[Arm-netbook] fosdem2016

[Wookey]

+++ Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton [2016-02-03 19:02 +0000]:
> > I had a quick look but failed to find details of the screen, keyboard,
> > boards and 3D parts online, other than scattered through many mailing
> > list-messages. Never mind info like the above. Is there a page that
> > actually has the info someone keen would need to get started?
> 
>  eek - sorry :)  i usually maintain a page that has them but haven't
> put it together yet - give me a mo and it'll be at
> http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/laptop_15in/

OK, cheers. So battery and touchpad not available in ones and keyboard
suppiers are idiots. So some associated faff there :-)

>  the boards i want to do another run in the next few weeks, wookey, so
> if you'd like to buy some you'd be most welcome.  i don't want to get
> too many done in case they need modifications.  they're only
> single-sided 2-layer 1.5mm thick so are "bog standard" i.e. dirt
> cheap.  i think this time i'll get them made up rather than do the
> component assembly myself.

I am interested, but I was a little put off by the prices you listed
last time at $120-150 per board and 3 boards. I don't call that 'dirt
cheap'. That's $430 + screen+keyboard+panel+printing, which is a
little more than I want to pay for just 'mucking about'. I could
afford it but a) I'm tight and b) I don't like buying electronics
unless I'm fairly sure I'm going to get decent use out of it (all that
eco-thinking). And ultimately a 2G RAM laptop is 'toy' these days,
because 'browsers'. So I was waiting to see if the upgradability
aspect looked likely to actually solve this issue, and I have a pile
of other half-started projects so don't _actually_ need any more :-)

So, er. 'maybe' :-) How much and when?

>  (i put USB 3.1 which is 10gbit/sec in place instead - 8 wires for
> only GbE or 8 wires for a general-purpose 10gbit/sec bus.... no
> contest)

Makes sense.
 
> > What I really want is either an A64 EOMA68 board, or a baseboard
> > that'll take the pine64...(as discussed, subject to heat
> > limits). Still, that's all 'just hardware' (ha ha).
> 
>  yeh the EOMA68-A64 is on the cards.... i even have a pine64 on order
> so i can check GPL compliance... *but* i just learned from someone at
> fosdem2016 that f*****g allwinner have done it *again* - this time
> something related to DDR3 RAM initialisation.  i can't recall the
> exact details (was a bit of a mad rush) but i am *not* going to waste
> my time any more on pursuing GPL violations.

>  so if someone can confirm whether this is true or not, i'll
> re-prioritise the allwinner A64 board back to the top of the TODO
> list.

Karsten Merker explained this at some length after my talk (he has a
pine). Allwinner's first-stage (non free, probbaly not even
redistributable) bootloader initialises the RAM, but we have no docs
to do it in uboot/uefi. Someone cut out the blob and linked it in
which works, but that's not redistributable either. So yes RAM init is
a roadblock until we can get someone at AW to tell us how to do it, or
it's otherwise revenged.

I was going to try and lean on them from the Linaro end (Connect in
March) and see if we can get any joy, but it may well be difficult.

Doing your own A64 board may well not help as I think the RAM is in
the A64 package and they'll no doubt give you the same magic
bootloader and no real docs.

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM
http://wookware.org/
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