[Arm-netbook] EOMA68 Computing Devices Update: New Factory Equipment, New Grant Proposal

[Paul Boddie]

Hello,

Good to see another update:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/new-factory-equipment-new-grant-proposal

I hope Mike is bearing up in the face of his recent difficulties. With regard 
to your funding proposal [1], I see that you wish to revive the other computer 
cards, and this brought to mind a couple of things I saw recently.

One of them was the StereoPi crowdfunding campaign:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/virt2real/stereopi

The relevant aspect of this is the use of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module as 
the core of the solution. Previously, the Compute Module was rather 
"unobtainium", shall we say, but given that Adafruit and the like seem to 
actually have the latest models in stock, I guess that they are being made and 
sold to real people.

Although things like the StereoPi have developers as their audience, and so it 
doesn't really bother people that bare boards and edge connectors are the 
basis of modularity, it would be nice to be able to pitch EOMA68 (and related 
profile) products for these kinds of things. But these kinds of campaigns do 
help to demonstrate the case for EOMA68 and modular computing.

Another thing that I noticed was in perusing the Dingoonity forums, where 
there is a fairly active forum about Ingenic-based handheld devices:

https://boards.dingoonity.org/ingenic-jz4760-devices/

As the URL indicates, a lot of them seem to be based on the JZ4760, but there 
was a curious remark about the JZ4770 used in the GCW Zero:

"There's no GCW Zero clone. H350 is its presumed internal name. The factory 
illegally sold prototypes from the initial test runs. Apparently the factory 
is hogging the last JZ4770 SoCs in existence. So don't expect a third party to 
jump in and start manufacturing a compatible device."

https://boards.dingoonity.org/ingenic-jz4760-devices/gcw-zero-14324/msg184122/#msg184122

Of course, the JZ4770 is the Vivante-based product variant, alongside the 
JZ4780 (PowerVR-based) and JZ4775 (no GPU). The latter two are still featured 
on Ingenic's Web site and are presumably active products. Hopefully, there are 
no availability issues, although one may wonder whether the JZ4760 might be a 
fallback if there is a glut of those (as evidenced by the continual stream of 
handhelds) and a shortage of the others.

Again, EOMA68 would be a good way of enabling products for this market. People 
seem to end up chasing discontinued products and settling for random imports, 
often being disappointed with some aspect of them or other, plus the software 
is not exactly responsibly produced, either.

Paul

[1] http://rhombus-tech.net/nlnet_2018/