Some questions about the Pyra

[scft]

Technical kinds of questions.

1. Are there any Linux-specific drivers \ bin blobs for the Pyra (its devices) involved? I'm planning use it with Free or NetBSD (with its footprint it might even be the greatest OS for the thing). Such devices won't obviously work for BSDs without an effort. Absence of 3D acceleration would still be tolerable for me though.
If there are things like that, i might take the code and challenge myself by porting it - but don't expect anything.
2. How the response from those two rotating knobs will look like? Will it be possible to use them like an x11 mouse? Any kind of non-standard keymapping to be dealt with? Left knob as a LMB, right knob as a RMB?
3. Regarding the socket - any plans (ETA) for any more modern ARMv8-A SoCs? Like some of the MediaTek ones. Strange that it goes with some of the older SoC from 2013. (To an outsider such as me it looks as simple as adapting the PCB for another set of BGA pins. I know the process should be harder than that, but thats how it looks like. With the better SoC the more literal pocket PC it'd be.)
Are RAM chips built on top of the CPU board? Good thing actually.
4. How does it boots up? Does it use coreboot & can i flash it with my very own coreboot?

And hi all, by the way.

 

[lukey]

4. How does it boots up? Does it use coreboot & can i flash it with my very own coreboot?

It uses U-Boot (Whitch is built straight in to the SoC?). It can boot from any Partition (MSDOS Partition Table only ?) on any Storage Device (So from eMMC, MicroSD, Left & Right Sd Card, Both USB-Host-Ports and eSATA).

 

[TrashyMG]

1. Are there any Linux-specific drivers \ bin blobs for the Pyra (its devices) involved? I'm planning use it with Free or NetBSD (with its footprint it might even be the greatest OS for the thing). Such devices won't obviously work for BSDs without an effort. Absence of 3D acceleration would still be tolerable for me though.
If there are things like that, i might take the code and challenge myself by porting it - but don't expect anything.

It's mostly mainline linux, the 3D acceleration is powerVR, so same binary blob mess as the Pandora there. There is a bit of hardware specific things you may have to deal with when dealing with Net/Free BSD that will most likely be available to the main line Linux kernel.

2. How the response from those two rotating knobs will look like? Will it be possible to use them like an x11 mouse? Any kind of non-standard keymapping to be dealt with? Left knob as a LMB, right knob as a RMB?

well we call them Nubs here, if we set them up like the Pandora they can be switched to Mouse to Joystick mode. The clicking is a bit odd on those nubs as it only works when they're centered so it may make for an odd use case... there are two smaller buttons that are next to the game buttons that could also be programmed as mouse click... Right now none of these configurations can happen until Prototypes get built and sent to developers.

Are RAM chips built on top of the CPU board?

Yes, The removable CPU board consists of the SoC, RAM and eMMC storage memory.

4. How does it boots up? Does it use coreboot & can i flash it with my very own coreboot?

It uses u-boot, which is common on these arm devices.

 

[ible]

are any future CPU boards restricted to being 32 bit, or could we see a 64 bit board in ~10 years?

 

[TrashyMG]

are any future CPU boards restricted to being 32 bit, or could we see a 64 bit board in ~10 years?

Can't think of any reason outside SoC availability for it not being able to move on to a 64-bit processor or even a different CPU architecture.


Edit: well and the cost of designing and building an entirely new CPU board of course... it's better to concern ourselves with the current product, then worry about a replacement SoC down the road.

 

[slaeshjag]

The reason for using a seemingly old (and by now legacy) SoC is simple: Getting them in low quantity, with linux drivers and with desent design support is quite difficult.
Future SoCs may become available that could fit the Pyra's form factor. i.MX8 could be a candidate, Freescale are pretty known for selling their i.MX chips to anyone with a credit card.

EDIT: Oh, and developing anything can take time when the team is small, so the time span between samples available and product on market can be quite long.

 

[ingoreis]

Hi i have 2 Questions.

1. How about Exagear?
EvilDragon has mentioned to ship it with the Pyra OS but there where Licensing Problems.
Any News about that??

2.Will Glshim be integrated in the standard OS too?

 

[Plume]

@ingoreis: First of all, the "Pyra OS" is just Debian with a patched kernel mostly. Next, as far as I know, ED never stated that Exagear would be available. There were however people here who tested stuff with Exagear and people who talked about using Exagear to run stuff, but that's all.

