Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On Fri, 8/14/15, Brian L. Stuart blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: The fundamental issue ... hwdraw(). Tonight's update: Forget what I said last night about hwdraw() and the difficulty of connecting into the devdraw/memdraw/screen stack. I had one of those embarrassing how did it ever work bugs. Now hooking into hwdraw() and flushmemscreen() works pretty well. With an environment variable in cmdline.txt, it boots either expecting an HDMI monitor, or the little LCD screen. A little more playing around attempting improvement and then I might take a crack at supporting the touch screen. BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
cute, you should ship with fresnel lenses, then the reference is complete: http://www.wikinoticia.com/images2//s2.alt1040.com/files/2011/11/Brazil2-800x528.jpg There could also be more modern versions for more IKEA styled students: http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/2013/01/mini-cinema-iphone-02.jpg On the other hand you shouldn't underestimate the usefulness of a thinkpad (e.g. x61) for students. They are cheap these days if you get them used, and this could get your university a badge for ecological behavior. At least it would be in the same price league as rpi + LCD + keyboard + mouse + case.
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
Vncserv must do something similar, maybe that is worth looking at. I went down a similar route but am planning to just address the display as a different type of device, rather than as a plan9 display. Your progress is very impressive, my project stalled - I must get back to it. -Steve On 15 Aug 2015, at 03:49, Brian L. Stuart blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: I have tried to email BLS but fear I am being spam filtered... you there? I did get one message from you, and replied earlier today. Hopefully it got through. A little more update on recent pi playing. I've been working on a little toy the last few days, namely one of those small SPI driven LCD panels: http://www.adafruit.com/products/2441 As of this evening, I've gotten it sort of running alongside the HDMI display showing the upper left corner. Here are a few pics of it in operation: The Pi with the display connected to a keyboard and mouse: http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft1-s.jpg and a couple of pics of the display showing acme running: http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft2-s.jpg http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft3-s.jpg It's a long way from being usable though. The fundamental issue is that there appears to be a very deeply embedded assumption that a screen must be memory mapped. I tried hooking into the hwdraw() routine in screen.c, but it seems that not every change to the screen memory space gets reflected in a call to hwdraw(). For the pics, I've got a version that periodically copies the whole of the appropriate area of the Memimage to the LCD panel over the SPI port. Obviously, that's too slow and too resource-hungry to be practical. Hopefully, I'm missing something and there's an elegant way to graft a non-memory mapped display into the devdraw/memdraw/screen infrastructure. BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On Sat, 8/15/15, Steve Simon st...@quintile.net wrote: Vncserv must do something similar, maybe that is worth looking at. I went down a similar route but am planning to just address the display as a different type of device, rather than as a plan9 display. Good point. Hadn't thought about that. I'll take a look and see if it has anything that might help. Your progress is very impressive, my project stalled - I must get back to it. The other option I've been thinking about since late yesterday is to create a variant of devdraw (or add hooks into the existing devdraw) that allows it to shoot off a request to another device for every screen update. My ideal for this scenario is to have a single kernel image that will simultaneously display on both the HDMI port and the SPI display. Then add some bits to boot.rc so that at boot-time, the user can indicate whether they've got the SPI display installed and whether to set the geometry and fonts accordingly. Some of that may end up being a potential project for students in the class to do :) BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On Sat, 8/15/15, hiro 23h...@gmail.com wrote: cute, you should ship with fresnel lenses, then the reference is complete: http://www.wikinoticia.com/images2//s2.alt1040.com/files/2011/11/Brazil2-800x528.jpg rotfl... I hadn't made the association until you mentioned it. I may have to mention the Brazil branch of development and show them the picture in class. On the other hand you shouldn't underestimate the usefulness of a thinkpad (e.g. x61) for students. They are cheap these days if you get them used, and this could get your university a badge for ecological behavior. At least it would be in the same price league as rpi + LCD + keyboard + mouse + case. True. The focus is more aimed at understanding embedded systems, microcontrollers, and SoCs more than Plan 9 per se, and I expect most students will use an existing HDMI or VGA monitor. Part of my motivation for this is as a less expensive alternative for any who don't have access to a spare monitor. Of course, they're not going to get the full embedded experience. There's just not enough time to develop a custom piece of hardware and get them comfortable with bare metal programming. (Hence why Im calling the course Computing in the Small rather than Embedded Systems.) BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On Sat, 8/15/15, Joseph Stewart joseph.stew...