non-x86 open-source-hardware laptops, let's take stock of Jul 2025

[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]

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.

[DiTBho]

DC-ROMA, price drop? See here. Only ~270 Euro + S/H.
Interesting. I remembered a much higher price and problems getting it 


edit:
url fixed.

[DiTBho]

A young dude, Byran Ee, made his Own ARM laptop

Blog, see here
GitHub, see here


Byran Ee, intervied by LTT

[brucehoult]

DC-ROMA, price drop? See here. Only ~270 Euro + S/H.
Interesting. I remembered a much higher price and problems getting it 

I see US$299 for that original JH7110 machine. It's been that since at least June 19 2024, as I noted at that date:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RISCV/comments/1djb16c/comment/l99y8j1/

And yes it was $1499 for the first 100 when preorders opened in late 2022

https://web.archive.org/web/20221128035027/https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/DC-ROMA-RISC-V-Development-Laptop_1600610157163.html

[DiTBho]

DC-ROMA, price drop? See here. Only ~270 Euro + S/H.
I see US$299 for that original JH7110 machine. It's been that since at least June 19 2024, as I noted at that date:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RISCV/comments/1djb16c/comment/l99y8j1/

And yes it was $1499 for the first 100 when preorders opened in late 2022

https://web.archive.org/web/20221128035027/https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/DC-ROMA-RISC-V-Development-Laptop_1600610157163.html

Yup, it's been a while since I read anything about it, busy with other things
I'm still working on the Olimex's Teres1.

I have zero budget right now, but at the end of 2025, I might buy a Roma and work on it

I have litteraly zero Gentoo building machines for RISC-V.
So if I take it in November/Dicember 2025 (Christmas present?), I expect to be up and running by February 2026.


edit: fix a missing quote

[brucehoult]

DC-ROMA, price drop? See here. Only ~270 Euro + S/H.

I see US$299 for that original JH7110 machine. It's been that since at least June 19 2024, as I noted at that date:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RISCV/comments/1djb16c/comment/l99y8j1/

And yes it was $1499 for the first 100 when preorders opened in late 2022

https://web.archive.org/web/20221128035027/https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/DC-ROMA-RISC-V-Development-Laptop_1600610157163.html

Yup, it's been a while since I read anything about it, busy with other things
I'm still working on the Olimex's Teres1.

I have zero budget right now, but at the end of 2025, I might buy a Roma and work on it

I have litteraly zero Gentoo building machines for RISC-V.
So if I take it in November/Dicember 2025 (Christmas present?), I expect to be up and running by February 2026.

If you don't actually need a laptop then you can get the same computing power in an SBC for about $50 e.g. Orange Pi RV for the DC-Roma or Orange Pi Rv2 for the DC-Roma II. Or if you want to spend $299 then you can get a lot more power.

Also there's a good chance there'll be much more powerful machines by the end of the year, though politics may interfere too.

[DiTBho]

If you don't actually need a laptop then you can get the same computing power in an SBC for about $50 e.g. Orange Pi RV for the DC-Roma or Orange Pi Rv2 for the DC-Roma II. Or if you want to spend $299 then you can get a lot more power.

Also there's a good chance there'll be much more powerful machines by the end of the year, though politics may interfere too.

my 2009 intel mac-mini died, and my Mac-Book Air M2 laptop was stolen.

I bought a new intel mac-mini, still 2009-model, but with 8GB of ram.
I moved the kernel from x86-32bit-profile to x86-64bit-profile.
Still 32-bit userland, but 64-bit kernel, so I can address all the ram.

And as my only laptop I have a lenovo i7-16GB-ram thing, bought second hand
Unfortunately I can't delete Windows 10, because I need it for work.

In short, the only laptop on which I can develop "weird" things is the Teres1.
Which has a nice motherboard, a nice LCD, but ...
... as for the keyboard, touchpad and plastics it is very "toy-like".
They used the shell of a Chinese laptop designed for secondary school children.

I have two projects where I design graphical interfaces.
A laptop, where I can modify the firmware, the kernel, and the userland, is the ideal option.

On the ground I developed
+ a very nice bootloader
+ very useful userspace applications
+ a fast alternative to "openRC".

All C/89 and myC(1) code that I can reuse.


