Forest Crossman

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Re: [Arm-netbook] rk3399 what full schematics does lkcl want?
by ronwirring＠Safe-mail.net 24 May '17

24 May '17

-------- Original Message -------- From: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl(a)lkcl.net> Apparently from: arm-netbook-bounces(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk To: Eco-Conscious Computing <arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk> Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] rk3399 what full schematics does lkcl want? Date: Sat, 20 May 2017 16:27:33 +0100 > btw ron please do cut context that's not necessary, it was very hard > to find the questions you wrote. > > On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 3:47 PM, <ronwirring(a)safe-mail.net> wrote: > > >> then once that's done you then have to do the PCB design *from* the > >> schematics, and that takes even longer. and will contain mistakes. > >> > > > Is it difficult or takes a lot of time? I ask because the converting to cad files cannot be split up in numerous pieces and put on a website, where people can each solve one piece? > > so, cutting all but the relevant context, and answering just the > questions you asked: there are two aspects. > > firstly, the schematics: these just take time. it could be > parallelised in theory > > secondly, the PCB layout: this takes time *and* is difficult. > creating the footprints for compoents could be parallelised, but the > PCB layout - positioning of components, connecting components, laying > out tracks and the planes? no - for such a small PCB that is best > handled by one person with the required expertise. > > and that task alone takes months to do from scratch. > > l. Do you make your pc card a20 cad files public? > > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook(a)files.phcomp.co.uk

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Re: [Arm-netbook] mali gpu reverse engineering lkcl may ignore
by ronwirring＠Safe-mail.net 24 May '17

24 May '17

-------- Original Message -------- From: Neil Jansen <njansen1(a)gmail.com> Apparently from: arm-netbook-bounces(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk To: Eco-Conscious Computing <arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk> Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] mali gpu reverse engineering lkcl may ignore Date: Mon, 22 May 2017 17:28:21 -0400 If you reinterpret what I write then tell on what grounds. I think lkcl's reasons for not reverse engineering a mali are right. Weighing them up against the importance of getting a libre software gpu, I reach the conclusion that the reverse engineering should be done. There have been some remarks about the probability of a successful crowd funding. I mentioned the numbers 50000 people, each paying 5euro. Notice on this email list, people want to pay 5eu, if they get the software in question. It is safe to say more than 10 million people have gnulinux on their computer? A major part of them know about the importance of libre software and a part of them would want to act on it. I agree about the responses on the practicability of a crowd funding. I am not sure a crowd funding can be done successfully. I would like to know why? Why cannot such campaigns be coordinated centralized? We should have a known entity, which would approve libre software related crowd fundings. People would know them to not be scams. Why does an entity like the free software foundation not take on this task? I should ask them. About these fragmented crowd fundings, you yourself have to make a validation, which is difficult. When lkcl initiated his pc card crowd funding, I did not know him. I still mostly do not. On trisquel's forum people referenced thinkpenguin. Thinkpenguin endorsed lkcl. That is why I supported lkcl. Is the free software foundation not involved because they fear scandals or not have enough resources? The matter about libre software consumer electronics, I consider highly important. There have been remarks about the retaliation towards people who want to do reverse engineering. How to deal with it. One option would be to let one entity collect the funding, manage public relations and another hidden team do the reverse engineering. Everything still legal on taxes. Legalities seems to be an important issue. Are these legal concerns an american matter? I do not know everything which may happen but if the public part of the crowd funding is located in eu, I think a campaign should be fine.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] arm-netbook Digest, Vol 82, Issue 47
by Ismo Väänänen 23 May '17

