On 03/24/13 21:36, max.stalna...@gmail.com wrote:
> I do not know anything but I lurk here for most of the millennia or
> more.
> 
> Openbsd arm seems to lack a frame buffer. 

you mean like the one on the Zaurus?

> If I try to ssh in thenci
> do not need  a frame buffer? Openrisc has a MMU or three and boots
> Linux with TFPD? Booter.   It does not presently have atomic
> operations.  Is the lack of atomic operators currently represent a
> death blow to running openbsd on it?

don't talk, write code.

> My interests revolve around how cheap android tablets can be and
> useful without a functional GPU and the nice feel you could have
> starting with a raw FPGA.  Not that nice feel is easy to justify.
> Just thinking out loud with the hope these are sane questions.
> 
> With respect to arm tablets I like allwinter but have read about the
> boot loader issue on all these arm tablets.  And I do know that I
> cannot take any existing openbsd distribution and boot it on
> openrisc.  And I do note that your preferred C compiler is going away
> from the openrisc tool chain.
> 
> Just wondering to myself if it is worth thinking about more.

You are wasting your time "thinking about" things.  As Yoda would say,
do or don't do.  If your reaction is, "well, I can't do", then please be
assured, OpenBSD is not the corporate world, we don't need "managers"
who claim to think, but can't do.

The problem with ARM is there is no ARM reference platform.
Every machine is significantly different than every other machine,
technical details of how it is built are not published (why should they
be? They aren't being sold as general purpose computers).

By the time a machine is reverse engineered and the code written for it,
it's obsolete and discontinued.  Its replacement is significantly
different hw, and a significantly different processor.  We've seen this
over and over, and if you have truly been following OpenBSD for as long
as you say, you have seen it, too.

I've got a Thecus sitting here.  I paid more for it -- AFTER it was
discontinued and on close-out -- than a three-core AMD64 board, proc,
and memory was when new.  My Thecus may be one of the last ones running,
as they appear to have been low-quality stuff and drop like flies.
Meanwhile, old P3 systems that are seemingly indestructible, much
faster, and highly useful are free for the hauling.  They use more
power, but the pay-off is /never/ at my electrical rates (considering
cost-of-money and relative life span of the Arm systems).  I can't do
anything really cool with it, because I can't easily replace it when it
dies.

I do not get the excitement over ARM.  Sorry.  Its "design" complete and
total chaos at this point.  Assume whatever OS you get on the thing is
what you will live with, and you will be getting your updates from the
vendor of the device (if you are lucky.  How's this working out so far
for you?).  As the vendors are quite volatile at the moment, assume a
very short useful life span for your hw, and assume ZERO reuse potential.

I also do not understand the point of OpenBSD on a tablet.  Ok, I've got
OpenBSD running on this ... tablet.  there's no touch screen, since
that's undocumented.  There's no keyboard, well, because there's no
keyboard.  There's no mouse, because there's no place to plug it in and
the touch screen is undocumented.  There's no real network port because
it is supposed to be wireless.  What do I do with it besides stare at
the boot messages?  I love dmesg porn as much as anyone, but... uhm.
after a certain point, you memorize it and it stops being interesting.

Nick.

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