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1079 discussions

pyra computer
by ronwirring＠Safe-mail.net 24 Jan '18

24 Jan '18

https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/getting-closer.82436/ I cannot remember if I previously have posted about the pyra computer. You can notice some of the same problems you see about the pc card. It seems the pyra's cabinet has been made. The cabinet has no pc card port. Has lkcl been in contact with pyra? The cabinet has no pc card slot. Is the pyra's cabinet relevant to the pc card?

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Libre RISC-V SoC
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 24 Jan '18

24 Jan '18

ok so, from the anonymous benefactor (independent of the shakti team), the one who sponsored me with the zc706 FPGA developer board, he has just had an interesting meeting with MOSIS, and has confirmed that they have an LPDDR3 PHY, so in combination with the DDR3 *controller* that was developed and released by someone working at CERN, this would be the last major piece of the "interfaces" side of puzzle that, until then, blocked progress. so he asked, also, what would it take to get things ready within a year, to hand over the ASIC-based design to MOSIS, for them to turn it into an ASIC, and i said "a team of engineers would need to be paid for". he asked - and please note the question very carefully - "would USD 250,000 be enough?" to which i replied (genuinely) yes... if done carefully. software also has to be taken care of. please note: *that's as far as the conversation has gone so far*. it is still exciting, and the next phase would be to get a strong committment and then i can start finding people to do software bring-up and also develop the VLSI / VHDL which will put all this together - mostly that's glue logic for the interfaces (putting them onto a "Tile" interface if using the rocket-chip or BOOM architecture) but also designing a multiplexer GPIO bank. i'm also talking to jeff from nyuzi, he designed a software-driven "compute engine that happens to be reasonably good at 3D", the interesting bit being that he's focussed on working out which areas need performance improvements. this is something that's almost completely lacking in the published academic world... *because nobody in the academic world has designed and published a GPU!* we worked out that nyuzi is approximately 1/16th the speed of MALI400. roughly. although area-for-area it's quite hard to tell whether that's a fair assessment because you can't *get* die areas for MALI400 (anyone know anything better than these estimates? https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1176110/ ) and it's the performance / mm^2 / watt that's critical, we worked out that if you put in 2 nyuzi cores and managed to halve the number of instructions / pixel by replacing critical path blocks with hardware-rendering ones, you'd end up at about 25% the performance of MALI400 and that i feel would be "good enough" for a first version. i'd be interested to hear what people think, here. the *general-purpose compute* performance of nyuzi on the other hand is really good. anyway lots of planning to do. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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Re: [Arm-netbook] RK3399
by ronwirring＠Safe-mail.net 23 Jan '18

23 Jan '18

> Pičugins Arsenijs<crimier(a)yandex.ru> Thank you for your email. > computer card or a RK3399 mainboard If the pc card gets shipped, then I got one. I want to frame this enterprise a bit more. It must be a hobby thing. You are not obliged to anything and you can skip any time you want. I will not hold it against you. One reason why I will not put large money into it. That way it is not a big deal if we do not succeed. We should do without time frames. Shipping the pc card appears to lay months ahead. > would you be interested in a videocall > of some sorts? On forums I prefer to stay anonymous. If things turn ugly I can walk away. If required can we get by using an irc or another messenger? > drawing the PCB, I can show you > the basics of KiCad For preparation, maybe you could state some links I should have a look on? I should mention I have a solder iron and a multimeter. About my comments on the devices I wanted to express that I prefer less complicated solutions. I was not telling you what solution to select. > important to remember that we'll > eventually need battery power, > and plan it in from the beginning Yes. The asus eee pc 4g's keyboard is model v072462ak1 revision 1.0 gr. The ribbon has 28 wires and the ribbon is 28mm wide. On ebay I have found this ribbon connector https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/gkgAAOSwZB9Z-YIL/s-l1600.jpg. Should I get one? > 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] RK3399
by Pičugins Arsenijs 23 Jan '18

