arm-netbook April 2017

arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk

42 participants
31 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I would highly recommend avoiding any logos, without proper historical reference.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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Solid wood corner prototype
by Tor, the Marqueteur 11 May '17

11 May '17

Thought I'd give a try at how a solid wood version would come out. Here is the result of about 45 minutes prototyping with a piece of 3/8" Cherry I had lying around. A couple notes: The 5/64" (.078", 1.98mm) bit has some tendency to wander, as can be seen in the holes. I also goofed the measurement so these are 11/16" instead of 9/16" wide. I didn't notice that until I was nearly done, and figured that since they weren't actually going to be used it didn't matter. I also didn't add the slot for the PCB, mostly because I wasn't sure of the size, and I didn't have the appropriate cutter lying close by. I have a couple thoughts on that. Tor -- Tor Chantara http://www.fineartmarquetry.com/ 808-828-1107 GPG Key: 2BE1 426E 34EA D253 D583 9DE4 B866 0375 134B 48FB *Be wary of unsigned emails* Stop spying: http://www.resetthenet.org/

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I saw your recent update, Luke
by zap 10 May '17

10 May '17

Just one question, I am assuming since there will be internal sd cards that your replacing one or both of the internal usbs? or am I wrong? By the way, I have a suggestion if you feel up to it, Debian 9 seems to be very close to stable, if you feel like it, and anyone wants it, install it for them. Whenever I order it, probably that will be what I will want. Using Debian 9 right now to be honest. It seems more stable then Debian 8 to me. just a thought. I wish you the best of luck, not that you will need it. :) Hoping you don't get sick again also, I am glad you will be sticking the libre guidelines. Even if it is a pain in the butt to be putting it lightly I am sure.

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libre 64-bit risc-v SoC
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 04 May '17

04 May '17

ok so it would seem that the huge amount of work going into RISC-V means that it's on track to becoming a steamroller that will squash proprietary SoCs, so i'm quite happy to make sure that it's not-so-subtly nudged in the right direction. i've started a page where i am keeping notes: http://rhombus-tech.net/riscv/libre_riscv/ and the general goal is to create a desirable mass-volume low-cost SoC, meaning that it will need to at least do 1080p60 video decode and have 3D graphics capability. oh... and be entirely libre. the plan is: * to create an absolute basic SoC, starting from lowRISC (64-bit), ORGFX (3D graphics) and MIAOW (OpenCL engine), in at least 90nm as a low-cost proof-of-concept where mistakes can be iterated through * provide the end-result to software developers so that they can have actual real silicon to work with * begin a first crowd-funding phase to create a 28nm (or better) multi-core SMP SoC for this first phase the interfaces that i've tracked down so far are almost entirely from opencores.org, meaning that there really should be absolutely no need to license any costly hard macros. that *includes* a DDR3 controller (but does not include a DDR3 PHY, which will need to be designed): * DDR3 controller (not including PHY) * lowRISC contains "minion cores" so can be soft-programmed to do any GPIO * boot and debug through ZipCPU's UART (use an existing EC's on-board FLASH) * OpenCores VGA controller (actually it's an LCD RGB/TTL controller) * OpenCores ULPI USB 2.0 controller * OpenCores USB-OTG 1.1 PHY note that there are NO ANALOG INTERFACES in that. this is *really* important to avoid, because mixed analog and digital is incredibly hard to get right. also note that things like HDMI, SATA, and even ethernet are quite deliberately NOT on the list. Ethernet RMII (which is digital) could be implemented in software using a minion core. the advantage of using the opencores VGA (actually LCD) controller is: i already have the full source for a *complete* linux driver. I2C, SPI, SD/MMC, UART, EINT and GPIO - all of these can be software-programmed as bit-banging in the minion cores. these interfaces, amazingly, are enough to do an SoC that, if put into 40nm, would easily compete with some of TI's offerings, as well as the Allwinner R8 (aka A13). i've also managed to get alliance and coriolis2 compiled on debian/testing (took a while) so it *might* not be necessary even to pay for the ASIC design tooling (the cost of which is insane). coriolis2 includes a reasonable auto-router. i still have yet to go through the tutorials to see how it works. for design rules: 90nm design rules (stacks etc.) are actually publicly available, which would potentially mean that a clock rate of at least 300mhz would be achievable: interestingly 800mhz DDR3 RAM from 2012 used 90nm geometry. 65 down to 40nm would be much more preferable but may be hard to get. graphics: i'm going through the list of people who have done GPUs (or parts of one). MIAOW, Nyuzi, ORGFX. the gplgpu isn't gpl. it's been modified to "the text of the GPL license plus an additional clause which is that if you want to use this for commercial purposes then... you can't". which is *NOT* a GPL license, it's a proprietary commercial license! MIAOW is just an OpenCL engine but a stonking good one that's compatible with AMD's software. nyuzi is an experimental GPU where i hope its developer believes in its potential. ORGFX i am currently evaluating but it looks pretty damn good, and i think it is slightly underestimated. i could really use some help evaluating it properly. my feeling is that a combination of MIAOW to handle shading and ORGFX for the rendering would be a really powerful combination. so. it's basically doable. comments and ideas welcome, please do edit the page to keep track of notes http://rhombus-tech.net/riscv/libre_riscv/ --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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first prototype microdesktop casework
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 30 Apr '17

