ARM powered notebooks?

A shameless plug , I think I will have RISC OS running on Efika MX Smarttop and book by the end of this summer. The current prices are EUR99 for the smarttop and EUR199 for the smartbook. I will also target our next generation hopefully coming this summer. They will be based on I.MX53 , use SATA , higher clock frequency , support 1080p and a lot of other good things.

Wow! that’s an attractive deal. $129 and $200 US dollars BTW.
I hope you go well with RISC OS for it, but I think even for Linux alone
it would be valuable. I hope with time, that hardware flaws don’t
become apparent.
Cheers, Ron

A shameless plug , I think I will have RISC OS running on Efika MX Smarttop and book by the end of this summer.

You do that, Michael, and you will have a definite sale to me very shortly afterwards.

Ditto.

Just to chuck another into the mix, there is the Toshiba AC100 (Tegra 2).

It is unclear if Toshiba are still selling/supporting it, but there still seems to be plenty available.

I think having the port done by an employee of the company (even if it’s his own hobby) is a major plus for a machine.

I seem to recall that they use a BIOS style software interface (as in how DOS talked to a system, not the config utility.) This ought to mean that the port only has to be done once, (though I suspect it means porting to a new model is a small job, rather than it just works).

The new system mentioned sounds good for a desktop. Internally, does it use a standard form factor board, that could be fitted in a larger case?

I seem to recall that they use a BIOS style software interface (as in how DOS talked to a system, not the config utility.) This ought to mean that the port only has to be done once, (though I suspect it means porting to a new model is a small job, rather than it just works).

I am thinking about doing a new HAL for Aura which is our new microkernel based “firmware”. The HAL would speak to the microkernel rather than the hardware. How would people around here think about this ? Is it legal to do something like that ? Any comments ?

This is almost harder than a native port because of clashing buildsystems.

I am thinking about doing a new HAL for Aura which is our new microkernel based “firmware”. The HAL would speak to the microkernel rather than the hardware. How would people around here think about this ?

I hadn’t realized that you were thinking of not using it.

Moving goalposts is an obvious (big) problem for RISC OS, if I unstand correctly, writing for Aura should mean it would run on any future machines with a compatible instruction set. (Though I assume changes would likely be needed to access enhanced features of a new machine.)

Is it legal to do something like that ?

It is just writing for another interface, surely? The obvious problem would be if it needed code with the wrong license to be included in the HAL.

Any comments ?

It is the thing that most interested me about your product.

Does Aura provide any potential for virtual machines? (i.e. running multiple OSes at once)

I hope that it will be easy to dual boot RISC OS on an Efika. Although RISC OS is my preferred OS, I am under no illusions that it will do everything I need. (For example, at home I have an Iyonix a Mac and an XP PC, I usually run the XP system via RDP).

It is just writing for another interface, surely? The obvious problem would be if it needed code with the wrong license to be included in the HAL.

This might be a problem , but I don’t know yet.

My biggest issue is the buildsystems/toolchains. Having the norcroft compiler running on linux would be good.

Does Aura provide any potential for virtual machines? (i.e. running multiple OSes at once)

Yes.

I hope that it will be easy to dual boot RISC OS on an Efika. Although RISC OS is my preferred OS, I am under no illusions that it will do everything I need. (For example, at home I have an Iyonix a Mac and an XP PC, I usually run the XP system via RDP).

The only limitation is the filecore thing. If you want to dualboot using the ssd it would require partitioning

I don’t suppose there’s any useful Tegra info within their nv-tegra repository, is there?

[Edit: That site site crops up here too.]

Michael
I suppose you know of the ‘RPCEmu’ RO4/5 emulator that runs on Windows/Mac/Linux

http://www.marutan.net/rpcemuspoon/

There was talk of 486 versions of the ‘C’ tools etc.
Perhaps you should contact the ROOL team direct.

The only limitation is the filecore thing. If you want to dualboot using the ssd it would require partitioning.

It appears to be the case that a normal filecore partition can co-exist on a drive with other partitions. (The filecore partition has to be the first, and is all that a current RISC OS system can see).

With a bit of thought, you start to see ways to adapt RISC OS to a tablet withouth having to put in a vast amount of work

For reference, FX File Explorer uses drags for multiple selections. One question is (when the time’s right) could the corresponding change in Select functionality be added as a configurable ‘Tablet mode’ option in a single ROM? I guess this would be a little more involved but would possibly allow for a(n automatic) switch when a mouse is used.