23 Jan '18

First of all, sorry for the wrong "Subject" of the last email! I'm guessing I should switch off "digest mode" on this ML =) > I wanted a small eoma pc card notebook. That is > why I obtained the asus 7inch eee pc 4g. > When I got the notebook, I took out the > mainboard because I wanted to see how > much space is in the cabinet. There's plenty of space, indeed, that's why modders liked it! Those old Intel systems were big and power-hungry - requiring 3 large chips and active cooling, then, slowly but surely, Moore's law caught up and we are where we are, where even our CPU has another CPU inside it =D > As I mentioned, I wanted to convert the notebook > to an eoma pc card notebook. Because shipping > of the pc card keeps being delayed I have not > done more about it. I mentioned the rk3399 > mainboard, because it maybe would be an > option if the pc card does not get made. First of all, by the time we get this done, or half-done, some computer cards should be available, at least for us =) Then, using a computer card is clearly a more sustainable and future-proof solution. However, that doesn't even matter for now - let's start with something that will work with both EOMA68 and RK3399 devboard, so we have a backup option! > Yes, but we have to set some references. > I am not skilled on electronics. I will have to > move on instructions. That's understandable - I'm willing to spend time walking you through the processes, at least initially =) > Costs may spiral. I am not going to accept > that. If I am asked to buy a 100usd device, I > will answer no. If I am asked to buy a 50usd > device, I will likely answer no. The mainboard should be the most expensive device of them all, whether it's a computer card or a RK3399 mainboard - this one is not something we can avoid. Other parts shouldn't cost any close to that. > If we in a low priced way can get to use the build > in display, that is what we should do. Absolutely. Sourcing a display that has the same size but different interface, then sourcing cables and making our own adapters could be problematic. > My notebook is an asus 7inch eee pc 4g. I do > not know the precise name of the build in > display. They should all be the same - we'll do some testing, too =) > About wifi card, I have small usb ar9271 wifi > cards. They work on debian 9 64bit main. Saying > the source software is available. We should > use an usb ar9271 wifi card. That's a good option, too. However, using SDIO for WiFi (instead of USB) could help us offload the USB bus, which is good for usability (have you heard all the RPi ramblings about RPi USB? it's not even quarter as bad as they make it sound, and this might actually be worse.) Regardless, it shouldn't be hard to support both options. > About sound. I have an usb soundcard. It works > on debian 9 64bit main. > About sdcard reader. I have usb sdcard > readers. They work on debian 9 64bit main. Yep, that's the good part about SD card readers and USB soundcards - they don't usually have many problems, and don't tend to need proprietary firmware. > About storage. My information is, the pc card > will have an sdcard port on the pc card for > storage. That SD card slot, as I understand, will be used for the system drive - so, an expansion slot would be useful. > Turning the keyboard into an usb keyboard is an > important move. I suggest we make turning the > notebook's keyboard into an usb keyboard our > first step. Agreed! My question is - would you be interested in a videocall of some sorts? We could start right off by drawing the PCB, I can show you the basics of KiCad. > About a battery supplying power. I suggest we > wait until we have a notebook, which will > run on a power supply. This is, undoubtedly, a good plan for a start, but it's important to remember that we'll eventually need battery power, and plan it in from the beginning - if we don't, that might cause problems down the road. Regardless, I'll take care of this =) > Maybe this modification of a notebook is of > interest for other people. We should use this > email list. If nobody else minds, then let's do it!

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Re: [Arm-netbook] arm-netbook Digest, Vol 90, Issue 26
by Pičugins Arsenijs 23 Jan '18

