Tiny Core Linux

Off-Topic => Off-Topic - Tiny Core Lounge => Topic started by: lemming on April 01, 2012, 08:10:40 PM

Title: Raspberry Pi
Post by: lemming on April 01, 2012, 08:10:40 PM
Any plans for a TC port to Raspberry Pi?

There is a post  in the 'off topic' section (don't know why it is off topic) that talks about the Raspberry Pi but does not say whether there are plans for a TC port.

TC would be ideal for the Pi as I am sure due to the type of board and target audience of the Pi, there are due to be many 'power off' shutdowns with the  resulting file system corruption. Not an issue with TC.  It will also be interesting to see how the mainstream Linuxes cope with 256 Mb RAM.  Again, not an issue with TC.

Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: Rich on April 01, 2012, 08:26:53 PM
Hi lemming
It is off topic because it concerns a port of TC that does not exist. The forum is X86 orientated.
Quote
there are due to be many 'power off' shutdowns with the  resulting file system corruption. Not an issue with TC.
If you run with a non-persistent home, there is still the issue of losing everything since you last ran a backup.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: hiro on April 01, 2012, 09:51:51 PM
The PI is a hoax in my view.  I would have bought it if it were possible.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: bmarkus on April 02, 2012, 01:48:53 AM
The PI is a hoax in my view.  I would have bought it if it were possible.

It's not a hoax. Now you can order it from Farnell. See details at

https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-43262/l/updated-11-march-frequently-asked-questions-about-raspberry-pi
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: hiro on April 02, 2012, 05:48:08 AM
They say there are only 2000 of them available. Seems like not even worth trying to get one. I'm not saying they made the whole thing up. But when I tried to order it didn't work.
I'll see if some day it will get available to the broad public. But I'm sure by then we'll have lots of other more capable hardware from the competition.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: cast-fish on April 02, 2012, 12:38:51 PM
200 thousand new rasberry pi's have been ordered at the factory. Majority model B's...as of a couple of weeks ago

V.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: ray0665 on April 26, 2012, 12:34:03 PM
They are being shipped in droves,  Tech Republic has an "Arrival Tear down" on their newsletter today.

Now back to the question at hand.
I for one think TC is a great match for Rpi but I don't have the skills to port it myself.
Are there any like minded capable members planning anything?
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: roberts on April 26, 2012, 02:19:50 PM
Thats interesting. I plan to evalute. But until one actually has one not much can truly be done.  I have one on order, order number confirmed as of Feb 29. Yet still not even an email about when it will arrive.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: spence91 on June 11, 2012, 09:45:17 AM
I have one, and the first thing I thought about was trying to get tinycore on it.

Once I get a bit of free time I'll let the board know how it goes.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: roberts on June 11, 2012, 10:30:15 AM
Amazing! My confirmed order of 29 Feb still has not come. I am promised end of April, then end of May, now I am told end of June.  I guess that they don't understand the meaning of a queue. Quickly losing interest here. In fact ready to cancel.  Keep us posted on your progress.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: curaga on June 11, 2012, 01:16:51 PM
It's indeed quickly starting to look that the competitors can ship in volume before the Pi..
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: roberts on June 11, 2012, 02:23:20 PM
Like the 1GB mk802!
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: netnomad on June 11, 2012, 04:06:54 PM
hi friends,

i use a raspberrypi now for a couple of weeks with the official debian-iso.
i work and play with plain debian on a couple of platforms and it's a long lasting love.

this official iso is much too fat for my taste...
i love it lean, clean, secure and fast, so i lost a bit the interest in this official iso...
perhaps i will config my own installation, but i would prefer something light like tinycore on it.
so if you want i test everything that you want to provide...

thank you in advance for all your contributions.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: cast-fish on June 11, 2012, 05:54:55 PM
Roberts and Co


thankyou for sharing your hardware device knowledge. It is very interesting
to learn of personal computing devices now on the market. The mk802 is anazing
to see. (if you "could" see it, that is....it's so tiny)

After reading, it appears that the new APC computer from VIA does not directly connect to google play marketplace website. You can certainly install apps and use many android apps by using the .apk file of each app.