@gmail.com wrote: Brian, does your uni let you publish your curriculum or course notes? Is this something you've ever considered? I should be able to do at least something along those lines. There are corners of the university that get twitchy about making available for free what online students pay for. But most of us take the more traditional academic view that the whole point of the exercise is to spread knowledge as widely as possible. Of course, whether there ends up being anything worth making available remains to be seen :) BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
Brian, does your uni let you publish your curriculum or course notes? Is this something you've ever considered? -joe On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 10:49 PM, Brian L. Stuart blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: I have tried to email BLS but fear I am being spam filtered... you there? I did get one message from you, and replied earlier today. Hopefully it got through. A little more update on recent pi playing. I've been working on a little toy the last few days, namely one of those small SPI driven LCD panels: http://www.adafruit.com/products/2441 As of this evening, I've gotten it sort of running alongside the HDMI display showing the upper left corner. Here are a few pics of it in operation: The Pi with the display connected to a keyboard and mouse: http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft1-s.jpg and a couple of pics of the display showing acme running: http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft2-s.jpg http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft3-s.jpg It's a long way from being usable though. The fundamental issue is that there appears to be a very deeply embedded assumption that a screen must be memory mapped. I tried hooking into the hwdraw() routine in screen.c, but it seems that not every change to the screen memory space gets reflected in a call to hwdraw(). For the pics, I've got a version that periodically copies the whole of the appropriate area of the Memimage to the LCD panel over the SPI port. Obviously, that's too slow and too resource-hungry to be practical. Hopefully, I'm missing something and there's an elegant way to graft a non-memory mapped display into the devdraw/memdraw/screen infrastructure. BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
I have tried to email BLS but fear I am being spam filtered... you there? -Steve On 12 Aug 2015, at 23:27, Brian L. Stuart blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: On Wed, 8/12/15, Skip Tavakkolian 9...@9netics.com wrote: the gpio pins don't seem accessible through a filesystem api like i see in plan9-bcm (unless i've missed something). I'm pretty sure it's not there. it would be great to merge that capability in. I've made a start on that this afternoon. I took the devbcm from plan9-bcm and stripped it down to just the gpio parts and renamed it devgpio. I've now got a B+ running with Richard's latest code that includes I2C and SPI and a first cut revision of devgpio. I'm watching an LED I wired up to it blinking driven by a program in user space as I type this. BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
I have tried to email BLS but fear I am being spam filtered... you there? I did get one message from you, and replied earlier today. Hopefully it got through. A little more update on recent pi playing. I've been working on a little toy the last few days, namely one of those small SPI driven LCD panels: http://www.adafruit.com/products/2441 As of this evening, I've gotten it sort of running alongside the HDMI display showing the upper left corner. Here are a few pics of it in operation: The Pi with the display connected to a keyboard and mouse: http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft1-s.jpg and a couple of pics of the display showing acme running: http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft2-s.jpg http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft3-s.jpg It's a long way from being usable though. The fundamental issue is that there appears to be a very deeply embedded assumption that a screen must be memory mapped. I tried hooking into the hwdraw() routine in screen.c, but it seems that not every change to the screen memory space gets reflected in a call to hwdraw(). For the pics, I've got a version that periodically copies the whole of the appropriate area of the Memimage to the LCD panel over the SPI port. Obviously, that's too slow and too resource-hungry to be practical. Hopefully, I'm missing something and there's an elegant way to graft a non-memory mapped display into the devdraw/memdraw/screen infrastructure. BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On Wed, 8/12/15, Skip Tavakkolian 9...