23 Jan '18

> you will learn a lot from the task that you envision, arsenijs: if > the reverse-engineering of the eeepc is that far along it takes care > of many of the tasks on the list and yes, 6 months would not be an > unreasonable estimate for the remainder. > > please however be under no illusion that, even at the end of all that > effort, which if well-documented will be extremely valuable in its own > right and on its own merit, you are still presenting people with the > task of *hand-disassembling* a pre-existing system, that the number of > people who will be interested to do so will be at most 100 in the > world, and that bang-per-buck wise the effort spent has an extremely > low *actual* environmental benefit compared to designing and building > a system that's *actually* intented - from the start - to be > eco-conscious. While I do agree that making a EOMA68-based EEE is a fun and educational project and all people participating and watching will learn a lot, I believe that re-building a small (and, in a way, iconic) netbook is very important for the EOMA68 project - and this is the main reason I'm ready to spend time on it (it's not like I have too much free time =D ). First of all, it shows that EOMA68 is a mature and thought-out platform that actually allows people to be more eco-friendly, and allows people to reuse their old laptop hardware with a simple, modular, EOMA68-based motherboard (even if this is not the direction you're planning to go). This is in contrast to all the vaporware platforms that claimed everything they could, only to never deliver: here, this is an EOMA68-based device that shows how EOMA68 enables people to do more ethical decisions and restores old hardware, this is not some closed-source project done by university students that will then fade into oblivion, and not a Kickstarter campaign that overpromised and then delivered a product that you can't actually use for its goal! If done right, it will also serve as an "EOMA68 example hardware project" of sorts. If we publish schematics, PCB designs, assembly instructions, device tree overlays etc., it can easily show people: "Oh cool - they've breathed life into a legendary netbook, did some simple electronics, wrote great blog posts, and it's even future-proof! Hey, I can use this EOMA thing as a base for my own project, too!" If people are getting interested in this, this is a real chance for EOMA68 to be more popular among tinkerers. It might not be your target audience, but it can be a great one to have behind your back, and you might like selling some more hardware. On top of that, Asus EEE 701 was an important milestone in the history of computers. It was the first truly popular netbook, and a good business decision that was copied by multiple companies after Asus did it (and I'm sure they continued to cash in on the EEE brand for a long long time after the 701 was released). It was also famous for its modding capabilities - people were putting touchscreens, FM transmitters, HDDs and god knows what in it (usually with lots of USB hubs connecting everything). Hell, one of my first projects in electronics was trying to build a dock station for my EEE 1001, I didn't succeed but I did learn a fuckton of things. So, in a way, EEE is a symbol of small but powerful portable computers (that are extensible, too), and it still has a fanbase that's nostalgic about it. Getting associated with that symbol is great publicity - again, it might not be the publicity that the project is aiming for, but it's great publicity nonetheless. I won't even mention some things like "EOMA68-based EEE is an EEE, but *libre*", "first EEEs were shipped with Linux and it matters", and other small but nice points. Also, if some people are interested, I wouldn't have any qualms about selling conversion kits with a decent margin and donating part of the revenue to EOMA68. Undoubtedly, I'm biased, mostly in a way that I loved EEEs while I used to use them as my primary PC (2011-2015, I believe), and I'd love to get an EOMA68-based netbook, especially if it's a EEE! So, there might be problems with my reasoning =D When you're making long-term plans for EOMA68, I'm sure you have thought of commercialization and why it's important. My idea doesn't really allow for commercialization, indeed - it's not quite a project you can sell in thousands, neither it is easily manufacturable, it's mostly showcasing EOMA68 and promoting it. Plus, I have no idea about the EEE trademark which was, undoubtedly, filed by Asus. I actually have registered a domain name already, "eeeoma.tk" (from a free domain name registrar), the name seems suitable but I'm not sure we can use it. But then, there's somebody that can sue me for "ZeroPhone", too! To sum up, I think that making an EOMA68-based EEE an important project that can help EOMA68 become more popular, and I can get behind it - I can't do most of the things that could help EOMA68 (and what I can do, wouldn't be efficient to assign to me), but if I can work on something that I can do and I'm actually driven to do (and benefits me, too), I'll be more than happy to help. While this is not the main direction that EOMA68 will go, I believe this is an easily recognizable goal that will help EOMA68 get more recognition and respect. Cheers! Arsenijs

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Re: [Arm-netbook] RK3399
by ronwirring＠Safe-mail.net 23 Jan '18

23 Jan '18

-------- 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 Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2018 16:17:18 +0000 > sure... i will however need sponsorship to cover the cost in time and My phrasing was unclear. My question was not about an eoma pc card. For sale are rk3399 mainboards. I wanted to know if you could take one of them and put it into a common notebook cabinet and get the computer to work, assuming you are able to get the computer's devices connected. > 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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SoC + external graphics
by Bluey 23 Jan '18

23 Jan '18

Hi Luke, Forgive me if this has been discussed before but has the possibility of supporting a model where by a dedicated GPU could be installed in a second slot in order to work in concert with an EOMA SoC? For instance, a micro desktop / laptop could have two slots: - EOMA68 (for the SoC) - EOMAXX (for an optional external GPU) Cheers, Bluey

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EOMA Standard
by Richard Wilbur 22 Jan '18

