New Crowdfunding Campaign Offers Modular EOMA68 Computing Devices (crowdsupply.com) 122
A new crowdfunding campaign by Rhombus Tech "introduces the world's first devices built around the EOMA68 standard," which separates a "modular" CPU board from the rest of the system so that it can be easily used in multiple devices and upgraded more simply. Rhombus Tech is now offering a 15.6-inch laptop, a laser-cut wooden Micro-Desktop housing, and two types of computer cards, both using A20 dual-core ARM Cortex A7 processors.
The cards are available with four flavors of the GNU/Linux operating system, and they're hoping to receive RYF certification from the Free Software Foundation.
"No proprietary software," explains their campaign's video. "No backdoors. No spyware. No NDAs." They envision a world where users upgrade their computers by simply popping in a new card -- reducing electronic waste -- or print new laptop casings to repair defects or swap in different colors. (And they also hope to eventually see the cards also working with cameras, phones, tablets, and gaming consoles.) Rhombus Tech CTO Luke Leighton did a Slashdot interview in 2012, and contacted Slashdot this weekend to announce: A live-streamed video from Hope2016 explains what it's about, and there is a huge range of discussions and articles online. The real burning question is: if a single Software Libre Engineer can teach themselves PCB design and bring modular computing to people on the budget available from a single company, why are there not already a huge number of companies doing modular upgradeable hardware?
"No proprietary software," explains their campaign's video. "No backdoors. No spyware. No NDAs." They envision a world where users upgrade their computers by simply popping in a new card -- reducing electronic waste -- or print new laptop casings to repair defects or swap in different colors. (And they also hope to eventually see the cards also working with cameras, phones, tablets, and gaming consoles.) Rhombus Tech CTO Luke Leighton did a Slashdot interview in 2012, and contacted Slashdot this weekend to announce: A live-streamed video from Hope2016 explains what it's about, and there is a huge range of discussions and articles online. The real burning question is: if a single Software Libre Engineer can teach themselves PCB design and bring modular computing to people on the budget available from a single company, why are there not already a huge number of companies doing modular upgradeable hardware?
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What you don't realize is that none of that means it won't happen, it just means Joe Average User won't end up buying it.
There is lots of open, modular electronics already. Your boogeyman didn't pop out.
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What you don't realize is that none of that means it won't happen, it just means Joe Average User won't end up buying it.
There is lots of open, modular electronics already. Your boogeyman didn't pop out.
sorry, i don't understand. could you possibly expand on this, perhaps help review the logic analysis behind the modular standards that i've reviewed over the past five years, if you feel that i've missed any or missed anything, please do let me know. the list that i maintain, including comprehensive analysis, is here: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Ope... [elinux.org]
the issues to take into account are: it must be absolutely simple, it must absolutely work, and it must not break (due to mechanical or EMI issues). we jus
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sorry, i don't understand. could you possibly expand on this, perhaps help review the logic analysis behind the modular standards that i've reviewed over the past five years
No. And I just wanted to say, that is a really, really weird thing to request. And I can say, I really don't care what you've reviewed. I'm not that into you, and I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about electronics.
And no, it doesn't have to be "absolutely simple," blah blah blah. Just waving your hands and saying words doesn't mean that objects in the world have to be what you want them to be. They can be what somebody else wants them to be, and still exist, and maybe I'll even like it better than
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sorry, i don't understand. could you possibly expand on this, perhaps help review the logic analysis behind the modular standards that i've reviewed over the past five years
No. And I just wanted to say, that is a really, really weird thing to request.
it's not weird at all. what it's doing is demonstrating to both you and to other readers that... (if i may be completely honest with you here)... you haven't thought through what you're saying. or, more to the point, we can't *check* your conclusion, because you're not prepared to provide us with the facts or any of the logical reasoning *behind* your conclusion. thus, if you're not prepared to stand up and do the work to justify your perspective, then your points may be safely ignored. the question i a
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what it's doing is demonstrating to both you and to other readers that... (if i may be completely honest with you here)...
LOL ok Mr Universe, tell us what other people can comprehend.
we can't *check* your conclusion, because you're not prepared to provide us with the facts or any of the logical reasoning *behind* your conclusion.
You just have to understand which direction proof goes when dealing with a negative. See, the claim was that we (people like me that value open systems) can't have what we want because the Big Bad Mr Big will stop us. The claim that we can't have what we want is what needs proof. If I point out we already have other things like this and nothing stops us, I don't need to present proof of those things. Proof of their existence would refute you concl
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what it's doing is demonstrating to both you and to other readers that... (if i may be completely honest with you here)...
LOL ok Mr Universe, tell us what other people can comprehend.
that's enough. sorry, but when you start laughing at other people's expense to make yourself look better than them, that's when i know not to take you seriously, and everyone else reading this will know that too. sorry, but you've had three chances to not display yourself as a "troll", and failed each time. apologies but i can't spend any more time replying to you until you change the way that you approach other people.
