12-27-2015, 09:15 PM
Tkaiser, not 100% sure what your issue is or if trolling is your day job, however I've noticed that pretty much every post you've written in response to the Pine A64 has been negative, derogatory or down right rude. Yes, allwinner's BSP isn't a solution in a box, we got that with your first post on the Armbian forum back on the 9th. Now you have a choice, if you think it's a sinking ship - leave and stop annoying everyone else who'd like to do what they can to make this 64bit SBC some way to a success *or* now you've pointed out all of the failings, start helping the rest of us fix them! Personally I can't see why someone who sees the PineA64 as such a screw up would actually register on their forums to post on a regular basis about how bad the situation is - and what's even more of a kicker, you actually put time and effort into your posts - a reasonable amount of research and reference - which either makes you an individual with far too much time on your hands or, as I said at the beginning, a professional troll.
The PineA64 guys (Johnson et al) have found a niche and have created a product to a price point that will generate sufficient sales to make it a success - just like many other system builders (HP, Dell, Lenovo, Sony, etc). As someone who has been a system builder for some 16 years - primarily in the bespoke market, yes - we'd all like a SBC with a top end SoC, this years graphics and a completely open source BSP, the only problem is the damn thing would cost upwards of $200 a board and no bugger would want to experiment with it for fear of burning the thing out by mistake! And yes, I'm sure there would be a market for such a product, however it would be such a small market that the tooling costs alone would bankrupt the outfit who decided to build it or if it was crowd funded it would stand little to no chance of reaching the minimum sustainable goal and would fall flat on it's face anyway.
That leaves two options I can see with some degree of viability. 1. an SBC with a removable/changeable SoC (and as each chipset to PCB mapping is different and all mobile SoC's are hard soldered - not currently a viable option or 2. A low cost SBC with the best SoC package for the price point that adds something new to the plethora of SBC's already out there on the market (as the PineA64 guys have done). Yes, it's not the best SoC from a software point of view, but - with some work by those of us with the know how and the will, we can make it a viable piece of hardware and make full use of it's capabilities.
Now, it's a 64bit SBC, as far as I've found to date there is no 2gb memory ceiling (unless someone has seen it in print from Allwinner or some other verifiable resource) - which means with enough requests a 4gb or even 6gb version *could* be tooled, making full use of the 64bit addressing. Secondly the connectivity options are very good considering the cost per unit, I can think of several very interesting uses for this SBC given some work to the BSP and collaboration from the open source community.
Also, this brings me to another point, Mr Jeng has been listening to you guys, and this is borne out in his actions - he's got ARM in on the ground floor, OpenHAB, and I suspect considering the large amount of press that the PineA64 board is getting, Allwinner is keen to meet him in person to put a face to an order number, anyone with high level business experience will realise that that gives the Pine team a valuable commodity in the modern marketplace (especially during the current financial climate) and that is leverage! If you want allwinner to open their code base up to you - Email Mr Jeng, explain the benefits to him (as I'm currently in the process of doing), point out that increased open source support, the ability to use Kernel 4.1 and 4.4 is beneficial both to Allwinner and the opensource and system builder community at large. Otherwise there are two other options available - 1. Make use of someone like ourselves who are in the software development/programming market - we sign the NDA, get access to the code base, get u-boot/grub/whichever other bootloader is desired working up to the latest version(s) and do the same for the kernel support. Then pass it back to allwinner and point out that was done with one companies resources - what would they get if they opened it up to the entire open source community? The other option is to use the current BSP if they're not willing to play ball and edit at assembler level (thankfully, one of my colleagues - Keldon Alleyne has already offered his services and experience in that regard).
My point being - it's not all doom and gloom, yes, we have some work to do and no, without everyone pulling together I think it's unlikely that we'll have distro support for every flavour of linux and every kernel by their main shipping date. But if people are willing to pull their finger out and realise that their work can and will benefit them if they want to make use of the PineA64 then not only will we end up with one of the most versatile SBC's on the market at our disposal, we'll also have given the PineA64 team a product that will be both financially viable and will likely lead to subsequent versions using newer, faster, better hardware down the line - and with some luck, better open source support out of the box.
Pine need people with experience in writing/re writing graphics drivers with a focus on OpenGL and direct hardware rendering support. They also need those who have worked with Kernel development, maintenance, porting and testing, those who have worked with u-boot, Grub and other boot managers, those who ported Android over to x86 probably have valuable insights to add also. The point is, constant negative whacks at the guys putting this product together is going to result in one thing only, less of a desire to maintain support in the long term, a lack of interest in creating PineA64 2.0 - and the only people that is going to really hurt in the long term is the customer base (because I'm damn sure an outfit like the Pine team can think of another project to sink their teeth into that will provide a return on investment). I point some of you in the know towards the Tesco Hudl 2 - who got hurt out of that - certainly not Tesco, but the customer base (and yes, before anyone says it, I'm well aware the lack of product continuation and long term support is actually down to a management level change and selling off of assets, but the end case is the same).
