News:

SMF - Just Installed!

Main Menu
Menu

Show posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.

Show posts Menu

Messages - jjSuper1

#1
Suggestions / Re: Display?
January 01, 2015, 07:14:45 PM
Care to elaborate?

4:3
Not sure why you want a square screen.  This could totally be done, however it would likely be more expensive as this is not the main consumer grade mass manufactured display technology currently being produced.  That = more $$
Secondly, while I believe most games have the ability to deal with a square format, most video content is (and always was) wide screen.


120Hz Display
Refresh rates don't really matter on TFT screens (I'll explain below), and if you are referring to the ability of some modern screens to oversample to 120Hz, or those rare but true 120Hz display panels, then the video chip would need to also be capable of delivering the content at 120Hz.

TFT screens do not refresh in the same way as a CRT screen does, where the image is redrawn at a certain rate. A TFT monitor will only support refresh rates coming from the graphics chip between 60Hz and 75Hz.  The "recommended" refresh rate for a TFT is 60hz, a value which would be difficult to use on a CRT. The "maximum" refresh rate of a TFT is 75hz.  This has to do with the way the LCD driver works.  Since the whole screen is not refreshed at once.   Those fake 120Hz screens use additional hardware to spit out literally extra frames of the same screen image; this has the added effect of reducing motion blur (a terrible thing if you ask me), and would, in a laptop, require additional power.

Strobed Display:
I will never, even as a gamer, understand the war on motion blur.  If you don't want motion blur, please go back to the 80's when we didn't have motion blur (per se) on our analog video as the frame rate was basically locked at 60 interlaced fps.
Anyhow, if you want the ability to turn this feature on and off, I don't see a reason to not include it (if it is even available in a laptop screen).

2560x1920
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
Go learn about display resolution, screen size, and the list of monitors that display this resolution. 
I'm sorry, I have nothing personally against your choice of resolution; a better selection would be 3200 × 1800 (which is 16:9 I know), and is readily purchasable.  If you still want to go square, there is the choice of     2560 × 1700 [3:2] or 1600 x 1200 [4:3]. 
There is a maximum resolution outputable by the DisplayPort standard, but also note that as the chosen resolution increases on a single connection, the refresh rate decreases.

There are always trade offs.
#2
Notebook chassis / Re: What about 3D printed chassis
January 01, 2015, 12:51:04 AM
3d printed prosthetic limbs have been printed, as well as firearms and race cars... I think it will be fine if suitable materials are used.
#3
Gnu/Linux Distros / Re: POSIX / Open Source Reference
December 29, 2014, 12:25:38 AM
I personally didn't find it hard to install, it just takes a little longer because everything is literally compiled from source.  There is also a fair bit of reading, and less hand holding, which I liked.   

We will already know the hardware exactly, so we could simply provide an installation image, having already compiled the base system. then the user simply burns it to disk or usb and installs as usual.  Because the hardware will be mostly standardized, it would be easy to to this.
However we could also just pre-install?  Of course, this gets into the question of how the end user is going to acquire the actual machine, and if it will come with any storage disks, or if the user will need to supply their own hard disk.

I am also actively following http://bedrocklinux.org/  as it aims to let all the flavors play nice together.   

I believe my line of thought is going in the direction of "get the hardware working and OS running" - I hope that helps.
Please be annoying!  Sometimes we all need that.



#4
ppc64 is an identifier commonly used within the Linux and GCC open source software communities to refer to the target architecture for applications optimized for 64-bit PowerPC- and Power Architecture processors, frequently used when compiling source code.

ppc64le is a pure little endian mode introduced with the POWER8 - the Motorola/FreeScale e6500 chip seems to support this mode.
    ppc64le was implemented with the new POWER8 design to make it easier for x86 based users to compile software for use on ppc64,
and for ppc64 based machines to use x86 specific binaries (i.e. installing from a package, not compiling from source).  This mode is switchable at run-time.  PCI functions in little-endian mode exclusively, as does x86.  Therefore it is necessary to allow PowerPC chips to masquerade in either eindian state to share memory.

QuoteFrom Wikipedia: An interesting side effect of this implementation is that a program can store a 64-bit value (the longest operand format) to memory while in one endian mode, switch modes, and read back the same 64-bit value without seeing a change of byte order. This will not be the case if the motherboard is switched at the same time.

Both forms of endianness are common.  The Intel x86 processor represents a common little-endian architecture, and IBM mainframes are all big-endian.  Big-endian is the most common convention in networking (including IPv6), and little-endian is popular among microprocessors in part due to Intel's significant historical influence on microprocessor designs.  There are also some bi-endian processors which can operate either in little-endian or big-endian mode.

There is, as I see it little reason to worry about which mode our system will run in at this time, but this provides some insight into future choices.
#5
Gnu/Linux Distros / POSIX / Open Source Reference
December 28, 2014, 07:51:58 PM
Current State of open source Linux operating systems:

CRUX PPC 3.0 - ppc64 via multilib toolchain

Debian 7.7.7 - Both "Stable" and "Testing" are built regularly, Testing iso (ppc64) rebuild weekly.
However, because most Debian packages are installed binary, this is not really a viable development
choice.

Fedora 20 - Has some major kernel bugs for PPC64 but overall stable.

FreeBSD 10.1 - ppc64 build available
netBSD - viable/mostly supported

Gentoo - ppc64, 32 and 64bit userlands (autobuild date 2014-Sep-08) - uclib experimental -
This is the most viable, as all software is compiled from source, extensive documentation exists also.

Ubuntu 14.04 - Apparently available, some kernel bugs based on specific hardware
See Debian.

______________________

ReactOS - Windows NT Clone is also said to be ported to PowerISA, but not confirmed.
#6
I like some of these a lot;

Maestro - sounds like something from the 80's, along the lines on Atari, or Commodore. "Introducing the new Maestro 644!"

Power-Zen - I also like a lot.
#7
Notebook chassis / Re: What about 3D printed chassis
December 28, 2014, 04:25:15 PM
I think the 3D printed idea is wonderful.
Would need:  Someone solid with CAD program, someone with access to 3D printer (find local Hackerspace?).

The CAD design is the tough part, but I could see it designed in two parts, like all laptop cases.
SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk