<megi>
that's re the linux-sunxi wiki entry about your wip on this. it worked quite fine on A83T
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<Asara>
:q
<Asara>
woops :(
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<catphish>
someone ought to maintain a database of sunxi boards with chips and pricing, looking for cheap boards with multiple cpu cores, lots of chinese listings to wade through :)
<KotCzarny>
just go to aliexpress?
<catphish>
that's where i'm looking mostly
<catphish>
but there are so many possible search terms
<catphish>
like every possible allwiner chip
<vagrantc>
at least many of the names are almost the same
<catphish>
ah, not see orange pi before, those look delightfully cheap
<KotCzarny>
lol?
<KotCzarny>
btw. go to xunlong store
<KotCzarny>
it's the source
<kilobyte>
catphish: depends on use case, but indeed a simple list could be useful
<catphish>
in my case, i basically want any board with a sunxi with the multiple cpu cores, wondering how cheap they go
<catphish>
could use an "approx price" column, but ideal
<KotCzarny>
it doesnt cover everything, but is a start for a new folks to select needed peripherials
<KotCzarny>
i think licheepi is even cheaper
<catphish>
ultimately i'd love to make my own, but probably not worth the work
<KotCzarny>
ahm, no, it's single core
<catphish>
orange pi zero looks perfect
<KotCzarny>
keep in ming xr819 on opi0 is atrocious
<KotCzarny>
*mind
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<catphish>
that's ok, i don't need network :)
<kilobyte>
the "needed peripherals" part often bites. I for example want a decent machine with video output on either dual-link DVI or DP (HDMI is no good). Not on any Allwinners I see, bought a RockPro64 that _claims_ to do it over USB C, so let's see if that'll work...
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<catphish>
for me, the only peripheral i'm interested in at the moment is hdmi at 1080p
<KotCzarny>
then opi0 is not for you
<KotCzarny>
it lacks hdmi
<KotCzarny>
only cvbs
<kilobyte>
right. Buy two monitors at 1080p, big-resolution monitors are not worth the effort. :/
<mru>
I use two 2560x1440 monitors
<kilobyte>
hey, there's that c-sky board for $6, it says it does 1080p well :p
<kilobyte>
perhaps only 64MB ram, and an arch that only just hit mainline, but... :p
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<kilobyte>
mru: there's a threshold between 2560x1440 and 2560x1600; older versions of HDMI handle the former fine but not the latter; the monitors I bought are old so they can't do new HDMI
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<mru>
these ones require dual-link dvi
<mru>
or displayport
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<catphish>
KotCzarny: oh, i didn't see it didn't have hdmi, that's somehing i will need :)
<kilobyte>
mru: ... ok so you're on the same boat as me. Any hints in case that RockPro64 won't work?
<catphish>
the list on the linux-sunxi wiki has the connectivity listed, so i'll browse :)
<KotCzarny>
yeah, and you can always open particular board page
<mru>
catphish: do you need ready to go system, or are you able/willing to make a carrier board for a SoM?
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<mru>
if the latter, there are many more options
<catphish>
orange pi one looks like it'd work, for $10
<catphish>
mru: actually ultimately i'd prefer to make my own board, for now i'm just getting a feel for how cheap one can go
<catphish>
it's unlikely my project will get that far, but i like to learn-ahead :)
<catphish>
i make boards for stm32, but bga seems a bit much for me
<KotCzarny>
catphish: if your device going to be idling much, you should consider ones with voltage regulation for cpu and working cpufreq
<catphish>
is that not handled internally by the soc? :(
<mru>
bga is annoying in that visual inspection is impossible
<catphish>
i can just about solder qfn, but not sure i'm ready to solder a SoC :0
<mru>
and you might need to go 6-layer (or more) to route all the signals
<catphish>
indeed, again i've only done 2 layer boards
<mru>
qfn is easy enough
<catphish>
so this might be beyond me for now
<KotCzarny>
nope, voltage regulation is done via external chip
<catphish>
interesting
<KotCzarny>
see pmu/vreg column
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<KotCzarny>
some board are permanently set to 1.3V (some bananas with H3)
<KotCzarny>
which makes them require heatsink+fan for stable operation
<catphish>
so orange pi one costs $10 + $5 shipping, it has a 1v1 or 1.3 selection
<KotCzarny>
opipc costs few bucks more and has larger board and programmable voltage
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<catphish>
more ram too
<catphish>
much better choice :)
<KotCzarny>
and more usb ports
<KotCzarny>
so you see, it boils down to requirements/target
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<catphish>
yeah indeed
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<catphish>
mru: where would one find modules you mentioned?
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<catphish>
$15 for orange pi pc, so yeah, happy with that kinda pricing
<KotCzarny>
need emmc?
