non-x86 open-source-hardware laptops, let's take stock of March 2024

[DiTBho]

And regarding SSD, it's mostly so I don't have to sit for the old spinner while loading stuff up. That's the least fun part of reliving a retro experience.

You can do whatever you want with your stuff at home, but if you make videos on it, well ...

I often ride my bicycle, and I also do "historical cycling". I might be tempted to installing a 11-speed electromechanical derailleur and carbon wheels on my 1940 bicycle, which not only it has no derailleurs at all but it also has wheels with wooden rims!

If I have to go uphill I have two options:
A: stop me, and do it on foot, dragging the bike
B: stop, turn the bike upside down, remove the rear wheel, and turn it backwards, it has a 16-teeth sprocket on the right, and a 22-teeth sprocket on the left.

Of course it's very uncomfortable compared to modern bicyciles which can change metric ratios literally with one click (Campagnolo Super Record Wireless 11Speed), as well as the fact that they offer different metric ratios, making you work less hard, but ...

... but it's part of the game 

- - -

Now, you are telling that, without SSD, the computer is unusable because it takes 2-4 minutes to boot?

I've been using an MDD since 2005 with GNU/Linux, and I have never, I repeat never, installed one of those bloody modern SSDs!

I have a 7200rpm Seagate internal HDD 20GB, other stuff on NFS via a 10/100Mbps NIC, and it's fine for compiling and cross-compiling { m68hc11, m68k, mips-r2k, SH1, ... }, or for all the things I've been doing for  ~19 years on that computer.

Think I even wrote my PhD thesis on that computer with LaTex!

@ActionRetro has done all kinds of mods on his MDD, making ... ummm, I think 4 or 5 videos on Youtube; I remember replacing the PSU with a more efficient modern one, and this makes more sense when your original PSU dies and you don't have the budget to look for a original spare part, which costs... too much.

Note, he always did it saying that he only did it to see if, from a technical point of view (he has more hw skills), the thing is feasible or not!
Rather than that I do it to teach someone something or relive the emotion of the time!

Notice the difference in attitude 

[geerlingguy]

Worse still to this, another level of bigotry on Youtube is added by proposing to the point of exasperation "RPI" as NAS.

The definition of bigotry is a bit lost in this discussion.

I love building incredibly dumb things with Raspberry Pi (and a ton of other tech), and learning along the way, and there's obviously an audience for that. Just like I enjoy watching videos of someone rebuild an old sailing yacht Ship-of-Theseus-style; I don't argue whether his old wooden boat is still the same boat after 98% of the material is replaced, I enjoy seeing his passion for the craft, and learning a ton about sailing, boat construction, and woodworking.

If 100 people do something better than I do (probably 99.9% of the people on this forum included), it doesn't mean there's no value in me doing it. It'd be a terribly depressing life if I said "ah, someone else has designed a PCB, I shall not ever try."

Instead, my plan is to design a PCB, which will go horribly wrong for many many attempts, and maybe someday I'll make a good one. Maybe not. But I will learn a lot, and hopefully it could inspire a few people to get into the field of EE. I think that's a good thing, so I carry on, regardless if EEVBlog users love or hate my methods

Now, you are telling that, without SSD, the computer is unusable because it takes 2-4 minutes to boot?

Never said it was unusable, only that it was "the least fun part of reliving a retro experience".

And while you may love spinning rust, I know a great number of folks who upgraded to SSDs the second they came on the market, while the G4 MDD was still their primary and newest workstation, so it's not like putting an SSD inside one is destroying the very soul of what makes it tick.

If I wanted to do that, I'd replace the motherboard with a Raspberry Pi 

[brucehoult]

If 100 people do something better than I do (probably 99.9% of the people on this forum included), it doesn't mean there's no value in me doing it. It'd be a terribly depressing life if I said "ah, someone else has designed a PCB, I shall not ever try."

I for one am glad that you're making a lot of videos about different things. And Christopher too (really good videos). Maybe even Gary Explains. Or maybe not.

Hope you don't mind my affectionate name for you too much.

[geerlingguy]

If 100 people do something better than I do (probably 99.9% of the people on this forum included), it doesn't mean there's no value in me doing it. It'd be a terribly depressing life if I said "ah, someone else has designed a PCB, I shall not ever try."

I for one am glad that you're making a lot of videos about different things. And Christopher too (really good videos). Maybe even Gary Explains. Or maybe not.

Hope you don't mind my affectionate name for you too much.

Ha! I've been called many things, it reminds me most of Yuengling, and that brings back good memories.

[DiTBho]

If I wanted to do that, I'd replace the motherboard with a Raspberry Pi 

and that's precisely why I don't like your chanel too much.

[DiTBho]

I have a YouTube channel, but I haven't uploaded any videos yet as I never consider any project "worthy" of the attention of the general public.

Well, we'll see. there are seven pending personal projects, carried out out of order in my free time. Sooner or later something will be uploaded.



This is my MDD. It never had the shells, I bought it second-hand, in very bad condition, and repaired it as best I could, paying little attention to its aesthetics.

