[9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Brian L. Stuart]

I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm
calling Computing in the Small.  Right now, I'm
leaning toward conducting it on a platform that
runs Plan 9.  I'm looking for something based on
ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection
to the external world in the form of GPIOs.  SPI,
I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too.
Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate.  What
are some others?  I've seen some code in the
source tree for the BBB.  Has anyone tried it out
to see what is and isn't there?  How about the
Banana Pi?  The SATA port on it is quite appealing.
Some of the other options I've been looking at
include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec
Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard,
and the Wandboard.  Has anyone done anything
on porting Plan 9 to any of them?  Are there others
I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class?

Thanks in advance,
BLS

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Charles Forsyth]

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On 5 August 2015 at 21:39, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate.


I think the big advantage of the Rpi or Rpi2 (for speed, memory and cores)
is that there's a wealth of published projects for them, including hardware
ones, and other stuff,
and they aren't likely to go away. It's true that lacking SATA and Gb Ether
makes it harder
to use them for certain applications (except as demos, alhough there's a
Kickstarter project for mSATA),
but if you're doing Computing in the Small both SATA and Gb are perhaps
optional.

I'm glad you asked, though, because I hadn't seen the APC Paper.

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Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Brian L. Stuart]

On Wed, 8/5/15, Charles Forsyth <charles.forsyth@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think the big advantage of the Rpi or Rpi2 (for speed,
> memory and cores)is that there's a wealth of published
> projects for them, including hardware ones, and other stuff,
> and they aren't likely to go away. It's true that lacking SATA
> and Gb Ether makes it harderto use them for certain applications
> (except as demos, alhough there's a Kickstarter project for
> mSATA),but if you're doing Computing in the Small both SATA
> and Gb are perhaps optional.

I am kind of leaning toward the RPi at the moment for reasons
very much along those lines.  Though I'm probably going to
order at least a Banana Pi for my own playing around.  If I
read their propaganda correctly, it should run the OS images
that the RPi does.  If so, I'm really curious to see how close
Richard's Plan9 image comes to running on it.  And I do still
need to do some playing with the BBB I recently got.  In terms
of the RPi though, as of yesterday, my auth server is now
running on an RPi, replacing a nearly 20 year old NEC laptop.

> I'm glad you asked, though, because I hadn't seen the APC Paper.

It is a really cute little machine.  I'm tempted to get one of
those to play with too.

Too many toys, too little time...

BLS

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Skip Tavakkolian]

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RPI's running something like plan9-bcm (check github) where gpio is exposed
should work. I'm going to try plan9-bcm this weekend; i'll keep you posted.
I like ODROID hardware, but obviously there isn't a Plan 9 port for it.

Arduino Yún (MIPS+AVR) could make a cool device for Plan 9, but the MIPS
part of the hardware is closed.

On the smaller end of the scale, I've just started porting lib9p to
esp8266. I'm using ESP01; it is a cheap yet very capable device.

On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 1:39 PM, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net>
wrote:

> I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm
> calling Computing in the Small.  Right now, I'm
> leaning toward conducting it on a platform that
> runs Plan 9.  I'm looking for something based on
> ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection
> to the external world in the form of GPIOs.  SPI,
> I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too.
> Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate.  What
> are some others?  I've seen some code in the
> source tree for the BBB.  Has anyone tried it out
> to see what is and isn't there?  How about the
> Banana Pi?  The SATA port on it is quite appealing.
> Some of the other options I've been looking at
> include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec
> Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard,
> and the Wandboard.  Has anyone done anything
> on porting Plan 9 to any of them?  Are there others
> I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> BLS
>
>
>

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Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Shane Morris]

Lib9p to ESP8266 would be quite good. I got two NodeMCU Rev 2 boards
from LearCNC here in Oz, I'm planning on using them in little vacuum
cleaner robots.

