well um i'm here.. an entire week early :) long story, but having booked the train tickets and hostel, nobody actually told me i was on the wrong day because of two separate and unrelated pieces of confusion / misprints! i decided rather than go back home to simply stay a week, having brought everything - soldering-iron, ruler, pliers, scissors, laptop, the works - with me all this way. 15kg suit-holding bag on wheels.... and in my infinite wisdom i decided that it would be an interesting experience to come to belgium on skates. with a 15kg wheeled bag.
so, anyway, i'll be volunteering for setup on the friday, i have the laptop to demo, am registered for a lightning talk on saturday morning, this might change if there's a full hour slot available (i'm on short-notice standby).
it'll be fun. the http://2go4.be is pretty good, the no 71 bus goes straight to ULB, there's a walk each end of about 250 metres... am enjoying the accidental circumstances...
l.
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
+++ Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton [2016-01-25 17:39 +0000]:
well um i'm here.. an entire week early :)
it'll be fun. the http://2go4.be is pretty good, the no 71 bus goes straight to ULB, there's a walk each end of about 250 metres... am enjoying the accidental circumstances...
Heh, A whole week early in person, but didn't manage to book a proper talk slot in advance (or did you just not quite make the cut?) Very 'LKCL' :-)
See you next week; I look forward to a play. Are you going to be set up on a stand/corner somewhere so we have a fighting chance of finding you in the madness that is FOSDEM?
Wookey
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Wookey wookey@wookware.org wrote:
+++ Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton [2016-01-25 17:39 +0000]:
well um i'm here.. an entire week early :)
it'll be fun. the http://2go4.be is pretty good, the no 71 bus goes straight to ULB, there's a walk each end of about 250 metres... am enjoying the accidental circumstances...
Heh, A whole week early in person, but didn't manage to book a proper talk slot in advance (or did you just not quite make the cut?) Very 'LKCL' :-)
:)
i didn't apply in advance because i didn't know how far along i'd be with the laptop. i didn't want to just bring a 3D design on-screen plus some PCBs: first assembly i literally only managed to complete 6 days ago, so that was when i contacted alasdair. i'm on standby if there's a free slot, but it will be short-notice: i'll post on-list and the arm-netbooks freenode irc
See you next week; I look forward to a play. Are you going to be set up on a stand/corner somewhere so we have a fighting chance of finding you in the madness that is FOSDEM?
well the advantage of being here early is that i'm planning - if i understand things well enough to know if this is even possible (first time ever to fosdem) - to set up early on the "open hardware laptops" stand, plus, also, i want to speak to the people on the "3d printers" stand to ask them if they'd like to print out some of the laptop parts, on the basis that it'd be cool for both anyone demo'ing 3d printers and also for the libre laptop project. so i'll be at one or other of those stands.
i'm using the time here at http://2go4.be to refine some of the parts, as this is the first time that PCBs have been inside the casework, there is some quite obvious strain in places i could not have forseen without actually having actual PCBs with fully-populated components. that, and ABS does have quite different characteristics from PLA.
other than that, i'll post here (and on IRC) if there's any changes. if anyone has any suggestions (for venues / meeting-times) do say so.
l.
On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 5:52 PM, Wookey wookey@wookware.org wrote:
Heh, A whole week early in person, but didn't manage to book a proper talk slot in advance (or did you just not quite make the cut?) Very 'LKCL' :-)
:)
i seem to be learning that some things - in real-life - just can't be "iterated-until-success" like software...
wookey do you know if anyone from the arm64 vero team are going to be in brussels? it would be nice to be able to say "hello this is a low-power laptop blah blah... and if you want a higher-end one you want to talk to _these_ people right here..." - i'll ask the powerpc-laptop people as well
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
+++ Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton [2016-01-26 09:50 +0000]:
wookey do you know if anyone from the arm64 vero team are going to be in brussels? it would be nice to be able to say "hello this is a low-power laptop blah blah... and if you want a higher-end one you want to talk to _these_ people right here..." - i'll ask the powerpc-laptop people as well
Sorry - didn't see this message in time. The main drivers (Andy Simpkins, Steve McIntyre and Daniel Silverstone) were all not there this year. Leif Lindholm was present.
Thing is, that project is stalled because a) Andy is working on both another project and deisgning/building a new house and b) they have failed to get AMD to commit to chip supply. So currently your design is looking a lot more like it might actually happen than theirs.
Good to see you at the weekend, and have a 'heft' of the machine. It was nice :-) I feel inspired to update my eoma card and print some parts...
Wookey
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 10:22 PM, Wookey wookey@wookware.org wrote:
+++ Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton [2016-01-26 09:50 +0000]:
wookey do you know if anyone from the arm64 vero team are going to be in brussels? it would be nice to be able to say "hello this is a low-power laptop blah blah... and if you want a higher-end one you want to talk to _these_ people right here..." - i'll ask the powerpc-laptop people as well
Sorry - didn't see this message in time. The main drivers (Andy Simpkins, Steve McIntyre and Daniel Silverstone) were all not there this year. Leif Lindholm was present.
if you speak to them please do mention that the casework's there for them to adapt. i honestly doubt very much that they will be able to source the required connectors that will be the right height. laptops are designed PCB+case+connectors - many connectors are *custom-made* so that they fit exactly at the right height (mid-mounted), and the tooling is often scrapped when the laptop itself is end-of-life.
Thing is, that project is stalled because a) Andy is working on both another project and deisgning/building a new house and b) they have failed to get AMD to commit to chip supply. So currently your design is looking a lot more like it might actually happen than theirs.
*sigh* yeahh, it's quite likely that AMD hasn't actually got *anyone* who's committed to it... which is precisely why they should give them some ICs due to the extremely high strategic value (debian developers for goodness sake!!)... but can you get that across to AMD's marketing and Directors? mmm...
Good to see you at the weekend, and have a 'heft' of the machine.
yeah you too - it's been a bit weird focussing so heavily on this stuff for such a long time.
