- arm-netbook - Mailman test

Libre CNC milling toolchain
by Lars Kruse 11 Mar '17

11 Mar '17

Hi Luke, I just read your last update [1], even though it is already three weeks old. It was a good and interesting read - thank you for that! There you mentioned the bad shape of Free Software in the fields of CNC milling. In general I have to agree. But I think, it is not as bleak as you experienced it. There is indeed a usable toolchain of Free Software for 2D or 3D design, toolpath generation and machine control. Sadly especially the toolpath generation process is far from being as fast and full of features as it should be. Personally I maintain PyCAM [2] (a toolpath generator). The toolpath generators are the weak link between a range of good libre 3D and 2D design software and linuxcnc [3] - an excellent and mature software for machine control. Feel free to contact me, if this topic is of any practical interest for you right now. Cheers, Lars [1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/progress-physics-t… [2] http://pycam.sf.net/ [3] http://linuxcnc.org/

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When does the A20 board ship?
by Nick Hardiman 10 Mar '17

10 Mar '17

When does the A20 board ship? I got a little lost following the many hardware and software updates and debates, in various mail threads. Thanks, Nick

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Logging and journaling
by Julie Marchant 09 Mar '17

09 Mar '17

I just want to make sure of something: are the EOMA68-A20 computer cards going to be shipped with logging and journaling disabled (so that the storage isn't constantly being written to)? I'm asking because this is pretty much a necessity for an OS running on NAND or an SD card if you don't want to have to constantly buy new SD cards because the previous one reached its write limit. Ditto for swap, but given the small amount of NAND on the A20 card, I'm sure not having swap is a given anyway. ;) -- Julie Marchant https://onpon4.github.io Protect your emails with GnuPG: https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Logging and journaling
by dumblob 08 Mar '17

08 Mar '17

Hi Hendrik, My experience when I end up swapping to a hard drive is that the whole > system becomes so slow and unresponsive that it mosstsly ignores console > input, and I have no ability to kill things before the OOM does. Often > the best way to get things moving again is a hard reset. And then > watching it repair the filesystems. > well, in Linux 4.10 there is kind of a solution - writeback throttling allowing "skipping parts of the queue" as described in https://lwn.net/Articles/682582/ . Cheers, Jan

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Olimex is making an "open-source" laptop...
by Christopher Havel 07 Mar '17

07 Mar '17

http://hackaday.com/2017/02/05/olimex-announces-their-open-source-laptop/ Rip 'em up, Luke... you know you want to... the quotes wouldn't be in the subject header otherwise... :P

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Laptop PCB schematics
by Internet 03 Mar '17

03 Mar '17

I recently walked through the files on hands.com and found the schematics for the 3 PCBs of the laptop. However, there are multiple versions (PDFs) and I would like to know whether those are the latest. If help is appreciated, I would like to take a look at the schematics. I really want this project to be successful and offering help is probably the best thing I can do ;) Julius Lehmann

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Arm processors
by rohbeck＠yahoo.com 02 Mar '17

02 Mar '17

No, the rumor mill has it that Zen will scale down to 4W/core ------ Original message------From: Luke Kenneth Casson LeightonDate: Thu, Mar 2, 2017 01:21To: rohbeck(a)yahoo.com;Cc: Linux on small ARM machines;Subject:Re: [Arm-netbook] Arm processors ---crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 9:14 AM, rohbeck(a)yahoo.com wrote:> Haha, just my thought. My first impulse was "Zen @4W, yay!".0 0https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_(microarchitecture) surely you don't mean the zen processors from AMD which have a TDP of65 or 95 watts and have over a thousand pins and a heatsink almostfour times the size of the PCMCIA Cards themselves.... is there any other processor which fits the description of "zen"which is less ambiguous from a google search? do you have a directlink to what you're referring to? thanks rob.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Arm processors
by rohbeck＠yahoo.com 02 Mar '17