 

[NearTao]

@ingoreis: I suspect that exagear will be worked on to get it to work similar to how it was done for Pandora... however I doubt it would be added as part of the Pyra base system, since that adds about $30 USD to the cost, which I imagine most folks would rather see spent elsewhere for improvements if the device was to cost more. Exagear may not be a standard use case for everyone with a Pyra. Though if it was an option to bundle at a discount, with decent support, I'd probably consider paying extra.

 

[Faust]

@ingoreis: I suspect that exagear will be worked on to get it to work similar to how it was done for Pandora... however I doubt it would be added as part of the Pyra base system, since that adds about $30 USD to the cost, which I imagine most folks would rather see spent elsewhere for improvements if the device was to cost more. Exagear may not be a standard use case for everyone with a Pyra. Though if it was an option to bundle at a discount, with decent support, I'd probably consider paying extra.

We can make a poll to know how many people are willing to pay an extra cost for exagear on Pyra. Personally I would.

Envoyé de mon 6039Y en utilisant Tapatalk

 

[WizardStan]

I wouldn't, I already own a license.
It's only $10, if people want it they can easily get it themselves.

 

[levi]

I probably wouldn't at least to begin with. I found the number of open source games the Pandora gave me access to more than enough to keep me going with the odd emulator session. It may be fair to say there are going to be fewer new-to-me open source games on the Pyra, as the Pandora's already running quite a lot of them. But I never really got to grips with DOSBOX on the Pandora, and now we can also play some of the 3dfx games I grew up with, and who knows what DOSBOX will be able to do on the Pyra with the extra power - all assuming the 3d driver gets fixed I guess. Similarly with Amiga, the Amiga emu only got able to run the dozen or so games I have ready recently, and I haven't got round to transferring more of my old discs yet.

It'll take me a while before I get bored of that stuff, and that's only games. Maybe then I'll consider buying an Exagear license if the community as a whole has taken it on board by then (perhaps it has already, I dunno).

 

[Askarus]

For marketing it's best to include ti with every Pyra.
That and an Android environment.

The more features are included without hacking, the better.

If we could make a deal with them I doubt it'll be 10$ per device.

 

[ingoreis]

I have no Problems too to pay little more for exagear

 

[elvissteinjr]

It's only $10, if people want it they can easily get it themselves.

The non-discounted license for ARMv7 devices is 29.95€.
The cheaper ones are for Raspberry devices only, although while I doubt they can't be made to work anyways, there may be speed improvements compared to the Pi1 versions since it's targeting a more advanced instruction set.

That aside, I already have a license so I'm kinda undecided on this. It would be unnecessary extra costs, but at the same time it would result in a bigger userbase for Exagear on the Pyra and could result in pre-configured ready-to-run packages to be made for example.

 

[WizardStan]

The non-discounted license for ARMv7 devices is 29.95€.

When did that happen? :O
When I bought it a year ago it was $10. Discount my butt, that's a huge price increase.

 

[TrashyMG]

When did that happen? :O
When I bought it a year ago it was $10. Discount my butt, that's a huge price increase.

It originally was $30 USD when I bought my first license, I picked up two more when the price dropped to $10, don't recall this "Raspberry device" version, just that it was a promotional price. The current pricing model is fairly new.

 

[jutleys]

Will the pyra run kodi media centre.

 

[Exophase]

Freescale are pretty known for selling their i.MX chips to anyone with a credit card.

Sadly they, like TI, are looking like less and less of a viable candidate in this space. i.MX7 took a step backwards by adopting Cortex-A7 CPUs and it looks like i.MX8 will use Cortex-A53. Being bought out by NXP (another mostly embedded manufacturer) probably didn't help. There's the QorIQ line with Cortex-A57 but it doesn't look like it's anywhere close to suitable for a form factor like Pyra's (and it's very expensive).

Things are looking more bleak than ever. The best hope may well be with Chinese manufacturers like Rockchip or Allwinner, nVidia's processor boards, or Intel and Atom (which they too seem to be losing interest in)

 

[Alperoot]

Will the pyra run kodi media centre.

Well, it runs on the Pandora so why not for Pyra?