@9netics.com wrote: the gpio pins don't seem accessible through a filesystem api like i see in plan9-bcm (unless i've missed something). I'm pretty sure it's not there. it would be great to merge that capability in. I've made a start on that this afternoon. I took the devbcm from plan9-bcm and stripped it down to just the gpio parts and renamed it devgpio. I've now got a B+ running with Richard's latest code that includes I2C and SPI and a first cut revision of devgpio. I'm watching an LED I wired up to it blinking driven by a program in user space as I type this. BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On Wed, 8/12/15, David du Colombier 0in...@gmail.com wrote: Is all that on sources somewhere or accessible otherwise? Richard's latest Raspberry Pi repository is available here: /n/sources/contrib/miller/9/bcm Cool. Somehow I missed that. I'll pull it and play with it. Using the github plan9-bcm devbcm, I've gotten as far as blinking an LED, but if there's already working I2C and SPI code, I've got devices that need to talk that. Thanks, BLS a little update: i am running Richard's latest bcm on several rpi's. i'm using the ds3231 based rtc (link below) on a couple of them. these use the i2c; everything is working as expected. the gpio pins don't seem accessible through a filesystem api like i see in plan9-bcm (unless i've missed something). it would be great to merge that capability in. http://www.ebay.com/itm/DS3231-Precision-RTC-Module-Memory-Module-for-Raspberry-Pi-/181405526368?hash=item2a3c9ca960
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On Wed, 8/12/15, David du Colombier 0in...@gmail.com wrote: Is all that on sources somewhere or accessible otherwise? Richard's latest Raspberry Pi repository is available here: /n/sources/contrib/miller/9/bcm Cool. Somehow I missed that. I'll pull it and play with it. Using the github plan9-bcm devbcm, I've gotten as far as blinking an LED, but if there's already working I2C and SPI code, I've got devices that need to talk that. Thanks, BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
Richard has an i2c and spi driver for the pi. I grafted the inferno i2c file system interface on top of Richards driver, though the sub addressed reads are awaiting my return from holiday. there is a pi gpio and pwm driver which has a pi audio module which sits on top. this produces strange noises with a pi2 which I will dig into shortly. I think the pi is a wonderful terminal, the only app which would really benefit from Gbit ether is Remote Desktop (imho) I would love a similar machine with Gbit ether and 2 or 3 sata 3s to replace my ageing file server. -Steve On 6 Aug 2015, at 00:12, Skip Tavakkolian skip.tavakkol...@gmail.com wrote: RPI's running something like plan9-bcm (check github) where gpio is exposed should work. I'm going to try plan9-bcm this weekend; i'll keep you posted. I like ODROID hardware, but obviously there isn't a Plan 9 port for it. Arduino Yún (MIPS+AVR) could make a cool device for Plan 9, but the MIPS part of the hardware is closed. On the smaller end of the scale, I've just started porting lib9p to esp8266. I'm using ESP01; it is a cheap yet very capable device. On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 1:39 PM, Brian L. Stuart blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm calling Computing in the Small. Right now, I'm leaning toward conducting it on a platform that runs Plan 9. I'm looking for something based on ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection to the external world in the form of GPIOs. SPI, I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too. Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate. What are some others? I've seen some code in the source tree for the BBB. Has anyone tried it out to see what is and isn't there? How about the Banana Pi? The SATA port on it is quite appealing. Some of the other options I've been looking at include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard, and the Wandboard. Has anyone done anything on porting Plan 9 to any of them? Are there others I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class? Thanks in advance, BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
Richard has an i2c and spi driver for the pi. I grafted the inferno i2c file system interface on top of Richards driver, though the sub addressed reads are awaiting my return from holiday. Steve, Is all that on sources somewhere or accessible otherwise? Last night, I pulled devbcm from plan9-bcm on github and folded it into the latest pi image Richard posted on sources, but I haven't done anything other than compile and boot a kernel with it yet. I've ordered a few toys to play with including a little 3.5 LCD with touch screen that talks SPI. So I'm going to try to get that up and running soon. I would love a similar machine with Gbit ether and 2 or 3 sata 3s to replace my ageing file server. Same here. In fact, I've ordered a Banana Pi to see just how close it does come to being compatible. I'll let everyone know if it does boot the rpi images. As an update to the whole thing, I've decided to go ahead and use the Raspberry Pi at least this term. Given