[Arm-netbook] "Great China's Firewall" blocking access to A10 SoC

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

[btw apologies phil, just throwing in arm-netbook in, for archive
purposes (i'm that list's admin), feel free to remove it again if you
wish, but i can't bcc it because mailman's configured to block bcc
whoops]

On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 12:51 AM, Phil Endecott
<spam_from_debian_arm at chezphil.org> wrote:

> Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <luke.leighton <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
> (Comparing with my i.MX53 board:)
>
>> * ARM cortex A10 1.5ghz - see this for a "definition" of A10 in this context:
>>  http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110912200637AAmOkiG
>
> So that's A8, with Mali GPU.  50% faster clock speed than the i.MX53.
>
>> * RAM: we're going for the full 2gb.  the little factory is finding
>> out if the full 2gb of RAM is in fact properly supported.  the
>> hardware supports 2gb RAM, but because nobody has done anything other
>> than 512mb not even the SoC people know if it does 2gb!  amazing :)
>
> I'm happy with the 1GB that I have.

 yeah 2gb is overkill, but the factory is designing for the full 2gb,
what the heck, why not.

> So what seems to be missing is:
>
> - Audio.  It must have this.  Perhaps you've just forgotten to mention it.

 yes, sorry.  ok.  the reason for that is two-fold:

 0) i should have mentioned that i asked the factory to put on a 5-way
3.5mm audio jack, see http://magniel.com/omapmod.html - yuli added one
to his OMAPMOD.  that audio jack gets you stereo spk (& mic i think)
in a very compact space, and you can get ipphon headphones and
adaptors no problem.

 1) i was planning to use an STM32F (leafpad maple, it's open source
hardware design, arduino-compliant), on the motherboard(s) and just
implement the audio entirely in software.  as it's a 75mhz Cortex M3,
it'll definitely be up to the job.  and it's cheap.

 regarding 1) yes i've looked up libopenstm32f and it's GPLv3+ _love_
it...  ["you want firmware?  i give ya firmware _and_ yer give me da
damn source code too or i poke yer inna eye wiv da SFLC ya thieving
coppyrite barsterds"] :)

 sorry, normal incomprehensible service resumed...

> - Analogue video output.  I've seen a chip block diagram that suggest that it
> has "TV Out", and also "TV In".  But that might be the wrong chip because it
> doesn't show SATA.

 *lol* it's there... they just haven't gone and put it on the web
site, or even in the datasheets, because nobody but us has asked about
it!  amazing.  it's on the Reference Board, but everyone in every
other china factory has cut it from the schematics!  and the 10/100
ethernet, too.

 incredible.  they all want to sell tablets, tablets, tablets.  oh,
and internet tv set-top-boxes, too, but mostly tablets, tablets,
tablets.

>  Analogue video out is something that I'm using on my i.MX
> board, and is nice to have.

 oh right, ok.  hm, can you check something for me?  can you find out
if the following connectors fit into 53mm?

 micro-hdmi
 micro-sd
 micro usb-otg
 3.5mm audio
 {insert video jack}

otherwise, apologies: it'll just have to be on an unpopulated
expansion header (with all the other things that don't fit).

l.