The notes do not mention if the APC computer will come with any pre-installed , ready rolled and free "third party marketplace" app stores.

I know it is simple to get any free app from google play marketplace by downloading to your PC desktop.  There is a free tool to do that. It is a free google Chrome extension called
http://codekiem.com/2012/02/24/apk-downloader/

You still need your device ID for your android device. For that you get a simple free androd app of the web which runs on your device and shows you your devices ID number.

This can then allow you to get apps from google play marketplace and put them on a memory
card and into your android device.

i thank you again

V.









Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: spence91 on June 12, 2012, 05:01:28 AM
Amazing! My confirmed order of 29 Feb still has not come. I am promised end of April, then end of May, now I am told end of June.  I guess that they don't understand the meaning of a queue. Quickly losing interest here. In fact ready to cancel.  Keep us posted on your progress.

Sorry to hear that - I ordered mine on the 3rd of March and it came through last week. It's always frustrating having to wait for a new toy!

It's indeed quickly starting to look that the competitors can ship in volume before the Pi..

As long as the pi has driven the *ridiculous* price of these boards/small ARM|x86 pc's down then it's done us all a huge favor.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: curaga on June 12, 2012, 06:14:02 AM
Heh, the Via APC preorder sold out within a day. Well, at least they're still saying that volume availability is in July, let's see if that slips too like the Pi.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: hiro on June 12, 2012, 09:23:22 AM
As long as the pi has driven the *ridiculous* price of these boards/small ARM|x86 pc's down then it's done us all a huge favor.

Strange, my first small ARM (a Seagate dockstar) was pretty cheap years ago. Bought it for 20 Euros.
Also I bought a toshiba ac100 for 100 Euros used.
All that the pi people have been doing so far is talking. They certainly didn't produce high enough volumes to bring any prices down.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: spence91 on June 12, 2012, 11:28:19 AM
As long as the pi has driven the *ridiculous* price of these boards/small ARM|x86 pc's down then it's done us all a huge favor.

Strange, my first small ARM (a Seagate dockstar) was pretty cheap years ago. Bought it for 20 Euros.
Also I bought a toshiba ac100 for 100 Euros used.
All that the pi people have been doing so far is talking. They certainly didn't produce high enough volumes to bring any prices down.

You're adept at finding a bargain, but you'll have to admit that the RRP of both those products are nowhere near that of the PI. I'm not familair with the dockstar but a quick Google suggests the RRP is something like £66? And the AC100 was an eye-watering £300 when you could get EEEpc's for less.

Remember also that the PI foundation is a non-profit charitable organisation who's purpose is to provide cheap hardware for educational purposes. They had to get the boards printed in China because it would have sent the price up getting them printed in the UK, which is probably the reason for the delay in shipping. Before the PI it was hard to find something so capable for £20.

Now that it's been released VIA have released a small, cheap and capable board at a similar price and hopefully others will knock down their prices too.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: hiro on June 12, 2012, 12:38:22 PM
my point is that good will aside there are other things more important for a successful product. they are around, competition stays around and I'm positive we'll get even more useful devices in the future :D
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: spence91 on June 19, 2012, 10:30:57 AM
...So I tried initially just to rip out the kernal from a debian distro that was already available and then roll up the basic utils and then all the scripts from an x86 version of TCL core.gz... err, that didn't work so well.

Has there been any discussion about rolling out a core.gz from scratch? Obviously because it's a different arch I can't just add to core.gz, and the source directories don't have any makefiles or scripts that I can look at.....
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: curaga on June 19, 2012, 02:55:59 PM
From my POV TC is the scripts and the philosophy: less about the exact components. Thus one could have a TC port based on uclibc/toybox, etc.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: thane on June 30, 2012, 10:59:39 PM
A person at my office just got a Raspberry Pi. It'll be interesting to see what he does with it, but as far as I know it won't involve TCL.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: stunix*com on July 22, 2012, 01:40:45 AM
well, things with the pi are really speeding up, Ive just taken delivery of my second stu-rl.eu/pi01 (http://stu-rl.eu/pi01), just as they lift the 1 per applicant restriction.  The pi is a natural platform for TC and from my in experience, a quick look at the pi bootloader and the usual "arm" compilations, I really don't think it would take much. 