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Look, bub, you say that stuff about "(if i may be completely honest with you here)" and "what it's doing is demonstrating to both you and to other readers that" and "you haven't thought through what you're saying" then don't get upset when I laugh at it. And sure as fuck don't get upset that I'm laughing at you in response to you insulting me.
How about, go fuck yourself you fucking snowflake, and get off your high horse because you're a hypocrite.
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The bigger risk is that the creator mis-estimates some of the financial or technical hurdles in the project and runs out of money befor
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Agreed. If computing devices running a fully FSF-approved software stack became wildly popular - 3% or more of the computing market - then the major players in proprietary computing and the surveillance industry would move to block them.
Until then, we're too small to care about and the bad publicity from actively blocking us would probably help us more than hurting us.
i'm counting on that :) i am sooo looking forward to the streissand effect... :)
but to clarify: it's important to emphasise that this is *NOT* restricted to FSF-approved software. it so happens that because it will be really hard for proprietary OSes to fully support all the Housings *unless* they are based around GNU/Linux driver stacks it's *really unlikely* that there will be any proprietary OSes installed on EOMA68-compliant Computer Cards, it's not totally out of the realm of possibility. but, more
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But I still think that those angles are the most likely cause of trouble. Hopefully nothing comes up or you're able to adjust for everything that does come up. I appreciate all of your free software work, by the way - I've used Samba before m
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I should have worded my post differently and qualified my statements.
nono, no need - it was actually really helpful that you pointed those things out
My best guess from the sidelines is that you're approaching this from a well-informed, well-planned angle and everything I've read and watched built my trust.
thanks!
I pledged to support the project.
that's really kind of you - thank you.
But I still think that those angles are the most likely cause of trouble. Hopefully nothing comes up or you're able to adjust for everything that does come up.
this is why i'm going to go over to taiwan, and from there to HK and to Shenzen. got bunnie's book already. my partner marie speaks mandarin. planning to go meet allwinner. and go *personally* to all the component suppliers to pick things up and pay by cash (which is totally normal, there). will be accompanying the finished units down to the docks and making sure they get sealed
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And by "move to block them" what do you mean, they'll dress up in a chicken suit and dance in the street? It won't work.
It is a pretty stupid conspiracy theory when all it consists of is an underpants gnome.
Maybe in your country there is some sort of process to "block" companies that anger competitors, but in most of the world it simply can't be done.
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And by "move to block them" what do you mean, they'll dress up in a chicken suit and dance in the street?
... cue the "why did the man in the chicken-suit dance in the street" jokes....
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Our smart phones have software running in the wireless carrier cellular modem that end users can't access or control. Almost all recent x86 laptops and desktops have Intel's TPM which the regular users can't control. Our ISPs track the websites we visit. Our credit card and debit card companies track every purchase we make. Even our grocery stores use loyalty card programs to see what we do. And browser fingerprinting tech like the "Evercoo
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I fully expect governments to throw up roadblocks
Yep, that's exactly what I meant. The gubermint is going to do... what? Dress up in a chicken suit? No?
Just waving your hands and saying, "the gubermint will block... something something" doesn't even rise to the level of prognostication. "Block" as a verb has to involve some sort of blocking action. Like an import/export ban, or a prohibition on using phones while wearing chicken suits. Those would be actual attempts to block something. They could be discussed, because they would have details. Real life al
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Diverse double-compiling (Score:2)
When is the last time you check all the code.
True, practice not meeting theory led to Heartbleed. But Heartbleed woke the industry, and now audits of free software have become somewhat more common. Audits for binary blobs aren't practical at all.
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheKenThompsonHack
Obsoleted by the David A. Wheeler defense [dwheeler.com].
This is just expensive hipster stuff with an ugly 3d printed case, no merit...
The merit is ability to show to suits that there exists a market for modular battery-powered computers with additive manufactured cases.
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And there is still the fact that there is software which is baked in inside the hardware chips, you can not audit that. How do you want to verify and compile that? You just have to trust the manufactures of those chips and their specs, and hope they do not have hidden functions...
the advantage of the modular approach is that we can play one manufacturer off against the other: we can play "Prisoner's Dilemma" at them. not just on security features but also on pricing and on GPL compliance.
it only takes about 6-8 weeks to get an entire new Computer Card made up, on a budget. if we had a team of people and a large budget that could be cut down to a matter of 3 weeks. the "usual" lock-in associated with hermetically-sealed and single-board monolithic designs is now entirely GONE.
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No, there is no open source graphics driver for the A20's MALI. However the FSF will look the other way and grant an exception if the GPU is not used and graphics are processed on the CPU. This is what they have done with the one variant of the system they are having certified. They are selling (at least) two others which are not certified.
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And of course if http://limadriver.org/ [limadriver.org] is ever advanced to the point where it is usable on whatever flavor of Mali GPU the A20 has, the whole issue will become moot and no blobs will be required anymore.
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Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath on an under-manned RE GPU driver ever seeing the light of day.
We're beyond 4 years w/o commits.
