Re: Openbsd openrisc opencores arm
On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 10:54:27PM -0400, Nick Holland wrote: There's no keyboard, well, because there's no keyboard. There's no mouse, because there's no place to plug it in and the touch screen is undocumented. There's no real network port because it is supposed to be wireless. Typical tablet has USB port one could attach keyboard/mouse/both to. Some of the touch screens are supported in linux, so theoretically the drivers could be written based on linux code as reference. Still, making a usable port for any tablet would take more time then the period of device availability in shops, and even then the user experience would likely be suboptimal, as most pieces of software still rely heavily on text input and precise pointing, while keyboard and mouse would effectively defeat the very idea of using tablet. FWIW Intel is lobbying Atom-based mobile devices. If such devices ever come to exiistance, the idea of OpenBSD may ultimately make some sense. As of now it would be just a waste of developers' time, which is quite limited. -- Dmitrij D. Czarkoff
Re: Openbsd openrisc opencores arm
Nick Holland [n...@holland-consulting.net] wrote: The problem with ARM is there is no ARM reference platform. Every machine is significantly different than every other machine, technical details of how it is built are not published (why should they be? They aren't being sold as general purpose computers). I do not get the excitement over ARM. Sorry. Its design complete and total chaos at this point. There is maybe one sort-of exception to this mess: The openly documented Freescale iMX6 platform. http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX6QnodeId=018rH3ZrDRB24Afpsp=1tab=Documentation_Tab It could stay around for a while. There is an open laptop design built around it that looks like fun: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2686 And a certain Dale Rahn even wrote support for iMX6 in a source tree that could drop in to OpenBSD... If someone really wants to play with newer ARM stuff on OpenBSD, try to find some iMX6 hardware, and start with Dale's improved sys/arch/arm, sys/arch/imx and sys/arch/beagle Chris
Re: Openbsd openrisc opencores arm
Am 25.03.2013 um 17:17 schrieb Chris Cappuccio ch...@nmedia.net: Nick Holland [n...@holland-consulting.net] wrote: The problem with ARM is there is no ARM reference platform. Every machine is significantly different than every other machine, technical details of how it is built are not published (why should they be? They aren't being sold as general purpose computers). I do not get the excitement over ARM. Sorry. Its design complete and total chaos at this point. There is maybe one sort-of exception to this mess: The openly documented Freescale iMX6 platform. http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX6QnodeId= 018rH3ZrDRB24Afpsp=1tab=Documentation_Tab It could stay around for a while. There is an open laptop design built around it that looks like fun: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2686 And a certain Dale Rahn even wrote support for iMX6 in a source tree that could drop in to OpenBSD... If someone really wants to play with newer ARM stuff on OpenBSD, try to find some iMX6 hardware, and start with Dale's improved sys/arch/arm, sys/arch/imx and sys/arch/beagle I have all that running on OpenBSD. I'm slowly sorting out diffs so we can get it (armv7, panda, imx) into OpenBSD without breaking zaurus. Without that constrain, I could basically just drop it in. I'd recommend one of the following, where I got the first one from: http://boundarydevices.com/products/sabre-lite-imx6-sbc/ http://boundarydevices.com/products/nitrogen6x-board-imx6-arm-cortex-a9-sbc/ Of course, there are other boards, even tablets and mini-usb/hdmi-sticks, but those boards are imho very good. Chris
Openbsd openrisc opencores arm
I do not know anything but I lurk here for most of the millennia or more. Openbsd arm seems to lack a frame buffer. If I try to ssh in thenci do not need a frame buffer? Openrisc has a MMU or three and boots Linux with TFPD? Booter. It does not presently have atomic operations. Is the lack of atomic operators currently represent a death blow to running openbsd on it? My interests revolve around how cheap android tablets can be and useful without a functional GPU and the nice feel you could have starting with a raw FPGA. Not that nice feel is easy to justify. Just thinking out loud with the hope these are sane questions. With respect to arm tablets I like allwinter but have read about the boot loader issue on all these arm tablets. And I do know that I cannot take any existing openbsd distribution and boot it on openrisc. And I do note that your preferred C compiler is going away from the openrisc tool chain. Just wondering to myself if it is worth thinking about more. Max Sent from my Kindle Fire
Re: Openbsd openrisc opencores arm
On 03/24/13 21:36, max.stalna...@gmail.com wrote: I do not know anything but I lurk here for most of the millennia or more. Openbsd arm seems to lack a frame buffer. you mean like the one on the Zaurus? If I try to ssh in thenci do not need a frame buffer? Openrisc has a MMU or three and boots Linux with TFPD? Booter. It does not presently have atomic operations. Is the lack of atomic operators currently represent a death blow to running openbsd on it? don't talk, write code. My interests revolve around how cheap android tablets can be and useful without a functional GPU and the nice feel you could have starting with a raw FPGA. Not that nice feel is easy to justify. Just thinking out loud with the hope these are sane questions. With respect to arm tablets I like allwinter but have read about the boot loader issue on all these arm tablets. And I do know that I cannot take any existing openbsd distribution and boot it on openrisc. And I do note that your preferred C compiler is going away from the openrisc tool chain. Just wondering to myself if it is worth thinking about more. You are wasting your time thinking about things. As Yoda would say, do or don't do. If your reaction is, well, I can't do, then please be assured, OpenBSD is not the corporate world, we don't need managers who claim to think, but can't do. The problem with ARM is there is no ARM reference platform. Every machine is significantly different than every other machine, technical details of how it is built are not published (why should they be? They aren't being sold as general purpose computers). By the time a machine is reverse engineered and the code written for it, it's obsolete and discontinued. Its replacement is significantly different hw, and a significantly different processor. We've seen this over and over, and if you have truly been following OpenBSD for as long as you say, you have seen it, too. I've got a Thecus sitting here. I paid more for it -- AFTER it was discontinued and on close-out -- than a three-core AMD64 board, proc, and memory was when new. My Thecus may be one of the last ones running, as they appear to have been low-quality stuff and drop like flies. Meanwhile, old P3 systems that are seemingly indestructible, much faster, and highly useful are free for the hauling. They use more power, but the pay-off is /never/ at my electrical rates (considering cost-of-money and relative life span of the Arm systems). I can't do anything really cool with it, because I can't easily replace it when it dies. I do not get the excitement over ARM. Sorry. Its design complete and total chaos at this point. Assume whatever OS you get on the thing is what you will live with, and you will be getting your updates from the vendor of the device (if you are lucky. How's this working out so far for you?). As the vendors are quite volatile at the moment, assume a very short useful life span for your hw, and assume ZERO reuse potential. I also do not understand the point of OpenBSD on a tablet. Ok, I've got OpenBSD running on this ... tablet. there's no touch screen, since that's undocumented. There's no keyboard, well, because there's no keyboard. There's no mouse, because there's no place to plug it in and the touch screen is undocumented. There's no real network port because it is supposed to be wireless. What do I do with it besides stare at the boot messages? I love dmesg porn as much as anyone, but... uhm. after a certain point, you memorize it and it stops being interesting. Nick.