On 8/6/15, Skip Tavakkolian <skip.tavakkolian@gmail.com> wrote:
> RPI's running something like plan9-bcm (check github) where gpio is exposed
> should work. I'm going to try plan9-bcm this weekend; i'll keep you posted.
> I like ODROID hardware, but obviously there isn't a Plan 9 port for it.
>
> Arduino Yún (MIPS+AVR) could make a cool device for Plan 9, but the MIPS
> part of the hardware is closed.
>
> On the smaller end of the scale, I've just started porting lib9p to
> esp8266. I'm using ESP01; it is a cheap yet very capable device.
>
> On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 1:39 PM, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net>
> wrote:
>
>> I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm
>> calling Computing in the Small.  Right now, I'm
>> leaning toward conducting it on a platform that
>> runs Plan 9.  I'm looking for something based on
>> ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection
>> to the external world in the form of GPIOs.  SPI,
>> I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too.
>> Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate.  What
>> are some others?  I've seen some code in the
>> source tree for the BBB.  Has anyone tried it out
>> to see what is and isn't there?  How about the
>> Banana Pi?  The SATA port on it is quite appealing.
>> Some of the other options I've been looking at
>> include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec
>> Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard,
>> and the Wandboard.  Has anyone done anything
>> on porting Plan 9 to any of them?  Are there others
>> I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class?
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>> BLS
>>
>>
>>
>

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Steve Simon]

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Richard has an i2c and spi driver for the pi. I grafted the inferno i2c file system interface on top of Richards driver, though the sub addressed reads are awaiting my return from holiday.

there is a pi gpio and pwm driver which has a pi audio module which sits on top. this produces strange noises with a pi2 which I will dig into shortly.

I think the pi is a wonderful terminal, the only app which would really benefit from Gbit ether is Remote Desktop (imho)

I would love a similar machine with Gbit ether and 2 or 3 sata 3s to replace my ageing file server.

-Steve




> On 6 Aug 2015, at 00:12, Skip Tavakkolian <skip.tavakkolian@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> RPI's running something like plan9-bcm (check github) where gpio is exposed should work. I'm going to try plan9-bcm this weekend; i'll keep you posted. I like ODROID hardware, but obviously there isn't a Plan 9 port for it.
> 
> Arduino Yún (MIPS+AVR) could make a cool device for Plan 9, but the MIPS part of the hardware is closed.
> 
> On the smaller end of the scale, I've just started porting lib9p to esp8266. I'm using ESP01; it is a cheap yet very capable device.
> 
> On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 1:39 PM, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>> I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm
>> calling Computing in the Small.  Right now, I'm
>> leaning toward conducting it on a platform that
>> runs Plan 9.  I'm looking for something based on
>> ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection
>> to the external world in the form of GPIOs.  SPI,
>> I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too.
>> Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate.  What
>> are some others?  I've seen some code in the
>> source tree for the BBB.  Has anyone tried it out
>> to see what is and isn't there?  How about the
>> Banana Pi?  The SATA port on it is quite appealing.
>> Some of the other options I've been looking at
>> include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec
>> Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard,
>> and the Wandboard.  Has anyone done anything
>> on porting Plan 9 to any of them?  Are there others
>> I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class?
>> 
>> Thanks in advance,
>> BLS
> 

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Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Brian L. Stuart]

> Richard has an i2c and spi driver for the pi. I grafted the inferno
> i2c file system interface on top of Richards driver, though
> the sub addressed reads are awaiting my return from
> holiday.

Steve,
Is all that on sources somewhere or accessible otherwise?
Last night, I pulled devbcm from plan9-bcm on github and
folded it into the latest pi image Richard posted on sources,
but I haven't done anything other than compile and boot
a kernel with it yet.  I've ordered a few toys to play with
including a little 3.5" LCD with touch screen that talks SPI.
So I'm going to try to get that up and running soon.

> I would love a
> similar machine with Gbit ether and 2 or 3 sata 3s to
> replace my ageing file server.

Same here.  In fact, I've ordered a Banana Pi to see just
how close it does come to being compatible.  I'll let everyone
know if it does boot the rpi images.

As an update to the whole thing, I've decided to go ahead
and use the Raspberry Pi at least this term.  Given the time
available, I suspect I'd get too caught up in getting a stable
port running on anything else and not do what I need getting
classes prepared.  If I teach this again sometime, maybe I'll
get a chance to do more.

I will say I very much like the documentation that TI has for
the SoC in the BBB, especially compared to what passes
for Broadcom documentation.  The reference manual for
the AM335X processor is nearly 5000 pages.  And there
are several other things I like about the BBB over the pi,
but who knows when my supply of round tuits will allow me
to spend much time working on it.

My thanks to everyone who has given me suggestions.
There are definitely some new machines I hadn't seen
before that I'll be checking out.

BLS

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[David du Colombier]

> Is all that on sources somewhere or accessible otherwise?