1.1kg - it's peanuts. i'm kinda confused as to why 15.6in laptops are 2.3kg and above.
It was nice :-) I feel inspired to update my eoma card and print some parts...
awesome. well, the rev 1.1 card that you have should work with a bit of modification - there's a couple of jumper leads you need to run, i've modded one here - you'll only be able to run the LCD at 100% brightness unless you compile up a software-PCM linux kernel module and do a few other tricks.... just running 3.3v to the pin that's now allocated as "PWM0" is the easiest temporary solution.
but, it would only be needed for a few months: i need to do another production run (rev 2.5) of the EOMA68-A20 PCB so there are more on the way. ethernet is going, so you need to be prepared for that, and have a USB-ETH dongle kicking around.
l.
+++ Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton [2016-02-02 20:10 +0000]:
Thing is, that project is stalled because a) Andy is working on both another project and deisgning/building a new house and b) they have failed to get AMD to commit to chip supply. So currently your design is looking a lot more like it might actually happen than theirs.
*sigh* yeahh, it's quite likely that AMD hasn't actually got *anyone* who's committed to it...
Softiron is selling hardware based on the AMD seattle, http://softiron.co.uk/products/ and there are 96board husky prototypes which I expect to be actually available as a board 'RSN'. So they have at least one real customer.
which is precisely why they should give them some ICs due to the extremely high strategic value (debian developers for goodness sake!!)... but can you get that across to AMD's marketing and Directors? mmm...
They did indeed agree in priciple but it neve actually happenned. There was much ructions at ADM last year I think. They had more important things to worry about.
Good to see you at the weekend, and have a 'heft' of the machine.
yeah you too - it's been a bit weird focussing so heavily on this stuff for such a long time.
1.1kg - it's peanuts. i'm kinda confused as to why 15.6in laptops are 2.3kg and above.
More performance, bigger batteries, fans, heatsinks, ABS cases, metal frame in decent ones (the PItop shows how much heavier an ABS injection-moulded case is - A brick in comparison). Yours feels too light to be very robust, but I guess we'll see. The lightness helps itself to some degree, in the way of insects being unaffected by falls.
I'm used to a solid lenovo X-series...
It was nice :-) I feel inspired to update my eoma card and print some parts...
awesome. well, the rev 1.1 card that you have should work with a bit of modification - there's a couple of jumper leads you need to run, i've modded one here - you'll only be able to run the LCD at 100% brightness unless you compile up a software-PCM linux kernel module and do a few other tricks.... just running 3.3v to the pin that's now allocated as "PWM0" is the easiest temporary solution.
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?
but, it would only be needed for a few months: i need to do another production run (rev 2.5) of the EOMA68-A20 PCB so there are more on the way. ethernet is going, so you need to be prepared for that, and have a USB-ETH dongle kicking around.
Boo. But yes OK, that's do-able.
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).
Wookey
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 6:33 PM, Wookey wookey@wookware.org wrote:
+++ Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton [2016-02-02 20:10 +0000]:
Thing is, that project is stalled because a) Andy is working on both another project and deisgning/building a new house and b) they have failed to get AMD to commit to chip supply. So currently your design is looking a lot more like it might actually happen than theirs.
*sigh* yeahh, it's quite likely that AMD hasn't actually got *anyone* who's committed to it...
Softiron is selling hardware based on the AMD seattle,
ok great!
yeah you too - it's been a bit weird focussing so heavily on this stuff for such a long time.
1.1kg - it's peanuts. i'm kinda confused as to why 15.6in laptops are 2.3kg and above.
More performance, bigger batteries, fans, heatsinks, ABS cases, metal frame in decent ones (the PItop shows how much heavier an ABS injection-moulded case is - A brick in comparison). Yours feels too light to be very robust, but I guess we'll see. The lightness helps itself to some degree, in the way of insects being unaffected by falls.
i kinda intuitively / subconsciously must have thought of that, i did know of the concept of "mass decompounding" as applied to cars. the hinge part is my main concern - but i guess that one part could always be either cast in aluminium (look up julia longtin's work - phil mentioned her to me a while back) or just done in either the high-temperature ABS from proto-pasta or perhaps the 300C polycarbonate used for plastic bottles... lots of experimenting, plenty of time.
I'm used to a solid lenovo X-series...
It was nice :-) I feel inspired to update my eoma card and print some parts...
awesome. well, the rev 1.1 card that you have should work with a bit of modification - there's a couple of jumper leads you need to run, i've modded one here - you'll only be able to run the LCD at 100% brightness unless you compile up a software-PCM linux kernel module and do a few other tricks.... just running 3.3v to the pin that's now allocated as "PWM0" is the easiest temporary solution.
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/
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.
but, it would only be needed for a few months: i need to do another production run (rev 2.5) of the EOMA68-A20 PCB so there are more on the way. ethernet is going, so you need to be prepared for that, and have a USB-ETH dongle kicking around.
Boo. But yes OK, that's do-able.
(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)
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.
l.
On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 7:02 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net wrote:
On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 6:33 PM, Wookey wookey@wookware.org wrote:
More performance, bigger batteries, fans, heatsinks, ABS cases, metal frame in decent ones (the PItop shows how much heavier an ABS
... i also am relying on the (unnecessarily overengineered) solid strength of the 1.5mm PCBs themselves, and will use double-sided tape to stick the bamboo plywood to it. i'm not expecting anything to break, there.
also, the front and back parts i use the same internal buttressing that you get inside old cathedrals. it's pretty freakishly strong, and the profile is dual-curved anyway. to get a 5mm bend i have to apply enough pressure so that my thumbs actually hurt. the screen edges however i'm relying on the metal case of the LCD, which i believe is pretty much the case for every single LCD lid out there.
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 that's done - if you want some schematics etc give me a bit longer as i have to redo all three PCBs, as they all need corrections.
* PCB1 i've almost finished the 2nd revision, it was actually only minor changes needed (except for getting the USB and LVDS connectors backwards... *sigh*...)