When people complain that the fans make too much noise... now it's placed on a wooden pallet, 20 meters underground, in a sort of bunker room, while I'm on the ground floor, connected by fiber optics.

When I was a student, my mini-apartment measured 10x5 meters and had to contain a bed, a kitchenette with only induction plates and no gas burners, and a desk. I had placed the MDD in the corner of the desk, very close to the bed, and left it on at night to compile things.

Practically for four years I spent 12 hours - night and part of the afternoon - very close to those fans that everyone complains about.

Those Youtubers on YouTube who have to make their video to show how to replace the noisy fans because otherwise they absolutely can't stay near their vintage computer, ... ummm it sounds a bit like the people who claim to be "cycling enthusiasts" and then... after 20 km they complain so much that they can't help but ride ***only*** on a pedal-assisted (e)bicycle, because ... you know, with muscular pedaling... you sweat, and it's hard...

That bloody MDD has other, much more serious problems, and no one talks about it!
maybe I will, maybe not, we'll see ... 

[DiTBho]

Yesterday I tried a Gdium Liberty 1000, 10-Inch, Netbook by EMTEC
Loongson2F@900MHz, ~MIPS64/LE by STMicroelectronics, 512MB DDR2 RAM

ummm, both the aesthetics and ergonomics need to be completely overhauled, and the keyboard was/is so terrible that it needs to be redesigned from scratch or replaced with something from the old school IBM Thinkpad.

Also, yesterday I installed a brand new battery, but after four hours working in a couple of GNU/Linux text consoles (compiling stuff), I found that the battery was at about 7%.

I wonder: modern upgrades of this old chinese-mips-based laptops from 10+ years ago? 

 

[DiTBho]

(Tadpole SPARCbook 3000ST)

in the 90s, I guess it had a price tag of ~$20000 USD
but look at details:

• slim magnesium alloy body, military-grade, entirely metal except for the ergonomic handrest
• ergonomic handrest!!!
• IBM Thinkpad keyboard (IBM was an early investor in Tadpole)
• an LCD readout of system status

this is how non-x86 laptops should be designed!

(
edit:
ummm, Tedpole was Cuipertino based, and went out of business in 2013
I can infer that making laptops the way I would like them to be made ...
... I'm afraid it's uneconomical for making good business of them
 
)

[DiTBho]

In 2014, Novena looked promising, see here.
Basically i.MX6Q ARM processor from Freescale, coupled to a Xilinx Spartan6 FPGA.

The result was very different.
Again, ugly, uncomfortable frame, too high costs, etc

Any news? 

edit:
It appears that interest is close to zero

[DiTBho]

back to Teres1 ...

... in the very few free moments I have, when I'm not working on racing bikes, or training, so basically when it rains, I go ahead and fix a lot of things. And it really is a dud from the firmware up, at least by my standards.

I think it will take a couple more weeks to start saying "so I can actually carry it around, without the embarrassment of finding it totally useless".

- - -

The developers seem... only four... five guys in the world, and the interest (at least what you perceive from the both WEB and IRC) is close to zero, so I exchanged a few words with one of the developers who sometimes appears randomly, and he described the laptop as "not really meant to be a consumer product", and this confirms that is rather a platform to build upon or challenge project for engineers to fabricate the device from scratch.

All known, nothing new, this definition was fully expected, just then - unexpected - he also pointed outthat  "it's without OLIMEX's help for which it's very known in the OSHW community just that people don't have the required skills to use it".

I didn't expect this, that is, I thought that Olimex had a little more interest - I mean man-hours that can be allocated to their DIY-project = and that there were at least a couple of competent engineers behind it, but instead there are fewer people than I had estimated.

D'oh 

- - -

So even for the next two iterations { Teres-v1.5(2024-2nd-semester?), Teres-2.0(2025?-2026?) }, I'm afraid we don't expect the popularity to change since it's basically an object (and not a product, umm formally it is and will continue  to be a "do-it-yourself kit") aimed mainly at "technicians" who already own the Teres-v1.0 and who intend to carry out the modifications.

[DiTBho]

RISCV laptop

[brucehoult]

Ohh, I haven't watched that yet.

In case it's not mentioned (I'm sure Chris would, he's pretty thorough), the same CPU is also used on the Banana Pi BPI-M3, which he already reviewed, the Milk-V Jupiter MiniITX motherboard which Yearling reviewed, the SpacemiT MuseBook (and Muse Pi and Muse Box...), and the Sipeed Lichee Pi 3A which I've ordered but not yet received.

In terms of laptops, there is also the RISC-V main board for the Framework 13,, which uses the same JH7110 SoC as the old DC-Roma model, the VisionFive 2, Milk-V Mars, Pine64 Star64.

I've been using a BPI-F3 remotely via ssh, doing things such as Linux kernel builds and gcc builds. I'm finding it not actually any faster than the VisionFive 2, despite having eight cores not four. I think it doesn't have enough cache .. it's only IIRC 512 MB L2 cache per 4 core cluster, while the JH7110 has 2 MB for its 4 cores. Or maybe Banana Pi made a slow motherboard (e.g. RAM) and others such as Milk-V or DC-Roma might be able to do better.