Richard's latest Raspberry Pi repository is available here:

/n/sources/contrib/miller/9/bcm

--
David du Colombier

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Brian L. Stuart]

On Wed, 8/12/15, David du Colombier <0intro@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Is all that on sources somewhere or accessible otherwise?
>
> Richard's latest Raspberry Pi repository is available here:
>
> /n/sources/contrib/miller/9/bcm

Cool.  Somehow I missed that.  I'll pull it and play with it.  Using
the github plan9-bcm devbcm, I've gotten as far as blinking an
LED, but if there's already working I2C and SPI code, I've got
devices that need to talk that.

Thanks,
BLS

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Skip Tavakkolian]

> On Wed, 8/12/15, David du Colombier <0intro@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Is all that on sources somewhere or accessible otherwise?
>>
>> Richard's latest Raspberry Pi repository is available here:
>>
>> /n/sources/contrib/miller/9/bcm
>
> Cool.  Somehow I missed that.  I'll pull it and play with it.  Using
> the github plan9-bcm devbcm, I've gotten as far as blinking an
> LED, but if there's already working I2C and SPI code, I've got
> devices that need to talk that.
>
> Thanks,
> BLS

a little update: i am running Richard's latest bcm on several rpi's. i'm using
the ds3231 based rtc (link below) on a couple of them. these use the i2c;
everything is working as expected.

the gpio pins don't seem accessible through a filesystem api like i see in
plan9-bcm (unless i've missed something).  it would be great to merge
that capability in.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/DS3231-Precision-RTC-Module-Memory-Module-for-Raspberry-Pi-/181405526368?hash=item2a3c9ca960

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Brian L. Stuart]

On Wed, 8/12/15, Skip Tavakkolian <9nut@9netics.com> wrote:
> the gpio pins don't seem accessible through a filesystem api
> like i see in plan9-bcm (unless i've missed something).

I'm pretty sure it's not there.

>  it would be great to merge that capability in.

I've made a start on that this afternoon.  I took the devbcm from
plan9-bcm and stripped it down to just the gpio parts and
renamed it devgpio.  I've now got a B+ running with Richard's
latest code that includes I2C and SPI and a first cut revision of
devgpio.  I'm watching an LED I wired up to it blinking driven
by a program in user space as I type this.

BLS
 
 

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Steve Simon]

I have tried to email BLS but fear I am being spam filtered... you there?

-Steve




> On 12 Aug 2015, at 23:27, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 8/12/15, Skip Tavakkolian <9nut@9netics.com> wrote:
>> the gpio pins don't seem accessible through a filesystem api
>> like i see in plan9-bcm (unless i've missed something).
>
> I'm pretty sure it's not there.
>
>>   it would be great to merge that capability in.
>
> I've made a start on that this afternoon.  I took the devbcm from
> plan9-bcm and stripped it down to just the gpio parts and
> renamed it devgpio.  I've now got a B+ running with Richard's
> latest code that includes I2C and SPI and a first cut revision of
> devgpio.  I'm watching an LED I wired up to it blinking driven
> by a program in user space as I type this.
>
> BLS
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Brian L. Stuart]

> I have tried to email BLS but fear I am being spam filtered... you there?

I did get one message from you, and replied earlier today.  Hopefully
it got through.

A little more update on recent pi playing.  I've been working on a
little toy the last few days, namely one of those small SPI driven
LCD panels:

http://www.adafruit.com/products/2441

As of this evening, I've gotten it sort of running alongside the
HDMI display showing the upper left corner.  Here are a few
pics of it in operation:

The Pi with the display connected to a keyboard and mouse:

http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft1-s.jpg

and a couple of pics of the display showing acme running:

http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft2-s.jpg
http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft3-s.jpg

It's a long way from being usable though.  The fundamental issue
is that there appears to be a very deeply embedded assumption
that a screen must be memory mapped.  I tried hooking into
the hwdraw() routine in screen.c, but it seems that not every
change to the screen memory space gets reflected in a call
to hwdraw().  For the pics, I've got a version that periodically
copies the whole of the appropriate area of the Memimage
to the LCD panel over the SPI port.  Obviously, that's too slow
and too resource-hungry to be practical.  Hopefully, I'm missing
something and there's an elegant way to graft a non-memory
mapped display into the devdraw/memdraw/screen infrastructure.