* PCB2 i have to redo to use the new Frida LCD. the one from the old supplier, bless 'em, they _just_ didn't get it that you actually have to provide... y'know... feedback to the customer, and an accurate datasheet?
* PCB3 i have to almost completely redo from scratch, using the bq24193 and an appropriate QFN coulomb battery monitor IC. it's only 2 ICs and about 40 components but i need clarification from TI on how to deal with the I2C interface (which appears to be a fixed 1.8v design... *sigh*...)
l.
+++ 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
On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 10:52 PM, Wookey wookey@wookware.org wrote:
+++ 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 :-)
yyeahh... there's a whole stack of that
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.
a qty 5 figure is $1700 for the CPU Cards (including components and assembly). a qty 5 figure for these 2-layer single-sided PCBs is going to be waaay less than that. i'd put a guess of around $60 for PCB1, $50 for PCB2 and $50 for PCB3. massive difference - just because of using simple 2-layer and 1.5mm.
the $120-150 was because i was using eurocircuits. i think it was around that much for PCB1 (qty 2). i'll get everything done in china this time.
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 added up a rough MOQ 200-1k figure today and it came out to a BOM of around $190, excluding assembly costs. which honestly isn't that big a difference from the qty5 figure.
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).
good for you! so the question becomes: is it worthwhile for you to spend the time as an early adopter, to help "prove the concept" - i'm pretty sure it'd be possible to find a home for the end result (i have to give one to dr stallman for example).
And ultimately a 2G RAM laptop is 'toy' these days, because 'browsers'.
*sigh* tell me about it... bear in mind this is only a 1366x768 LCD.
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 :-)
haha
So, er. 'maybe' :-) How much and when?
let me work it out more accurately, likely timeframe 2-3 months. i'd like it to be before 2 months as i'm leaving den haag end of march.
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.
you've seen the lichee A64 source code from the a64 sdk, right? links and mirrors were discussed here about 2 months ago, but i'm seeing full source including "init_DRAM" which all looks fine... i mean they forgot (again) to put a GPL header on the file (mctl_hal.c) but other than that it looks fine... let me just upload the u-boot source that i have here to hands.com... here y'go:
http://hands.com/~lkcl/u-boot-2014.07.tgz
can you put me in touch with karsten?
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.
well let's see if that source (which includes boot0 full source, it seems - no .o or .a files) does the trick, first.
l.
+++ Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton [2016-02-03 23:47 +0000]:
On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 10:52 PM, Wookey wookey@wookware.org wrote:
a qty 5 figure for these 2-layer single-sided PCBs is going to be waaay less than that. i'd put a guess of around $60 for PCB1, $50 for PCB2 and $50 for PCB3.
OK, that's a lot more doable.
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).
good for you! so the question becomes: is it worthwhile for you to spend the time as an early adopter, to help "prove the concept" - i'm pretty sure it'd be possible to find a home for the end result (i have to give one to dr stallman for example).
verses debian cross-compilers, fixing troggle, drawing up a major cave survey backlog, insulating the rest of this house, flogging the e-moped taking up space in the shed or getting my humidity/temp sensors and LED lighting finished :-) I need to retire, and then learn to start projects at a lower rate than finishing them for a while. :-)
you've seen the lichee A64 source code from the a64 sdk, right? links and mirrors were discussed here about 2 months ago,
I downloaded it after those mails yes. But not looked inside.
The sunxi people must know about that?
can you put me in touch with karsten?
Karsten Merker merker@debian.org (be nice to him :-)
Wookey
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 12:27 AM, Wookey wookey@wookware.org wrote:
verses debian cross-compilers, fixing troggle, drawing up a major cave survey backlog, insulating the rest of this house, flogging the e-moped taking up space in the shed or getting my humidity/temp sensors and LED lighting finished :-) I need to retire, and then learn to start projects at a lower rate than finishing them for a while. :-)
i have - had - lots of those. i figured that the ones i never finished were the ones that were just useful to be because they were different enough to keep me from going bananas. the ones that i did finish were the ones that were _driving_ me bananas... but had some specific purpose (beyond relaxation / hey-this-is-fun).
i'm just damn lucky that for this project, it's fun, there's so many different things to do that i can switch from one to the other and still not go completely nuts. i think that might appeal to you too, wookey.
you've seen the lichee A64 source code from the a64 sdk, right? links and mirrors were discussed here about 2 months ago,
I downloaded it after those mails yes. But not looked inside.
The sunxi people must know about that?
no idea - when they are running their mailing list on non-SAASS infrastructure i'll subscribe to it.
can you put me in touch with karsten?
Karsten Merker merker@debian.org (be nice to him :-)
awesome - turns out i have him in email history so i appear to have talked with him before. i wonder how long i can resist the temptation to do a search through old mail to find out what... :)
l.
En 4 de febrero de 2016 en 0:47:41, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (lkcl@lkcl.net) escrito:
On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 10:52 PM, Wookey wrote:
+++ 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 :-)
yyeahh... there's a whole stack of that
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.
a qty 5 figure is $1700 for the CPU Cards (including components and assembly). a qty 5 figure for these 2-layer single-sided PCBs is going to be waaay less than that. i'd put a guess of around $60 for PCB1, $50 for PCB2 and $50 for PCB3. massive difference - just because of using simple 2-layer and 1.5mm.
the $120-150 was because i was using eurocircuits. i think it was around that much for PCB1 (qty 2). i'll get everything done in china this time.
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 added up a rough MOQ 200-1k figure today and it came out to a BOM of around $190, excluding assembly costs. which honestly isn't that big a difference from the qty5 figure.
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).
good for you! so the question becomes: is it worthwhile for you to spend the time as an early adopter, to help "prove the concept" - i'm pretty sure it'd be possible to find a home for the end result (i have to give one to dr stallman for example).
Well, maybe the problem is that the project initially was too ambitious for a small company.
I remember when EOMA-68 would be sold in stores and you could put it on any kind of device. It was a very good idea, but very difficult to do (at least without the money of a big company).