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No, there is no open source graphics driver for the A20's MALI. However the FSF will look the other way and grant an exception if the GPU is not used and graphics are processed on the CPU. This is what they have done with the one variant of the system they are having certified. They are selling (at least) two others which are not certified.
that's a rather.... that's a misunderstanding of how the FSF operates. i didn't fully understand the criteria until it was explained to me a few months ago by josh gay. the primary concern is, "will a non-technical user end up arbitrarily executing privacy-violating malware WITHOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE"? so things like the Debian synaptics package manager providing a simple-to-use point-and-click option to enable the "nonfree" repository WITHOUT ANY WARNING WHATSOEVER OF THE CONSEQUENCES is one of their worst
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I don't see anything relevant there on page 17 of the thread you linked. Was there something in specific you're you're trying to point out?
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you'll have to look around, i summarised it already, but i apologise i'm dealing with reading and responding non-stop to comments here as well as other forums and incoming campaign questions. if someone else spots the discussion i'm referring to please do link it here, many many thanks.
dumping Windows (Score:2)
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Any windowed equivalent since the 98SE interface, fine. The main thing is how easily it plugs into HDTVs, existing i86 machines, or any thing with power and a screen. When I travel and stay in homes or hotels, that would make life easier.
yeah by default i'm installing XFCE4 but in the future with more powerful SoCs coming out all the time the sky's the limit. ok in the future i'd really like to see schools, libraries and hotels have EOMA68-compliant HDTVs that you can pop your own computer card into. might not be a realistic vision for libraries (they might *rent* you an "approved" EOMA68 computer card though, just like a book...) or hotels (would need to become as prevalent as memory cards) but for schools, yeah it's on the scenarios in
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Wow, Just a regular tech story and this nonsense gets modded up. Has /. gone over to the dark side.?
dunno about /. but EOMA68 definitely has... https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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No backdoors? No spyware? No NDAs?
i know, right? such a novel concept! and we can play prisoner's dilemma with the SoC manufacturers as well, to keep them honest.
Hillary Clinton and NAWBO would never stand for that!!!
who? what? non-US citizen and geek to boot... :)
Because.se one size does not fit all (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Because.se one size does not fit all (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason that this isn't already a common approach in the industry is that forcing constraints on form factors for SoC devices has some intractable issues. If you have a powerful SoC it demands high power and needs to dissipate heat; so the upper bound of what you can achieve in the packaging and with the connector will be rapidly met u.nless it is massively over specified, and then it will be large and expensive.
we're dealing with that by setting a hard limit for the [re-used, pin-incompatible] PCMCIA "Type I" and "Type II" sockets which are 3.3mm and 5.0mm respectively: the hard limit for these two thinner card types is 5.0 watts. so at around 3.0 to 3.5 watts there's still absolutely no need for fans or any kind of special thermal considerations: passive cooling is all that's needed, and the SoC happens to be in contact with the stainless steel case, which happens to be in contact with the aluminium of the keyboard (in the case of the laptop).
just over that (up to 4.0 watts) and it is possible to use exactly the same graphite paper that's been developed for mobile phones. cheap, readily-available.
at around 4.5 watts it would be necessary to seal the package and flood it with thermal gel.
Also, display technology is not fixed in time, parallel interface signals are already quite out of date as an interface specification , although the actual limit here will probably be down to the PCMCIA connectors impedance discontinuity and consistency after numerous insertions when more modern differential display protocols are adopted. .
right. i spent five years analysing this and the impedance of PCMCIA (which, again, just to emphasise, we are *NOT* electrically or electronically compatible with: EOMA68 merely REUSES the PCMCIA connectors, housings, sockets and assemblies) is 100 ohms.
the EOMA68 standard uses RGB/TTL because that allows you to go all the way from 320x240 up to 1366x768 which works out to be around 80mhz. 80mhz over 100 ohm impedance is just about acceptable: you remember those "gold shields" on PCMCIA? those were designed to reduce EMI. the cards we're using for the initial prototypes have the metal case covering the entire connector, both sides.
why use RGB/TTL? this is covered in the eco-computing white paper in detail, section on "interface selection" http://rhombus-tech.net/whitep... [rhombus-tech.net] basically if you consider the cost of 320x240 LCDs and take a look on http://panelook.com/ [panelook.com] they're peanuts cost and they're *all* RGB/TTL. if you added a converter IC it would be a massively-disproportionate percentage addition to the BOM. however if you go up to a 1024x600 which costs $18 approx and you add a $1 SN75LVDS83b LVDS converter IC.... that's not so bad, is it?
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Not trying to be rude.
Even with open source software, the modern desktop/laptop needs have long since surpassed those specs.
1366x768 is very much on it's way out. (THANK GOD) It's a horribly small resolution for the majority of current gui's and websites even though it's technically 720p hd. Still usable though if you force your users to run fluxbox or similar. 2gb of ram is pretty tiny, usable but tiny. 4gb SHOULD have been your MIN amount. Otherwise your system will be limited to running JUST a single mod
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Your missing the point and value of this project entirely. We're giving the community and users control over the design of there computing devices. Right now we're stuck behind crappy poorly supported proprietary systems full of backdoors and malicious code. Modern Intel and AMD systems, televisions, every Android device, most Raspberry Pi-like boards, tablets, and even routers have backdoors and other malicious features.
