arm-netbook February 2017

arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk

36 participants
22 discussions

Laptop LCD Touch Pad: Display KB Layout Idea
by Alexander Ross 25 Mar '19

25 Mar '19

On the laptops lcd touch pad. Here’s a idea for a feature. When leaning new keyboard layout. Say dovrak for example. The trouble is learning where the new keys are. For me at least, one could do with a constant reminder. What if the lcd touch pad displayed the current pressed keys? Maybe on a image of the keyboard, meaning some way of representing where the key you pressed is relative to other keys. So if its the wrong one you can see where the right one is. This info is only displayed while the keyboard is in use. When the touch pad is in use it switches to a relevant display for touch pad use. As for when the user is using not the touch pad nor the keyboard? What then? display keymap? If playing video display: video controls, time left, is internet speed fast enough for this stream? etc.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Logos
by John Luke Gibson 22 Sep '18

22 Sep '18

I would highly recommend avoiding any logos, without proper historical reference. One of the problems with traditional Linux icons, are that they are very un-iconic. It's better to be textually based, in my opinion, than to use disorienting imagery. At this point, most of the clay has already set so referencing/alluding-to other gnu projects [such as blender] wouldn't be detrimental, however ascii has a very richer history of use by "hacktivists". Referencing some historically relevant (to "hacktivism") ascii iconography either overtly or subtly, kindof more or less as a hat tip to communities which support said historical events will cause the logo a greater likelihood of being regarded as iconic. I wish I had specific examples, but possibly using cloister black font would be a subtle hat tip to anonymous for some individuals use of various letters in that font as copy-cat of L from Death Note. Another thing of note, would be that we need to be careful who we tip our hats to, to be careful of who in the future people might assume us to endorse. A font is innocuous enough, that it can be adapted later due to circumstance (should a need arise to disassociate) without damaging the recognize-ability of any logo. The universal and modular style of blender, is a good point to mimic. A solid dot in the center of the "O" would probably be a subtle enough correlation to the blender logo. This is the pattern of thinking we need in developing logos and "slogans". Thinking about what sounds catchy only correlates us with random corporate culture. We don't need to be entirely original as we have a history to fall back on. However originality might also help distinguish us from our predecessors, the last thing we want is to fail to distinguish ourselves from your neighborhood corporation. I would recommend Luke to contact Wenqing Yang a.k.a. "Yummei", using the notability of the project to attract their attention. I would like to point out that despite being a cultural figure (famous artist) in the hacktivist community they previously lauched a multi-million dollar successful indiegogo which caused them much heart ache (per their blog) over legal controversy with so-called partners and their personal admonishment that they failed to do enough. >From: Alexander Ross <maillist_arm-netbook(a)aross.me> >To: Linux on small ARM machines <arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk> >Cc: >Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2017 16:07:15 +0000 >Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] Logos >this all these efforts, got me to have a play around too. :) > > i was started having a go at one idea of letters inserting into each > other kinda like a module. > > I had put E and O in side the M. it then kinda looked like/spelled Meoo > like a cat. > So what about a darn cat logo? maybe a cat playing with a eoma68 card in > its paws? > > sry for the yet another internet cat image type of suggestion, never > thought id be making one heh.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Logos
by John Luke Gibson 21 Sep '18

21 Sep '18

> The idea about a dot in the "O" of EOMA made me think of fonts where the > dot is in the 0 (zero) to distinguish it from O (capital letter O) As we > all are somehow computer related I would find such a design confusing. If it was really to be in honor of the modularity and progress of blender, one would want to make the "O" not really in any particular font, but to look exactly the shape blender logo, except without the flay or the color scheme: a perfect solid-color circle within another perfect circle. It wouldn't theoretically be confusing because the mark you are thinking of is a hollow circle in an oval. Letter-o'es and zeroes can only sometimes be confusing because in some fonts they are both written as vertical ovals, not just the zero. I'm not sure on the required dimensions of a certification mark, however, the solid-shape flag-esque convention I've noticed among popular one's, often seems to detract from the continuity of the design on the objects that bear them, making them seem particularly foreign and like they don't belong. The vaporwave-esque color palate which most of them choose only add to this affect, as if they themselves are trying to distance themselves on some subconscious level from their endorsements. As a side effect to this, it makes them harder to trust. Any symbolism of any significant body, displays historical awareness.. It's what tells people whether they can trust it, before reading or attempting to judge it. Therein lies the axiom, there is no such thing as an original thought, so, if by means of arbitrary work dedicated to make more concise and thoroughly plastered an announcement of what historical or cultural event may have inspired such thoughts and such work, people will then engage in the arbitrarily difficult work of judging whether the project is sincere or not. In other words, if we don't display more than necessary effort in our symbol that can be recognized with several magnitudes less effort than it took to generate, then no highly-self-valuing person will have any sane reason to take us seriously, because if they took every slightly promising project, which failed to create a Sybil-certificate reputation in this manner, then they would never find a single valuable project in their lifetime (obviously this is an exaggeration).