22 Jan '18

As I was reading the EOMA standard[*] in the section entitled "Interoperability Restrictions imposed by height limits", I came across a statement Type III 8.0mm cards must be actively prevented from slotting into Type I (5.0mm) Housings by ensuring that there is a physical slot in the casework that is no more than 5.5mm in height. which I think would probably reflect your meaning better if rewritten as follows: Type III 8.0mm cards must be actively prevented from slotting into Type II (5.0mm) Housings by ensuring that there is a physical slot in the casework that is no more than 5.5mm in height. Because the previous paragraph dealt with restrictions on Type I Housings (which accept 3.3mm high cards) and this mentions 5.0mm cards (which correspond to Type II). Reference: [*] https://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA68/Hardware#Pinou… Sent from my iPhone

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Re: [Arm-netbook] RK3399
by Pičugins Arsenijs 22 Jan '18

22 Jan '18

> I agree on that. For now I have spent 50usd on getting > an asus 7inch eeepc. I like the size of it. It has a full > keyboard. It is bulky. Therefore more likely to have space > for building in another mainboard. > ... > Then lkcl has this argument about reverse > engineering a lot of computer devices. I do > not understand it. Apart from the display all devices > should be usb. Sound, touchpad, keyboard, ethernet, > wifi, storage. Display should be hdmi. Rather I believe > getting a battery and powersupply solution would be > difficult. I have some EEE PCs (2 working and 2 spares), and I absolutely love them, I spent lots of time growing up with them, and learned to properly use command-line Linux while I was at it. My question - would you be interested in re-making it for EOMA-68 or something similar? I definitely am. EEE 701 has been thoroughly reverse-engineered, there are schematics available, as well as lots of interesting replacement parts. So, my plan: we'll need to re-place the motherboard, with something much more simple and much less power-guzzling. We'll also need to mod the chassis a little bit (to make an opening for an EOMA68 card). That's the extent of what we'll need to do - we won't need to replace anything in the upper half, and we'll be able to reuse many parts from the lower half. Here's how it goes: Screen: * The screen is RGBTTL, which is the same interface that an EOMA68 card has on its pinout. If my understanding is correct, it should be trivial to interface to. LVDS is used internally (for decreasing EMI, if I understand it correctly), and the upper half has a small board with LVDS2TTL IC - SN75LVDS86A. So, interfacing that to EOMA68 (specifically, the hardware side) would simply require using a TTL2LVDS IC - something like SN75LVDS84A, to convert EOMA's RGBTTL into LVDS. We'll be able to re-use the original LCD cable that way, too! * The LCD panel also has I2C, which is likely used for just interfacing to an EEPROM containing panel's resolution. If it's not only an EEPROM and there's some kind of control data going over there, it is likely sniffable using a 5$ logic analyzer (using all OSS software, too!). * I've got no idea if there's any kind of initialization sequence sent over TTL, but I think it's unlikely. If so, we might still be able to sniff it with a more advanced analyzer, or try to get a panel datasheet&init sequence somewhere (it is a popular panel, after all). So, we should be able to re-use the screen and all the surrounding parts - win! Battery: * Connector pinout is known, and desoldering the connector from the board is tricky but not too hard. * It uses a fuel gauge chip accessible over I2C, indeed. Thankfully, as I have two working EEEs (and three batteries), we should be able to sniff enough communication to determine which commands correspond to which data. Alternatively, it's very likely the fuel gauge's datasheet is available somewhere. * Charging the battery and powering the system will be a problem, indeed. Fortunately, the EEE's solution to this is documented, and we could, at the very least, learn from it - it's going to be an interesting journey for me, but nothing that's not been done by somebody else already. So, we should be able to re-use the battery - another big win! Other things we can re-use: * Camera is USB indeed, dead simple to interface. * Touchpad is PS/2, but that's not a big problem, PS/2 to USB converters are available cheaply. * Keyboard is a matrix one - but the pinout is known (the matrix isn't known though, but shouldn't be hard to figure out). Again, matrix-to-USB converters are both available cheaply, and DIY-able easily. * Speakers and microphone should be easily re-usable. Parts we won't be able to re-use: * Original Intel CPU, south and north bridges... We won't miss them, though =) * Embedded controller - the part that controls the power states, power button, LEDs, peripheral power (like, turning off the camera or the SD reader when they're not used). We can, and likely will, replace it with a microcontroller. * SD reader - it's too tightly integrated in the motherboard, even though it's USB. Desoldering lots of chips & support passives, as well as the connector, would be tricky, so it'd be best if we don't go that path. We might be able to use the SDIO from EOMA68 connector, though (alternatively, we could use that SDIO for WiFi). Also, we can simply add a USB SD reader, yay! * Ethernet - luckily, USB-ethernet chips are cheap and accessible, so if we need to add Ethernet, we can. * Audio - either an AC97 solution or a USB one will be suitable. * MiniPCI-E interface - no PCI-E on EOMA, maybe that's for the best, we don't need it for much (PCB layout would be tricky, too). Though I have to admit that a full-size WiFi would be nice to have. * SATA and IDE - again, godspeed, and we absolutely can use a converter chip if need arises. > Lkcl says, should I succeed in building one, only I would > benefit. I disagree. I would tell others how to make a > similar computer, should they want to. Totally agree. Once one does something, others can follow. The EEE PC was popular enough so that lots of other people can follow. Broken laptops and replacement parts are still available, too. > How to make the keyboard's matrix, I do not know. Interfacing to a keypad matrix is very easy nowadays. There are a lot of ready-to-go hardware and software solutions from the DIY keyboard community. > https://www.cnx-software.com/2016/12/05/firefly-rk3399-rockchip-rk3399-deve… > has a hdmi port. What should be the difficulty in connecting > the mainboard to a hdmi display? As a rule of thumb, using HDMI internally, or converting high-speed interfaces into similar-but-not-quite high-speed interfaces, comes with an increased power consumption. You don't really want that - and it seems that EOMA68 should work without it, allowing us to use the HDMI for an additional display instead =) So, here's my summary - it's doable. If you're ready to work for this, we can have it done in half a year. I'll be more than happy to help (and I know some people that could help, too). However, there are a lot of parts that are small and easy, but time-consuming, and time is something I don't have much of, so expect there to be plenty of work for you =) Let me know (maybe email directly) if you're interested and ready to start working on this project together. Cheers! Arsenijs