You can't replace wifi cards in most devices these days because manufactures like Intel
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The high end Intel/AMD system is already sufficiently modular and far more open than SoC and other embedded hardware.
... except that for the cost of the lowest-end intel/amd *processors* we can do an entire computer - memory, storage, processor, hdmi output, usb output *and* casework.
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Funny, I can buy an entire tablet (it has "memory, storage, processor, hdmi output, usb output *and* casework" and also screen, battery, cameras) with a latest-generation quadcore Intel processor and more storage for the proposed price for the SBC alone (no case).
i trust you understand that that was vs a desktop PC intel processor. i've seen this next type of comparison before as well (a lot) - another mass-produced mass-volume well-established manufacturer product vs an early concept libre and privacy respecting crowd-funded one. ... doesn't really mesh, does it? :)
Perhaps you aren't aware how low the low end of the Intel processor linecard goes? In particular, see the X3-C3230 and X5-Z8300.
i wasn't! oh _good_ - the collaboration between rockchip and intel actually produced results. why the hell didn't my contact at intel get in touch?? ok *sigh* i'll speak to him and find out if they h
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Perhaps you aren't aware how low the low end of the Intel processor linecard goes? In particular, see the X3-C3230 and X5-Z8300.
i wasn't! oh _good_ - the collaboration between rockchip and intel actually produced results. why the hell didn't my contact at intel get in touch?? ok *sigh* i'll speak to him and find out if they have a reference design.... that *doesn't* have the backdoor co-processor in it....
right. interesting. the "brief" - and by brief i mean "so sparse and devoid of information it's pretty useless" - says that it was released Q1 2015. i believe it wasn't long after this that intel announced the COMPLETE TERMINATION of their involvement in the smartphone and tablet industry.
now, whether that applies to the rockchip collaboration remains to be seen. anyway, thank you for making me aware of this one, i'll keep an eye on it.
l.
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It's not open at all unless by open you mean there is some code, but in reality it's a proprietary minefield There is proprietary CPU microcode and backdoors in modern Intel/AMD CPUs. We actually have all sources necessary to utilize core functionality and booting of the A20 CPU/SOCs and upcoming SOCs or released SOCs that can be utilized in future EOMA68 computer cards.
What is worse is that the cost of designing and manufacturing new systems is extreme for Intel/AMD. With EOMA68 you don't need to worry abo
Re:Because.se one size does not fit all (Score:4, Interesting)
Not trying to be rude.
no offense taken: this is the internet... it's slashdot.... what you wrote is actually really helpful as a counterpoint: chris answered i think really well https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
, bill yourself as a fully open and environmentally friendly alt to the raspberry pi and similar.
*deep, deep breath*..... AAAAAAAAAAAgh no :) *shudder* no, no, nOooo, and no.
ok to explain my reaction, there: those are all SBCs (single-board computers). after six months of supernova-style popularity, they're dead. each manufacturer of each SBC has to scramble like mad to bring out *the next* SBC using whatever processor they can get their hands on, and the next, and the next, in a desperate cat-and-dog bitch-fight of popularity and unethical abuse of the word "open". ... am i painting a broad picture here of the *really* stark contrast between the approach taken by the embedded "educational" SBC clone market and what we're doing with EOMA68?
by total contrast we're creating the beginning of a comprehensive eco-system of hardware re-use which *happens* (through direct correlation) to both save money for end-users and also reduce e-waste.
but more than that: if we took the EOMA68-A20 board and turned it into an SBC, it would *INSTANTLY* be perceived as being a tired total waste-of-time banana pi or cubieboard clone... when in fact the irony is that those products exist *because* of the reverse-engineering and persistence that i applied to Allwinner to obtain GPL compliance. the sunxi community then helped take that initiative over, they've been working non-stop now for years to pressurise allwinner, and i've been helping quietly in the background ever since.
this project has a completely different focus in other words, where it succeeds if there is a *huge* compatible eco-system (tablet, laptop, router, camera, gps, media centre, lcd tv, games console - everything you can see on here http://rhombus-tech.net/commun... [rhombus-tech.net] and many more) and a huge compatible range of EOMA68 Computer Cards (and an FPGA card and a Pass-through Card and a DisplayLink Card) with a wide price-range and crucially a decades-long-term "just plug it in, it will work" *stable* standard. ... massive, massive difference.
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by total contrast we're creating the beginning of a comprehensive eco-system of hardware re-use which *happens* (through direct correlation) to both save money for end-users and also reduce e-waste.
In defence of the Raspberry Pi foundation's work, the ecosystem (peripherals, software, community) is what sets it apart from the sea of samey Allwinner-based SBCs. I really hope that the ecosystem you're building is as successful!
yeah it was the price-point for the feature-set at the right time that really got people's attention, in the same way that the $9 CHIP has grabbed people's attention now... but less so *because* the pi already exists.
so that area is "sewn up" and over-saturated. that's not *the* reason why i have taken the approach that i've taken - it's a different story, tackling a much larger set of systemic and underlying problems in the way that we (world-wide) think of and "consume" our computing appliances. never l
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No it's not, unfortunately. It's just that people stopped trying to race to the bottom and produce only sub-$500 laptops that we have more options now (i.e., try to make more than a couple of bucks on a PC).