the time available, I suspect I'd get too caught up in getting a stable port running on anything else and not do what I need getting classes prepared. If I teach this again sometime, maybe I'll get a chance to do more. I will say I very much like the documentation that TI has for the SoC in the BBB, especially compared to what passes for Broadcom documentation. The reference manual for the AM335X processor is nearly 5000 pages. And there are several other things I like about the BBB over the pi, but who knows when my supply of round tuits will allow me to spend much time working on it. My thanks to everyone who has given me suggestions. There are definitely some new machines I hadn't seen before that I'll be checking out. BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On Sat, Aug 08, 2015 at 06:42:04AM +0200, lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote: this board has quite a number of features, and might be useful for education if the cost isn't prohibitive. The list is impressive and the schematics ought to make things simpler, but will support for Plan 9 be a real possibility? Persoanlly, I think Gbit ether is essential and a second ether port almost equally so. I couldn't quite figure out what type of graphics driver the CI20 provided or how easily Plan 9 would deal with it. My choice would be to support MikroTik equipment in the role of routers or CPU servers, but that of course is itself limiting. Another type of machine worth looking at is the EdgeRouter Lite (aka Erlite 3) from Ubiquiti Networks: Dual Core 500 MHz MIPS64 CPU (Cavium Octeon), 512MB of RAM, 3x GBit Ethernet, Cisco style console port running at 115200. The OS (EdgeOS) runs from an internal USB stick. EdgeOS is based on Vyatta which is in turn based on Debian. I've successfully converted the Erlite3 to run plain Debian (jessie with a custom 3.18.19 kernel) - replacing the firmware just involves undoing three screws on the case, opening it and replacing the internal USB stick. So now two of those run my network at home - one as core router, the other as edge router (for the 100 MBit Fiber uplink). Running plain Debian, of course, I never looked at the EdgeOS system. The USB hardware is rather picky which sticks it recognizes, but SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB works reliably. The Gentoo folks also have information about it: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/MIPS/ERLite-3 Seeing as Linux already (and without crazy closed firmware blobs) runs on it, it might be an interesting machine to port Plan9 to. As for availability: Amazon sells it for less than $100, and with the Prime package, i.e. you can get _very_ quickly ;-) Kind regards, Alex. -- Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. -- Thomas A. Edison
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
Liinux running on a device sadly doesn't say anything about available documentation or the complexity of the interface that need to be implemented. On 8/8/15, Alexander Schreiber a...@thangorodrim.ch wrote: On Sat, Aug 08, 2015 at 06:42:04AM +0200, lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote: this board has quite a number of features, and might be useful for education if the cost isn't prohibitive. The list is impressive and the schematics ought to make things simpler, but will support for Plan 9 be a real possibility? Persoanlly, I think Gbit ether is essential and a second ether port almost equally so. I couldn't quite figure out what type of graphics driver the CI20 provided or how easily Plan 9 would deal with it. My choice would be to support MikroTik equipment in the role of routers or CPU servers, but that of course is itself limiting. Another type of machine worth looking at is the EdgeRouter Lite (aka Erlite 3) from Ubiquiti Networks: Dual Core 500 MHz MIPS64 CPU (Cavium Octeon), 512MB of RAM, 3x GBit Ethernet, Cisco style console port running at 115200. The OS (EdgeOS) runs from an internal USB stick. EdgeOS is based on Vyatta which is in turn based on Debian. I've successfully converted the Erlite3 to run plain Debian (jessie with a custom 3.18.19 kernel) - replacing the firmware just involves undoing three screws on the case, opening it and replacing the internal USB stick. So now two of those run my network at home - one as core router, the other as edge router (for the 100 MBit Fiber uplink). Running plain Debian, of course, I never looked at the EdgeOS system. The USB hardware is rather picky which sticks it recognizes, but SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB works reliably. The Gentoo folks also have information about it: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/MIPS/ERLite-3 Seeing as Linux already (and without crazy closed firmware blobs) runs on it, it might be an interesting machine to port Plan9 to. As for availability: Amazon sells it for less than $100, and with the Prime package, i.e. you can get _very_ quickly ;-) Kind regards, Alex. -- Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. -- Thomas A. Edison
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
Also, crazy closed firmware blobs is a violation of our COC. Some people here develop firmware blobs and don't want to hear such insults.