The problem is that people will be reluctant to buy a computer with Allwinner A20. Even the people will be reluctant to buy a computer without Windows or Linux (x86).
Perhaps it would be interesting to establish requirements for software and minimum hardware requirements as did 96boards.
And ultimately a 2G RAM laptop is 'toy' these days, because 'browsers'.
*sigh* tell me about it... bear in mind this is only a 1366x768 LCD.
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 :-)
haha
So, er. 'maybe' :-) How much and when?
let me work it out more accurately, likely timeframe 2-3 months. i'd like it to be before 2 months as i'm leaving den haag end of march.
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.
you've seen the lichee A64 source code from the a64 sdk, right? links and mirrors were discussed here about 2 months ago, but i'm seeing full source including "init_DRAM" which all looks fine... i mean they forgot (again) to put a GPL header on the file (mctl_hal.c) but other than that it looks fine... let me just upload the u-boot source that i have here to hands.com... here y'go:
http://hands.com/~lkcl/u-boot-2014.07.tgz
can you put me in touch with karsten?
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.
well let's see if that source (which includes boot0 full source, it seems - no .o or .a files) does the trick, first.
l.
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--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 6:08 PM, GaCuest gacuest@gmail.com wrote:
good for you! so the question becomes: is it worthwhile for you to spend the time as an early adopter, to help "prove the concept" - i'm pretty sure it'd be possible to find a home for the end result (i have to give one to dr stallman for example).
Well, maybe the problem is that the project initially was too ambitious for a small company.
I remember when EOMA-68 would be sold in stores and you could put it on any kind of device. It was a very good idea, but very difficult to do (at least without the money of a big company).
not really. remember that i am doing this as a very long-term project. it's not a "if it doesn't succeed in the first 8 months give up and go do something else" project.
The problem is that people will be reluctant to buy a computer with Allwinner A20. Even the people will be reluctant to buy a computer without Windows or Linux (x86).
the entire EOMA68 concept is based around upgradeability. i *don't care* that the A20 is "old" - it's "good enough". and in the future, because of the upgradeability, other SoCs will be along and will fit into the form-factor - double the RAM, double the speed, double the storage.
remember, this is *not* a "give up after 6-8 months" project, it's a "remain committed for the next 10-12 years" project.
Perhaps it would be interesting to establish requirements for software and minimum hardware requirements as did 96boards.
no. absolutely not. ok, clarification: the standard defines the minimum hardware requirements, in terms of what interfaces MUST be provided (even if they're lower speed).
but software-wise: how can you define minimum software requirements for a pass-through card? you can't. how can you define minimum software requirements for an FPGA-based card? you can't.
the whole point of the exercise is that there should be a *range* of CPU Cards. i've discovered a $3.50 SoC from Ingenic that has 128mb of built-in RAM. it's possible to create a 2-layer PCB based around it. total BOM could well be around the $8 mark.
... should i define "minimum software requirements" that exclude the possibility of creating such a low-cost CPU Card? hell no!!
now, if that $3.50 SoC happened not to have the required SD/MMC interface, or happened not to have 18-pin RGB/TTL which could do 1366x768, or anything else, *then* it automatically gets excluded.
bottom line i'm happy with the way things are with EOMA68, and i trust that there will be a huge range of SoCs in the future that will fit even the highest-end requirements and cost well over $200, as well as fitting people's needs at the lower end as well.
l.
En 4 de febrero de 2016 en 19:31:29, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (lkcl@lkcl.net) escrito:
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 6:08 PM, GaCuest wrote:
good for you! so the question becomes: is it worthwhile for you to spend the time as an early adopter, to help "prove the concept" - i'm pretty sure it'd be possible to find a home for the end result (i have to give one to dr stallman for example).
Well, maybe the problem is that the project initially was too ambitious for a small company.
I remember when EOMA-68 would be sold in stores and you could put it on any kind of device. It was a very good idea, but very difficult to do (at least without the money of a big company).
not really. remember that i am doing this as a very long-term project. it's not a "if it doesn't succeed in the first 8 months give up and go do something else" project.
The problem is that people will be reluctant to buy a computer with Allwinner A20. Even the people will be reluctant to buy a computer without Windows or Linux (x86).
the entire EOMA68 concept is based around upgradeability. i *don't care* that the A20 is "old" - it's "good enough". and in the future, because of the upgradeability, other SoCs will be along and will fit into the form-factor - double the RAM, double the speed, double the storage.
remember, this is *not* a "give up after 6-8 months" project, it's a "remain committed for the next 10-12 years" project.
The problem is that if you sell a few units will not have money to make more EOMA-68 (or devices) and will also be difficult to attract more investors. For example, Aaron sold slow and left the project.
And in addition to paying the hardware, you have to pay salaries for people who develop software, advertising, and so on. So you need a lot of money.
I guess you maybe think the community develop the software, but if you sell little units, it is difficult to attract the scene. For example, only devices that sell a lot like Raspberry have a good scene.
Perhaps it would be interesting to establish requirements for software and minimum hardware requirements as did 96boards.
no. absolutely not. ok, clarification: the standard defines the minimum hardware requirements, in terms of what interfaces MUST be provided (even if they're lower speed).
but software-wise: how can you define minimum software requirements for a pass-through card? you can't. how can you define minimum software requirements for an FPGA-based card? you can't.
the whole point of the exercise is that there should be a *range* of CPU Cards. i've discovered a $3.50 SoC from Ingenic that has 128mb of built-in RAM. it's possible to create a 2-layer PCB based around it. total BOM could well be around the $8 mark.
... should i define "minimum software requirements" that exclude the possibility of creating such a low-cost CPU Card? hell no!!
now, if that $3.50 SoC happened not to have the required SD/MMC interface, or happened not to have 18-pin RGB/TTL which could do 1366x768, or anything else, *then* it automatically gets excluded.