If you hunt for cheap laptops, 1366x768 is very much a common resolution. But now you can pay a little more, like say $1000, and get a laptop with a 1080p screen.
It's just that a few years ago, $1000 laptops weren't an option because few people were makin
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So how exactly do I upgrade the RAM without replacing the CPU?
It's not modular down to that level, it's modular in the sense that you can upgrade the CPU-card while keeping all the housing, and reuse the CPU-card for other devices like NAS, micro-servers, routers, etc. (or sell it, if there's enough market).
For example, if such CPU-cards are marketed in the future, you can swap the current ARM-32 bits CPU-card for a future ARM-64 bits in the laptop housing that you purchase (or 3D-print) today. You can even completely change the architecture to be MIPS or Intel, i
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somebody asked this on reddit - full answer here: https://www.reddit.com/r/frees... [reddit.com]
Wicked fast swap file (Score:2)
By adding a RAM SSD and putting the swap file on it. Then the SOC's internal RAM becomes in effect a cache for your RAM SSD.
What are the success criteria? (Score:1)
Sounds interesting, but I'd have to see a complete proposal before I'd chip in. I'd want to see the schedule, the budget, the resources, and the success criteria to know if the project succeeded. The summary sounds way too grand, so I think I'd want to see it broken down into pieces that are small enough to understand, too. Also important to make sure nothing is overlooked, such as sufficient testing. Be fine if the same organization that helped check the proposal evaluated and reported on the results (perh
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Unfortunately, SlashDot stopped there.
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Sounds interesting, but I'd have to see a complete proposal before I'd chip in. I'd want to see the schedule, the budget, the resources, and the success criteria to know if the project succeeded.
most of the information you've asked for, because this is a *genuinely* open and transparent project, is on http://rhombus-tech.net/crowds... [rhombus-tech.net] - including the BOM, a full risk analysis, and much more. having been around for a long time, long enough to have seen the openmoko fail, and the pi-top team break their promises, and the shit-storm that resulted from the purism team's deceptive marketing, and the difficulties that the openpandora team had with R.F. and firmware: if you have any specific advice, TELL
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Excellent and substantive response, though you ["ikcl", but not sure of your relationship to the project] sound a bit defensive about it. Considering the mixed success history of such projects (which both of us referenced), I certainly understand why. (However, just to refer to another, I think Diaspora may have been the best idea to die for bad planning combined with overfunding from the crowd. Not sure if it should be "literally die", because that depends on the relationship of Diaspora to the visionary's
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Excellent and substantive response, though you ["ikcl", but not sure of your relationship to the project] sound a bit defensive about it. Considering the mixed success history of such projects (which both of us referenced), I certainly understand why.
yeah no i get it. here's the thing: i am happy to admit that i don't know what i'm doing: that's why i'm inviting people to participate and point things out. if it succeeds, it succeeds as a *group* project, and that's really valuable. the approach that i'm taking seems to be working: we got this far, y'know?
I followed http://rhombus-tech.net/crowds... [rhombus-tech.net] and read some more, but it seems to me that your approach is too orthogonal to what I'm trying to describe. You have lots of detail about how you think you can deliver a certain product with certain capabilities within a certain budget. Those numbers seem too fuzzy for me to trust the totals, and I couldn't find the schedule. Other places it felt like you were diverted by details that should not be relevant at this relatively early stage.
i'm talking to the factory owner online, and planning to go to taiwan (and then to HK and Shenzen) in september. leading up to christmas the factories are *stupidly* busy, which is why i will go and
Magnavox had a concept like this MANY years ago. (Score:1)
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Wasn't there a brief modular TV trend in the early 90s where the idea was that the TV was a monitor and you bought components like a stereo, or probably more correctly, they were thought of as stereo-type components to be added to the component stereo system?
I think it was at about the peak of VHS as a technology, when TV broadcasts were in stereo and VHS had hi-fi stereo audio and better TVs had at least composite if not SVHS video.
Now most people use them that way despite the TV industry never giving up i
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I don't know what brand it was but back inn the early to mid 80s, we had a TV that was ghosting the immage and the sound would cut out at times. The TV repair guy still actually came to the house back then and I watched him work on it. He replaced two modular boards which was new to me because i was use to the tubes. He said the boards would be fixed back at a shop but was in and out in about 30 minutes complete with running test patterns on the screen and some audio thing for the speakers.
I don't know if
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Future CPU cards (different CPU architectures) (Score:3, Interesting)
Currently the CPU in the CPU-cards available in the campaign is an ARM 32 bits ("armhf" for Debian systems).