02 Mar '17

Haha, just my thought. My first impulse was "Zen @4W, yay!".0 0 ------ Original message------From: Luke Kenneth Casson LeightonDate: Wed, Mar 1, 2017 20:22To: Linux on small ARM machines;Cc: Subject:Re: [Arm-netbook] Arm processors On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:49 AM, zap wrote:>>> On 03/01/2017 06:58 PM, John Luke Gibson wrote:>> And, Luke mentioned inquiries being made about using RISC-V in a 100%>> open core board. That's probably a more longterm slightly optimistic>> ah okay fair enough. I was just curious if he planned to reverse> engineer ones with 8gb or more in the later future. reverse-engineering i have come to the conclusion is a total - andcriminal - waste of time and effort. by the time all features are100% stable it's several YEARS down the line. look at how long agothe A64 was released, and the libdram code STILL HAS NOT BEENREVERSE-ENGINEERED. it's 200 lines of code for fuck's sake. NO. read this, zap: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/picking-a-processo… should give you some idea of how insane pretty much every singlefabless semiconductor company really is. they're just not payingattention: every single one of them makes at least one compromise,somewhere, and because it's an *integrated* SoC there's absolutelynothing that can be done about it.so we need to be of the order of a MILLION units to be in a positionto influence these people. and if you're going for a million units,you might as well get your own SoC custom-made. anyone knows of an open silicon H.264 and MPEG design that is capableof up to 1080p60 video decode, do let me know.l._______________________________________________arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.ukhttp://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbookSend large attachments to arm-netbook(a)files.phcomp.co.uk

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a20 board and rk3288 board
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 27 Feb '17

27 Feb '17

ok so the a20 board's nand ic is recognised in software... but *not* by the eGON bootloader ROM: it's too modern. i'm going to have to find an older (lower-capacity) TSSOP-48 NAND IC. arse. the rk3288 board is *almost* up: the i2c bus for the PMICs appears to be non-operational (reason yet to be determined but most likely to be a short-circuit) which, when the linux kernel tries to initialise each of the PMICs hangs on accessing the I2C bus. when i replaced the I2C pullup resistors with 1.5k instead of 2.2k then SD/MMC refused to boot! only thing i can think of is, the short is pulling the 3.3v power rail down enough to affect the SD/MMC. i'll keep investigating. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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passthrough, a20 and rk3288 cards
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 24 Feb '17

24 Feb '17

ok so still waiting for the updates to go out from crowdsupply, brief news in the meantime. revision 2.7.2 pre-production test pcb run has been ordered, i will be assembling those myself, here in taiwan, using my host's equipment. btw i didn't hear from anyone about the offer to send out pre-production cards. i'm having fun with the rk3288 board: putting on 600-pin 0.6mm pitch bga ICs is tricky but doable. the first board i managed to get access via USB, and learned that it is actually possible to initialise them by uploading u-boot-spl over USB. however the DDR3 RAM would only initialise if the clockrate was limited to 200mhz. the second board i tried, unfortunately the 3.3v power output was shorted to the DDR3 RAM 1.5v line and destroyed $20 worth of RAM ICs and a $20 processor. not doing that again. the third board i am currently trying, i have to get the ACT8846 properly soldered down: it's not initialising (yet) so all outputs measure 0v. the passthrough card i am still waiting for an adapter cable in order to be able to wire a 2.4.1 revision a20 card's HDMI output to the passthrough card's HDMI input. it has to be micro-hdmi to micro-hdmi hence why an adapter had to be ordered. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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Re: [Arm-netbook] passthrough, a20 and rk3288 cards
by dumblob 22 Feb '17

22 Feb '17

Hi Luke, speaking of commitments, timeframes and the equipment price, it appears to me we could develop and provide a fully working QEMU image to break the current dependecy on EOMA HW (of course, in the end it will be tested on a real HW, but the global parallel development of anything regarding EOMA will be much easier and faster using QEMU). Would it make sense to you? Cheers, -- Jan

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Re: [Arm-netbook] A20 deadline
by John Luke Gibson 19 Feb '17

19 Feb '17

>john i appreciate your support, do try to be... less forthright than >i am when focussing on things :) I am afraid :> Being overly forthright will forever be my crime It is my over compensating for a perceived blindness in the world. If an extraterrestrial ever saw through it, I would be thoroughly flushed and embarrassed xD

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Re: [Arm-netbook] A20 deadline
by John Luke Gibson 19 Feb '17