BLS

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Steve Simon]

Vncserv must do something similar, maybe that is worth looking at.
I went down a similar route but am planning to just address the display
as a different type of device, rather than as a plan9 display.

Your progress is very impressive, my project stalled - I must get back to it.

-Steve



On 15 Aug 2015, at 03:49, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>> I have tried to email BLS but fear I am being spam filtered... you there?
>
> I did get one message from you, and replied earlier today.  Hopefully
> it got through.
>
> A little more update on recent pi playing.  I've been working on a
> little toy the last few days, namely one of those small SPI driven
> LCD panels:
>
> http://www.adafruit.com/products/2441
>
> As of this evening, I've gotten it sort of running alongside the
> HDMI display showing the upper left corner.  Here are a few
> pics of it in operation:
>
> The Pi with the display connected to a keyboard and mouse:
>
> http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft1-s.jpg
>
> and a couple of pics of the display showing acme running:
>
> http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft2-s.jpg
> http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft3-s.jpg
>
> It's a long way from being usable though.  The fundamental issue
> is that there appears to be a very deeply embedded assumption
> that a screen must be memory mapped.  I tried hooking into
> the hwdraw() routine in screen.c, but it seems that not every
> change to the screen memory space gets reflected in a call
> to hwdraw().  For the pics, I've got a version that periodically
> copies the whole of the appropriate area of the Memimage
> to the LCD panel over the SPI port.  Obviously, that's too slow
> and too resource-hungry to be practical.  Hopefully, I'm missing
> something and there's an elegant way to graft a non-memory
> mapped display into the devdraw/memdraw/screen infrastructure.
>
> BLS
>

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[hiro]

cute, you should ship with fresnel lenses, then the reference is complete:
http://www.wikinoticia.com/images2//s2.alt1040.com/files/2011/11/Brazil2-800x528.jpg

There could also be more modern versions for more IKEA styled students:
http://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/2013/01/mini-cinema-iphone-02.jpg

On the other hand you shouldn't underestimate the usefulness of a
thinkpad (e.g. x61) for students. They are cheap these days if you get
them used, and this could get your university a badge for ecological
behavior.
At least it would be in the same price league as rpi + LCD + keyboard
+ mouse + case.

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Brian L. Stuart]

On Sat, 8/15/15, hiro <23hiro@gmail.com> wrote:
> cute, you should ship with fresnel lenses, then the reference is complete:
> http://www.wikinoticia.com/images2//s2.alt1040.com/files/2011/11/Brazil2-800x528.jpg

rotfl...   I hadn't made the association until you mentioned it.
I may have to mention the Brazil branch of development and
show them the picture in class.

> On the other hand you shouldn't underestimate the usefulness of a
> thinkpad (e.g. x61) for students. They are cheap these days if you get
> them used, and this could get your university a badge for ecological
> behavior.  At least it would be in the same price league as rpi + LCD
> + keyboard + mouse + case.

True.  The focus is more aimed at understanding embedded systems,
microcontrollers, and SoCs more than Plan 9 per se, and I expect
most students will use an existing HDMI or VGA monitor.  Part of
my motivation for this is as a less expensive alternative for any who
don't have access to a spare monitor.  Of course, they're not going
to get the full embedded experience.  There's just not enough time
to develop a custom piece of hardware and get them comfortable
with bare metal programming.  (Hence why I"m calling the course
Computing in the Small rather than Embedded Systems.)

BLS

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Brian L. Stuart]

On Sat, 8/15/15, Steve Simon <steve@quintile.net> wrote:
> Vncserv must do something similar, maybe that is worth looking at.
> I went down a similar route but am planning to just address
> the display as a different type of device, rather than as a plan9 display.

Good point.  Hadn't thought about that.  I'll take a look and see
if it has anything that might help.

> Your progress is very impressive, my project stalled - I must get back to it.

The other option I've been thinking about since late yesterday
is to create a variant of devdraw (or add hooks into the existing
devdraw) that allows it to shoot off a request to another device
for every screen update.

