[Arm-netbook] 15in laptop LCD up on PCB1

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 5:25 PM, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> On Tuesday 1. December 2015 17.05.31 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>> http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/laptop_15in/news/
>>
>> it's by no means perfect, but i have at least data on-screen.  i
>> suspect EM interference is causing the corruption, so another revision
>> of PCB1 will need the LVDS IC layout to be reworked.  this is however
>> huge progress.  the only 2 parts of PCB1 that need to be checked and
>> debugged are the MicroSD card slot and the 1W speaker/headphone
>> amplifier circuits.  the CM108AH USB Audio IC has already been
>> confirmed as operational on the USB bus, as has the GL850G and the 3
>> USB ports.
>
> Nice work on getting this far, despite the "gothic" font. ;-)

 it gets really weird when doing echo "hello" > /dev/tty1 - the
on-screen display is rather... garbled.  i'll try a 3rd CPU Card
later, and/or perhaps set up dual-output (via HDMI) to check that it's
not the framebuffer that's corrupted.

> Now if only the established players would see sense and support this effort
> instead of dumping excess stock SoCs into newsagents on the covers of
> magazines and causing scuffles in the aisles. :-/

 yehhh you saw the report a few days ago by Make magazine, which
showed that the cost of that $5 board is considerably higher:

 "Solving this lack of connectivity makes the cost of owning a Pi Zero
increase greatly. It’s not just that you need a USB Wi-Fi dongle,
you’d need a powered USB hub to have a Wi-Fi dongle, keyboard, and
mouse (it only has one USB slot for peripherals; the other is for
power)."

http://makezine.com/2015/11/28/chip-vs-pi-zero/

 further down, it shows that the only thing you need to operate the
C.H.I.P is a $1 USB cable, to provide power.  the alternative board -
which is "only" $5 - requires a whopping *$19* of additional
components in order to make it actually useful.

 l.