(1) doesn't compile for ARM7, and doesn't support RISC-V
Only MIPS32-32 and ARM4 (StrongArm) at the moment, but ... I might add a machine layer 

[DiTBho]

A young dude, Byran Ee, made his Own ARM laptop
Blog, see here
GitHub, see here

Any comment for the Byran Ee's laptop? 

[Nominal Animal]

A young dude, Byran Ee, made his Own ARM laptop

The idea is extremely interesting.  I took a look, but the blog is too shiny and about him/what he did, rather than what the result is, for me personally.  I guess I'm getting old, no longer with the times 😥.

[brucehoult]

If you don't actually need a laptop then you can get the same computing power in an SBC for about $50 e.g. Orange Pi RV for the DC-Roma or Orange Pi Rv2 for the DC-Roma II. Or if you want to spend $299 then you can get a lot more power.

Also there's a good chance there'll be much more powerful machines by the end of the year, though politics may interfere too.

my 2009 intel mac-mini died, and my Mac-Book Air M2 laptop was stolen.

I bought a new intel mac-mini, still 2009-model, but with 8GB of ram.
I moved the kernel from x86-32bit-profile to x86-64bit-profile.
Still 32-bit userland, but 64-bit kernel, so I can address all the ram.

And as my only laptop I have a lenovo i7-16GB-ram thing, bought second hand
Unfortunately I can't delete Windows 10, because I need it for work.

In short, the only laptop on which I can develop "weird" things is the Teres1.

So from this review ...

https://www.cnx-software.com/2017/02/02/olimex-teres-i-a64-diy-open-source-hardware-laptop-kit-design-complete-to-sell-for-225-euros/

... I get that the Teres1 has an Allwinner A64 quad core ARM Cortex-A53 processor @ 1.2 GHz with 1 GB RAM.

So basically very similar to a Raspberry Pi 3. And a 1366×768 pixel display, and some eMMC that I found a complaint from people that it only does 20 MB/s.

Except possibly for the level of support for the ImagTech GPU, I can confidently say that the DC-Roma would be a step up, though not a huge one. The SiFive U74 cores are more like an Arm A55 than an A53, and are running at 1.5 GHz not 1.2, so you're probably looking at about 1.7x faster.  Plus with 8 GB RAM many things work well that would be impossible or at least take 1000x longer with 1 GB RAM, and in general use everything will be in the disk cache in RAM.

The 1080x1920 screen is quite a bit better and with a recent software build should play 1080p video no problem. The SD card will do around 60 MB/s, and the 1 TB SSD better than 300 MB/s.

Overall performance is I'd say similar to an original 2008 MacBook Air, which I had (and loved). That was a 1.6 GHz Core2 Duo which dropped to 1.2 GHz after about 3 seconds then 800 MHz after 30 seconds.  It's definitely I think slower than a 2009 Mac Mini. Actually, I have one ... I should pull it out of a box somewhere and try it against my RISC-V boards.

The U74 cores aren't as good as Core2 at the same speed, but it has more of them AND it's not going to throttle down in any reasonable scenario.

The one big lack is there is no SIMD. Nothing comparable to SSE or NEON.

The DC-Roma II has 256 bit vector processing.

[DiTBho]

A young dude, Byran Ee, made his Own ARM laptop

The idea is extremely interesting.  I took a look, but the blog is too shiny and about him/what he did, rather than what the result is, for me personally.  I guess I'm getting old, no longer with the times 😥.

yup, same option about his blog, but I don't have other material, except his github files and the interview done by LTT.
In short you can consider that video on youtube as a sort of "visual summary", where you listen to what they say and evaluate for yourself what you see.

[DiTBho]

Overall performance is I'd say similar to an original 2008 MacBook Air

The problem is not the performance 

[DiTBho]

I mean, I'm one of the few who still develops and uses Xscale PXA270 PDA (Zaurus-SL)
and I don't complain about 5Mbyte/sec of storage on the microdrive, 1Mbyte/sec USB (OHCI), nor about the CPU that runs at 400Mhz.

I don't like the plastic feel of the teres1, the keyboard, and the touchpad are terrible, in addition to some rather stupid hw defects,
such as

• after 1000 insertions, the power connector breaks and needs to be replaced
• the ucSD card enters upside down and there is no extraction pin, you have to use a toothpick, which can damage it
• there is no network port, for the reason that the SoC comes from a tablet, which only has wifi, and the ethernet, although present in the soc, has not been implemented because they "copied" the tablet design from scratch, therefore setting the multifunction bits for other things. This when it was very feasible to also implement the lan!
• there is only one USB port

and similar defects that make using the laptop outside the lab unpleasant or in any case annoying.