My ideal for this scenario is to have a single kernel image that
will simultaneously display on both the HDMI port and the SPI
display.  Then add some bits to boot.rc so that at boot-time, the
user can indicate whether they've got the SPI display installed
and whether to set the geometry and fonts accordingly.  Some
of that may end up being a potential project for students in the
class to do :)

BLS

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Joseph Stewart]

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Brian, does your uni let you publish your curriculum or course notes? Is
this something you've ever considered?
-joe

On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 10:49 PM, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net>
wrote:

> > I have tried to email BLS but fear I am being spam filtered... you there?
>
> I did get one message from you, and replied earlier today.  Hopefully
> it got through.
>
> A little more update on recent pi playing.  I've been working on a
> little toy the last few days, namely one of those small SPI driven
> LCD panels:
>
> http://www.adafruit.com/products/2441
>
> As of this evening, I've gotten it sort of running alongside the
> HDMI display showing the upper left corner.  Here are a few
> pics of it in operation:
>
> The Pi with the display connected to a keyboard and mouse:
>
> http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft1-s.jpg
>
> and a couple of pics of the display showing acme running:
>
> http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft2-s.jpg
> http://cs.drexel.edu/~bls96/9pitft3-s.jpg
>
> It's a long way from being usable though.  The fundamental issue
> is that there appears to be a very deeply embedded assumption
> that a screen must be memory mapped.  I tried hooking into
> the hwdraw() routine in screen.c, but it seems that not every
> change to the screen memory space gets reflected in a call
> to hwdraw().  For the pics, I've got a version that periodically
> copies the whole of the appropriate area of the Memimage
> to the LCD panel over the SPI port.  Obviously, that's too slow
> and too resource-hungry to be practical.  Hopefully, I'm missing
> something and there's an elegant way to graft a non-memory
> mapped display into the devdraw/memdraw/screen infrastructure.
>
> BLS
>
>
>

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[9fans] python for plan9 ?

[Floris van Manen]

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Is there a recent python port for plan9 ?
Or is it a no go area?

.F


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Re: [9fans] python for plan9 ?

[David du Colombier]

Jeff Sickel ported Python 2.7 to Plan 9.

https://bitbucket.org/jas/cpython

My notes on to install Python (and Mercurial) are available here:

http://9legacy.org/9legacy/doc/python/notes

--
David du Colombier

Re: [9fans] python for plan9 ?

[Jeff Sickel]

The 2.7.9 release isn’t complete yet given a backport of the SSL module from Python 3
to Python 2.7.9.  You may want to track

	hg clone -b 2.7-plan9 -u 93565 https://bitbucket.org/jas/cpython

until I get time to redo the Plan9/_p9ssl.c module.  It’s a bigger effort than the
old 2.7.x releases given the significant changes in the Python SSL module API.

-jas




> On Aug 15, 2015, at 9:15 AM, David du Colombier <0intro@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Jeff Sickel ported Python 2.7 to Plan 9.
> 
> https://bitbucket.org/jas/cpython
> 
> My notes on to install Python (and Mercurial) are available here:
> 
> http://9legacy.org/9legacy/doc/python/notes
> 
> -- 
> David du Colombier
> 

Re: [9fans] python for plan9 ?

[Floris van Manen]

is there a python 3.4 port ?
.F


> On 15 Aug 2015, at 17:21, Jeff Sickel <jas@corpus-callosum.com> wrote:
> 
> The 2.7.9 release isn’t complete yet given a backport of the SSL module from Python 3
> to Python 2.7.9.  You may want to track
> 
> 	hg clone -b 2.7-plan9 -u 93565 https://bitbucket.org/jas/cpython
> 
> until I get time to redo the Plan9/_p9ssl.c module.  It’s a bigger effort than the
> old 2.7.x releases given the significant changes in the Python SSL module API.
> 
> -jas
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Aug 15, 2015, at 9:15 AM, David du Colombier <0intro@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Jeff Sickel ported Python 2.7 to Plan 9.
>> 
>> https://bitbucket.org/jas/cpython
>> 
>> My notes on to install Python (and Mercurial) are available here:
>> 
>> http://9legacy.org/9legacy/doc/python/notes
>> 
>> -- 
>> David du Colombier
>> 
> 
> 

Re: [9fans] python for plan9 ?

[erik quanstrom]

On Sat Aug 15 16:06:57 PDT 2015, vm@klankschap.nl wrote:
> is there a python 3.4 port ?
> .F

nope.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Brian L. Stuart]

On Sat, 8/15/15, Joseph Stewart <joseph.stewart@gmail.com> wrote:
> Brian, does your uni let you publish your curriculum or course notes?
> Is this something you've ever considered?