In the future, if things go well, there are plans to launch other CPU-cards that meet requirements of low power, hw and sw freedom (not requiring proprietary firmware blobs to run), etc. Other CPUs have been already considered, including different architectures, like MIPS. The housing (laptop, micro desktop, etc.) can be reused, it's just a matter of swapping the CPU-card -- that's one of the main points of this project.
I'm hoping that there's enough interest in the project and goes ahead, that the ecosystem thrives and other CPU-cards based on free designs like OpenRISC or RISC-V will be produced in the future.
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...I'm hoping that there's enough interest in the project and goes ahead, that the ecosystem thrives and other CPU-cards based on free designs like OpenRISC or RISC-V will be produced in the future.
What, you don't like SoftBank's ownership of ARM?
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Currently the CPU in the CPU-cards available in the campaign is an ARM 32 bits ("armhf" for Debian systems).
and a Pass-Through Card just to make sure that people don't get the impression that EOMA68 is restricted to Software Libre, ARM processors *or* processors *at all*... https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo... [crowdsupply.com]
In the future, if things go well, there are plans to launch other CPU-cards that meet requirements of low power, hw and sw freedom (not requiring proprietary firmware blobs to run), etc. Other CPUs have been already considered, including different architectures, like MIPS. The housing (laptop, micro desktop, etc.) can be reused, it's just a matter of swapping the CPU-card -- that's one of the main points of this project.
i did a big evaluation here - bear in mind that this evaluation process has been continuous and ongoing for *five years*: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo... [crowdsupply.com]
I'm hoping that there's enough interest in the project and goes ahead, that the ecosystem thrives and other CPU-cards based on free designs like OpenRISC or RISC-V will be produced in the future.
OpenRISC was not designed around a harvard architecture so is extremely unlikely to go beyond around... 500mhz, even if it was in 10nm, due to insufficient
FSF's Respects Your Freedom certification (Score:2)
Why? Its the economy, Stupid! (Score:3)
Volume is king in electronics. Surely everyone knows that here! In case you had not noticed, a computer is made from -
The last three items are one-off costs, spread over the entire production volume. If your volume is high, they are negligible, if your volume is low, you are stuffed.
PCB design is a non-issue - if you don't pay the going rate. PCB test, debugging and verification, not so much. Hint: you cannot do your own quality control - no one spots their own errors.
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Volume is king in electronics.
thanks anne - appreciate the informative post. amazingly the computer cards are around $35 in volumes of 250 which puts them still well within the "affordable" bracket @ a pledge level of $65. which is one key reason why i have gone with the modular strategy - to get the Computer Cards into people's hands at an early phase. it's part of the bootstrapping process to get up to those mass-volume levels where the Computer Cards would only be around $16 in 20k volumes and the Laptop Housing's BOM would be aro
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VERY EXPENSIVE machine tools
HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of HOURS of VERY EXPENSIVE engineering time
MASSIVE AMOUNTS of special purpose tooling
The last three items are one-off costs, spread over the entire production volume. If your volume is high, they are negligible, if your volume is low, you are stuffed.
sorry, forgot to say:
VERY EXPENSIVE machine tools which is why i went with re-using of legacy PCMCIA casework. why pay $250k to get tooling made up and end up having to order 1 million units when you can re-use what already exists? tools costs wiped out....
HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of HOURS of VERY EXPENSIVE engineering time - or just one person over a looong time, doing things from home, backed by small sponsors, or by working part-time, but also doing things as a modular approach so that the main bulk of
The real burning question ... (Score:2)
"The real burning question is: if a single Software Libre Engineer can teach themselves PCB design and bring modular computing to people on the budget available from a single company, why are there not already a huge number of companies doing modular upgradeable hardware?"
Well, because it is economical BS. 99.9% of the market doesn't give a damn about modularity (cf. scaling back of the project Ara from Google) or whether or not the device designer had to sign an NDA to get documentation for a chip or not
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Yep. 99.9764% of all consumers care about "price" first and "sustainability and green-ness" absolutely dead last.
Not one consumer will pay 25% more for a computer that is compostable and will not poison the environment after it is thrown away.
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Yep. 99.9764% of all consumers care about "price" first and "sustainability and green-ness" absolutely dead last.
Not one consumer will pay 25% more for a computer that is compostable and will not poison the environment after it is thrown away.
you will be ironically amazed to learn that "eco" correlates *directly* with "price". the more you pay, the more you empower someone to do environmental damage... somewhere and somehow on the planet.
so i've learned to simply say, "long-term this will save you money! buy a $50 computer card every year instead of a $500 laptop every year! saves you money!!! buy two housings and only one computer card and save 40%!" and many other things (without the exclamation marks...) not even *mentioning* the eco-benef
Open, certified by FSF (Score:2)
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While not impossible, I find it hard to believe. I also have an A20 ARM board, a Lamobo R1 that after I cut physically the damn realtek ship is very similar in architecture to this card. Guess what...it is not open, it needs binary blobs to boot in graphic mode at least.
i've outlined the process in some detail in other posts, as to how we manage to apply for RYF Certification. see http://slashdot.org/~lkcl [slashdot.org] and look back in the comments. you should investigate xf86-video-fbturbo - it uses G2D. you do NOT need mali.ko for standard desktop work, and in fact you may end up overloading the processor unnecessarily if you are trying to use the proprietary 3D GPU for nothing more than simple 2D GPU style tasks.