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Logging and journaling
by Julie Marchant 09 Mar '17

09 Mar '17

I just want to make sure of something: are the EOMA68-A20 computer cards going to be shipped with logging and journaling disabled (so that the storage isn't constantly being written to)? I'm asking because this is pretty much a necessity for an OS running on NAND or an SD card if you don't want to have to constantly buy new SD cards because the previous one reached its write limit. Ditto for swap, but given the small amount of NAND on the A20 card, I'm sure not having swap is a given anyway. ;) -- Julie Marchant https://onpon4.github.io Protect your emails with GnuPG: https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org

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Olimex is making an "open-source" laptop...
by Christopher Havel 07 Mar '17

07 Mar '17

http://hackaday.com/2017/02/05/olimex-announces-their-open-source-laptop/ Rip 'em up, Luke... you know you want to... the quotes wouldn't be in the subject header otherwise... :P

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Laptop PCB schematics
by Internet 03 Mar '17

03 Mar '17

I recently walked through the files on hands.com and found the schematics for the 3 PCBs of the laptop. However, there are multiple versions (PDFs) and I would like to know whether those are the latest. If help is appreciated, I would like to take a look at the schematics. I really want this project to be successful and offering help is probably the best thing I can do ;) Julius Lehmann

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a20 board and rk3288 board
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 27 Feb '17

27 Feb '17

ok so the a20 board's nand ic is recognised in software... but *not* by the eGON bootloader ROM: it's too modern. i'm going to have to find an older (lower-capacity) TSSOP-48 NAND IC. arse. the rk3288 board is *almost* up: the i2c bus for the PMICs appears to be non-operational (reason yet to be determined but most likely to be a short-circuit) which, when the linux kernel tries to initialise each of the PMICs hangs on accessing the I2C bus. when i replaced the I2C pullup resistors with 1.5k instead of 2.2k then SD/MMC refused to boot! only thing i can think of is, the short is pulling the 3.3v power rail down enough to affect the SD/MMC. i'll keep investigating. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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passthrough, a20 and rk3288 cards
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 24 Feb '17

24 Feb '17

ok so still waiting for the updates to go out from crowdsupply, brief news in the meantime. revision 2.7.2 pre-production test pcb run has been ordered, i will be assembling those myself, here in taiwan, using my host's equipment. btw i didn't hear from anyone about the offer to send out pre-production cards. i'm having fun with the rk3288 board: putting on 600-pin 0.6mm pitch bga ICs is tricky but doable. the first board i managed to get access via USB, and learned that it is actually possible to initialise them by uploading u-boot-spl over USB. however the DDR3 RAM would only initialise if the clockrate was limited to 200mhz. the second board i tried, unfortunately the 3.3v power output was shorted to the DDR3 RAM 1.5v line and destroyed $20 worth of RAM ICs and a $20 processor. not doing that again. the third board i am currently trying, i have to get the ACT8846 properly soldered down: it's not initialising (yet) so all outputs measure 0v. the passthrough card i am still waiting for an adapter cable in order to be able to wire a 2.4.1 revision a20 card's HDMI output to the passthrough card's HDMI input. it has to be micro-hdmi to micro-hdmi hence why an adapter had to be ordered. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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Re: [Arm-netbook] passthrough, a20 and rk3288 cards
by dumblob 22 Feb '17

22 Feb '17

Hi Luke, speaking of commitments, timeframes and the equipment price, it appears to me we could develop and provide a fully working QEMU image to break the current dependecy on EOMA HW (of course, in the end it will be tested on a real HW, but the global parallel development of anything regarding EOMA will be much easier and faster using QEMU). Would it make sense to you? Cheers, -- Jan

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Re: [Arm-netbook] A20 deadline
by John Luke Gibson 19 Feb '17

19 Feb '17

>john i appreciate your support, do try to be... less forthright than >i am when focussing on things :) I am afraid :> Being overly forthright will forever be my crime It is my over compensating for a perceived blindness in the world. If an extraterrestrial ever saw through it, I would be thoroughly flushed and embarrassed xD

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arm-netbook February 2017