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Re: [Arm-netbook] RK3399
by ronwirring＠Safe-mail.net 22 Jan '18

22 Jan '18

-------- Original Message -------- From: Pičugins Arsenijs<crimier(a)yandex.ru> Apparently from: arm-netbook-bounces(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk To: "arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk" <arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk> Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] RK3399 Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2018 18:47:02 +0200 > Pičugins Arsenijs<crimier(a)yandex.ru> Thank you for your email. There are a lot of pieces of information about this task. In this email I may forget to address some of them. I wanted a small eoma pc card notebook. That is why I obtained the asus 7inch eee pc 4g. When I got the notebook, I took out the mainboard because I wanted to see how much space is in the cabinet. As I mentioned, I wanted to convert the notebook to an eoma pc card notebook. Because shipping of the pc card keeps being delayed I have not done more about it. I mentioned the rk3399 mainboard, because it maybe would be an option if the pc card does not get made. > If you're ready to work for this Yes, but we have to set some references. I am not skilled on electronics. I will have to move on instructions. Costs may spiral. I am not going to accept that. If I am asked to buy a 100usd device, I will answer no. If I am asked to buy a 50usd device, I will likely answer no. I will comment briefly on what you wrote about various computer devices. > The screen is RGBTTL, which is the same interface >that an EOMA68 card has If we in a low priced way can get to use the build in display, that is what we should do. I mentioned getting a 7inch hdmi display if that was the only workable solution. My notebook is an asus 7inch eee pc 4g. I do not know the precise name of the build in display. Camera is not important. We will use the camera as an usb camera. Else we will not use it. About wifi card, I have small usb ar9271 wifi cards. They work on debian 9 64bit main. Saying the source software is available. We should use an usb ar9271 wifi card. About sound. I have an usb soundcard. It works on debian 9 64bit main. Saying the device's source software is available. We should use an usb soundcard. About sdcard reader. I have usb sdcard readers. They work on debian 9 64bit main. Saying the devices' source software is available. We should use an usb sdcard reader. About storage. My information is, the pc card will have an sdcard port on the pc card for storage. > matrix-to-USB converters are both available Turning the keyboard into an usb keyboard is an important move. I suggest we make turning the notebook's keyboard into an usb keyboard our first step. About a battery supplying power. I suggest we wait until we have a notebook, which will run on a power supply. > maybe email directly Maybe this modification of a notebook is of interest for other people. We should use this email list. > 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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