/tech/ - Technology

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Here's an unboxing/first impressions video of the Librem5 that show they sent out a review sample with a fucked up screen protector. Keep in mind this thing is selling for $800 on their website.

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Due to family circumstances I had an early Christmas this year. Because cafe's /cyber/ doesn't work with my system for some asinine reason (I've tried literally every browser I can, nothing can get around their broken-as-fuck captcha) I'm dumping it here.

This was my build of Back7's Raspberry Pi quick kit. frame is 3D printed, screws were sourced from a pill container of electronic screws, and a literal bucket of bolts. Everything else was Christmas presents.

>>588
Very cool, I'm looking for the day I can make money so I can buy shit like this on a whim and fuck around with it however I want.

I've been waiting for something like the Pinetime to come out for awhile now to build a small night vision device. Using a smartwatch as a base build means all I have to do is stick on a high sensitivity camera and a few IR LEDs to get a working camera and monocular eyepiece that's light enough to be mounted on a helmet. Depending on the cost very low resolution thermal imaging might be possible in the future too.

Looked into getting a typical Android based smartwatch for the longest time and while some models have higher resolution and larger screens at a lower price they're very limited in what you can do software wise. The community on getting a libre OS running on them exists but there isn't much activity or users.

I'm sure there are hundreds of great uses for a small self contained ARM computer that has a tiny screen and integrated power management in it that sells for less than $100. We haven't seen them yet cause modern smartwatches are garbage fashion accessories first and computers second.

>>588
Very nice. Pelican case is a nice touch. Any idea how much you have into it Anon?

>>645
I had to work around a non-tech-savvy family to get this to me, so it's much more expensive than it could be. I would estimate around $250 USD was paid for the parts.

The most expensive parts were the RPi unit, the screen and the pelican case, the entire cost for those were $45,$70 and $50 respectively. I have my own 3D printer, so the filament and printed parts are technically free. 

I've also bought a small wireless adapater and a bewinner bluetooth keyboard. It's important that it's bewinner because that is basically the only brand of keyboard I've found on amazon (ugh) that is tiny enough to fit in this case. Otherwise, I would say "go big or go home" when it comes to keyboards using a device like this.

You could easily cut costs on this kind of project by sourcing them from cheaper sites and something other than a pelican case (a hard-plastic lunchbox would be neat). But if you're broke as shit, then I would stick to stuff like pi zero.

When is the pinephone getting restocked?

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>>461 (OP) 
One word. China!

>>1338
The chinks arent restocking their hwrdware fast enough

>>1397
No shit. Took 3 months for my order.

I think the answer is no, but does anyone of anything that is ARM on real hardware? Socketed, etc. Everything ARM that I know if is embedded systems, phones, SBC, whatever. Why not a desktop or laptop with ARM for processor (socketed too pls, not soldered) and the usual standardized and replaceable parts. GPU, drives, RAM, what have you.

>>1407
The ARM ecosystem is traditionally cucked. Each ARM soc does things differently, because they are designed usually for specific applications and boards. There is no BIOS or UEFI, vendors typically provide you with a non-mainline patched u-boot blob and binary kernel and that's it. Many chips don't have sata and pci-e, have particular memory timing requirements (so no "common" ram sticks for you) and other shits to cheap out as most as possible.
I was looking for the ultimate blobless libre SBC and it's either too expensive or not completely free.
On the software side. If you are lucky enough to have most functions works on mainline kernel, Gentoo solves most problems.

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All my computers are ARM now.  This is my main one, a cubietruck with A20 SoC, 2 GB RAM, SATA, VGA, 1000M Ethernet.  It doesn't need any special firmware blobs for basic operation.  I don't use the OpenGL stuff at all, and I boot it with /dev/fb0 at 640x480.  I don't use Xorg, unless I have to, but I don't like to.  I mean I really, really, really don't like GUI shit at all!
What else... it's Ubuntu but I use busybox for init instead of systemd.  I use Ubuntu (actually Armbian), because it already has all the necessary drivers, including the NAND flash.  I have Linux installed to the sata HDD, and also a separate install on the microSD as a backup, and also on the NAND flash as a third backup.  It was a bit of trouble to get the NAND formatter properly, and eMMC are probably easier to work with.  Also newer kernels don't have driver for this NAND flash, so I'm stuck on this old kernel.  But I don't care really.  I don't run any network services at all on here, and don't run any javascript browsers locally.  It's still a mainline kernel though, and so is the u-boot.  I chose this board carefully to avoid blobs and fulfill my needs.  I doubt it would suffice for most people.  I'm not most people.  I don't like modern computers at all, and in fact I'd rather be back in the 80's on an 8-bit micro.  So there you go.