 
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: tinypoodle on July 22, 2012, 08:27:53 AM
Any plans for a TC port to Raspberry Pi?

After doing a bit of research and particularly finding this:
Quote
Slackware ARM (formally ARMedslack) version 13.37 and later runs on the Raspberry Pi without modification.
conclusion is that maybe "port to Raspberry Pi" could be replaced by "port to ARM"
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: hiro on July 22, 2012, 08:26:58 PM
different ARM versions have different instruction sets... you'd want armv5, armv6, armv7,...
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: tinypoodle on July 23, 2012, 03:24:21 AM
different ARM versions have different instruction sets... you'd want armv5, armv6, armv7,...

Reading up more I come to understand that a separate kernel would be required for each system, but userland could be one (with a minimum arch).
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: curaga on July 23, 2012, 04:26:19 AM
Yes, but the advantages of a higher minimum arch than v6 (of the pi) are big (5-20% IIRC). Add to that how limited the pi is, it doesn't make sense to target anything less than v7 with neon and hard float IMHO.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: roberts on August 04, 2012, 09:51:33 AM
FWIW, I have received my Pi. I have been preparing a Core root filesystem. I now have micro Core booting "scatter mode" from both Qemu and the actual Pi. Still early stage. Still evaluating...

The Pi seems to be controversial as some love it and some think it is a joke. I will note that it is very underpowered and its price is no bargain once you add the cost of a case and its own power supply. There are now many alternate more powerful low cost systems available. Think Allwinner.

 
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: spence91 on August 06, 2012, 09:18:12 AM
I've had mine being a small torrent & rsync server for backups to NFS. Not done anything else in terms of trying to get TCL on it.

Would be keen to test the system if you wanted to make it available :-)

...I have to disagree on the case and power supply - the original packaging can be your case (I've got mine hanging off a hook in a sunglasses cloth carry case) and a power source is going to set you back £2.50 at the most if you don't already have a 5V phone charger already.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: curaga on August 06, 2012, 03:49:21 PM
I wouldn't trust a generic chinese usb charger to be stable 24/7. CE is just a sticker nowadays.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: bmarkus on August 06, 2012, 04:16:38 PM
A phone charger is not a power supply.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: netnomad on August 07, 2012, 12:53:40 AM
i tried two different power supplies...
both are phone chargers:
the first one, a new cheap manufactured chinese product with 700ma i bought on a flee-market for 2 euros and my raspberrypi suffered various malfunctions.
afterwards i bought a new phone-charger with 1000ma for 12 euros and everythings works flawless.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: spence91 on August 07, 2012, 04:36:44 AM
Official Blackberry chargers are rated 5V 700ma and are *cheap*, plus my work seems to throw one at me every couple of years. That's what I've been using and I've not had any issues - even having 2 devices in both usb ports and using XBMC playing stuff over NFS.

A phone charger is not a power supply.

Supplying power to an electrical load - what else can it be?
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: bmarkus on August 07, 2012, 07:40:50 AM
Supplying power to an electrical load - what else can it be?

A charger is providing power to charge a mobile phone battery where charging is regulated by the phone's electronic and phone itself is powered from the battery having a regulator, filter circuit between battery and and phone. It means, that requirement on stability, noise, etc. is low on charger, it can be a cheap shit.

Powering a cumputer board is a different story, where requirement on voltage stability and noise level on the lines are much higher to protect the board, as well as for example how voltage is changing during on/off can be important for reset circuit, etc. Do not know how Pi, wether there is a voltage stab for example in its power line or line, how reset circuit is built, etc.

Low quality power supply can cause strange system crashes and mulfunctions which would handled as software bug or a hardware failure of the board by most users but it isn't.

So even if you find a phone charger working it is a high risk for your board.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: spence91 on August 07, 2012, 08:49:01 AM
A charger is providing power
Bingo.

http://elinux.org/Rpi_Hardware#Power (http://elinux.org/Rpi_Hardware#Power)
According to the online wiki the Pi can take voltages anywhere from 5V to 16V, I think the whole point of deciding on this method of power supply was precisely because many people have mini-usb power supplies at home already because it's become ubiquitous.