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
Another type of machine worth looking at is the EdgeRouter Lite (aka Erlite 3) from Ubiquiti Networks I agree that the EdgeRouter Lite could be a very good platform to make a MIPS64 port. It has a serial port and runs U-Boot, so it's pretty convenient as as development platform. The documentation of the Cavium CN5020 can be found very easily. -- David du Colombier
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
hiro 23h...@gmail.com once said: Also, crazy closed firmware blobs is a violation of our COC. Some people here develop firmware blobs and don't want to hear such insults. It says more about you that you're insulted by something so innocuous. Email me privately if you'd like some real insults. Cheers, Anthony P.S. Stop writing closed firmware blobs.
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
It says more about you that you're insulted by something so innocuous. The humourous tone is slipping... Anyone writes firmware blobs, crazy closed or otherwise, should be reported to the authorities for recycling. Lucio.
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
Brian, does your uni let you publish your curriculum or course notes? Is this something you've ever considered? -joe On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 4:39 PM, Brian L. Stuart blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm calling Computing in the Small. Right now, I'm leaning toward conducting it on a platform that runs Plan 9. I'm looking for something based on ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection to the external world in the form of GPIOs. SPI, I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too. Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate. What are some others? I've seen some code in the source tree for the BBB. Has anyone tried it out to see what is and isn't there? How about the Banana Pi? The SATA port on it is quite appealing. Some of the other options I've been looking at include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard, and the Wandboard. Has anyone done anything on porting Plan 9 to any of them? Are there others I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class? Thanks in advance, BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
brian, i have started work on porting 9front to http://www.elinux.org/MIPS_Creator_CI20. this board has quite a number of features, and might be useful for education if the cost isn't prohibitive. nick On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 6:09 PM, Brian L. Stuart blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm calling Computing in the Small. Right now, I'm leaning toward conducting it on a platform that runs Plan 9. I'm looking for something based on ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection to the external world in the form of GPIOs. SPI, I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too. Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate. What are some others? I've seen some code in the source tree for the BBB. Has anyone tried it out to see what is and isn't there? How about the Banana Pi? The SATA port on it is quite appealing. Some of the other options I've been looking at include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard, and the Wandboard. Has anyone done anything on porting Plan 9 to any of them? Are there others I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class? Thanks in advance, BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
Hi Brian, Plan 9 works really well on a Raspberry Pi B for me. Haven't tried it on a RasPi 2 yet though. I would be rather cautious about so called compatible products. I have yet to meet a product that is truly compatible and the quirks tend to take up a disproportionate amount of time to resolve. When you are trying to get a course together you have enough to contend with before getting caught out by incompatibilities. Is there any reason you don't choose to just go with Raspberry Pi as is? After all, it is cheap and with lots of support. On 8 August 2015 at 11:13, Nick Owens misch...@offblast.org wrote: brian, i have started work on porting 9front to http://www.elinux.org/MIPS_Creator_CI20. this board has quite a number of features, and might be useful for education if the cost isn't prohibitive. nick On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 6:09 PM, Brian L. Stuart blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm calling Computing in the Small. Right now, I'm leaning toward conducting it on a platform that runs Plan 9. I'm looking for something based on ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection to the external world in the form of GPIOs. SPI, I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too. Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate. What are some others? I've seen some code in the source tree for the BBB. Has anyone tried it out to see what is and isn't there? How about the Banana Pi? The SATA port on it is quite appealing. Some of the other options I've been looking at include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard, and the Wandboard. Has anyone done anything on porting Plan 9 to any of them? Are there others I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class? Thanks in advance, BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
this board has quite a number of features, and might be useful for education if the cost isn't prohibitive. The list is impressive and the schematics ought to make things simpler, but will support for Plan 9 be a real possibility? Persoanlly, I think Gbit ether is essential and a second ether port almost equally so. I couldn't quite figure out what type of graphics driver the CI20 provided or how easily Plan 9 would deal with it. My choice would be to support MikroTik equipment in the role of routers or CPU servers, but that of course is itself limiting. Lucio.
