Bugs and Calculations

[Grench]

900mA is USB 3.0, USB 2.0 only has 500mA max.

Not quite the whole story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#2.0
The USB 2.0 charging spec was updated in 2007 to go as high as 1.8A for device charging then again in 2010 to include 1.5A with data transport as part of the USB 3.0 updates. More or less this puts a retroactive requirement on USB 2.0 - which is admittedly weird.

Still, 500mA should be enough to spin up and run nearly any modern SATA HDD or SSD.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

More or less this puts a retroactive requirement on USB 2.0 - which is admittedly weird.

AFAIK this requirement actually needs to be actively negotiated over the data lines.

 

[God Ginrai]

https://www.dragonbox.de/en/354-pyra-preorder-without-4g-lte-pyra.html


(strike-through by me, assuming that's a leftover from last year :^) )

I'd assume that would be sufficient for you.

This is helpful. When I looked in the Pyra section the other day, I wasn't able to find anything other than shirts and mugs. I'd still prefer to receive an email before pre-orders start, rather than once people are already hammering the servers, however this at least puts my thoughts at ease.

-God Ginrai

 

[Xcl4m4t10n]

 

[Luke-Jr]

Will there be a slider or switch on the Pyra?

 

[TrashyMG]

Will there be a slider or switch on the Pyra?

To power on the Pyra? it's a button just above the Start button.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

To power on the Pyra? it's a button just above the Start button.

It better give some dialog before shutting it off!

 

[TrashyMG]

It should be just like on a regular PC and bring up the dialog window to ask if you really want to shutdown.

 

[ible]

but if you hold it down it should do a hardware shutdown, right? (force poweroff?)

not that that will hopefully happen too often...

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Uhh... I meant to say shutting off, not s**tting off, I swear!

 

[TrashyMG]

Uhh... I meant to say shutting off, not s**tting off, I swear!

Fruedian autocorrect...

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Fruedian autocorrect...

LOL, I'm tired!

 

[Luke-Jr]

To power on the Pyra? it's a button just above the Start button.

No, just for software use. On the N900, for example, it locks/unlocks the screen.
On the Pyra, I would see a switch being useful to lock/unlock the externally accessible controls.

 

[TrashyMG]

No, just for software use. On the N900, for example, it locks/unlocks the screen.
On the Pyra, I would see a switch being useful to lock/unlock the externally accessible controls.

Well what I seen there is no keyboard lock/hold switch like that.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

Well what I seen there is no keyboard lock/hold switch like that.

Momentarily pressing it while it's on could lock the keyboard, and holding it for 5 seconds could start shutdown like on Pandora.

 

[rygD]

Is "only for Pyra!" an official slogan now? (from the eSATA adapters, in case anyone missed it)

Regarding the keyboard locking stuff, why not just have it detect that the lid is closed and do whatever you need it to do to the shoulder buttons? Am I misunderstanding what you guys are talking about? This option would allow you to disable the shoulder buttons completely, or switch them to media controls, or maybe even enable/disable 3G/4G. Maybe that should be easily user configurable (GUI tool).

 

[hns]

Shouldn't handling missing controllers gracefully be the base case ?

In theory yes, but in practice it's not something you can expect always to work.

I'd say that with modern (4.x) Linux kernels you can expect in practice that it almost always works

There are rare exceptions but I haven't seen a significant one in the Pyra so far. The only undetectable things are changes of GPIO assignment but this does not happen if components are optionally installed.
Most components are connected through I2C (and 3G/4G through USB) and if they are not installed on a PCB, the driver is simply not loaded and does not present some /dev or /sys files.
User space software can detect the presence and e.g. adjust GUI or show an alert.

So there is a single kernel for all variations of installed components ED is thinking of.

 

[notaz]

Most components are connected through I2C (and 3G/4G through USB) and if they are not installed on a PCB, the driver is simply not loaded

Only if you use the right DTB...

So there is a single kernel for all variations of installed components ED is thinking of.

But still many DTBs and all the trouble to load the right one.

 

[Luke-Jr]

I'd be perfectly happy if all the official support for Pyra was small RAM/eMMC and I had to jump through hoops to enable the bigger sizes... just saying.

 

[Silent-Hunter]

I'd be perfectly happy if all the official support for Pyra was small RAM/eMMC and I had to jump through hoops to enable the bigger sizes... just saying.

That's be a support nightmare for novice users who buy one and don't know how to do stuff like that.