I should be able to do at least something along those lines.  There
are corners of the university that get twitchy about making available
for free what online students pay for.  But most of us take the more
traditional academic view that the whole point of the exercise is
to spread knowledge as widely as possible.  Of course, whether
there ends up being anything worth making available remains to
be seen :)

BLS

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Brian L. Stuart]

On Fri, 8/14/15, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> The fundamental issue ... hwdraw().

Tonight's update: Forget what I said last night about hwdraw()
and the difficulty of connecting into the devdraw/memdraw/screen
stack.  I had one of those embarrassing "how did it ever work"
bugs.  Now hooking into hwdraw() and flushmemscreen() works
pretty well.  With an environment variable in cmdline.txt, it boots
either expecting an HDMI monitor, or the little LCD screen.

A little more playing around attempting improvement and then
I might take a crack at supporting the touch screen.

BLS

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Brian L. Stuart]

On Wed, 8/5/15, Skip Tavakkolian <skip.tavakkolian@gmail.com> wrote:
> RPI's running something like plan9-bcm (check github) where gpio
> is exposed should work. I'm going to try plan9-bcm this weekend;
> i'll keep you posted.

Thanks for the pointer.  I'll definitely check that out.  I'm hoping to
expose them to a little bit of working in the kernel anyway, but
don't want to take so much of the quarter's time as to get them
to the point where they can write their own drivers.  So depending
on where plan9-bcm stands, it might be just right.

> I like ODROID hardware, but obviously there
> isn't a Plan 9 port for it.

True.  Though in looking into some stuff on the Banana Pi,
I've seen indications that it supposedly can run at least one
ODROID image and it claims to be basically RPi compatible.
If all that's true (and things work out ideally) the Plan9 RPi
port might not be all that far away from running on it.

> Arduino Yún (MIPS+AVR) could make a cool device for Plan 9,
> but the MIPS part of the hardware is closed.

I've had a pretty similar reaction to that one.
 
> On the smaller end of the scale, I've just started porting lib9p
> to esp8266. I'm using ESP01; it is a cheap yet very capable
> device.

Very cool.  I'd not seen these before.  Keep us posted on your
progress on it.  that would be a lot of fun to play with.

BLS

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Charles Forsyth]

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On 7 August 2015 at 18:13, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net> wrote:

> So depending
> on where plan9-bcm stands, it might be just right.
>

That seems to be an old version of /sys/src/9/bcm (perhaps with
modifications)
so Richard Miller's version in contrib will be more up-to-date, I think.

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Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[lucio]

> I'm looking for something based on
> ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection
> to the external world in the form of GPIOs.  SPI,
> I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too.

Olimex in Bulgaria manufacture and market worldwide a very wide range
of AVR and ARM based boards and peripherals.  They target the DIY
market.  Pay their site (olimex.com works for me) a visit.

Their summer vacation is right now, but they will be open again by
mid-August.

Lucio.

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Brian L. Stuart]

On Thu, 8/6/15, lucio@proxima.alt.za <lucio@proxima.alt.za> wrote:
> Olimex in Bulgaria manufacture and market worldwide a very wide
> range of AVR and ARM based boards and peripherals.  They target
> the DIY market.  Pay their site (olimex.com works for me) a visit.

They do look interesting, and I like their intention to keep things
more open than Broadcom does.  Unfortunately, especially with
their vacation, I fear that the time between now and the start of
the term is too short for me to get one, familiarize myself enough
with it to teach it, get something more interesting than Linux
running on it and work out how to get them into the hands
of the students.  But if I ever do run a similar course again in
the future, I'll definitely look at them far enough ahead of time
to consider using them.

BLS

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Joseph Stewart]

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Brian, does your uni let you publish your curriculum or course notes? Is
this something you've ever considered?
-joe

On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 4:39 PM, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net>
wrote:

> I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm
> calling Computing in the Small.  Right now, I'm
> leaning toward conducting it on a platform that
> runs Plan 9.  I'm looking for something based on
> ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection
> to the external world in the form of GPIOs.  SPI,
> I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too.
> Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate.  What
> are some others?  I've seen some code in the
> source tree for the BBB.  Has anyone tried it out
> to see what is and isn't there?  How about the
> Banana Pi?  The SATA port on it is quite appealing.
> Some of the other options I've been looking at
> include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec
> Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard,
> and the Wandboard.  Has anyone done anything
> on porting Plan 9 to any of them?  Are there others
> I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> BLS
>
>
>