23 May '17

> > Date: Sun, 21 May 2017 00:45:30 +0100 > From: Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl(a)lkcl.net> > To: Eco-Concscious Computing <arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk> > Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] GR8 based EOMA68 card > Message-ID: > <CAPweEDywhR-LUBAZojgGr2Hn0WJijOuZayxvJBK4W > DH7MuhRDw(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" > > ismo, hi, > > it was just too tempting to have an initial go at converting the > CHIP_PRO_v1 schematic and PCB into a version of an EOMA68-GR8 card, > deliberately cutting it down to the absolute basic minimum - after > only about 6 hours i'm pretty much done connecting everything > together, having cut/paste bits and pieces over: > > http://hands.com/~lkcl/eoma/gr8/ > > those are exported from PADS into 9.0 ASCII format if you want to take a > look. > Sweet, thanks. Just imported these to Altium. Actually noticed that the Allegro .brd import in to Altium needs Allegro installed to function. The imported layout looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/uPmEsQb.png > importing from ORCAD/Allegro doesn't half make a dog's dinner of > things... *sigh*... > It so does. None of the component parameters for the passives carried over in the import. The component values imported as separate strings for the passives, at least the cases are OK. Of course, the mentioned cases don't exist. So that needs some additional work. > anyway it's the *absolute* absolute bare minimum. TV-out, gone, > HP/MIC, gone. OTG, gone. NAND, gone. SDC2 is connected to a MicroSD > slot, SDC0 is connected to EOMA68. SPI2 is connected to EOMA68 so in > theory could also be used as bootable media (factory-install purposes > only). boot is basically from on-board MicroSD, that can be > over-ridden if people want to by using a Housing MicroSD card (if the > Housing *has* one). > That's OK with me. More space to use for potential future expansion. > the layout's hilarious: the PCB is over 50% completely empty. what i > haven't done is: > > (1) complete the tracks / connections > (2) add a VCC-3V3 power plane or other power planes. god did ORCAD > make a mess... *sigh*. > (3) convert any of the 0201 components to 0402 (for goodness sake > don't use 0201 components!) > (4) sort out any tracks as a result of 0201 conversions > Ya 0402 is a lot more sane to deal with than 0201. > (5) re-add the copper pours for the power outputs from the inductors > (to the AXP209). > This and in general figure out the power stuff. > (6) do a full review to check that the dog's dinner mess made by ORCAD > hasn't split some of the NETs. PADs doesn't support multi-named nets. > i found one (and joined them) but there may be others. > (7) sync'd PADS schematic and PCB so that a proper NETLIST review could be > done. > It's gona be FUN mating the CHIP Pro schematic files with that layout. Absolute joy. > remember that this *really is* the bare minimum - it'll be amazingly > an under $10 BOM. also that if you _did_ want to add HP and/or TV-out > and/or MIC sockets, as well as OTG.... you can't: there's not enough > room on the connector, not and have MicroSD as well. so you can do 3 > out of 4 of those connectors but not all. > I'll fully decide on this later on, USB+Video would allow for standalone use. And sort-of usable while standalone is aligned with the spirit of the EOMA68 standard (or how I see it at least). also bear in mind that there's a couple of tabs on the Litkconn > casework that fit *just* either side of the MicroSD, whch make it damn > awkward to fit the MicroSD anywhere but directly in the middle of the > end of the Card. > Where can I find datasheets, drawings or 3d models for the Litckonn cases? Can I buy a few sample units from somewhere for fiddling around? > also bear in mind that finding mid-mount 2.5in and 3.5in multi-pin > jacks is a complete bitch. i *might* have one supplier (who speaks > chinese only) who *might* be able to help, there (Runde). > I'm perfectly OK with deleting the sound input/output. Just a shame to leave the sound hardware unused when it exists. > so - what ya wanna do? do you want to take over this layout/schematic > from here and go with it? if you leave it as-is it should be easy to > finish within a matter of 2-3 weeks, which means that it's potentially > possible to add to the upcoming (2nd) planned crowdfunding campaign... > or you could run your own. > More or less regardless of crowdfunding or anything I'll continue doing work on my vision of what a GR8 based EOMA68 card would be. But my progress won't be fast as I'm working full time and doing the same stuff at home as I do at work is not attractive every single day. A low cost alternative for low powered embedded applications might also be attractive to some folks and in general for testing and debugging housings. On an other note, replying to this list while it's in digest mode is a bit weird. I might have to change it from digest to the individual message style and hope that gmail is good enough at clumping the threads. -Ismo / 2ftg