I understand what you say. I mean that much variety can confuse non-expert people. For example, a classification. Can anyone buy an EOMA-68 destined for a router and put it in a laptop? Not now.
Or you create an OS that suits each device, or you create a classification or similar.
bottom line i'm happy with the way things are with EOMA68, and i trust that there will be a huge range of SoCs in the future that will fit even the highest-end requirements and cost well over $200, as well as fitting people's needs at the lower end as well.
l.
arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook Send large attachments to arm-netbook@files.phcomp.co.uk
On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 9:34 AM, GaCuest gacuest@gmail.com wrote:
remember, this is *not* a "give up after 6-8 months" project, it's a "remain committed for the next 10-12 years" project.
The problem is that if you sell a few units will not have money to make more EOMA-68 (or devices) and will also be difficult to attract more investors.
that is not a problem, because i have sponsors - not investors. investors demand short-term profits and dividends. there is a place for investors, but that place is later.
also for example: i met someone at fosdem2016 who is willing to pay cash up-front to purchase a number of early-adopter kits, and he will go round the world selling those kits, arranging workshops where people may come along and assemble their products. those people will be *delighted* to assemble their own eco-conscious laptop, and the person sponsoring the kits loves to see that sort of thing happen.
where you perceive there to be "problem" there is in fact no such thing. that is just one door closing and saying "you don't do it this way, because that's not good for the project. find another way".
For example, Aaron sold slow and left the project.
which says "this is not the right way", and in fact that turns out to be absolutely correct. if you recall, aaron's associates attempted to become the world leading authority on the EOMA68 standard, telling people for example that "Multi-port SATA would be supported in a future version of EOMA68". they were NOT AUTHORISED to make ANY such misleading statements that could completely destroy four years of extremely thorough and careful analysis.
basically they thought that they could take control of the entire project, and they did not listen to my advice. many of the lessons that i had already learned (which took time to learn) they ignored. and because of the mistakes, aaron ran out of funds before we could solve the mistakes that had been made.
but that's ok - we learned some important lessons. we learned the ways how *not* to succeed. and, critically, the people who had tried to take control of the project were no longer interested in it.
And in addition to paying the hardware, you have to pay salaries for people who develop software, advertising, and so on. So you need a lot of money.
no, not really. there are other business models. creative solutions come out of *not* having a lot of money. wealth comes from your own mind, *not* from actual physical cash.
business is defined as "providing a service and being financially adequately rewarded for doing so". there are many many ways to provide a service that achieves the end-goal. those ways do not necessarily *have* to involve "having a lot of money, personally".
in the past few weeks it's become clear to me that "money" equates pretty much directly proportionally to "environmental impact". even in the case of the ipad 1 which cost only $USD 125 to make, foxconn charged apple $140, and apple sold it for a whopping $700+, the discrepancy between the purchase price and the sale price is *still* an environmental impact because apple had to (a) pay engineers (b) pay investors (c) invest in environmentally-damaging silicon fabs for the next generation SoC that went into the iphones and the ipad2.
so when you say "you need a lot of money", what you are actually indirectly saying is "you need to make a large amount of environmental damage in order to get this project off the ground".
and it is my responsibility to ensure that this project, which is an eco-conscious one, carefully evaluates options which minimise environmental impact - i.e. minimise everyone's costs.
so that's why we're looking at crowd-funding, and the "open hardware" model, which i've been faithfully following.
I guess you maybe think the community develop the software,
i'm *inviting* them to - but if they do not wish to have the exciting opportunity of being involved with the project, then i will do it instead. they will lose the enjoyment of being an early stage developer, but that's not my problem.
but if you sell little units, it is difficult to attract the scene. For example, only devices that sell a lot like Raspberry have a good scene.
again, you're forgetting that it's important to ramp things up in stages. i have mentioned this many many times: i would say that i am curious as to why you are perceiving that there are only roadblocks and problems instead of envisioning success, but i'm actually *not* interested in hearing about the roadblocks and problems that you envisage.... *UNLESS* you are interested to hear of possible SOLUTIONS to those roadblocks and problems.
so i am going to ask you to do something very specific. if during the development of the project that you are doing, you have any specific problems or roadblocks, please discuss them here with an open mind.
however if you wish to only say "the EOMA68 project is a failure because of X Y and Z could not possibly work" i.e. the only thoughts in your mind are "failure failure failure omg crash problem problem problem no money no money no money" then i'm going to have to ask you to stop doing that, ok?
right now, in the past two messages, they basically summarise as "this project is a failure, i can't see how it can possibly succeed". i'm inviting you to turn your thoughts around, and to begin asking, "i see there is this problem: how do you envision it being solved?" or "i see this happened, do you perceive it to be a problem or not - what insights can you share about it?"
i trust that this is absolutely clear. if it is not, PLEASE ASK before sending another message in which you imply that there must be "no possible solutions", ok?
Perhaps it would be interesting to establish requirements for software and minimum hardware requirements as did 96boards.
no. absolutely not. ok, clarification: the standard defines the minimum hardware requirements, in terms of what interfaces MUST be provided (even if they're lower speed).
but software-wise: how can you define minimum software requirements for a pass-through card? you can't. how can you define minimum software requirements for an FPGA-based card? you can't.
the whole point of the exercise is that there should be a *range* of CPU Cards. i've discovered a $3.50 SoC from Ingenic that has 128mb of built-in RAM. it's possible to create a 2-layer PCB based around it. total BOM could well be around the $8 mark.
... should i define "minimum software requirements" that exclude the possibility of creating such a low-cost CPU Card? hell no!!
now, if that $3.50 SoC happened not to have the required SD/MMC interface, or happened not to have 18-pin RGB/TTL which could do 1366x768, or anything else, *then* it automatically gets excluded.
I understand what you say. I mean that much variety can confuse non-expert people. For example, a classification.
such as labels being put on the outside of the boxes, in colour-coding and so on, and then that colour-coding becomes a de-facto part of the standard or a pre-arranged part of the standard. yes, the idea was discussed four years ago.
