arm-netbook

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1082 discussions

15.6in libre laptop "whoops"...
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 14 Jul '15

14 Jul '15

oh dear, first mistake: hoping it's not too big a deal... i've done the base, now, and have moved on to doing the LCD screen holder parts. i forgot to check which side the connector is... turns out that when the screen's facing forwards the connector is on the *right*.... guess which side i put the main PCB? yep, on the left... so that shouldn't be so big a deal, right? just run the cable all the way along the back of the lcd until it pops out? noo problem, right? ... except it has to cross the middle part of the LCD, which is where there is a divider so that the left and right bamboo laminate panels can "lock" into place, and also so that the top and bottom channels can be divided into two (so they'll fit across a 200mm x 200mm 3d printer). the problem is in joining the parts together. previously i had thought to slot a little u-shape in place which would act as a trap: the ends of each of the U would "lock" into the left and right edges.... noo problem, right? except now there's a cable that has to go through exactly where that joining-piece was supposed to go. the other option: i was considering mirror-imaging the laptop base. put the PCB on the right, battery on the left.... except argh i remembered that i had to *offset* the touchpanel from centre (by about 30mm) in order to fit the battery to its right, and also fit PCB2 so that the keyboard connector goes into it.... all of this means that there is absolutely no way that the parts can be mirror-imaged: it's a near total redesign of the interior, and i'm certainly not doing that. sooo i have an eeenteresting mechanical design challenge left to think about.... :) l.

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Req: FOSS-restricting firmware hints
by Nico Rikken 08 Jul '15

08 Jul '15

Dear ARM-netbook and Coreboot readers, In FSFE context we're looking for examples regarding firmware restrictions on modern computer hardware. This so that we can shed light on the difficult situation you are all too familiar with. Examples are: - Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chips - Secure Boot - Intel - Management Engine - Advanced Management Technology - Boot Guard It will be great if you can add some from the top of your head, ideally including some references. I'll be doing my own research as well, but your hints will greatly help this process. Kind regards, Nico Rikken

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05 july 2015 laptop casework progress
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 05 Jul '15

05 Jul '15

http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/laptop_15in/news/ getting there. next is to do the right-hand edge, which will take the 3rd PCB (battery, power etc.). all sorts of small niggles, still have to check that the bamboo panels will fit, for example! need to get some battery samples to make sure that it'll fit, etc. etc.... l.

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spaghetti instead of 3d
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 03 Jul '15

03 Jul '15

http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/laptop_15in/news/ first print of 4 of the full-sized parts - enough to put the keyboard and touch/LCD in place to see what the laptop will look like. l.

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Fundraising and campaign status (and wiki authentication)?
by Paul Boddie 01 Jul '15

01 Jul '15

I saw a collection of recent updates on the wiki, although the URL in the following page is wrong: http://rhombus-tech.net/fundraising/ Where... https://crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro_desktop ...should be... https://crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop I tried to authenticate myself using various mechanisms in order to edit the page, but... * OpenID didn't work with the Python Package Index OpenID provider * Google have discontinued their OpenID 2.0 support (yes, thanks Google for breaking the Web again!) * Wordpress claimed that I don't own my own username Particularly the last one, but also the first one, sounds more like communications issues between the wiki and OpenID providers. I guess I could register, but I thought it might be helpful to indicate a possible problem. Paul

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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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Any progress?
by Paul Boddie 29 Jun '15

29 Jun '15

Luke, others, Has there been any recent progress on the crowd-funding campaign or on other things? I know there's been a little off-list correspondence about Gratipay, which is peripheral to everything else, but for the benefit of anyone following the list (either as a subscriber or reading the archives) an update might be informative. From what I've seen from following other lists, there's progress on Linux device tree support for various Ingenic JZ-series SoCs, which might have a beneficial impact on any jz4755 card that is produced. My own experiments with the jz4720/30/40 have stalled somewhat for the time being, but I'll get back to them at some point, I imagine. Paul

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15.6in laptop casework print started
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 29 Jun '15

29 Jun '15

so after a looong time designing and testing, i began 3d printing the first parts of the full-sized 15.6in laptop casework a few hours ago. the longer edges fit just across the diagonal of a 200x200mm mendel90 with 10mm to spare. the glass is not properly flat but acceptably enough for the part to grip in each corner. the middle strut and back edge are done already, and the left-hand edge is underway. the back edge needs to be re-done already: the smaller "test runs" of the past few months were able to iron out the majority of possible errors however there are still things that need fine tuning. most of the fine-tuning i will leave until i have at least a completed demo which i can assemble around the screen, keyboard and touchpanel. l.

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laptop 15in progress report
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 06 Jun '15

06 Jun '15

http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/laptop_15in/news/ first near-complete render (at full 15.6in size) which shows something looking more like a laptop. 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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