19 Feb '17

I think you read this: >well, thanks to some questioning last month we worked out a way to >increase (negotiate) power up to 10W, and i am working on a proposal / >concept to get an 8-core 64-bit RISC-V SoC produced. And, didn't read this thread: RK3288 PCB first prototype assembled. I hate to add, because it seems Luke was sufficiently crass, but I'd like to explain why it was justified and appropriate, even if it comes off as insult to injury, it is only meant to explain so truly harmful stress can be avoided in the future. When you are communicating on this mailing-list, you are not contacting customer support and you are not engaging with a corporation, a corporate entity, or any type of public relations entity. When/If you backed this project you did not back any person or organization. We are the organization, you included even if you are the metaphorical equivalent to a lazy employee just like I am [at least, I admit it]. By messaging on this mailing-list, you are not messaging to this organization, but-rather as a part of it, because this is an internal communication channel where we [this organization] are collaborating the planning and design of our thing. Luke, being the one whom holds the funds we have gathered to build our things, is simply a very pro-active member of this organization that has existed long before this campaign has, whom has become a trusted agent of this organization with the sole purpose of performing our grande finale in this epic. Once that role is complete Luke will ultimately return to being like the rest of us until the certification mark is registered, that is to say hopefully if it is successfully registered. We owe a lot to Luke, being the still unconventional and still unfortunately somewhat amorphous segment of the Linux community dedicated to hardware that we are, [and, that is the only definition for organization I will provide here] Luke certainly seems on the path to fulfilling such prerequisites as would complete the mandate of such temporal authority, and perhaps deserving it, as only history can tell. This organization will still exist even after this grande finale which now should seem as ever impending as it ever has been, and as such it is only natural that we talk about the hereafter of this whole project. Luke, making mention of a proposal to build a RISC-V SoC was not supposed as recommendation for this project as even a "Lazy Employee" such as yourself [please excuse the metaphor] can obviously see that wouldn't work. There are still many more epics to be written after this one, and, with the temporal authority supposed to be placed in Luke's hands shortly hereafter [re-read that until you get the pun and can laugh, because you won't understand the sentence until you get the pun; it happens with the word suppose], I can trust that it will be a great one with great OpenCores. Yes, Luke must be accountable being trusted with these funds that the fellow is, but this type of questioning now is an insult because we are supposed to be doing this for ourselves. Luke's deadline is soon, but we, being that we are doing this project for ourselves, have no deadline especially being that the sooner we rush this the less work and the more likely to fail we are. The deadline here is partly on us to help Luke build these boards the best we can remotely, and, if Luke were to fail to create a board soon after we develop a promising prototype, then we question Luke and hold accountable thereof. That very clearly hasn't happened and, in fact, the opposite has very clearly happened and, if Luke, in celebration of completing part of the trust we had in him, sings song of the next epic we shall write and you question it in this way that you have, you are not only insulting Luke severely, you are identifying yourself very opaquely as the colloquial "Lazy Employee". Please pay attention.

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New Eoma68 housing idea
by HeadsUpHigh 18 Feb '17

18 Feb '17

Hi, I think this indiegogo project has a very interesting form factor. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gpd-pocket-7-0-umpc-laptop-ubuntu-or -win-10-os-laptop--2#/ I think this kind of form factor would be ideal for a new Eoma68 housing. Especially if there is an m.2 slot inside the housing for extra storage( via usb 3.1 to sata3), this would make for a really good extremely portable computer with the added bonuses of the upgradability of the eoma68 standard as well as no space wasted for active cooling( like that machine has).

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RK3288 PCB first prototype assembled
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 17 Feb '17

17 Feb '17

http://rhombus-tech.net/rock_chips/rk3288/news/ 2 updates from crowdsupply in the pipeline, i'll cf them later. also will update the latest news tomorrow when i have a chance to swap the USB cable over. all rather hilarious: i wired the OTG pins to the 2nd USB port and vice-versa. whoops. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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A suggestion why Systemd may be bad
by John Luke Gibson 16 Feb '17

