This is kinda an unorganized post, so sorry for that.

Recently, I've been thinking about creating a computer in the form factor of the "Handheld PCs" that were around during the 1990s. It's mainly just for me but I wouldn't mind selling a few to the small community of nerds who like those things. I'm trying to avoid making another PC or ARM device like someone would normally do just because I'm not really a fan of either of those architectures or the monopoly they represent.

I've been considering the MIPS-compatible X2000 from the Chinese semiconductor firm Ingenic but unfortunately that chip doesn't have an external memory controller so you're limited to just the 128M/256M of DRAM in the package which is less than ideal.

So, has anyone heard of any weird chips lately? Idk where else to ask. I don't know where people who make computers discuss things like this.

(Btw if you're interested in this topic you may enjoy www.greenarraychips.com. It's Charles H. Moore's outfit, the guy who invented Forth. They make cute little chips with many independent stack machines on them. Not useful for this project but still pretty cool. This is not an ad, I just like weird computers.)

  • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]
    ·
    11 months ago

    megi is the name of the kernel dev from czechia. He's put in a lot of work and he's pretty active in the matrix chats, but he's not big on upstreaming his changes and some of his side projects he doesn't even release the code... this seems like a good summary https://momi.ca/posts/2022-09-07-mainline.html

    I think he might be doing a bit of "making himself necessary" in the ecosystem of A64 based devices tbh, You can't entirely blame him but its bad for the community long term.

    Manjaro is a mess though yeah, I used it for a while since it came on the pinebook/pinephone but I had to nope out.

    Plan9 is pretty befuddling still ngl but I'm starting to like what I see. I might have to install it on a raspberry pi and see what the fuss is about

    • PaX [comrade/them, they/them]
      ·
      11 months ago

      megi is the name of the kernel dev from czechia. He's put in a lot of work and he's pretty active in the matrix chats, but he's not big on upstreaming his changes and some of his side projects he doesn't even release the code... this seems like a good summary https://momi.ca/posts/2022-09-07-mainline.html

      I think he might be doing a bit of "making himself necessary" in the ecosystem of A64 based devices tbh, You can't entirely blame him but its bad for the community long term.

      Thanks for the article! That 500k line diff from mainline is scary...

      Plan9 is pretty befuddling still ngl but I'm starting to like what I see. I might have to install it on a raspberry pi and see what the fuss is about

      Highly recommend this video to help you get around the UI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt3Dr3jUPjo

      Hope you have fun if you decide to try!