Pinebook Pro

Two things: I have read that Pinebook are not going to develop the 11" screen version any further, just the 14" version; and they are bringing out a “higher quality” version, Pinebook Pro. Can we port RISC OS to the Pinebook Pro?

Can we port RISC OS to the Pinebook Pro?

You mean engage in a dialogue with the manufacturer about having RO on their machine.

That would probably be the ARMbook from R-Comp, and yes, I suspect they have all the details to port to a variant, unless someone stuck a 64bit CPU in there.

It is a 64bit cpu, but has some fallback (slow[er]) 32bit cores for energy saving. There’s a general lack of info on those, though.

To be frank, I fear that always chasing after the “next thing on the horizon” is a sure fire way to ensure nothing ever happens. I’ve seen this kind of things so many times before.

I’m not sure if you’ve registered interest in the ARMbook, but if so, you’ll have received quite a lengthy progress report on things last week. Conversely, the sure-fire way to discourage future projects is to not support the ones which are already happening!

Also, I wouldn’t speculate on availability or lack thereof until you know what’s actually available. For example, right now, my stock-buying abilities are being hampered by Chinese New Year. The original goal was to decorate the stand in laptops for the SW show!

The Pinebook Pro will use the RK3399 which has 2xCortex-A72 and 4xCortex-a53. Both capable of running aarch32. It will also use LPDDR4 memory giving much higher memory bandwidth than any current RISC OS hardware. Plus 4k resolution @60Hz with a suitable monitor.

There are several thousand pages of documentation in the TRMs. Whether that’s enough to port RISC OS I don’t know. Michael hints that it’s possible here.

The problem RISC OS has is all the current hardware it runs on has a whole load of hardware it can’t acccess. This severely limits what RISC OS can do on that hardware compared to other OS’s. One option to mitigate this is to port RISC OS to faster hardware. The RK3399 is an ideal candidate as it uses the Cortex-A72 running up to 2GHz. There are also lots of cheap boards using this SOC so long term availability shouldn’t be a problem.

Benchmarks on RISC OS Linux show that the Cortex-A72 @2GHz is up to twice as fast as a 1.5GHz Titanium so the potential speed up is there on real hardware.

I don’t think there is much of technical difficulties in running RISC OS on the Pro model. The SoC is actually better documented than A64 is.. and there is also similarities with other Rockchips. IT is a lot of work to do a complete port of RISC OS and I am looking forward of using it on a ARMbook, rather than always work on porting to newer hardware.

Then ofc the availability is always a factor to count with. The problem for us is that the SoC vendors pumps out support for linux and there are a lot of linux developers. When new hardware released there are already a lot of software for it.
We really can’t follow at the same pace.

We really can’t follow at the same pace.

They can’t either. Will need months to see something stable.
Classic Pinebook (32/64GB) will do the job for me.

Thanks everyone for the replies.

Andrew, I am not much good (too lazy/busy?) at using snail mail to post a form to R-Comp showing my interest in buying an ARMbook. Can we do an online version of the form with the option of bunging some money in the direction of R-Comp to express our interest in the ARMbook?

I am certainly very interested in R-Comp’s project and buying an ARMbook when it’s ready. Keep up the good work.

They can’t either. Will need months to see something stable.

It is a lot of difference with “porting” a linux distro , than porting a new “alien” OS. They have a bsp to do it from. We have nothing.

David, yes, I’d rather assumed that people would reply via email. On RISC OS, the PDF can even be saved as “Draw” and filled in on-screen. Or scan, or just email saying “please keep me informed” or whatever. That’s what other people have done.

The PDF was simply the easiest way to provide everyone with the material we had at the show, so that those who didn’t attend could still get a copy.

Anyway, Chinese New Year ends next week, so I’m hoping for more info. Unfortunately, it was timed badly for the SW show. Still, we should have a nice display this year at SW, not just of laptops! So, I think, visitors will see some exciting (unannounced) stuff on the stand this year ;)

visitors will see some exciting (unannounced) stuff on the stand this year

How will folk know if they’re interested in going to the show to see unannounced things, if they’re…unannounced?

Andrew, I have found the PDF form on the R-Comp website, completed it and emailled it to R-Comp; but I can’t send any money that way as a drawfile of a cheque wouldn’t work. :-)
However, maybe I can bung some money in R-Comp’s direction on Saturday at the show.

It is a lot of difference with “porting” a linux distro , than porting a new “alien” OS. They have a bsp to do it from. We have nothing.

A BSP for Android, yes. Enough to get a working Linux distribution, yes. But not the same as a perfect Linux support. Of course we’re late on everything, but the Linux world is not perfect either.

The work on Allwinner chips could unlock a lot of cards.
The work on i.MX6 probably unlocked a bunch of cards too, but nobody made tests under RISC OS :)