16 Feb '17

Perhaps it is the idea that a linux machine should be wholly modular and attaching a library to a critical component of the system, shouldn't be a viable strategy for popularizing one's work. When a distro is forced to carry a package due to a dependency of a dependency, or any magnitude there of, it breaks a core separation of power there. The users depend on distro's to provide reliable packages, however if a package is intentionally interweaving files to make these dependencies simply a part of the file and therefore robbing the distro's the ability to choose a different dependency should another developer or team thereof prove more reliable or more suited for their distro. Systemd in this sense would be like microsoft robbing those wishing to distinguish themselves of the ability by increasing the magnitude of difficulty in doing so. Now, keep in mind, I am not fluent in any programming language and have not audited Systemd, nor do I know anyone who has. This is based on a compiled understanding of observations expressed in arguments both infavor and against Systemd.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] A suggestion why Systemd may be bad
by John Luke Gibson 15 Feb '17

15 Feb '17

Sorry, I just read your reply Mike. I think that answers any curiosity I had. I appreciate it very much. This is makes sense as I imagine it to be part of the problem GNU/Mach is trying to solve (separating components of the system better, and with more micro-managed permissions?). Anyway, above and beyond explaining, both Mike and Philip.. Thx!

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Network Neutrality - From policy to law to regulation
by el_gallo_azul 11 Feb '17

11 Feb '17

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/network-neutrality-9781526105486?cc… Greg Flint

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Enough Space in the 15.6" laptop housing for an SSD?
by Mike Leimon 11 Feb '17

11 Feb '17

In light of all the recent discussions about journaling filesystems and system logging on systems with flash storage. I'm a feeling a bit curious to to know if there is enough space within that included "internal" usb cavity of the 15.6" laptop housing to be able to house a small M.2 42mm usb device. I'm thinking about a device like the following: https://www.amazon.com/Crest-NGFF-SATA-Enclosure-SY-ENC25040/dp/B0146DD6KM/ Perhaps if/when there is a rev 2 of the Laptop housing, it might be worth considering the creation and inclusion of an additional board which would both provide a built-in usb to SATA adapter as well as provide a location to install an M.2 SATA drive (with huge bonus points if it can support an 80mm drive). I might be an oddball but, I would also love to see the inclusion of a dedicated M.2 SATA board to the upcoming EOMA68 tablet design (even if there would only be room for a 42mm variant) to be a huge plus. I think that being able to use M.2 SATA drives would be a huge step up in quality from using uSD cards both from a reliability standpoint as well as speed. Also, if USB -> M.2 SATA board created was a USB3.0 device it would pretty much be able to run the SSDs at their full speed.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Logging and journaling
by Julie Marchant 09 Feb '17

09 Feb '17

> So what happens on a violent poweroff? Just lose data? Sure, if you happened to be in the middle of writing to the card, but this isn't that big of a deal really. People routinely take this risk with USB flash drives and SD cards. -- Julie Marchant https://onpon4.github.io On Feb 9, 2017 6:11 AM, Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir(a)cohens.org.il> wrote: > > On Thu, Feb 09, 2017 at 06:03:06AM -0500, Julie Marchant wrote: > > On 02/09/17 01:50, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > > > do you know the mkfs.ext4 commands needed or the ext2flags command? > > > > No, but just using an ext2 filesystem instead should suffice (since ext2 > > doesn't support journaling). That's the standard advice for the OpenPandora. > > So what happens on a violent poweroff? Just lose data? > > There's also f2fs. But you do need a recent enough kernel to use it. The > versions from some older kernels may eat some files occasionally. > > -- > Tzafrir Cohen | tzafrir(a)jabber.org | VIM is > http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's > tzafrir(a)cohens.org.il | | best > tzafrir(a)debian.org | | friend > > _______________________________________________ > 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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passthrough card v0 quick status
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 08 Feb '17

08 Feb '17

assembled here with my friend's equipment, i got the 9161A tab pin wrong (GND instead of power), and i managed somehow to reverse the order of the OTG pinouts 5-1, despite cut/paste from a known working board. after pulling up the 3.3v regulator and putting a top-mount OTG reversed in place of the mid-mount, powerup worked and the GL850G USB Hub came up. tomorrow i will test the tfp401a by... you'll like this... configuring an A20 board to do HDMI output, and wiring it to the passthrough card :) l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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Re: [Arm-netbook] TIL: Intel's credit-card sized modular computer is "inspired" by EOMA68
by rohbeck＠yahoo.com 08 Feb '17