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Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Nick Owens]

brian,

i have started work on porting 9front to
http://www.elinux.org/MIPS_Creator_CI20.

this board has quite a number of features, and might be useful for
education if the cost isn't prohibitive.

nick

On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 6:09 PM, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm
> calling Computing in the Small.  Right now, I'm
> leaning toward conducting it on a platform that
> runs Plan 9.  I'm looking for something based on
> ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection
> to the external world in the form of GPIOs.  SPI,
> I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too.
> Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate.  What
> are some others?  I've seen some code in the
> source tree for the BBB.  Has anyone tried it out
> to see what is and isn't there?  How about the
> Banana Pi?  The SATA port on it is quite appealing.
> Some of the other options I've been looking at
> include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec
> Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard,
> and the Wandboard.  Has anyone done anything
> on porting Plan 9 to any of them?  Are there others
> I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> BLS
>
>
>

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[da Tyga]

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Hi Brian,

Plan 9 works really well on a Raspberry Pi B for me.  Haven't tried it on a
RasPi 2 yet though.

I would be rather cautious about so called compatible products.  I have yet
to meet a product that is truly compatible and the quirks tend to take up a
disproportionate amount of time to resolve.  When you are trying to get a
course together you have enough to contend with before getting caught out
by incompatibilities.

Is there any reason you don't choose to just go with Raspberry Pi as is?
After all, it is cheap and with lots of support.

On 8 August 2015 at 11:13, Nick Owens <mischief@offblast.org> wrote:

> brian,
>
> i have started work on porting 9front to
> http://www.elinux.org/MIPS_Creator_CI20.
>
> this board has quite a number of features, and might be useful for
> education if the cost isn't prohibitive.
>
> nick
>
> On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 6:09 PM, Brian L. Stuart <blstuart@bellsouth.net>
> wrote:
> > I'm teaching a special topics course this fall I'm
> > calling Computing in the Small.  Right now, I'm
> > leaning toward conducting it on a platform that
> > runs Plan 9.  I'm looking for something based on
> > ARM or MIPS and that has some useful connection
> > to the external world in the form of GPIOs.  SPI,
> > I2C, and analog I/O would be nice to have too.
> > Obviously, the Raspberry Pi is a candidate.  What
> > are some others?  I've seen some code in the
> > source tree for the BBB.  Has anyone tried it out
> > to see what is and isn't there?  How about the
> > Banana Pi?  The SATA port on it is quite appealing.
> > Some of the other options I've been looking at
> > include the VIA APC Rock and Paper, the Phytec
> > Cosmic, the CubieBoard, the Odroid, the Riotboard,
> > and the Wandboard.  Has anyone done anything
> > on porting Plan 9 to any of them?  Are there others
> > I'm missing that would be good targets for such a class?
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> > BLS
> >
> >
> >
>
>

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Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[lucio]

> this board has quite a number of features, and might be useful for
> education if the cost isn't prohibitive.

The list is impressive and the schematics ought to make things
simpler, but will support for Plan 9 be a real possibility?

Persoanlly, I think Gbit ether is essential and a second ether port
almost equally so.  I couldn't quite figure out what type of graphics
driver the CI20 provided or how easily Plan 9 would deal with it.

My choice would be to support MikroTik equipment in the role of
routers or CPU servers, but that of course is itself limiting.

Lucio.

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Alexander Schreiber]

On Sat, Aug 08, 2015 at 06:42:04AM +0200, lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
> > this board has quite a number of features, and might be useful for
> > education if the cost isn't prohibitive.
>
> The list is impressive and the schematics ought to make things
> simpler, but will support for Plan 9 be a real possibility?
>
> Persoanlly, I think Gbit ether is essential and a second ether port
> almost equally so.  I couldn't quite figure out what type of graphics
> driver the CI20 provided or how easily Plan 9 would deal with it.
>
> My choice would be to support MikroTik equipment in the role of
> routers or CPU servers, but that of course is itself limiting.

