On Saturday 3. September 2016 00.02.47 Sam Geeraerts wrote: > Op Thu, 1 Sep 2016 00:18:47 +0200 > > schreef Paul Boddie <[email protected]>: > > So I guess there were gNewSense builds for mipsel at some point to > > support the Lemote products, and that these worked with the various > > kernels provided for the Ben NanoNote? > > I don't remember if I used the gNewSense kernel or another one.
OK, but as I understand it, then, gNewSense must have been supporting mipsel instead of mips64el and thus the distribution worked on the Ben. (My impression is that mips64el is a fairly new thing in Debian.) > > Fortunately/unfortunately, it was shown that the A20 card can most > > likely be endorsed, thus eliminating any urgent need for the jz4775 > > card. But that would also mean that the A20 card could be used > > instead (to support ARM systems, obviously). > > Hm, considering the problems we've had with mipsel, I'm not keen on > adding another architecture to the repo. Well, this was more a personal experiment at present. I'm not advocating anything for the distribution itself. > > The reference you provide [1] is somewhat confusing, partly because I > > don't really know that much about the Yeeloong, but also because I > > thought that it was a MIPS64 system. Maybe only the later > > models/variants are MIPS64, but it then confuses me that this change > > would seek to affect MIPS32 systems, too. > > As I understand it, it can run 32 bit and 64 bit ABIs [1] and the "one > size fits all" MIPS I o32 instruction set that Debian provided, but not > the MIPS II instruction set to which they're switching now. I think the Ingenic SoCs may support MIPS II, but I'm not entirely sure, and their datasheets probably intentionally do not indicate this because the "XBurst" architecture is based on presumably-unencumbered aspects of the MIPS architecture. They may have licensed the architecture from ImgTec subsequently, however. > > Interestingly, Guix(SD) supports mips64el presumably for Yeeloong > > compatibility, but I'm not too familiar with Guix at the moment, so I > > don't know what architecture version restrictions that system imposes > > in its build environment. I can always dig up some more information > > about that. > > It's good to know that there are other options that still support the > Yeeloong. Yes. > > In addition, the jz4780 uses widely-disliked PowerVR technologies, > > but maybe they are not mandatory for it to be used in a productive > > way. And Imagination Technologies seem to have moved on to the CI40 > > (which is less suitable as a build host), and I don't see a > > particularly large amount of obvious support for the CI20 any more. > > So that's a dead end, then. So if I understand you correctly, then with > regards to current and near-future hardware options, there's no real > reason to continue mipsel support in gNewSense post-Yeeloong. I don't know. The Ingenic SoCs have been used in a variety of devices, but I'm not sure how available those devices are now. The GCW-Zero is perhaps the most well-known, but it seems to suffer availability problems, although there does seem to be some kind of community around it and other devices. > > Maybe it's some other kind of server issue. Anyway, if you need any > > assistance then I'd be happy to take a look. > > Ack. > > [1] > https://blogs.gentoo.org/blueness/2014/07/02/continued-support-for-the-lemo > te-yeeloong-gentoo-mips-is-alive-and-well/ Thanks for the references! Where should I start looking if I want to derive a gNewSense variant from Debian for the purposes of evaluating the feasibility of my little project? I did find this... http://bzr.savannah.gnu.org/lh/gnewsense/ ...but it seems to be down at present. Paul _______________________________________________ gNewSense-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnewsense-dev