08 Feb '17

It almost looks as if they don't have money to throw at everything any more. I'll bet they're tightening the strings in anticipation of AMD's comeback. ------ Original message------From: Paul BoddieDate: Tue, Feb 7, 2017 15:22To: Ralf-Peter Rohbeck;Linux on small ARM machines;Cc: Subject:Re: [Arm-netbook] TIL: Intel's credit-card sized modular computer is "inspired" by EOMA68 On Thursday 2. February 2017 00.00.01 Ralf-Peter Rohbeck via arm-netbook wrote:> Just saw this on Reddit:> https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/comments/5rhuig/til_intels_creditcar…'ve been fed adverts for it now, leading to this product page at Mouser:http://www.mouser.co.uk/new/Intel/intel-joule/Pricing starts at around £150 per unit.I see this as Intel gradually moving back towards what they know. Their embedded boards don't really seem to have been widely picked up, at least in the hacker/hobbyist mainstream (although maybe the Arduino 101 really has sold well), and what started with a higher-end Arduino competitor employing a Pentium-class CPU (Quark) became a 500MHz Atom-based product (second generation Edison) that has now led to this 1.5GHz Atom-based board (Joule).Paul

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USB3.1 pinout
by Internet 06 Feb '17

06 Feb '17

Hey there! I was wondering about the USB3.1 pinout in the EOMA68 standard. In my research on the USB Type C connector I found out that USB3.1 (Superspeed+) has only two differential signal pairs (one for receiving, one for transmitting) but on elinux.org there are four differential pairs for only one USB interface. Are the other two pairs meant to be used by the second USB port or did I miss something? Thank you very much! Julius Lehmann

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Re: [Arm-netbook] USB3.1 pinout
by Internet 06 Feb '17

06 Feb '17

On Feb 5, 2017, 15:06, at 15:06, Julius Lehmann <julius(a)devpi.de> wrote: >Regarding USB C you are right that there are four differential pairs on >the connector. However, for communication only two pairs are used >because the USB 3.1 protocol only uses two. On the device that has a >USB C connector you need a dedicated controller that manages the >orientation of the plug. Then the two data lines are connected to the >right pins on the connector through a multiplexer. The other two pairs >on the connector are for no use in USB mode but if you want to use USB >C in alternate mode (e.g. DisplayPort), signals can be rerouted. > >You can find all the information on usb.org (zip archive with full >specification). > >This basically means that the EOMA68 standard has two differential >pairs that are not used for USB but if your intention was to make it >available for USB C, an internal multiplexer would be needed. > >Kind regards >Julius Lehmann > >On Feb 5, 2017, 14:20, at 14:20, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton ><lkcl(a)lkcl.net> wrote: >>--- >>crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: >https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68 >> >> >>On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 11:44 AM, Internet <internet(a)devpi.de> wrote: >>> Hey there! >>> >>> I was wondering about the USB3.1 pinout in the EOMA68 standard. In >my >>> research on the USB Type C connector I found out that USB3.1 >>> (Superspeed+) has only two differential signal pairs (one for >>receiving, >>> one for transmitting) >> >>http://pinoutguide.com/Slots/usb-type-c_pinout.shtml >> >>two for receiving, two for transmitting, each 5gbit/s for a total of >>10gb/sec. the connector and thus the pinouts are rotatable by 180 >>degrees so the pinouts on the first 12 pins (top row) are *identical* >>layout to the second 12 pins (bottom row) except in the reverse order. >>D+ and D- (the USB2 pins) are *missing* on one row of the receptacle >>so that you don't connect them up twice (which would be bad). >> >>you *may* be thinking of USB 3.0 which is connector-compatible with >>USB 2.0 and is what you find on most laptops and desktop computers >>these days: >> >>http://pinoutguide.com/Slots/usb_3_0_connector_pinout.shtml >> >>that is *only* one set of (5gbit/sec) tx-rx differential pairs. >> >>scared me for a minute that i'd messed it up... :) >> >>l. >> >>_______________________________________________ >>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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Logos
by James L 30 Jan '17

30 Jan '17

Here is my attempt at a KISS logo for EOMA68 (easily adapted for other standards): https://www.flickr.com/photos/151565999@N03/32579869145 If you want me to post it somewhere else (or you want the sources), you got to point me where to upload it. License: Whatever lkcl wants (otherwise cc-sa-by-4.0)

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