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On 7 August 2015 at 18:13, Brian L. Stuart blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: So depending on where plan9-bcm stands, it might be just right. That seems to be an old version of /sys/src/9/bcm (perhaps with modifications) so Richard Miller's version in contrib will be more up-to-date, I think.
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On Thu, 8/6/15, lu...@proxima.alt.za lu...@proxima.alt.za wrote: Olimex in Bulgaria manufacture and market worldwide a very wide range of AVR and ARM based boards and peripherals. They target the DIY market. Pay their site (olimex.com works for me) a visit. They do look interesting, and I like their intention to keep things more open than Broadcom does. Unfortunately, especially with their vacation, I fear that the time between now and the start of the term is too short for me to get one, familiarize myself enough with it to teach it, get something more interesting than Linux running on it and work out how to get them into the hands of the students. But if I ever do run a similar course again in the future, I'll definitely look at them far enough ahead of time to consider using them. BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On Wed, 8/5/15, Charles Forsyth charles.fors...@gmail.com wrote: I think the big advantage of the Rpi or Rpi2 (for speed, memory and cores)is that there's a wealth of published projects for them, including hardware ones, and other stuff, and they aren't likely to go away. It's true that lacking SATA and Gb Ether makes it harderto use them for certain applications (except as demos, alhough there's a Kickstarter project for mSATA),but if you're doing Computing in the Small both SATA and Gb are perhaps optional. I am kind of leaning toward the RPi at the moment for reasons very much along those lines. Though I'm probably going to order at least a Banana Pi for my own playing around. If I read their propaganda correctly, it should run the OS images that the RPi does. If so, I'm really curious to see how close Richard's Plan9 image comes to running on it. And I do still need to do some playing with the BBB I recently got. In terms of the RPi though, as of yesterday, my auth server is now running on an RPi, replacing a nearly 20 year old NEC laptop. I'm glad you asked, though, because I hadn't seen the APC Paper. It is a really cute little machine. I'm tempted to get one of those to play with too. Too many toys, too little time... BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On Wed, 8/5/15, Skip Tavakkolian skip.tavakkol...@gmail.com wrote: RPI's running something like plan9-bcm (check github) where gpio is exposed should work. I'm going to try plan9-bcm this weekend; i'll keep you posted. Thanks for the pointer. I'll definitely check that out. I'm hoping to expose them to a little bit of working in the kernel anyway, but don't want to take so much of the quarter's time as to get them to the point where they can write their own drivers. So depending on where plan9-bcm stands, it might be just right. I like ODROID hardware, but obviously there isn't a Plan 9 port for it. True. Though in looking into some stuff on the Banana Pi, I've seen indications that it supposedly can run at least one ODROID image and it claims to be basically RPi compatible. If all that's true (and things work out ideally) the Plan9 RPi port might not be all that far away from running on it. Arduino Yún (MIPS+AVR) could make a cool device for Plan 9, but the MIPS part of the hardware is closed. I've had a pretty similar reaction to that one. On the smaller end of the scale, I've just started porting lib9p to esp8266. I'm using ESP01; it is a cheap yet very capable device. Very cool. I'd not seen these before. Keep us posted on your progress on it. that would be a lot of fun to play with. BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
I'm looking for something based on ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection to the external world in the form of GPIOs. SPI, I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too. Olimex in Bulgaria manufacture and market worldwide a very wide range of AVR and ARM based boards and peripherals. They target the DIY market. Pay their site (olimex.com works for me) a visit. Their summer vacation is right now, but they will be open again by mid-August. Lucio.