I agree with the non-brand phone chargers not being good, I disagree with it being a high risk to your board, most people have issues with too little power not the other way around. It will result in strange failures but will it blow up in your face? I doubt it.

My point is that you can get branded power supplies for very cheap, and most people already have some lying around.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: Rich on August 07, 2012, 10:24:49 AM
Hi spence91
From the link you provided:
Quote
The board takes fixed 5V input,
Nowhere does it state (that I could find) you can run from 16V. Read this: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/260
Also from the link you provided:
Quote
This permits adoption of the micro USB form factor, which, in turn, prevents the user from inadvertently plugging in out-of-range power inputs; that would be dangerous, since the 5V would go straight to HDMI and output USB ports, even though the problem should be mitigated by some protections applied to the input power: The board provides a polarity protection diode, a voltage clamp, and a self-resetting semiconductor fuse.
I took a look at the schematic for the model B, the link for the PDF can be found here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/1090
Here's what I saw for the power supply input:
1. A series connected semiconductor fuse rated for 1.1A at 6V, followed by
2. A shunt connect 5V bi-directional transzorb
3. NO POLARITY PROTECTION DIODE
As you increase the input voltage above 5V, the transorb will begin conducting current and clamp the voltage to the board
at 5V. This excess current will heat up the fuse until you reach about 1.1A, at which point it's resistance suddenly becomes
very high and shuts down the board. Once it cools down, it's resistance once again drops. The purpose of this circuit is to
clamp momentary spikes and surges, not to serve as a mechanism to regulate higher voltages to 5V. If you do actually
apply a solid 16V supply, the transorb will have 5V across it, leaving 11V across the 6V fuse, most likely destroying it.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: spence91 on August 07, 2012, 10:44:48 AM
Rich - my bad, the 16V came from the C6 capacitor that's on the board (I skimmed the article) that aids with DC regulation.

--EDIT--
Also here's a list of Verified power sources - many of them phone chargers.
http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals#Power_adapters (http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals#Power_adapters)
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: Rich on August 07, 2012, 11:49:15 AM
Hi spence91
I suspected it was something like that.

@ALL: You want to use a 5 volt 1 amp REGULATED power supply.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: cast-fish on August 14, 2012, 10:44:03 PM
A phone charger is not a power supply.

You do talk some Rubbish sometimes.

It's like. "did he even read the sentence before posting it?"

Ofcourse a phone charger is a "power supply" because it powers the phone
while charging the phones empty battery.

What school did you go to?

V.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: bmarkus on August 15, 2012, 12:30:45 AM
A phone charger is not a power supply.

You do talk some Rubbish sometimes.

It's like. "did he even read the sentence before posting it?"

Ofcourse a phone charger is a "power supply" because it powers the phone
while charging the phones empty battery.

What school did you go to?

V.

Thanks. School? M.Sc.E.E in electronics and computer sciences, amateur radio operator with HAREC licence. To be honest I'm tired to discuss hw construction details whith someone who knows nothing about circuits and takes out one sentence without reading deatails.

You can do whatever you want with your toys. Please, let me out of your bussiness.

Thanks.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: Rich on August 15, 2012, 02:02:18 AM
Hi cast-fish
Quote
You do talk some Rubbish sometimes.

It's like. "did he even read the sentence before posting it?"
Did you bother to read and understand post #33 written by bmarkus?
Quote
Ofcourse a phone charger is a "power supply" because it powers the phone
while charging the phones empty battery.
Yes, but that does not mean it is a proper power supply for this application. I tried to find some specs for
phone chargers, and none listed whether the output was regulated, what the output tolerance was, or
how much ripple they put out. I did find one that listed its input voltage as 100-240VAC, and its output
voltage as 4.5-9.5VDC, sound like a good power supply to you? Just because a phone can be charged
from a USB port, does not mean its charger is suitable for powering logic circuits.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: spence91 on August 16, 2012, 05:38:35 AM
A phone charger is not a power supply.

You do talk some Rubbish sometimes.

It's like. "did he even read the sentence before posting it?"

Ofcourse a phone charger is a "power supply" because it powers the phone
while charging the phones empty battery.

What school did you go to?

V.