There are also problems with firmware, kernel, and userspace, but these are things that I can fix, and that I am fixing by myself.

It takes a long time, and unfortunately I can only work on weekends, and not always, because I also have to fix the Zaurus-SL, and here too I am practically alone, as you ca see here.

I really hope that the Roma-laptop is better built than the Teres1, that it has at least a better keyboard, touchpad, and plastics, and better connectors, because that's what I expect it to have!

Performance-wise it's not a big deal, all the software I've developed runs fine on the Zaurus-SL, and if it flies on the Teres1 ... on the Roma... I think it's even too fast 

[brucehoult]

I really hope that the Roma-laptop is better built than the Teres1, that it has at least a better keyboard, touchpad, and plastics, and better connectors, because that's what I expect it to have!

I have not personally seen or touched a Roma, or the suspiciously similar MuseBook (which is the same CPU as the Roma II), but those who bought them say they're the same quality as you'd expect from a similar priced made in China laptop from HP, Asus etc.

If you want better build quality then there is the Frame13 with the custom RISC-V mainboard from DC-Roma. But that is quite a lot more money.

Performance-wise it's not a big deal, all the software I've developed runs fine on the Zaurus-SL, and if it flies on the Teres1 ... on the Roma... I think it's even too fast 

That's good. I don't want to see people buying a RISC-V laptop at the moment expecting 2010's x86 performance and being disappointed. The current offerings are like Pentium III or PPC G4, but more cores (and 64 bit). Or, yes, the lowest end Core2, like the original MacBook Air.

I personally find the level of performance of the JH7110 SBCs (e.g. VisionFive 2, Pine64 Star64 and PineTabV, Milk-V Mars, Orange Pi RV) to be fine and when I was contracting to Samsung a year ago helping on the DotNET port to RISC-V the VisionFive  2 was the reference target. The only problem I have with it myself is that it's limited to 8 GB RAM which make e.g. building current GCC challenging unless you restrict the build to '-j1' which is a shame on a quad core board. Older GCC (e.g. 9) is fine. Current GCC is *just* ok to build on a 16 GB RAM machine with '-j4' or even '-j8' if you have swap enabled -- it uses a few hundred MB, but not enough to slow it down.

My first laptop was a 16 MHz 68000 (PowerBook 100), followed by a 33 MHz 68030 (Duo 230). I did a TON of programming on those things in the mid 90s, took them all over the world. The 266 MHz "Mainstreet/PDQ" G3 I got in 1998 felt like a HUGE step up from those.

These 1.5 GHz quad core machines are much better than any of those.

My 24 core 5.4 GHz Core i9 laptop just feels like magic, and is very spoiling.

[DiTBho]

MuseBook (which is the same CPU as the Roma II)

I never looked into it more than what I read on Reddit a while back.
They said it was supposed to be a competitor, but it looks so damn similar.

I think this topic is followed by few people.
I expected someone to come here and post something like, umm 

[DiTBho]

The only problem I have with it myself is that it's limited to 8 GB RAM which make e.g. building current GCC challenging unless you restrict the build to '-j1' which is a shame on a quad core board. Older GCC (e.g. 9) is fine. Current GCC is *just* ok to build on a 16 GB RAM machine with '-j4' or even '-j8' if you have swap enabled -- it uses a few hundred MB, but not enough to slow it down.

Don't talk to me about it, they seem to have gone crazy with gcc!
It takes forever to compile unless you have modern machines.

You can't have more than 8GB of ram on machines like the HP-PARISC C36xx C37xx, which only have 1 core!
The C8000 can have to physical CPUs, so 2 cores, and uses non-proprietary ram, but at most it supports 16GB!

Machines like PowerMac G4s, even 2xPPC7450@1.6Ghz (the fastest), are doomed as they don't physically address more than 2GB.

it's becoming a serious problem compile gcc, I have serious problems with Catalyst, so much so that I often fall behind, at Gcc v7 and don't go any further!

And not only that, even "running modern gcc" is problematic. If you remember I had opened a topic precisely on the fact that gcc v7 crashes on routers like the rb532a that addresses 64MB of ram.

Just crazy