Post B9n7qQDfJEe0JrFwVU by updn@chaos.social
(DIR) More posts by updn@chaos.social
(DIR) Post #B9lbraBTzoNOhUbHn6 by mntmn@mastodon.social
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another brainworm: what are we gonna make/sell in 2027 when there's no more ddr4 (shortage). i guess even if the crisis is mostly about ddr5, there will be knock-on effects. more and more low-resource/power/fpga based ideas circulating in my head. i think a major interesting thing would be to solve interfacing low end MCUs to 1080p+ eDP displays, for writing/terminal use cases. instant-on kinda things with good typography engine
(DIR) Post #B9lby6MRHDBqESpjxQ by concretedog@mastodon.social
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@mntmn I hate that we are here, but blimey, this sounds really cool. Either this or 27 is the year of diy ram from sand :)
(DIR) Post #B9lc2VjEtydk4EbItk by mntmn@mastodon.social
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@concretedog well, sdram, sram, probably ddr3 etc will probably be around
(DIR) Post #B9lcFrGU8rcecpW22C by concretedog@mastodon.social
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@mntmn theres definitely a big interest in writerdeck/low distraction computing. Things like pocketmage getting a lot of attention.
(DIR) Post #B9lcHIMwr2fsyeDwxs by mntmn@mastodon.social
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MNT Interim (this time the name fits)
(DIR) Post #B9lcJoCNU4uaH2Ti9A by jt_rebelo@ciberlandia.pt
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@mntmn back to electrical typewriters, word processors and pocket computers (Sharp PC-1 and the like come to mind). I cherish my mechanical typewriter (helped my pc-less butt through middle school in the early 2000's) and have to secure more ink ribbons just in case, but if I can go with a middle of the road solution (that I've never used, went from typewriter to x86 PC) I'll be satisfied.
(DIR) Post #B9lcX5eVu1QiAcyIlM by cararemixed@mastodon.social
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@mntmn I've been thinking about the overhead of unicode text on these constrained devices. It's easier when you can assume everything will fit in a byte but so much text gets cut out and so many fonts with it. Text being so limited is maybe my biggest complaint with trying to shove things into uxn. Someone built an engine that prebakes Japanese kanji but that assumes you have a fixed corpus. I wonder what the minimum spec really is for truly international access.
(DIR) Post #B9lcwSskfkT5SIjNqK by cararemixed@mastodon.social
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@mntmn 32MiB PSRAM on an ESP32-S31, an SD card slot, and a larger 1-bit MIP display with a front-light and good keyboard would be fun form factor.
(DIR) Post #B9ldPbAawBpnYcy8OG by deshipu@fosstodon.org
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@mntmn the software support of eink displays seems to be advancing recently, and those would fit the typewriter-like projects, if not for the low power, then for the reflective quality of the display
(DIR) Post #B9leKBzxCJJDzlygTY by decibyte@social.data.coop
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@mntmn Joining the e-ink choir here
(DIR) Post #B9lenPiDHxmEvTc6OO by scops@social.tchncs.de
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@mntmnAaaand lora/mashtastic out of the box would be nice
(DIR) Post #B9lfVRI2mcxiYsMkca by mntmn@mastodon.social
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@GyrosGeier meh!
(DIR) Post #B9lfdjrxad6MV77gxs by mntmn@mastodon.social
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@cararemixed i think we can stream the required glyphs from flash/disk into a cache/atlas, and one doesn't really need more than 2 or 3 fonts, so "online" memory use could be optimized even on low-end i think
(DIR) Post #B9lfo1UGwRF42OwmcS by niklasnisbeth@mastodon.xyz
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@mntmn Open source graphical OS that runs in tens of megabytes of RAM. Amiga/Mac System 7 level of complexity. The hardware's NBD, getting critical mass for the software is.
(DIR) Post #B9lfpHrhXCKT7eVay0 by lhp@mastodon.social
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@mntmn netbook (or smaller) form-factor canon cat!Just a text editor, just a single large text file. Instantly powers on, remembers your last cursor position. Auto-saves.Had that idea for a while. My ideal note-taking device. Optional encryption would be nice.
(DIR) Post #B9lgR8YiaCgtGQg4iu by mntmn@mastodon.social
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@dartov don't wanna compete with tangara
(DIR) Post #B9lhBZOf8IIZox7CFs by cararemixed@mastodon.social
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@mntmn Yeah. I guess I was dissapointed to learn that some single emojis can take up over 40 bytes. Sure we can start cutting things out but where should the line be?
(DIR) Post #B9lhY2FcXBlJgIb93g by jfred@jawns.club
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@mntmn MNT lapdock module for plugging an external mobile device into an MNT chassis? Tough market though because the competition (NexDock et al) is very cheap (~$200) and it's very much a nicheThere are basically no lapdocks with high-quality peripherals though. Maybe because people wouldn't pay for it, idk
(DIR) Post #B9lmmrSNRtCwJmSCR6 by Lynx@ohai.social
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@mntmn I love this idea! I'm trying to put together a writer deck for my spouse with an ESP32, an eink display, and an old Thinkpad keyboard.
(DIR) Post #B9lmx7BLpxULz9NaCG by jaseg@chaos.social
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@mntmn i’ve noticed that secondhand DDR3 is still reasonably cheap. Also XC7Z020 and XCKU3P are currently available for cheap second hand, the former because I think it’s used a lot in war drones, the latter because it was in a batch of data center accelerators that recently got written off.
(DIR) Post #B9mJ2k2hyk96UT40TA by max_power@chaos.social
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@mntmn I think this concept is super nice and I am very sad this did not materialize https://github.com/ericjenott/Evertop/
(DIR) Post #B9mzf4aoDcmFIuyT5s by PaulaMaddox@mastodon.social
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@mntmn I like the idea of an eink based laptop, something simple and clean. Something you can use for coding, but mostly just reading and writing text.
(DIR) Post #B9n7qQDfJEe0JrFwVU by updn@chaos.social
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@mntmn I'm hoping that DDR2 and 3 will not come into shortage this extreme due them being ancient and usually in a more steady demand, or maybe even with some tiny surplus capacity there, as the knock-on effects chill industrial demand.It all depends on how low the barrier of "this is actual junk and it won't do" is at the usual suspects, which are buying up all hardware they can get their hands on. And I'm betting that We can /always/ make do with less than large-scale industry.
(DIR) Post #B9nG1iiJgfOGUtUWum by BrettRD@mastodon.au
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@mntmnFor me and people I've tried to mentor, most of the pain for low end micros has been the endless sea of incompatible HALs and errata.This could be be addressed in the general case with a fpga gateware providing a meddler-in-the-middle attack on a mcu psram bus so that developers can shoehorn arbitrary (open and standardised) memory-mapped peripherals into the address space of fast (still low end) CPUs.That would immediately give you the Tiliqua pixel shader, audio processor, and hdmi drivers on most mid range microcontrollers.I'm looking forward to the Glasgow revD because its psram applet already provides half of that gateware.