<steps off of soapbox/>
The PineA64 guys (Johnson et al) have found a niche and have created a product to a price point that will generate sufficient sales to make it a success - just like many other system builders (HP, Dell, Lenovo, Sony, etc). As someone who has been a system builder for some 16 years - primarily in the bespoke market, yes - we'd all like a SBC with a top end SoC, this years graphics and a completely open source BSP, the only problem is the damn thing would cost upwards of $200 a board and no bugger would want to experiment with it for fear of burning the thing out by mistake! And yes, I'm sure there would be a market for such a product, however it would be such a small market that the tooling costs alone would bankrupt the outfit who decided to build it or if it was crowd funded it would stand little to no chance of reaching the minimum sustainable goal and would fall flat on it's face anyway.
That leaves two options I can see with some degree of viability. 1. an SBC with a removable/changeable SoC (and as each chipset to PCB mapping is different and all mobile SoC's are hard soldered - not currently a viable option or 2. A low cost SBC with the best SoC package for the price point that adds something new to the plethora of SBC's already out there on the market (as the PineA64 guys have done). Yes, it's not the best SoC from a software point of view, but - with some work by those of us with the know how and the will, we can make it a viable piece of hardware and make full use of it's capabilities.
Now, it's a 64bit SBC, as far as I've found to date there is no 2gb memory ceiling (unless someone has seen it in print from Allwinner or some other verifiable resource) - which means with enough requests a 4gb or even 6gb version *could* be tooled, making full use of the 64bit addressing. Secondly the connectivity options are very good considering the cost per unit, I can think of several very interesting uses for this SBC given some work to the BSP and collaboration from the open source community.
Also, this brings me to another point, Mr Jeng has been listening to you guys, and this is borne out in his actions - he's got ARM in on the ground floor, OpenHAB, and I suspect considering the large amount of press that the PineA64 board is getting, Allwinner is keen to meet him in person to put a face to an order number, anyone with high level business experience will realise that that gives the Pine team a valuable commodity in the modern marketplace (especially during the current financial climate) and that is leverage! If you want allwinner to open their code base up to you - Email Mr Jeng, explain the benefits to him (as I'm currently in the process of doing), point out that increased open source support, the ability to use Kernel 4.1 and 4.4 is beneficial both to Allwinner and the opensource and system builder community at large. Otherwise there are two other options available - 1. Make use of someone like ourselves who are in the software development/programming market - we sign the NDA, get access to the code base, get u-boot/grub/whichever other bootloader is desired working up to the latest version(s) and do the same for the kernel support. Then pass it back to allwinner and point out that was done with one companies resources - what would they get if they opened it up to the entire open source community? The other option is to use the current BSP if they're not willing to play ball and edit at assembler level (thankfully, one of my colleagues - Keldon Alleyne has already offered his services and experience in that regard).
My point being - it's not all doom and gloom, yes, we have some work to do and no, without everyone pulling together I think it's unlikely that we'll have distro support for every flavour of linux and every kernel by their main shipping date. But if people are willing to pull their finger out and realise that their work can and will benefit them if they want to make use of the PineA64 then not only will we end up with one of the most versatile SBC's on the market at our disposal, we'll also have given the PineA64 team a product that will be both financially viable and will likely lead to subsequent versions using newer, faster, better hardware down the line - and with some luck, better open source support out of the box.
Pine need people with experience in writing/re writing graphics drivers with a focus on OpenGL and direct hardware rendering support. They also need those who have worked with Kernel development, maintenance, porting and testing, those who have worked with u-boot, Grub and other boot managers, those who ported Android over to x86 probably have valuable insights to add also. The point is, constant negative whacks at the guys putting this product together is going to result in one thing only, less of a desire to maintain support in the long term, a lack of interest in creating PineA64 2.0 - and the only people that is going to really hurt in the long term is the customer base (because I'm damn sure an outfit like the Pine team can think of another project to sink their teeth into that will provide a return on investment). I point some of you in the know towards the Tesco Hudl 2 - who got hurt out of that - certainly not Tesco, but the customer base (and yes, before anyone says it, I'm well aware the lack of product continuation and long term support is actually down to a management level change and selling off of assets, but the end case is the same).
<steps off of soapbox/>