<KotCzarny>
its nice to have
<KotCzarny>
or if you run baremetal os, you can choose board with spi chip soldered already
<karlp>
there's not many options outside orangepi lineup, nanopi linuep and the coupleof bananapi lineups
<catphish>
i like my lemaker, but it's a lot more expensive
<KotCzarny>
a20 is expensive
<KotCzarny>
for some weird reason
<mru>
cubietech do some full boards and modules
<KotCzarny>
catphish: also, you might consider just cannnibalizing some old tablet
<KotCzarny>
you will get display and battery for free
<catphish>
the H series chips seem better and cheaper weirdly
<catphish>
(than the A20)
<catphish>
how does one even boot the orange pi pc? it doesn't appear to have any internal or external non volatile memory
<KotCzarny>
sdcard
<KotCzarny>
all allwinner chips have boot sequence starting from sdcard
<catphish>
oh, sorry, yeah , just spotted the sd card on the back
<mru>
better is relative
<KotCzarny>
i think its sdcard / emmc / nand / spi / usb(fel)
<catphish>
soldered flash would be nice i guess, so then one upgrades to the pc+
<mru>
we picked a20 for a recent project because it was a better fit
<catphish>
yeah i'm just using fel for now
<catphish>
hopefully the work i've done on the a20 DE will translate to the H3
<KotCzarny>
a20 has g2d
<KotCzarny>
h3 has no 2d accel
<plaes>
no driver, though :)
<KotCzarny>
:)
<catphish>
i didn't see the point of g2d
<catphish>
but i assume there is a point to it
<KotCzarny>
he writes bare metal almost
<mru>
a20 has canbus which was a requirement for us
<catphish>
yeah i'm writing bare metal, right now using a simple framebuffer
<KotCzarny>
also, you might be interested that h3 feature openrisc core
<catphish>
not sure if this is a particularly good way to use the chip, but it works nicely
<KotCzarny>
think of having microcontroller handy for rt work
<catphish>
that's pretty cool, but also, meh
<KotCzarny>
why meh? offloading polling is nice
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<catphish>
my goals are not well defined right now, playing with graphics, vaguely aiming to make a simple games machine using gpio and hdmi
<KotCzarny>
then grab any h3 based device and pop retropie or something
<KotCzarny>
done
<KotCzarny>
;)
<catphish>
nah
<catphish>
installing an emulator doesn't really interest me
<catphish>
using the hardware properly does though :)
<KotCzarny>
if the system you plan needing to be mobile, you might consider A series
<KotCzarny>
any h3 board is going to suck 300-500mA in idle
<catphish>
well originally i was thinking a64 would be the ultimate target, i have an a64 tablet to hand
<catphish>
i wasn't sure if mobile was important or not though, again, goals very vague, just playing
<KotCzarny>
then grab opipc and roll with it
<KotCzarny>
unless you prefere 64bit cores
<catphish>
nah, no need
<catphish>
my a20 is serving the purpose for now (because i have it lying around) but i think with a view to this being useful to anyone else, i will port to h3/h2+ soon and use the opipc
<catphish>
thanks for the pointers
<catphish>
for now i have to write a graphics engine :)
<catphish>
is the openrisc core separate form the arm cpu core?
<catphish>
if so, i suddenly understand the point!
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<catphish>
karlp: the problem with u-boot isn't serious, it's just that it seems like an unnecessary extra layer, and it configures a lot of hardware, meaning i can't really test my own init code because the work is already done
<beeble>
depending on your timezone you might have some hours left to reinvent the wheel too
<beeble>
today
<catphish>
unfortunately the boot sector for sunxi seems pretty complicated
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<catphish>
so that can probably wait
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<smaeul>
catphish: how much RAM do you need for your application (order of magnitude)?
<smaeul>
if you need more than a few hundred KiB, then you need to turn on DRAM, which is the hard part of what u-boot does
<smaeul>
if SRAM (that few hundred KiB) is enough, creating an image you can FEL boot directly is not so hard
<catphish>
samueldr: that's good to know, i hadn't even considered that dram needed to be initialized! i do use it
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<smaeul>
the other issue is that the boot ROM has a hard limit of 32 KiB for the first stage bootloader
<smaeul>
so if you need more code/data than that, you have to either 1) implement a storage driver or 2) reuse the storage controller set up by the BROM
<smaeul>
(for #2 that means if your first stage is FEL you have to return to FEL, or if your first stage is on SPI NOR your remaining data has to also be on SPI NOR, etc)
<smaeul>
so U-Boot is split into two parts -- "U-Boot SPL" and "U-Boot Proper" -- and "U-Boot SPL" is the part that turns on DRAM while meeting all of the above requirements
<smaeul>
whereas "U-Boot Proper" is the part that initializes all of the hardware you don't want
<catphish>
that's interesting, so one has to (at a minimum) initialize dram, and load code from flash/eeprom into dram, and execute it