Can anyone buy an EOMA-68 destined for a router and put it in a laptop? Not now.
no of course not, because the OS on the router would turn the laptop *into* a router! exactly as the product you are developing (a "games CPU Card") would turn a laptop into a games laptop. that's the whole idea: the CPU Cards, with pre-installed OSes, you can buy for specific purposes and they are less money than they would be to buy the same monolithic devices from other manufacturers.
let's envisage the scenario the other way round: why would you put a dual or quad-core laptop CPU Card into a router "base"? because you would want the faster CPU Card to handle traffic encryption, that's why. the kinds of 400mhz MIPS processors that go into the low-cost 4-port routers simply cannot handle the decrypt/encrypt of end-to-end traffic at 100mbit/sec speeds let alone gigabit, whereas a dual or quad-core processor could easily handle it, especially if it has an on-board hardware crypto unit.
would a "traditional" manufacturer make a quad-core router monolithic box? of COURSE NOT! the number of people who would understand its benefits are not big enough to justify the cost. however, creative people such as those we encounter at FOSDEM2016 (one of whom immediately "got" the concept of using high-end CPU Cards for end-to-end traffic encryption including WIFI, and running TOR and VPNs as well) *DO* get it, and they *REALLY* appreciate the freedom and flexibility that comes with this concept.
basically there are limitless scenarios that we could not possibly envisage, which are suddenly opened up, as 3rd party base units are combined with 3rd party CPU Cards in ways that were never imagined by *either* manufacturer.
when i described the "3G CPU Card with Digital SLR Camera" scenario to someone at FOSDEM2016, the person i told the story to went, "oh that's really cool, a journalist being able to upload images and video footage in real-time to their editor and also to the BBC and to Reuters. how about adding GPG Digital-Signing to the photos and the video, so that the BBC and Reuters can tell that the images are coming from a known journalist's camera?"
can you imagine approaching a Digital SLR Camera company and saying, "we'd like you to add GPG Digital-Signing to your Camera OS"??? they'd look at you like you had 2 heads and had your hair tie-dyed in psychedelic patterns.
so the only way to achieve that goal on a monolithic designed camera would be to reverse-engineer the camera.... only to find that the processor is totally incapable of handling the encryption speed of real-time video traffic.
whereas, with a 3rd party general-purpose CPU Card with a general-purpose OS (such as android, linux or even windows), the BBC, Reuters, the Journalist or their News Agency could conceivably pay someone to write the general-purpose software to do the encryption.... *OR* they could most likely find, online, a pre-existing app that does the job.
does this start to make it clear?
l.
En 5 de febrero de 2016 en 12:36:19, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (lkcl@lkcl.net) escrito:
On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 9:34 AM, GaCuest wrote:
remember, this is *not* a "give up after 6-8 months" project, it's a "remain committed for the next 10-12 years" project.
The problem is that if you sell a few units will not have money to make more EOMA-68 (or devices) and will also be difficult to attract more investors.
that is not a problem, because i have sponsors - not investors. investors demand short-term profits and dividends. there is a place for investors, but that place is later.
also for example: i met someone at fosdem2016 who is willing to pay cash up-front to purchase a number of early-adopter kits, and he will go round the world selling those kits, arranging workshops where people may come along and assemble their products. those people will be *delighted* to assemble their own eco-conscious laptop, and the person sponsoring the kits loves to see that sort of thing happen.
where you perceive there to be "problem" there is in fact no such thing. that is just one door closing and saying "you don't do it this way, because that's not good for the project. find another way".
For example, Aaron sold slow and left the project.
which says "this is not the right way", and in fact that turns out to be absolutely correct. if you recall, aaron's associates attempted to become the world leading authority on the EOMA68 standard, telling people for example that "Multi-port SATA would be supported in a future version of EOMA68". they were NOT AUTHORISED to make ANY such misleading statements that could completely destroy four years of extremely thorough and careful analysis.
basically they thought that they could take control of the entire project, and they did not listen to my advice. many of the lessons that i had already learned (which took time to learn) they ignored. and because of the mistakes, aaron ran out of funds before we could solve the mistakes that had been made.
but that's ok - we learned some important lessons. we learned the ways how *not* to succeed. and, critically, the people who had tried to take control of the project were no longer interested in it.
And in addition to paying the hardware, you have to pay salaries for people who develop software, advertising, and so on. So you need a lot of money.
no, not really. there are other business models. creative solutions come out of *not* having a lot of money. wealth comes from your own mind, *not* from actual physical cash.
business is defined as "providing a service and being financially adequately rewarded for doing so". there are many many ways to provide a service that achieves the end-goal. those ways do not necessarily *have* to involve "having a lot of money, personally".
in the past few weeks it's become clear to me that "money" equates pretty much directly proportionally to "environmental impact". even in the case of the ipad 1 which cost only $USD 125 to make, foxconn charged apple $140, and apple sold it for a whopping $700+, the discrepancy between the purchase price and the sale price is *still* an environmental impact because apple had to (a) pay engineers (b) pay investors (c) invest in environmentally-damaging silicon fabs for the next generation SoC that went into the iphones and the ipad2.
so when you say "you need a lot of money", what you are actually indirectly saying is "you need to make a large amount of environmental damage in order to get this project off the ground".
and it is my responsibility to ensure that this project, which is an eco-conscious one, carefully evaluates options which minimise environmental impact - i.e. minimise everyone's costs.
so that's why we're looking at crowd-funding, and the "open hardware" model, which i've been faithfully following.
