[Arm-netbook] Side-Topic: Liberating PocketCHIP

[doark at mail.com]

I apologize for DOS'ing the list, I can only get online about once a week.

On Thu, 4 May 2017 17:13:23 +0200
"mike.valk at gmail.com" <mike.valk at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 2017-05-04 9:04 GMT+02:00 John Luke Gibson <eaterjolly at gmail.com>:
> 
> > Since it seems like a trivially simple task that for some reason no
> > one has taken up, I would like to take the opportunity to exercise a
> > learning experience and simultaneously benefit the community, by
> > liberating PocketCHIP by deblobbing the source and re-compiling.
> >  
> 
> The PocketCHIP is powered by their SoM:
> http://linux-sunxi.org/NextThingCo_CHIP
> 
> That is apparently a Allwinner R8 pared with an external rtl8723bs
> Wifi/BT chip.
> 
> The R8 is a rebranded A13.
What? I own one of those and I'm almost certain that the CPU is an A7.
Let's boot the PocketCHIP up...
The processor is detected as an A7.
I'll attach the output, it would probably be interesting to see all of
it...
Done, it's compressed bzip2 since it's ~300KiB decompressed which is large
for an email.

<aside>
I'm not too clever with gpg yet, so please tell me if the compressed file
is also signed (I wanted to do that so that you could be certain that it
was not infected en-route like happens to MS .cab files far to
frequently (even though I don't have my key signed by anyone yet
\me grumble grumble)).
</aside>

Unless your saying that the WiFi has a built in ARM R8 (Why)? which would
really surprise me considering how large the processor chip is compared
with the WiFi chip.


> If you look at
> https://getchip.com/pages/chip
> 
> You'll see:
> On the left image the RAM (Hynix) and Wifi+BT (Realtek) and Power module
> (Allwinner AXP209)
> On the right the SoC (R8/A13) and NAND (Samsung)
> 
> The A13 does not need blob's to run anymore, the WiFi+BT chip does.
> AFAIKT
> 
> Display output needs some checking in Linux and U-boot mainline. But
> most should be available or somewhat easily hacked in.
> 
> GPU needs a BLOB which does not work on mainline AFAIKT. Luc Verhaegen
> did get quite far before he burned out.
<snip>

You're not giving us enough details. Who is Verhaegen? What did he burn
out on?
When I first considered purchasing a PocketCHiP I read about the GPU
not having 3D capabilities because of a binary blob. So, the CHIP folks
hired (I think it was an extended goal of the kickstarter campaign), a
kernel dev to add support to the Linux kernel for the GPU. I was going to
mention this on this list before, but it's been so active...

Sincerely,
David
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: tmp.txt.bz2
Type: application/x-bzip
Size: 28716 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/attachments/20170507/5c55fc8c/attachment-0001.bin>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/attachments/20170507/5c55fc8c/attachment-0001.sig>