arm-netbook September 2016

arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk

39 participants
42 discussions

USB-to-Ethernet efficient throughput
by SohKa 07 Sep '16

07 Sep '16

Hello Does anyone have an idea of the efficient throughput with an Ethernet adapter connected to the micro-usb-otg port of the EOMA68 or to the USB2 ports of the micro desktop housing ? SohKa

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EOMA68: DRM and Tivoisation
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 07 Sep '16

07 Sep '16

http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/EOMA-68#DRM_and_Tivois… i've added a specific section on tivoisation and drm - basically it's not permitted. it didn't occur to me to add this until the issue of the RYF Certification came up, where it was discussed the rather scary prospect on the horizon of USB3 devices not working due to there being some weird "online firmware real-time download database". it suddenly occurred to me that if there isn't a specific section which explains why DRM is not permitted (because it stops interoperability), someone might actually think it's okay to implement DRM. i can only think of *one* instance where DRM is okay, and that's in an *isolated* Hardware-Virtualised (Guest) OS... and that's only if its tentacles don't extend *outside* of that OS. any thoughts which can make this clearer really appreciated. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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As promised... a small fix to the Wiki
by Mike Leimon 07 Sep '16

07 Sep '16

Okay, I think I finally got this one section of the wikipedia page correctly ironed out now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EOMA68#Size I did notice while I was cross checking things though, that the PC Card spec for Type III cards is actually 10.5mm in height, not 8mm (as it is for the EOMA68 spec). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Card#Type_III I'm not sure if this is an issue or not but, I'm going to point it out to all of you anyhow. If I get a chance later I'll try to take a closer look at some of the other sections too. -Mike p.s. Ugh.. after reading Luke's last email comment about articles-for-deletion, I'm now wondering if I just wasted my time fixing that.

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One issue with the EOMA68 Wikipedia
by Mike Leimon 07 Sep '16

07 Sep '16

Luke, I took a quick glance at the Wikipedia entry and saw what I thought was an error and I will fix the problem if you can confirm that I understand the situation correctly. The wikipedia article says the following: """ There are two different physical profiles of EOMA68 (based around the legacy PCMCIA <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCMCIA> classifications):[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EOMA-68#cite_note-2> - 54 mm × 85.6 mm; 5mm variant (Type II) - 54 mm × 85.6 mm; 3.3mm variant (Type I) Type I is reserved for up to 1366x768 RGB/TTL video output; Type II is reserved for up to 1920x1080 RGB/TTL video output, on the basis that a Type I 3.3mm card may fit into a Type II 5.0mm socket but not vice versa. Thus, a module with a lower-capacity video output will physically be prevented from being used with incompatible higher-resolution devices, preventing any possible confusion about interoperability. """ However, as I understand things, the second part of the article is incorrect and should probably be as follows: """ Type II is reserved for up to 1366x768 RGB/TTL video output; Type I is reserved for up to 1920x1080 RGB/TTL video output, on the basis that a Type I 3.3mm card may fit into a Type II 5.0mm socket but not vice versa. Thus, a module with a lower-capacity video output will physically be prevented from being used with incompatible higher-resolution devices, preventing any possible confusion about interoperability. """ Please respond and let me know if I am understanding this issue correctly and if so, I'll make this correction to the article after I am back home from work for the day. I'm not sure about any other issues with the article but, when I get a chance I'll try to take a closer look at it (maybe some time tomorrow). -Mike

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EOMA-68 or EOMA68? How to write name?
by Alexander .S.T. Ross 07 Sep '16

07 Sep '16

I’m not sure anymore. how are you supposed to write eoma-68? with or without the dash "-"? Could you clarify how the name is written, on the elinux wiki page please. could it also be unofficial or official, as to weather for referring to all/any eoma standard if the notation of eoma*/eoma-* counts/is permitted/ok? cus ive been using it as a young cool shorthand :). reminds me of diaspora*/D* and how they use the wildcard in there logo. if its not ok, then ill stop and use "a eoma standard" instead. Thanks!

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EOMA68 A20 DDR3 SA15 (2GB addressing), finance records in bugtracker
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 05 Sep '16

05 Sep '16

http://bugs.rhombus-tech.net/index_by_target.html i'm keeping a record of the amounts in and out. thinkpenguin (my sponsor) is handling the money... which if you've been following (running) the assess_campaign.py program is pretty much gone / accounted for. there are a number of reasons why the amounts are being published, not least is so that people can see exactly where the money's going, but also to ensure that it is absolutely clear that this is *NOT* being run as a "profit maximising business". over the past five years i've put at least $40,000 of my own personal funds into this; over the past two years thinkpenguin has sponsored the project with a further $60,000 approximately (so far). one of the other reasons for making this clear statement on-list is because now that there exists a wikipedia page, we're getting well-meaning people try and contribute to it, and, so far, there's a 100% track record of the contributions being factually incorrect, misleading and just plain wrong. that's led to me having to step in to correct them, which has led to a request that i make a (false) declaration that there exists a "conflict" between the two roles {wikipedia editor | guardian and editor} of the EOMA68 open Creative Commons Licensed {wikipedia page | Standard} on the wikimedia site {wikipedia.org | elinux.org}. it's yet to be demonstrated that such a "conflict" exists. i absolutely flat-out refuse to make a publicly auditable FALSE declaration that a conflict exists when it does not: that brings both the EOMA68 standard *and* wikipedia into disrepute. interesting situation - one that wikipedia's clearly never had to deal with before. http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/news/ the DDR3 RAM address line that needed to be added has been done... it's extremely tight and has been quite disruptive. i'll need to do some close inspection of what the auto-router's altered during the many push-and-shove events required to make room for the extra address line. the problem is that if it wasn't planned for, the available space is used up for VIAs and components that literally makes it impossible to get the extra track into the available space without considerable knock-on modifications. at the time that the original A10 board was done, we actually didn't *know* if it was possible to do 4x DDR3x8 2GB RAM layout: it was only tom cubie's team who discovered the extra address line and used it with the Cubietruck. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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New Open Access Journal for Open Source Hardware
by Mike Leimon 05 Sep '16