I guess you maybe think the community develop the software,
i'm *inviting* them to - but if they do not wish to have the exciting opportunity of being involved with the project, then i will do it instead. they will lose the enjoyment of being an early stage developer, but that's not my problem.
but if you sell little units, it is difficult to attract the scene. For example, only devices that sell a lot like Raspberry have a good scene.
again, you're forgetting that it's important to ramp things up in stages. i have mentioned this many many times: i would say that i am curious as to why you are perceiving that there are only roadblocks and problems instead of envisioning success, but i'm actually *not* interested in hearing about the roadblocks and problems that you envisage.... *UNLESS* you are interested to hear of possible SOLUTIONS to those roadblocks and problems.
so i am going to ask you to do something very specific. if during the development of the project that you are doing, you have any specific problems or roadblocks, please discuss them here with an open mind.
however if you wish to only say "the EOMA68 project is a failure because of X Y and Z could not possibly work" i.e. the only thoughts in your mind are "failure failure failure omg crash problem problem problem no money no money no money" then i'm going to have to ask you to stop doing that, ok?
right now, in the past two messages, they basically summarise as "this project is a failure, i can't see how it can possibly succeed". i'm inviting you to turn your thoughts around, and to begin asking, "i see there is this problem: how do you envision it being solved?" or "i see this happened, do you perceive it to be a problem or not - what insights can you share about it?"
i trust that this is absolutely clear. if it is not, PLEASE ASK before sending another message in which you imply that there must be "no possible solutions", ok?
Perhaps it would be interesting to establish requirements for software and minimum hardware requirements as did 96boards.
no. absolutely not. ok, clarification: the standard defines the minimum hardware requirements, in terms of what interfaces MUST be provided (even if they're lower speed).
but software-wise: how can you define minimum software requirements for a pass-through card? you can't. how can you define minimum software requirements for an FPGA-based card? you can't.
the whole point of the exercise is that there should be a *range* of CPU Cards. i've discovered a $3.50 SoC from Ingenic that has 128mb of built-in RAM. it's possible to create a 2-layer PCB based around it. total BOM could well be around the $8 mark.
... should i define "minimum software requirements" that exclude the possibility of creating such a low-cost CPU Card? hell no!!
now, if that $3.50 SoC happened not to have the required SD/MMC interface, or happened not to have 18-pin RGB/TTL which could do 1366x768, or anything else, *then* it automatically gets excluded.
I understand what you say. I mean that much variety can confuse non-expert people. For example, a classification.
such as labels being put on the outside of the boxes, in colour-coding and so on, and then that colour-coding becomes a de-facto part of the standard or a pre-arranged part of the standard. yes, the idea was discussed four years ago.
Can anyone buy an EOMA-68 destined for a router and put it in a laptop? Not now.
no of course not, because the OS on the router would turn the laptop *into* a router! exactly as the product you are developing (a "games CPU Card") would turn a laptop into a games laptop. that's the whole idea: the CPU Cards, with pre-installed OSes, you can buy for specific purposes and they are less money than they would be to buy the same monolithic devices from other manufacturers.
let's envisage the scenario the other way round: why would you put a dual or quad-core laptop CPU Card into a router "base"? because you would want the faster CPU Card to handle traffic encryption, that's why. the kinds of 400mhz MIPS processors that go into the low-cost 4-port routers simply cannot handle the decrypt/encrypt of end-to-end traffic at 100mbit/sec speeds let alone gigabit, whereas a dual or quad-core processor could easily handle it, especially if it has an on-board hardware crypto unit.
would a "traditional" manufacturer make a quad-core router monolithic box? of COURSE NOT! the number of people who would understand its benefits are not big enough to justify the cost. however, creative people such as those we encounter at FOSDEM2016 (one of whom immediately "got" the concept of using high-end CPU Cards for end-to-end traffic encryption including WIFI, and running TOR and VPNs as well) *DO* get it, and they *REALLY* appreciate the freedom and flexibility that comes with this concept.
basically there are limitless scenarios that we could not possibly envisage, which are suddenly opened up, as 3rd party base units are combined with 3rd party CPU Cards in ways that were never imagined by *either* manufacturer.
when i described the "3G CPU Card with Digital SLR Camera" scenario to someone at FOSDEM2016, the person i told the story to went, "oh that's really cool, a journalist being able to upload images and video footage in real-time to their editor and also to the BBC and to Reuters. how about adding GPG Digital-Signing to the photos and the video, so that the BBC and Reuters can tell that the images are coming from a known journalist's camera?"
can you imagine approaching a Digital SLR Camera company and saying, "we'd like you to add GPG Digital-Signing to your Camera OS"??? they'd look at you like you had 2 heads and had your hair tie-dyed in psychedelic patterns.
so the only way to achieve that goal on a monolithic designed camera would be to reverse-engineer the camera.... only to find that the processor is totally incapable of handling the encryption speed of real-time video traffic.
whereas, with a 3rd party general-purpose CPU Card with a general-purpose OS (such as android, linux or even windows), the BBC, Reuters, the Journalist or their News Agency could conceivably pay someone to write the general-purpose software to do the encryption.... *OR* they could most likely find, online, a pre-existing app that does the job.
does this start to make it clear?
l.
I may have misspoke. In my opinion, the EOMA-68 project is very good. The problem is that I see it from a very ambitious view, a project to change the world.
Perhaps your view is better. We must be realistic. It is a small company, so we have to do the simplest project. First do simple devices (one EOMA-68 basic with Allwinner A20 with a simple notebook, a simple tablet, a simple games console...) to sell between developers and fans of the genre, and then expand the concept to ordinary people with more complex and powerful devices. And try to do cheap products (at first) to avoid losing money if very few units sold.
arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook Send large attachments to arm-netbook@files.phcomp.co.uk
--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Fri, Feb 5, 2016 at 12:20 PM, GaCuest gacuest@gmail.com wrote:
I may have misspoke. In my opinion, the EOMA-68 project is very good. The problem is that I see it from a very ambitious view, a project to change the world.
indeed. there are a huge number of steps, but the goal is very very clear to me.
i am not known for thinking small. i took on microsoft [and they didn't hire a contract killer to have me taken out - but they _did_ call my boss at Internet Security Systems and ask if they could fire me. my boss said, "if we do that, he's just going to carry on. now, do you want him on the inside where we can keep an eye on him pissing out, or do you want him on the outside, annoyed, and pissing in?"] by network-reverse-engineering their flagship Operating System, NT.
