Open... and close... and open...

[Caine]

https://www.pyra-handheld.com/pipermail/kernel/2017-September/thread.html

just an updated link to follow development of kernel.

The battery life estimate of 7 hours when idling with display and backlights switched off is interesting.

 

[Mr_Loon]

it will not be known whether the solution(s) will require hardware changes

Can't see any scenario where hardware changes would be made if all that was required to make 4GB work is a small overvolt. It of course makes sense to look for a solution where overvolting is not necessary, which is my understanding of the current situation re the 4GB issue.

Apologies if that was dangerously close to being on topic, can we now please get back to talking about pencil sharpeners

 

[sepulep]

The battery life estimate of 7 hours when idling with display and backlights switched off is interesting.

I think ed thinks that this means some component is leeching power...

 

[rygD]

I don't know what the wall mounted ones were, but I thought they were all steel.

Meanwhile, my schools had these.

Fucking kids. Get off my lawn.

Yeah, those ones. I think they still use those.

Hopefully all the posts about liquid cooling solutions for a DS sized handheld are meant in jest.

If this thing ends up getting a fan or liquid cooling, it's an insta refund for me.

You do realize that those of us talking about things like that are talking about doing that on our own to our Pyras, not as a stock option, right? If you don't like people modding their stuff you might as well ask for that refund.

 

[shaddim]

Magnesium + water + high temperatures = you're gonna have a bad time. Anyone who's taken a basic chemistry class knows that.

And while, obviously, you've got bigger things to worry about if your Pyra gets wet, you definitely don't want some magnesium parts of it happening to go up in flames if that water happens to contact hot parts, or the water ITSELF happens to be hot. Being in the presence of steam is as good as "Please give me fire" when you've got magnesium around.

Excuse me, as thermal conductive material and heat sinks are still discussed, I want to bring in some material which has quite some interesting properties and was not mentioned (?) up to now:
alumina (aluminium oxid) which is electrically insulating (as being a ceramic) but thermal conductive , quite well even with 30 W/m*K (a tenth of pure alu but orders higher than other electrical insulators). It is also chemical stable.

 

[Dark Pulse]

Excuse me, as thermal conductive material and heat sinks are still discussed, I want to bring in some material which has quite some interesting properties and was not mentioned (?) up to now:
alumina (aluminium oxid) which is electrically insulating (as being a ceramic) but thermal conductive , quite well even with 30 W/m*K (a tenth of pure alu but orders higher than other electrical insulators). It is also chemical stable.

But how expensive would that be? If 10x the insulation performance comes with 10x the cost, then it's not exactly worth it.

 

[Grench]

It of course makes sense to look for a solution where overvolting is not necessary, which is my understanding of the current situation re the 4GB issue.

Solution without overvolting: 2GB units apparently work fine.

"4GB problem" exists, and is delaying rollout as it becomes an increasing time sink, due to community unneeded spec chasing. There hasn't yet been any actual need for 4GB. On the contrary, the actual devs with actual experience with actual hardware have presented actual testing showing that 2GB is a better fit to the OMAP. So, the whole "4GB problem" fault lies firmly on the community's shoulders.

Regardless of how we got here, though, solutions need to be found. ED is doing a great job of getting the right people working on it.

A potential solution?: 2GB units running ~1.5Ghz. 4GB units running ~1Ghz. (Or whatever can be stable.)

I still hope they can get the 4GB running at full speed on the optimized boards. I'm not sure if those exist yet though.

 

[EvilDragon]

Any progress on this three weeks @EvilDragon? .

Yes, plenty, if I find the time to summarize it all.

Sent from my XT1650-03 using Tapatalk

 

[Dark Pulse]

Solution without overvolting: 2GB units apparently work fine.

"4GB problem" exists, and is delaying rollout as it becomes an increasing time sink, due to community unneeded spec chasing. There hasn't yet been any actual need for 4GB. On the contrary, the actual devs with actual experience with actual hardware have presented actual testing showing that 2GB is a better fit to the OMAP. So, the whole "4GB problem" fault lies firmly on the community's shoulders.

Regardless of how we got here, though, solutions need to be found. ED is doing a great job of getting the right people working on it.

A potential solution?: 2GB units running ~1.5Ghz. 4GB units running ~1Ghz. (Or whatever can be stable.)

I still hope they can get the 4GB running at full speed on the optimized boards. I'm not sure if those exist yet though.

Uhh... making it out to sound like "Hey, it's the community's fault, great job holding it up guys, if only you would've picked 2GB this would've been easier" is pretty rude of you.

~70% of the community wants those 4 GB boards; EvilDragon and company are doing their best to bring it to us, and if for some reason they literally can't get it to happen at 1.35V, then I guess we'll be asked what to do then. I have a feeling as long as it won't fry our Pyras, most of us will be just fine with the RAM running at 1.39V, as while it is a bigger drain on the battery, it'd be a difference of what... 20 minutes of battery life? At most?

Yes, we have to wait longer while they try to sort it out. But I'd rather they sort it out if at all possible.

Not only that, "2 GB is a better fit for the OMAP" is ridiculous. OMAP 5 is known to support up to 8 GB of RAM. There is no "the hardware doesn't support it" like you're trying to assert - it does; it's just for some reason the combination of this chip and this amount of RAM (and possibly other factors, like the RAM timings) is making it not play nice at fullspeed. They just have to figure out why it's not playing nicely, which they are doing (and have temporarily worked around by slightly bumping up the RAM voltage - which is still within spec of what the RAM can handle). Last I heard they apparently got it somewhat working and it was a matter of RAM timings.