It also quite sad there is still not a more modern ARM SoC besides the A20 that supports SATA directly connected to the CPU.
i know... well the R40 is coming out soon.
it's been done (Score:1)
Fully open, even the laptop embedded controller (Score:2)
Note that the EOMA-68's HW and SW is Open Source, which means — among others — that:
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What you really have is an overly expensive slow phone clone, with ugly ass cases.
it's not a phone, but i get your point. if you could do better, what would you do on your available personal budget that would be better?
Great for boring appliances (Score:2)
This could be cool for an HTPC emulator kind of thing, there doesn't seem to be much mention of the graphics/video playback capabilities though?
GPU? (Score:2)
They claim that they removed the Mali GPU from the SoC in order to be 100% free. Is that even possible? Did they get AllWinner to make them a special chip without the GPU? And how are the graphics handled if there is no GPU?
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They claim that they removed the Mali GPU from the SoC in order to be 100% free
no we didn't.
Is that even possible?
no it isn't
Did they get AllWinner to make them a special chip without the GPU?
no we didn't.
And how are the graphics handled if there is no GPU?
answered here https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
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The FSF-approved Linux distribution (or GNU/Linux, whatever) "Parabola" that they offer won't include the firmware for the GPU, and does all graphics processing and calculations on the CPU. So the GPU is included on the chip but it's not used.
... not quite: again, the phoronix thread had people explain this in some detail, it's 200 comments so i won't go looking for it, i have too much ground to cover, but the key discrepancy in what you said is that the 2D GPU is up and running: we're *not* doing "pure framebuffer". so there's far less load on the CPU than would otherwise be expected. see the very first update, in which i got xf86-video-fbturbo up and running on the Parabola-ARM Gnu/Linux-Libre card: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo... [crowdsupply.com]
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no problem d - we learn by making comparisons...
Same stupidity from the 90's (Score:2)
"They envision a world where users upgrade their computers by simply popping in a new card "
Intel had the same idea... and it was a giant failure.
Unless the "card" is a whole new computer that slots into a thin plastic case, this is 100% impossible.
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Unless the "card" is a whole new computer that slots into a thin plastic case, this is 100% impossible.
In a way, it's basically what you say -- a "card" that slots into thin plastic case... Except:
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wooden, actually (for the current micro-desktop)
and a laptop case which is mostly plastic,
... don't forget *3D printed* plastic.... :) so you can repair it yourself or replace the casework parts if you want a change of scenery.... :)
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"They envision a world where users upgrade their computers by simply popping in a new card "
Intel had the same idea... and it was a giant failure.
i'm not surprised. intel literally cannot make a low-enough processor without sacrificing their pride. they just had to abandon the entire smartphone and tablet market a few months ago because of their pride.
Unless the "card" is a whole new computer that slots into a thin plastic case, this is 100% impossible.
it's a whole new computer in credit-card-sized form-factor (5mm x 54mm x 86mm - it's PCMCIA casework after all). it's stainless steel thin casework (0.1mm thick). so... not impossible at all. in fact, so not impossible that i managed to do it on a budget of $20k (which i got down to $1800 by the 3r
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There is no money in it for the big players.
hoooraaay, congratulations on being the first person in this thread to notice :) profit-maximisation is achieved through *deliberate* obsolescence, and cooperation through standards compliance is viewed as "an opportunity for competitors to step in and take over the market that you created".
You do not want to sell individual components.
You want consumers to buy a whole new thing, paying for everything new, even if the old trackpad or display of the old one is still working. More money there.
in theory... yes. but the profit margins on laptops are becoming so much tighter it's becoming ridiculous. it's around 10% for the *ENTIRE CHAIN*. not 10% for the factory, 10% for the middle-man, 10% for the salesman
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A very tiny and again short lived market for you then.
This product has one selling point, modular. Which has absolutely no value. Nobody cares if their pc is modular or not, it just have to work.
It could work if like the case is 100 bucks or something in that range and looks designed, but to ask 500$ for an unassembled...
and 1200$ for... I mean, i can buy a macbook for that.
ok, so you're comparing a mass-produced product that's been refined by a billion-dollar company that has a track record of taking software libre source code and using it without actually funding or compensating the people whom their profits are critically dependent on... against a crowd-funded *prototype* project that's entirely transparent, is deliberately limiting the first prototype production run to around 250 units, where the majority of the funds goes towards NREs and to ensuring that the project can
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As a consumer, yeah! I am not a bank. And seeing your prices. pfff...