05 Sep '16

Greetings all, One of my friends brought this new open access journal to my attention this morning. Apparently, it is just starting up now and looking for an initial call for papers. http://www.journals.elsevier.com/hardwarex/ Ordinarily, I wouldn't have brought this up at all however, since it appears this is going to be an open access journal, I am thinking that it may in fact be handled in a manner that is compatible with the spirit and the goals of the EOMA-68 project. Given the readership of scholarly journals, an effort to get a publication about this new open hardware standard could result a lot of interest and adoption within the scientific community. Perhaps if that comes to fruition, we may see EOMA-68 cards adopted as components used within custom sensors or instrumentation. Anyhow, I'd say looking into this may be worth at least a few minutes of time. -Mike

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http://bugs.rhombus-tech.net/
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 02 Sep '16

02 Sep '16

ok so thanks to phil hands, we've now got a bugtracker (bugseverywhere). the number of tasks that are needed to be fulfilled is so enormous that i felt it best to set one up. it's in the same repo as the rhombus-tech.net wiki and i've started putting in the top-level tracker items. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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Sorry to Luke (and others)
by chadvellacott＠sasktel.net 02 Sep '16

02 Sep '16

(From a computer-libErTarian) Sorry, Luke, for the "shower" of private "e"mails today. [To avoid any of you confusing me with someone else (I guess Al Billings)- No, it was not me who sent 10 private messages, containing demands, in 20 minutes. Mine was like- 7, containing questions, in over 3 hours.] To you on this mailing-list, and to Luke when he is not so (understandably) busy, please let me "explain" my apology and how this happened. I had many questions, regarding the products offered at https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop for backing. And I am nearly sure that it HAD occurred to me, in the past, that if a question whose answer is likely of interest to others, can be asked and answered PUBLICLY, then that can save time for the person answering, by not having to answer the question twice. And I HAD noticed that "Rhombus-Tech" had a mailing-list. But I guess that it has been a long time since I was on ANY mailing-list, and that I did not think clearly about what that meant. (Mistake 1) I did not "put two and two together". It did not occur to me that perhaps my questions should be sent to the list, rather than privately to Luke. I did not even think to ask him whether I should send my questions, to the list. So I sent him a "shower" of questions in private "e"mails, mostly this morning but a few were before then. After responding to several of them, in reply to one of them he (in a gracious way) asked me to "send this" to the list (send the question or send that "e"mail of mine, or perhaps, by "this", he meant something more). (Mistake 2) I supposed or guessed that he just meant the one or more questions in that particular message, or just questions of that particular kind. And since I had questions which were on DIFFERENT sub-topics, I continued and sent one or more other private "e"mails to him. Then he (well-manneredly, again) replied to another of mine, and his reply made it clear enough for me, that I should send most or all of these questions, to the list. (Mistake 3) BUT, I had already sent another "e"mail, BEFORE reading his 2nd request asking me to post to the mailing-list. So, understandably, he again replied by directing me to the list. Again, not rudely, though I had been acting foolishly. And, understandably, he mentioned "critical tasks" for him to do. After that, I felt quite ashamed. Perhaps a little like a baby. ~(:^o)--- At least I am learning by this event. [(A) to use mailing-lists when proper. and (B) generally, to read received messages from the same person or on the same topic, before clicking <Send>.] I guess that I was not thinking at my best, this morning. I should have stepped back and taken a break. Sorry, Luke. And thanks for the patience with me. And sorry too, to you who benefit from work which Luke does when unnecessarily-private messages do not distract him from "critical" tasks! (And I suspect that I wasted some of Chris Waid's time, too, by "CCing" him with every one of those messages of mine, other than one message where I guess I unintentionally put Chris into a "To"-field!) I will now send questions, to this list. And if Luke at some time says that he is fine with it, I will copy (to this list), in some form, at least some of my earlier questions and his answers. Sincerely, a computer-libErTarian. (:^)

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An update on the OLIMEX TERES-I laptop
by Mike Leimon 02 Sep '16

02 Sep '16

Oh yeah, I stumbled across this blog update yesterday as well. https://olimex.wordpress.com/2016/08/31/teres-i-diy-open-source-hardware-ha… Now I do realize that yet again that some people around here aren't the biggest fans of OLIMEX however, keep in mind that I'm not submitting this to ruffle any feathers. I just found this blog post to be quite interesting in that it describes a lot of similar problems and issues I've read about in one form or another on the mailing list. It seems to me that they still have a lot of work ahead of them before they start to get anywhere. I personally think that the modular CPU card design is vastly superior however, it's still really neat to see more and more ARM laptops in the pipeline. Perhaps it means that before too long there will be more pre-compiled software and better drivers available for these systems as a whole. -Mike

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arm-netbook September 2016