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GR8 based EOMA68 card
by Ismo Väänänen 23 May '17

23 May '17

Hello, The recent talk about de-blobbing R8 and thus also GR8 inspired me to do a quick write up on how I see a Next Thing Co. GR8 System-In-Package chip being used in an EOMA68 compatible card. The latest version of the write up can be found here: https://sites.google.com/site/oh2ftg/eoma68/eoma68-gr8 I named the project "EOMA68-GR8" because why not. Like Vincent I'm doing this on the side and also with Altium. I haven't done anything this complex in Altium before it's likely going to be an interesting challenge. GR8 has TTL/RGB LCD interface, USB2.0, I2C, SPI(SDMMC) and so on. All the interfaces to make a compute card compatible with EOMA68 are there. Except if I want the card to have "front facing" USB I'll need to include some USB HUB chip like TI TUSB2046, which conveniently has no firmware being a state machine. I'll have to look at how the interrupts go, at AXP209 PMIC and it's routing. And decide on if I'll layout the NAND as the talk about blobs being required for NAND support sounds worrying. That and seeing in general if even a half reasonable layout is possible on 4-layer FR4 to get cheaper rates on the pcb's. At least there's no DDR RAM to route, but the TTL/RGB fanout and length matching is gona be chore. One more good reason to learn how the automated length matching in Altium works. Sourcing connectors and housings in small quantities. All that fun stuff. If anything I have missed comes to mind please mention it, I'd rather hear it now then when I have prototype pcb's at hand or layout nearly done. Cheers, Ismo Väänänen de OH2FTG alias 2ftg

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designing a low-cost decent 3d printing board
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 23 May '17

23 May '17

hi all, ok so i've been looking around and the practice of creating a "modular" 3d printing electronics board is extremely common, thanks, many years ago, to the stupid, stupid decision to use prototyping (evaulation) plugin boards with 1.3 to 2.0 *amp* stepper ICs mounted onto micro-postage-stamp-sized PCBs. the problems these cause are endless. *some* people have actually read the datasheets associated with these driver ICs and have designed PCBs that respect the advice of the designers, by making sure that a large part of the PCB's copper is used as a heat-spreader. however the practice is not very common, and the people who make such boards are typically actual well-trained electronics engineers from the west, but who then use western PCB manufacturing and assembly plants, end result: very expensive boards ($120 to $200). as i would like to see both a low-cost board made *and* have a decent design, and having researched this for many weeks and found that what i am searching for DOES NOT EXIST i need some help. the board i believe is best started from is the Duet WIFI: https://github.com/T3P3/Duet this uses 2.5A TMC2660 "silent" steppers and importantly they're SPI-based. the idea is to cut the DuetWIFI down to the *absolute* bare minimum, turning it into the exact same thing as TRAMS (which uses the 1.3A TMC5130). so instead of an on-board ATSAM4, you use an arduino due. instead of WIFI you use a *standard arduino WIFI shield*. now, debatable is whether to split out the MOSFETs, endstops and thermistors into their own separate shield as well, which i feel might be sensible. in particular i would very much like to "stack" the steppers because i have a design where it is going to use *four* z-axes. in a first iteration those may be wired up as 2x 2-serial in parallel, however it would be very *very* nice to be able to just add a second "stack" of 4 z-axis steppers and use them to do automatic bed-levelling. so to do that it would mean having on-board jumpers that could select alternative GPIO pins... or maybe to use an I2C-based or SPI-based GPIO expander in order to reduce the amount of GPIO needed. however an alternative idea which would do just as well (without needing too much work) would be to have the expectation that there would be a "base board" into which *two* modular 4x TMC2660 stepper boards would be plugged, and an arduino due, *and* the MOSFET/endstop/thermistor board, and the *base* board would take care of GPIO expansion. anyone considering this: the layout on the DuetWIFI for its steppers is very *very* specific and should really not be touched or altered, merely cut away surrounding parts and add the necessary arduino-compatible headers. any takers for what is likely to be a quite straightforward project? l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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