Thus basically you're asking people to fund with a zero interest loan, not only your pet project but also your eduction.
absolutely correct on both counts (despite the clear hatred, jealousy and patronising in your voice which can be detected from the use of the word "pet"). that's exactly how ethical crowd funding projects work. the unethical ones such as the pi-top and many of the china-based 3d printers that steal marlin GPL'd firmware, they teach people a hard lesson... but it's still education. as a software libre developer i will be documenting everything so that other people can learn, just as i learned from the ope
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The sacrifice is performance - if you read comments by the project founder, in order to have tiny swappable cards they're targeting something like a 3.5 watt power draw. So the device is a few generations behind the latest ARM chips, and is running at smart phone power levels. So the big wins are modularity and freedom, the big loss is that your modular 2017 mini-computer or laptop has the computing power of a 2013 smart phone.
But my PC is already modular. (Score:2)
I have an ANCIENT (>10 years old) Dell XPS desktop machine - and last week, the motherboard failed. Went to Fry's paid $65 for a new motherboard and $120 for a new CPU (which included a new cooling fan). My RAM modules were too ancient to run in the new motherboard - so I spent another $60 for a couple of RAM modules. To my surprise, the original power supply, graphics card, hard drive, DVD drive and case all fitted perfectly - and a simple reboot got me back into Ubuntu as if nothing had happened -
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I have an ANCIENT (>10 years old) Dell XPS desktop machine - and last week, the motherboard failed. Went to Fry's paid $65 for a new motherboard and $120 for a new CPU (which included a new cooling fan). My RAM modules were too ancient to run in the new motherboard - so I spent another $60 for a couple of RAM modules. To my surprise, the original power supply, graphics card, hard drive, DVD drive and case all fitted perfectly - and a simple reboot got me back into Ubuntu as if nothing had happened - I was back up and running in an hour.
Sure, the CPU socket had changed - and my decade-old DDR-2 memory wouldn't work in the DDR-3/4 motherboard - but aside from that, modularity worked 100% perfectly. I could have chosen from a dozen different CPU's and a similar number of RAM suppliers and any one of a dozen motherboards - and the outcome would have been the same.
... you're aware that intel has moved *away* from socketed CPUs and is forcing BGA onto manufacturers, now? you're really lucky to have been able to find a motherboard that suited you which didn't have the BGA-soldered processor on it.
So the desktop PC "standard" is already an incredibly modular system. The problem is that (by modern standards) it's physically huge.
For small systems like IOT devices, the cost of "the computer" including graphics, networking, RAM, long-term-storage is down to $10 or less...so modularity at that scale is just pointless - increasing the cost by adding connectors between the parts is just silly.
... and actually causes huge reliability and manufacturing issues. yeah. you get it. which is great to see.
For systems at the scale of a cellphone, modularity is a tough sell because the physical form-factor has to fit perfectly with the shape of the battery and screen and heat management is a big issue - so making a *usefully* modular phone is challenging.
dave hakkens is *PISSED*, man. like, really *really* disappointed and betrayed by google. all that money and they *claim* open-ness but actually instead they're jus
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> ... you're aware that intel has moved *away* from socketed CPUs and is forcing BGA onto manufacturers, now?
That's funny. Newegg is still full of them. Even if you have to go "higher end", those kinds of components are not going to disappear for the forseeable future.
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there's always AMD
.... whose processors have been backdoored in exactly the same way as Intel's since 2009, except all AMD's processors are backdoored since 2013.
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Any smaller and it would not hold a DVD drive, an LTO drive and a DAT drive, and still have somewhere to put USB sticks and SD cards, not to mention the place required for SCSI cards.
As someone who actually saw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v4Juzn10gM [youtube.com] EDSAC working, I think the standard tower PC case is about right, and I KNOW that tape will keep my data for 30 years (I have read my own backups 30 years later), and I know DVDs won't keep my
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The problem is that (by modern standards) it's physically huge
Any smaller and it would not hold a DVD drive, an LTO drive and a DAT drive, and still have somewhere to put USB sticks and SD cards, not to mention the place required for SCSI cards.
yeahhh i had to make a decision whether to make the first EOMA standard for mass-volume clients or for mass-volume servers. i figured that with facebook, google and hp and others having the data centre market pretty much sewn up, and them trying to convince everyone that "cloud is good", and having poisoned the word "open" in that area with their "open compute" standard, the chances would be much better if i focussed on "the little guy"... ... that meant using hardware that was simple enough for someone li
Missing question in their FAQ (Score:2)
"Why are you using a shitty old processor like an A20 and exclude the only two good things it has going for it, GbE and SATA?"
Even the old Raspberry Pi 2 is much faster than the A20, being a quad core A7.
If they wanted to go cheap and Allwinner, there's the A80, H3 or A64.
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"Why are you using a shitty old processor like an A20
answered in the update regarding processor selection - https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo... [crowdsupply.com]
and exclude the only two good things it has going for it, GbE and SATA?"
answered in depth on the FAQ section - look for "SATA and GbE" and a more in-depth answer on http://rhombus-tech.net/crowds... [rhombus-tech.net] again search for the keyword "SATA".
Even the old Raspberry Pi 2 is much faster than the A20, being a quad core A7.
only available from broadcom - a hypocritical company that operates on unethical grounds and maintains cartelling business practices, ships proprietary arbitrary untrusted executables that boot the CPU *from* the GPU, and forces children to purchase licenses t