Thanks. School? M.Sc.E.E in electronics and computer sciences, amateur radio operator with HAREC licence. To be honest I'm tired to discuss hw construction details whith someone who knows nothing about circuits and takes out one sentence without reading deatails.

You can do whatever you want with your toys. Please, let me out of your bussiness.

Thanks.

I don't think anyone takes exception to your reasoning or your impressive electronic credentials. I was just calling you up on the blanket statement that was made.
My shaky reply aside, it still remains that the Raspberry Pi foundation endorses a variety of power supplies, with many of them being phone chargers.

What is far more important is of course getting TCL up and running on this board....
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: netnomad on August 16, 2012, 06:12:21 AM
hi friends,

i learnt that if i have problems with my rpi, it's worth to check the power supply.
in my daily work i experience regulary that technical problems are often caused by a poor power supply.
after changing or improving the power supply many problems disappear...
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: cast-fish on August 18, 2012, 02:15:15 PM
Hello

oh mt "phone charge" ppost is  a bit heavy. Sorry. It was just correcting Markus blanket statement
which is incorrect.

his post  "a phone charger is not a power supply"

hie next post

A phone charger is providing power to charge a mobile phone battery where charging is regulated by the phone's electronic and phone itself is powered from the battery having a regulator, filter circuit between battery and and phone. It means, that requirement on stability, noise, etc. is low on charger, it can be a cheap shit.


i hope that clears up why i commented.

In relation to the comment that i have no experience with circuits. (hmmm)

My comments are not Flame Rich and Markus but fact. I stand by what i say as
a roadblock for a wholly 100 percent incorrect comment from BM.

As for the OP....

The Rasberry states that it can work with many "mobile phone chargers"
and it was designed this way. Two hundred thousand Pi's have been sold. Youtube vids show many phone chargers plugging in and powering the Pi. (funnily enough that means the phone charger is a Power Supply).

Rasberry foundation just qoute what electronic specs are needed from a phone charger to allow the charger power the Pi.  They state the required voltage thresholds and current thresholds. Your charger will work right if it is in that catagory.....   If not....then it won't work right.

thanks

Vince.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: hiro on August 18, 2012, 02:28:16 PM
Stuff breaks, so just try out different chargers, power sources, cables, whatever. Specs don't matter to the Chinese anyway.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: cast-fish on August 18, 2012, 02:42:09 PM
Sorry....i read the bits of thread again

So maybe people are using correct spec "phone chargers" but the Pi does not like the chargers....?

But surely what your saying can't be the case?. The Pi foundation marketed the whole Pi
on the very notion that it can be powered off many existing Cell phone chargers....could this be wrong?(surely not). Pi can also be powered over USB right?   (Pi)

i just think in the case of this thread it's a one thread situation. Your "reply angle" while not only incorrect, seems to infer doomed design.

The power supply for the Raspberry Pi is a standard micro-usb charger. This is the de-facto charger for most mobile phones as well as other electronic devices. I have dozens of USB adapters in the house that are suitable. This includes laptop power supplies, my Android (HTC) phone charger, Asus tablet charger, USB hub and more. The minimum requirement is that the supply must be capable of at least 700mA.

There are several chargers on Amazon starting from about £2

anyway......there is no point arguing. The points are clear

V.

hmmm

V.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: cast-fish on September 09, 2012, 08:48:58 AM
Hello

That is super. Tinycore available for the Rasberry Pi. Really interesting project and offerring. Also
it's free.

There is a nice version of Puppy Linux for rasberry Pi. It's in Alpha 4 stage but does contain
Chromium browser with Flash. (among many other things)

http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02910

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-pJ3eoz9Kw

this above is called "SAP Puppi".   Squeezed Arm Puppy.

There is also another Puppy for Rasberry Pi called "cockroach"

V.
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: bmarkus on September 09, 2012, 09:11:06 AM

There is also another Puppy for Rasberry Pi called "cockroach"


Name is impressive...
Title: Re: Raspberry Pi
Post by: cast-fish on September 09, 2012, 09:26:10 AM
ha ha.

People say they are the only thing that would survive a nuclear haulacaust?  (not sure how the Rasberry pi would fair there)

V.