I know I'd be very unhappy if I had to lose literally 1/3rd of my processing power just for some RAM issue, especially when a very slight voltage nudge makes it stable, and with a few more weeks they'll probably have it knocked out and we won't need that either.

So in short, keep your pants on. Yes, waiting sucks. But we're ALL waiting - and needless to say, the 72% of the community that wants a 4GB unit would represent a MAJORITY, not a minority, of customers. Pissing them off just to make the remainder happy is not good business sense.

 

[sandstein]

I want to have a stable Pyra, and i can waiting for - its no problem. The 4GB Version is a nice to have for me. I only want coding, writing, surfing, gaming, loving, watching. If ED would ask me, what would i choose: a) the 2GB Version at Christmas 2017, or b) the 4GB Version at Christmas 2018, i would take the 2GB Version.

The most important thing for me is stability, not having a big XXX.

 

[frefol]

I only ordered the 4GB version because it was an option. If I'm paying this much for a device I might as well get the most powerful version available.

 

[Swordfish II]

I think ed thinks that this means some component is leeching power...

Iirc the Pandora wasn't very efficient at first either.

 

[WizardStan]

2GB units apparently work fine

8 years ago my Pandora worked perfectly fine, it did everything I needed it to with it's 512MB of RAM.
Today, it still does almost everything I need it to, but if I were granted one wish to upgrade a component it would be more RAM. It is almost impossible to use the internet to any substantial degree on such a small amount any more. You get 2, 3, maybe 4 tabs, and it's all gone. I've encountered such interactive websites that just suck it all up entirely and my Pandora comes to a grinding halt as Firefox or Chromium struggle to compress or swap or whatever it is they do. If would've asked me whether I thought I'd be needing more RAM to browse web pages 8 years ago I would've said no. The web changed drastically in ways I didn't expect.
2GB is plenty for today, sure. It's probably plenty for most tasks in the future, but we have no idea of knowing what paradigm shift is going to happen that may make it more obsolete than it ought to be.
That is why I want 4GB: even if I don't need it now, even if I just shut off half of it to save battery, the extra cost is well worth the attempted future proofing in my mind and wallet.
That isn't to say we should just throw everything we can into it "just in case": RAM is a special case in that more can always be used even if it isn't strictly needed, if for nothing else than just caching.

 

[dracmas]

Keeping extra ram for future use is the same reason I ordered the 4gb as well. With software requiring higher specs than it did ten years ago I'd rather have double the ram just in case it's needed. I hope Ed is able to have updated boards at that point but this will last a long time otherwise. At least with more RAM it might make more games play more smoothly than it would have with half the ram. Even if it ends up cutting the battery life some, it's comforting to know we can replace a worn out battery when the time comes.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

Yes, plenty, if I find the time to summarize it all.

Let's donate some time. Is BitMinute running, yet?

, if for nothing else than just caching.

That's like using your heart, if for nothing else than just pumping.

 

[levi]

8 years ago my Pandora worked perfectly fine, it did everything I needed it to with it's 512MB of RAM.
..snip...
I've encountered such interactive websites that just suck it all up entirely and my Pandora comes to a grinding halt as Firefox or Chromium struggle to compress or swap or whatever it is they do.

That's why I am glad my Pandora can run firefox, so that I can use noscript on it. I tend to avoid sites that need oodles of scripts just to read a page on my Pandora, although to be fair I tend to do similar on my main x86 machines too, although not to the same degree. Occasionally on my PCs I have to quit firefox because it's decided to eat 100% of one of my cores, although only about as often as I have to kill LXpanel for the same offence.

 

[slaeshjag]

Solution without overvolting: 2GB units apparently work fine.

"4GB problem" exists, and is delaying rollout as it becomes an increasing time sink, due to community unneeded spec chasing. There hasn't yet been any actual need for 4GB. On the contrary, the actual devs with actual experience with actual hardware have presented actual testing showing that 2GB is a better fit to the OMAP. So, the whole "4GB problem" fault lies firmly on the community's shoulders.

Regardless of how we got here, though, solutions need to be found. ED is doing a great job of getting the right people working on it.

A potential solution?: 2GB units running ~1.5Ghz. 4GB units running ~1Ghz. (Or whatever can be stable.)

I still hope they can get the 4GB running at full speed on the optimized boards. I'm not sure if those exist yet though.

From what I gather from IRC and the mailing list, there is no currently known work-around that makes 4GB stable on more than one board.

 

[Shlee]

As the official spokes person for the community... Let's just go live with the 4GB chips disabled to 2GB...

[doublepost=1504482145,1504482111][/doublepost]This thread is now about shipping

 

[erico]

 

[Xcl4m4t10n]

Yes, plenty, if I find the time to summarize it all.

Sent from my XT1650-03 using Tapatalk

Nice! Hope you have time soon. It would be perfect to commemorate the 16th month of preorder opening (and 3 years and 7 months after the FOSDEM presentation).
[doublepost=1504485314,1504485237][/doublepost]

Yes, plenty, if I find the time to summarize it all.

Sent from my XT1650-03 using Tapatalk

Nice! Hope you have time soon. It would be perfect to commemorate the 16th month of preorder opening (and 3 years and 7 months after the FOSDEM presentation).