Notices by josch (josch@floss.social), page 3

MNT Reform meetup with @debacle during MiniDebconf Berlin 2024 🥳

MiniDebConf Berlin 2024 Day #3 status report:

- replied on linux-ext4 concerning bit-by-bit reproducible ext4 images and preserving sparse-ness in ext4 images https://lore.kernel.org/linux-ext4/171584261210.153302.13800498533021477492@localhost/
- review of reform-debian-packages linux build script by Debian Linux packaging maintainer Ben Hutchings -- thank you!! ❤️
- applied patch from sbuild bug #1071234
- filed bug #1071238
- worked on sbuild-unshare-chroot-manager

@mntmn Is this how our hopes for a wireless keyboard in the pocket-reform form-factor go out of the window? 😉

Me and my trusted MNT Reform are in the train headed to MiniDebConf Berlin 2024. Looking forward to seeing everybody tomorrow! 🎉

@mntmn you thought up laptop designs when you were younger? You must be doing your dream job! 🤩 @de my daughter is only 3 right now but the only laptops she sees on a daily basis are the MNT Reform and a Thinkpad. She has a portable toy supermarket checkout station which she pretends to be her very own laptop. I wonder how her laptop designs will look like when she's older!! 🥰

I was surprised that the MNT Reform laptop as reviewed by @geerlingguy only achieved 2.5 hours of battery runtime. So I tried replicating the same benchmark on my own MNT Reform with Banana Pi BPI-CM4 and fresh 2000mAh LiFePO4 cells by playing the exact same Youtube fireplace video in Firefox in fullscreen mode at full display brightness and got a much more respectable runtime of 4:45 hours. 🤔 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DA0Jr4WH-4 https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/mnt-reform-hackable-laptop-not-everyone

After upgrading my MNT Reform from IMX8MQ to A311D, I had to remove all my mods. I finally found some time to 3D print all parts so that everything fits again. Full description in the MNT forum: https://community.mnt.re/t/adding-lte-modem-and-other-usb-devices/1215/20

@mntmn You call 100 MBit ethernet an issue but I don't even have any hardware at home that would be able to do more than that! :D
I guess/hope the pcie refclock issues that you fixed via a mod on the motherboard can be solved on the adapter board without requiring a motherboard change?

@mntmn So the usb-c was not soldered on correctly? How did you prevent the hot air from damaging the surrounding plastic parts? I always have trouble getting components off without causing more damage than what I'm trying to fix. 🙃

@jacqueline me raises both arms up in the air sending all the energy 💪 Remember that those tech sites get way more clicks by writing bad takes. I hope you manage to ignore the haters to be able to put all the good spirits into the tangara. I also just noticed.. Crowdsupply says it raised 87k from 208 backers... Did the average backer purchase 1.7 tangaras??

@as400 @mntmn Oh thank you for that info! No kvm is a dealbreaker for me as I use qemu+kvm every day on my a311d reform (and the imx8mq in the past). Should the qcm6490 become part of the reform family, I'd appreciate another row in the table on https://mntre.com/modularity.html which indicates whether the platform can do kvm acceleration or not (in the same way as the table also lists opengl capabilities of the board).

I bought the same speakers that the @mntmn Pocket Reform uses (CUI CES-36181118PM67) and installed them into my MNT Reform following a mod that Lukas had already performed. My first attempt fried my audio chip (reason unknown -- i was probably not careful enough with the cabling) but now it worked! To save space, I routed the cables between motherboard and keyboard. These speakers are finally proper loud. 📢 🎉

I 3D printed the Reform laptop main box (I was too cheap to by the original aluminum parts) and stuck a case-less external MNT keyboard 3.0 and trackball 2.0 together with a tiny USB hub into it. I wanted to avoid having to leave the keyboard with my hands when I need the mouse cursor at my work desktop.

@mntmn @jacqueline If this hasn't happened to you yet, Lukas, then that just means that you haven't yet made the Reform gay enough to deter the wrong type of customer. 😀 (jaqueline style purple mainboard when?)

@mntmn Or in other words: this table is holding about 18k EUR right now! 😆 Are those pocket reform batteries in the upper-left-hand corner? Nice Reform standalone keyboard v3 case color!

One of the reasons why I bought the LS1028A SoM for my MNT Reform laptop was, that I have several projects that only utilize a single core and benefit from /tmp being mounted as a large tmpfs as they would otherwise write several GB to my SSD. So I benchmarked the runtime of the testsuite of my software mmdebstrap:

imx8mq: 522 minutes
ls1028a: 402 minutes

Not surprisingly the story is the other way round for compiling the Reform Debian Linux kernel:

imx8mq: 347 minutes
ls1028a: 412 minutes

@vimja I 3d printed my right side panel and added another 3.5 mm audio jack. Now I'm not only free to choose which side to plug my headphones in, but it's also super easy to plug in two headphones at the same time and watch a movie with a friend. 😀
More about this here: https://community.mnt.re/t/show-your-case-mods/194/7

And here with the heatsink on top.

My new LS1028A just before putting the thermal pad on top.

My dad used to repair TVs and he remembers the time when for each TV you could get the schematics so that he could repair them at his shop.

When was the last time you bought a computer that came with schematics?

Finally my LS1028A arrived today!

https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform-ls1028a-module