>>1409
Cubietruck was the only A20 with 2GB ram. But it was hard to find and is expensive. I ended up on Olinuxino a20 lime2. 1GB ram is one of the main performance bottleneck other than the slow CPU.
Wayland works much better with mainline lima.

>>1409
How much did you pay for a Cubietruck? An i.mx6 Wandboard looks better for the same price.

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>>1426
100 euros, pretty much.  That was back in 2018 though, when you could still find them easily.  Now most of their distributors are out of stock.  Well I guess there's NewIT in the UK, but they don't sell just the board by itself, they want to sell you also an ugly metal case, battery, and SSD, none of which I have any use for.
Anyway I don't want to spend money i.mx6 or any SoC with processor that does speculative execution.  That mostly leaves only Cortex-A7 and A53 (plus older ARM stuff and microcontrollers), but there's enough choice of SoCs built on those to do what I want.  I have this A20 board, and an Olimex A64 board with 2 GB RAM also that I reserved for running subversive garbage like Firefox.  That way the nasty shit stays contained in a controlled environment and doesn't affect my main computer.  I don't like or trust VMs also.  Since the hardware is cheap (100 bucks or less for a board), I can simply buy as many as I need.  But right now I only got these two, and also a tablet (with A64 SoC and 1 GB RAM) that was gifted to me.  I haven't used it because it's Android...  I'll probably convert it to Linux eventually, but will need to open it up to access the UART.
All of this leaves the question: who bought up all the damn cubietrucks? Clearly nobody wants them, except for freaks like me who prefer a slower, simpler system.

I’ve been using a pinephone as a daily for a few months now and I can say definitively that linux is nowhere near close to being daily ready. The only distros that even work as phones are KDE and Phosh, and even then they are clunky/slow/glitchy messes that barely run. Most other alternatives don’t even have full phone functionality (no drivers for the telecoms hardware, for example). And as someone who is a bit of a luddite, it absolutely does not pass the grandma test. 
Only get one if you just want a novel pocket PC you can browse the net on.

>>8949
>The only distros that even work as phones are KDE and Phosh
Ubuntu Touch does. But not on your shitty overpriced Pine Phone.
https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/device/pinephone/

>>1409
What do you compute on it?

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>>9050
I don't "compute" anything special, just regular Linux programs. The A20 is much more powerful than my first PC (a 486DX/33) so I can even run old games like Doom natively much better than I could on the 486. But I have to use a port (Chocolate Doom or PrBoom) because DOSBox is pretty slow on ARM. In fact it's not worth playing most later DOS games for that reason, but older ones from the 80's generally run fine. And I can run most 8-bit emulators well, except for C64 because VICE emulator wants GPU  and/or SDL2 for some reason. But that's not essential to me, as most 8-bit games got ported to multiple systems, and I can usually just use an Atari 400/800, MSX, Amstrad, Speccy, or MSX. In fact, even Atari ST and Amiga games work well on here, but I have to use e-uae instead of more recent Amiga emulators (since have same issue as VICE).
My favorite thing though is text games, not just text adventures but anything made with text or similar (Petscii, IBM-PC ANSI, TRS-80 glyphs, etc.)

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>>9055
> MSX
Uh I meant to type Apple II instead of MSX twice. But yeah, the games often got ported to several platforms.
Also, love me some BASIC! A lot of old games were programmed in it, even commercial releases.

>>9055
So you want to have the simplicity of 8bit home computers back, is that your goal?
Does this ARM system fullfill this demand? It is propably still much more complicated than your 486. 

