[Arm-netbook] eoma68-jz4775 x-ray pictures

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68


On Mon, Apr 25, 2016 at 11:30 AM, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> On Monday 25. April 2016 12.03.11 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>> http://rhombus-tech.net/ingenic/jz4775/news/
>>
>> this is totally cool, photos of the x-ray machine and the DDR3 and
>> jz4775 SoC.  of the six samples made, only one did not have bridging
>> between the DDR3 ICs, so i asked the factory if they'd like to get
>> some experience at sorting out BGA ICs, which they did - here's the
>> results, and they look great.
>
> Good news! That machine looks like something everyone should have at home.

 yeah!  eeveryone should be making PCBs at home... :)

> I particularly like the typeface used for "X-RAY". ;-)

:)

> I suppose you're now part way through your planet-roaming exercise, and I was
> going to ask how things had been progressing.

 ok - we have a daughter, lilyana, so decided to stay here in den haag
for another month.

 the casework which i 3d-printed and assembled in translucent black
and "robot silver" from faberdashery looks absolutely superb, a few
niggles to resolve but that's fine: it's good enough to send to
crowdsupply, where they have a professional studio so will take some
pictures, and we can start the crowdfunding campaign in a few weeks.
joshua is giving a talk on may 18th so wants to be able to include the
libre laptop in that.

 now, as far as picking OSes is concerned that are FSF-Endorseable,
we've got an interesting situation where we'll need some porting and
packaging help.  there basically aren't any good libre OSes for ARM
(due to canonical's recent blatant GPL violations and record on
privacy, those based on ubuntu *not* being "good", plus trisquel is
currently based on ubuntu 8.04 which doesn't have an ARM port), and
the only one for MIPS is gnewsense and that's been custom-targetted at
the leemote laptop.

 the thing is though, that the current situation for
FSF-Endorseability of hardware is even worse than it appears, due to
the simple fact that there *aren't* any modern FSF-Endorseable x86
processors.... period.   *all* intel processors of the past 15 years
require a proprietary RSA-signed piece of firmware in order to boot,
and all AMD processors require a licensed proprietary piece of
firmware from Intel because AMD licensed intel's HDMI interface.

 so... err.... basically, the approach that i'm taking, slow as it's
progressing, actually stands to be the first modern "Good Enough
Computing" [1] hardware that *can* actually be FSF-Endorsed.

 aside from that, i'm also focussing quite a lot on the portable 3d
printer, which is going to be a critical tool that i will need over
the next year.  the current version is around 450x410x200mm when
stowed, and i'm working on a second version that's around
440x360x155mm.  i've ordered various bits, which include something
called a Flex3Drive, it's based around an automotive-grade flexible
shaft, 800mm long, that can transfer the power of the extruder stepper
motor down to where the filament hot-end is, so that the hot-end can
be lightweight and move very fast, whilst at the same time remaining
accurate.

i don't know if you're familiar with 3d printers but there's two main
designs (now three) - "direct drive" where you have the stepper (400g)
mounted on the carriage.  that gets thrown around a bit like a brick,
at high speed, and it causes problems unless you're happy to run
slowly.  then there's "bowden" which is where you put in a teflon
tube 800mm long and you push the filament all the way down that.  it
means that the carriage can be as light as 150 grams (less in the case
of delta printers), but the problem is you get flex in the tube, and
any compression in the filament due to its material properties is
amplified hugely.

 the Flex3Drive solves all that, combining the best of both worlds.
when i read up on it i went "wow!  someone who clearly knows what
they're doing!" :)  so with that and a "Volcano" set for the hotend i
should be able to do reliable, high-quality prints at around 3x the
speed of most reprap printers, in a small and compact space.  it's a
lot of fun and i should get on with it, so much to do.

l.

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-real-reason-for-the-pc-sales-plunge-the-era-of-good-enough-computing/
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_good_enough