[9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm calling Computing in the Small. Right now, I'm leaning toward conducting it on a platform that runs Plan 9. I'm looking for something based on ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection to the external world in the form of GPIOs. SPI, I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too. Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate. What are some others? I've seen some code in the source tree for the BBB. Has anyone tried it out to see what is and isn't there? How about the Banana Pi? The SATA port on it is quite appealing. Some of the other options I've been looking at include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard, and the Wandboard. Has anyone done anything on porting Plan 9 to any of them? Are there others I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class? Thanks in advance, BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
On 5 August 2015 at 21:39, Brian L. Stuart blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate. I think the big advantage of the Rpi or Rpi2 (for speed, memory and cores) is that there's a wealth of published projects for them, including hardware ones, and other stuff, and they aren't likely to go away. It's true that lacking SATA and Gb Ether makes it harder to use them for certain applications (except as demos, alhough there's a Kickstarter project for mSATA), but if you're doing Computing in the Small both SATA and Gb are perhaps optional. I'm glad you asked, though, because I hadn't seen the APC Paper.
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
RPI's running something like plan9-bcm (check github) where gpio is exposed should work. I'm going to try plan9-bcm this weekend; i'll keep you posted. I like ODROID hardware, but obviously there isn't a Plan 9 port for it. Arduino Yún (MIPS+AVR) could make a cool device for Plan 9, but the MIPS part of the hardware is closed. On the smaller end of the scale, I've just started porting lib9p to esp8266. I'm using ESP01; it is a cheap yet very capable device. On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 1:39 PM, Brian L. Stuart blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm calling Computing in the Small. Right now, I'm leaning toward conducting it on a platform that runs Plan 9. I'm looking for something based on ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection to the external world in the form of GPIOs. SPI, I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too. Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate. What are some others? I've seen some code in the source tree for the BBB. Has anyone tried it out to see what is and isn't there? How about the Banana Pi? The SATA port on it is quite appealing. Some of the other options I've been looking at include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard, and the Wandboard. Has anyone done anything on porting Plan 9 to any of them? Are there others I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class? Thanks in advance, BLS
Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms
Lib9p to ESP8266 would be quite good. I got two NodeMCU Rev 2 boards from LearCNC here in Oz, I'm planning on using them in little vacuum cleaner robots. On 8/6/15, Skip Tavakkolian skip.tavakkol...@gmail.com wrote: RPI's running something like plan9-bcm (check github) where gpio is exposed should work. I'm going to try plan9-bcm this weekend; i'll keep you posted. I like ODROID hardware, but obviously there isn't a Plan 9 port for it. Arduino Yún (MIPS+AVR) could make a cool device for Plan 9, but the MIPS part of the hardware is closed. On the smaller end of the scale, I've just started porting lib9p to esp8266. I'm using ESP01; it is a cheap yet very capable device. On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 1:39 PM, Brian L. Stuart blstu...@bellsouth.net wrote: I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm calling Computing in the Small. Right now, I'm leaning toward conducting it on a platform that runs Plan 9. I'm looking for something based on ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection to the external world in the form of GPIOs. SPI, I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too. Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate. What are some others? I've seen some code in the source tree for the BBB. Has anyone tried it out to see what is and isn't there? How about the Banana Pi? The SATA port on it is quite appealing. Some of the other options I've been looking at include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard, and the Wandboard. Has anyone done anything on porting Plan 9 to any of them? Are there others I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class? Thanks in advance, BLS