Another type of machine worth looking at is the EdgeRouter Lite (aka
Erlite 3) from Ubiquiti Networks: Dual Core 500 MHz MIPS64 CPU (Cavium
Octeon), 512MB of RAM, 3x GBit Ethernet, Cisco style console port
running at 115200. The OS (EdgeOS) runs from an internal USB stick.
EdgeOS is based on Vyatta which is in turn based on Debian. I've
successfully converted the Erlite3 to run plain Debian (jessie with
a custom 3.18.19 kernel) - replacing the firmware just involves undoing
three screws on the case, opening it and replacing the internal USB
stick. So now two of those run my network at home - one as core router,
the other as edge router (for the 100 MBit Fiber uplink). Running plain
Debian, of course, I never looked at the EdgeOS system.

The USB hardware is rather picky which sticks it recognizes, but
SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB works reliably. The Gentoo folks also have
information about it: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/MIPS/ERLite-3

Seeing as Linux already (and without crazy closed firmware blobs) runs on it,
it might be an interesting machine to port Plan9 to.

As for availability: Amazon sells it for less than $100, and with the
Prime package, i.e. you can get _very_ quickly ;-)

Kind regards,
            Alex.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
 looks like work."                                      -- Thomas A. Edison

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[hiro]

Liinux running on a device sadly doesn't say anything about available
documentation or the complexity of the interface that need to be
implemented.

On 8/8/15, Alexander Schreiber <als@thangorodrim.ch> wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 08, 2015 at 06:42:04AM +0200, lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
>> > this board has quite a number of features, and might be useful for
>> > education if the cost isn't prohibitive.
>>
>> The list is impressive and the schematics ought to make things
>> simpler, but will support for Plan 9 be a real possibility?
>>
>> Persoanlly, I think Gbit ether is essential and a second ether port
>> almost equally so.  I couldn't quite figure out what type of graphics
>> driver the CI20 provided or how easily Plan 9 would deal with it.
>>
>> My choice would be to support MikroTik equipment in the role of
>> routers or CPU servers, but that of course is itself limiting.
>
> Another type of machine worth looking at is the EdgeRouter Lite (aka
> Erlite 3) from Ubiquiti Networks: Dual Core 500 MHz MIPS64 CPU (Cavium
> Octeon), 512MB of RAM, 3x GBit Ethernet, Cisco style console port
> running at 115200. The OS (EdgeOS) runs from an internal USB stick.
> EdgeOS is based on Vyatta which is in turn based on Debian. I've
> successfully converted the Erlite3 to run plain Debian (jessie with
> a custom 3.18.19 kernel) - replacing the firmware just involves undoing
> three screws on the case, opening it and replacing the internal USB
> stick. So now two of those run my network at home - one as core router,
> the other as edge router (for the 100 MBit Fiber uplink). Running plain
> Debian, of course, I never looked at the EdgeOS system.
>
> The USB hardware is rather picky which sticks it recognizes, but
> SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB works reliably. The Gentoo folks also have
> information about it: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/MIPS/ERLite-3
>
> Seeing as Linux already (and without crazy closed firmware blobs) runs on
> it,
> it might be an interesting machine to port Plan9 to.
>
> As for availability: Amazon sells it for less than $100, and with the
> Prime package, i.e. you can get _very_ quickly ;-)
>
> Kind regards,
>             Alex.
> --
> "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
>  looks like work."                                      -- Thomas A. Edison
>
>

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[hiro]

Also, "crazy closed firmware blobs" is a violation of our COC. Some
people here develop firmware blobs and don't want to hear such
insults.

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[Anthony Martin]

hiro <23hiro@gmail.com> once said:
> Also, "crazy closed firmware blobs" is a violation of our COC. Some
> people here develop firmware blobs and don't want to hear such
> insults.

It says more about you that you're insulted by something so innocuous.

Email me privately if you'd like some real insults.

Cheers,
  Anthony

P.S. Stop writing closed firmware blobs.

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[lucio]

> It says more about you that you're insulted by something so innocuous.

The humourous tone is slipping...

Anyone writes firmware blobs, crazy closed or otherwise, should be
reported to the authorities for recycling.

Lucio.

Re: [9fans] Small Plan 9 Platforms

[David du Colombier]

> Another type of machine worth looking at is the EdgeRouter Lite (aka
> Erlite 3) from Ubiquiti Networks

I agree that the EdgeRouter Lite could be a very good platform to make
a MIPS64 port.

It has a serial port and runs U-Boot, so it's pretty convenient as
as development platform.

The documentation of the Cavium CN5020 can be found very easily.

--
David du Colombier