I adore that you can find enjoyment in such simplistic computer games, regardless of the technological breakthroughs and increasingly sophisticated, ever more realistic video games of our time.

I also certainly find ARM an interesting plattform, but there are just so many cheap/free x64 systems lying around that I wouldn't bother with such an overpriced system which also isn't expandable.
I also think the processing power just wouldn't suffice for my needs, especially since I use the web and vastly bloated webbrowsers. 
Do you also sometimes use it for such normalfag purposes? Did you use the ARM PC to create this post?

>>9065
I tried to use A20 as my main, but all these normalfag browser shit is just too slow on the board. The only way to do it is remote control a x64 machine with it.

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>>9065
I guess my main goal is to not get sucked into the botnet, or to minimize my exposure. Long ago I had the 486 desktop computer and some more recent i386 stuff, but I left it behind when I moved overseas. Then I bought a modern shitty budget amd64 laptop and suffered through the bad keyboard and 1366x768 display until it finally broke and I could get something else. I made sure the replacement wasn't going to have ME/PSP or speculative processor, and that didn't leave me too many options.
I do in fact post here with the A20 board via old web browsers (Links and Lynx). I don't use this board to run a modern browser, because although it can it's pretty slow. Instead I have another A64 board running OpenBSD that I basically dedicated to chromium. I'd much rather not use the modern web at all, but that's not realistic, so I do my best to minimize and contain it. But I have to warn you, even A64 is pretty slow for the modern web. For me that's not a big problem because I seldom need to use it.
Otherwise uh I guess I'd be a lot happier if this was the 80's or early 90's and I had an 8-bit computer, no Internet access, and a big library full of books, boardgames (and a lot more privacy!) But those days are long gone, so I kind of have to just play pretend.

>>8998
Scroll down, shit cunt
“Not yet capable of connecting to mobile carriers”

>>9760
That was the point. The device isn't properly supported by Ubuntu Touch.
Other cheaper devices are.

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>>461 (OP) 
What ever happened to the PineNote and why isn't it in stock? Is it just unattainium with the whole US-China trade war going on or are they still developing the thing since E-ink displays are a really difficult market to get in? They haven't made any mentions about it on their JewTube channel for about a year and a half either as far as I'm aware of.
I hope work out what ever is going on eventually because I really like the idea of having an E-ink tablet that isn't sold by Google or Amazon for reading manga and doing some light weight work in without frying my corneas.

>>10173
I think it’s a combo of trade war and inflation.
China’s been claiming the US importers dumped (canceled) 60 billion worth of orders on them. If you can get someone in China maybe me, I got a business trip in a week, no idea how to keep ourselves anonymous in the mail though... shipping in china requires your passport/ID as a foreigner to buy and ship it to you it should be pretty cheap unless it’s bleeding edge tech.

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>>10173
>I really like the idea of having an E-ink tablet that isn't sold by Google or Amazon for reading manga
I have a Kobo (Libra 2, specifically) e-Reader and it fits this description (not sure what you mean by "doing some light weight work" though).
It's not open source, but it doesn't lock you into a jewish ecosystem (unlike Kindle), and it's very easy to hack and customize, and it's much more affordable that what I predict something PineNote would be. Probably also applies to most or all Kobo e-Readers in general.
Though if by E-ink tablet you mean an actual tablet with Android or something similar, for doing various tasks other than reading, then I don't know.
<PICTURE UNRELATED (also my opinion about the picture: the person who made it is probably a homo, lol)>

>>10175
Yeah, guy who made that image is definitely a queer. If you have to point that kind of stuff out to bystanders, then it wasn't a big problem in the first place.

>>10175
>this isn't realistic 
>this isn't realistic 
>this isn't realistic 
>this isn't "artistically necessary"
If you're going to complain about bullshit at least keep it consistent, this is just disappointing.

>>10175
>Satoko should not have hips wide enough for a gap. She's fucking 10, not 18.
Why are normalniggers obsessed with the age of fictional characters?

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>>10175
I like the art, but funny.

>>10187
Reality is realistic, and it fucking sucks.