Perhaps your view is better. We must be realistic. It is a small company, so we have to do the simplest project. First do simple devices (one EOMA-68 basic with Allwinner A20 with a simple notebook, a simple tablet, a simple games console...) to sell between developers and fans of the genre, and then expand the concept to ordinary people with more complex and powerful devices.
exactly. and why is this still good? because there is an upgrade path. products bought now can be repaired indefinitely (with the laptop you can go to a public library in the U.S. and 3D-print a replacement bit of the casework).
but, also, it's actually really important to start off slow. problems that occur early on can be fixed. even a 0.1% returns rate on mass-volume products is too much, because of the sheer volume involved that 0.1% means "100,000 products returned". to get there, things have to be ramped up carefully.
And try to do cheap products (at first) to avoid losing money if very few units sold.
or, more to the point, that there are not too many early adopters who feel that they've been "ripped off", because they instead love the idea of supporting this project, they have some spare income, they're happy to put that towards being part of a much larger picture which will make a positive difference in the world.
one of the crucial things here is never to think of it as being "money lost". money is *never* lost - money is "stored energy" (potential energy) that empowers people to do things. money is a representation of the "value" of the "service" that you (or i) provide. we provide "service" to others, and they give us "stored potential energy" in return. that "stored potential energy" is equal (ish) to the *actual* kinetic energy needed to provide that "service".
once you start thinking of money in terms of "potential [stored] energy", the mystique and fear - phrases like "losing money" - all disappear. you can instead think of a project's goal as being "how much kinetic and potential energy is needed" and "where is that going to come from?"
and it turns out that great ideas have a way of coming together, if you are persistent enough, and can communicate them well to others. that's what i did at FOSDEM2016, and i was confident of what i was talking about because i had the prototype right there in front of me. *i* believed in what i was doing, so they did as well.
l.
On Thursday 4. February 2016 19.08.39 GaCuest wrote:
Well, maybe the problem is that the project initially was too ambitious for a small company.
I remember when EOMA-68 would be sold in stores and you could put it on any kind of device. It was a very good idea, but very difficult to do (at least without the money of a big company).
The problem is that people will be reluctant to buy a computer with Allwinner A20. Even the people will be reluctant to buy a computer without Windows or Linux (x86).
I think we may be moving away from the brand-obsessed era of Wintel once again, where people can be persuaded that they don't need Windows or "Intel Inside". Indeed, on mainstream news sites, any mention of Windows these days seems to be accompanied by hordes of angry people complaining about XP being "end-of-lifed".
Although I'm not a fan of the way things like Android have been done, one thing that it and other mobile systems have achieved is to make people care rather less about the brand name and more about what you can do with the device, even if the obsession has now shifted to "app stores" and "app ecosystems".
I'd really like to see things like EOMA-68 enable "appliances" and devices that serve people's needs quite directly, as opposed to selling them a box of tricks and indoctrinating them into believing that technological solutions have to be complicated and unreliable.
Perhaps it would be interesting to establish requirements for software and minimum hardware requirements as did 96boards.
I see that Luke has responded quite robustly to this, but with this initiative being rather open-ended, the idea of software requirements sounds like big- company-consortium material where people write criteria like this to look as if they have something to do.
It also provokes a lot of squabbling between people about the "official" choice, reminding me a bit of initiatives like Linux Standards Base (if I remember it right) where Red Hat technologies were chosen, thus alienating everyone else and diminishing the importance of the whole thing.
On Thursday 4. February 2016 19.08.39 GaCuest wrote:
En 4 de febrero de 2016 en 0:47:41, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
(lkcl@lkcl.net) escrito:
On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 10:52 PM, Wookey wrote:
And ultimately a 2G RAM laptop is 'toy' these days, because 'browsers'.
I think it's appalling that when you consider the actual information on most Web sites, teletext/viewdata pages would get the same job done of communicating the information, minus the images, I guess. All of this complexity being upheld so that any element in the page can be nudged by one pixel at any time for a completely dynamic layout. (Annoyingly, what with the "full screen mobile" experience being increasingly the new normal, things like needing to reformat the page in real time as windows get gradually resized is becoming something of an archaic feature.)
On my 1GB machine, the biggest problems I have, apart from rampant scripts and resources needing to be loaded from tens of tracking sites and silos, is the depositing of large images that appear to be dynamically scaled in the browser, supposedly so that mobile users get the right format served up to them, or something. (Responsive design or whatever it is called.)
Anyway, I'll let you get flamed for bringing up the 2GB limit this time. For me, it would be easily enough for my needs, which is what I wrote on the topic last time for all the good it did me.
Paul
On Thu, Feb 4, 2016 at 8:10 PM, Paul Boddie paul@boddie.org.uk wrote:
Perhaps it would be interesting to establish requirements for software and minimum hardware requirements as did 96boards.
It also provokes a lot of squabbling between people about the "official" choice, reminding me a bit of initiatives like Linux Standards Base (if I remember it right) where Red Hat technologies were chosen, thus alienating everyone else and diminishing the importance of the whole thing.
yeah - the arguments all stop when each company can go "mmm.... i want to create our own branded CPU Card" and they find, amazingly, that they can do exactly that and nobody's going to stop them.
at some point i will actually create executable business cards that have a presentation pre-loaded, and the "traditional" business bits printed out as a label on the metal case :)
On my 1GB machine, the biggest problems I have, apart from rampant scripts and resources needing to be loaded from tens of tracking sites and silos, is the depositing of large images that appear to be dynamically scaled in the browser, supposedly so that mobile users get the right format served up to them, or something. (Responsive design or whatever it is called.)
there was an article on slashdot about exactly this, someone released a variant of a desktop thingy which, by cutting out the crap, reduced the package size from something mad like 600mb down to only 23mb.
so you're definitely not the only person to have noticed the madness of rampant-sized images.
l.
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GaCuest -
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton -
Paul Boddie -
Wookey