30 Apr '17

http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/micro_desktop/news/ --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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Another set of EOMA 68 logos
by dumblob 28 Apr '17

28 Apr '17

Hi everybody, few ideas I spotted on the so far submitted logos inpired me to create also some proposals. All logos are carefully designed to meet the following requirements. * Support B/W rendering "out of the box" (just use e.g. the indexing algorithm in Gimp) * Be decently well readable * Be moderately intuitively understandable * Be compact in size, but not overly dense * Stay consistent (all components of the same importance shall have roughly the same visual area, size, color, and "shape kind") * Support future numbers in place of 68 * Favicon shall well resemble the logo (in this case the favicon will be a green character E) * The minimum safety zone does not need to be very big to let the logo be readable All the material I'm attaching is licensed under CC BY 4.0 . Unfortunately I again ran out of my time to contribute to this interesting project. I might find some time later (in few months rather than weeks). So feel free to modify the logos to your needs. There is one more idea from my side - add a leaf of a lime tree (as it looks a bit like a heart) to make it less "technically" looking and more resembling the eco-friendliness. Note, the attached bitmap exports are not perfect as the source SVG files are prepared for easy editing, but not for high-quality bitmap exporting with antialiasing. The source SVG files are Inkscape SVG files, so they are not optimized for viewing. Cheers! -- Jan

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Re: [Arm-netbook] SoC warp soldering risk?
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 28 Apr '17

28 Apr '17

--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68 On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 11:53 AM, <sokolgeo(a)posteo.net> wrote: > Hello. It seems like NEO900 project (http://neo900.org/) is having some > problems with SoC warp soldering memory chips to their PCB: > > http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=1525427&postcount=2850 > > https://irclog.whitequark.org/neo900/2017-03-14#19041338 specific details: http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/community/2017-February/001583.html http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/community/2017-February/001594.html > Luke - is there similar soldering risk in EOMA manufacturing? fuck no :) whenever i see "PoP" as an option for a processor i run away very very fast :) it's also why i haven't done a smart (or dumb) phone, because *without* that smaller size (due to "stacking") you simply can't make a small enough PCB for it to be socially acceptable, these days. that's why i was so excited when i found the Ingenic M150... and so disappointed when they told me they'd stopped making it. why? because the M150 has 128mb of DDR2 RAM *on board* the same 11x11mm package, as a Multi-Chip-Module. instead i've focussed on EOMA68 as the first modular design, which is *just* big enough to fit processor and RAM and PMICs onto one side of the PCB., and in some cases big enough to fit NAND or eMMC on as well. so no - the primary reason why i avoid PoP RAM is because of the MOQ quantities usually being around 1,000. *sigh* another expensive learning experience for the open / libre hardware community, there. i do wish sometimes that they'd read some of the things that i write. i've *already learned* that you don't try retro-fitting PCBs into pre-existing casework. never mind - sometimes it's better for people to do things they won't listen on and then fail. l.

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SPI-based LCDs, 3D printing, RISC-V
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 28 Apr '17

28 Apr '17

ok so a quick status update: * Frida, in Shenzhen, have a customer currently ordering their 2.8in FRD280J3703D SPI-based LCD. this means it's possible to place an order for less than the normal MOQ of 1,000 so we go with that one for the 15in laptop. * i calculated that for the microdesktop i have an ENTIRE MONTH of 3d-printing to do, and a YEAR for the laptop. there's an update going out about this soon but basically i need help. ideas or actual practical help. * i'm investigating RISC-V *long-term*, i will start a separate thread about this (immediately after writing this) so am reaching out to various people to see who's interested. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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arm-netbook April 2017