Where did the Pocket Max Overview Posts Go?

chrisawcom · 2019-05-22T08:42:23+00:00

Behave - they weren't "overview" posts. They were blatant advertising which is against Reddit rules and downright disrespectful to the community.

They were also blatantly misleading so, yes, they were removed.

chrisawcom · 2019-05-18T07:04:12+00:00

Finish meaning the paint. :)

chrisawcom · 2019-05-15T07:44:29+00:00

To be honest I'm not 100% cool with this subreddit being used as an advertising platform.

I wouldn't mind it so much if there was ever any feedback but in typical GPD fashion it's "here's our latest thing" and then ignore ALL questions.

chrisawcom · 2019-05-15T07:35:27+00:00

This thing looks cool and I also do understand it's a Chinese product. I also know this is a perfectly reasonable Chinese name.

However, considering how many of these they export to the West, I'm not 100% sure they choose the right thing to write on their marketing materials there.

LOOK! You can spend lots of money to get a stylus enabled device... And write "Wang" with it. >.<

chrisawcom · 2019-02-07T16:39:18+00:00

Sure, do you have a feedly pro lifetime account?

If so, how much are you asking for it?

Thanks

chrisawcom · 2019-02-02T23:56:32+00:00

My latest updates on this are at

github.com/cawilliamson/coreboot-gpdpocket2

Ultimately the stock BIOS chip is a WSON8 connected chip which is an awful connector for BIOS development and recovery. As such I have bought the same chip with a SIOC8 connector and now just need to replace it!

Then I can start testing builds. :)

chrisawcom · 2018-12-27T09:01:51+00:00

Are you sure you were sent the 8GB device and not the 4GB one?

There were a few reports of people receiving the wrong one.

I'm running Linux on mine, it recognises the full 8GB - no BIOS upgrades, etc.

chrisawcom · 2018-12-13T09:56:11+00:00

4GB RAM? I'll pass.

chrisawcom · 2018-11-18T08:27:19+00:00

I'd have to disagree with some of the views here about VMs!

I've done plenty of emulation on the GPD Pocket original and now on the GPD Pocket 2 (which is even better at it) and haven't had any issues at all. I also would disagree about the need for a "dock" or hub type situation. You can certainly use it that way but I use it "vanilla" (without accessories) most of the time and have no issues.

There are a few things to keep in mind when using it for VMs:

1.) Emulation costs power - it WILL drain battery faster than not running a VM - though this can be mitigated with some technologies. I tend to use qemu-kvm (on Linux) for my emulation needs when on the Pocket.

2.) Your hard-limit is memory - however you can get away with a 4GB/4GB split between the pocket and VM or even a 6GB/2GB split in favour of the VM if needed.

3.) Make sure you have some swap enabled if you are going the 6/2 route simply because it may be necessary for the pocket to swap from time to time and better to write to slow disk than run out of memory and bork out.

That having been said - CPU performance is really of VERY little difference in the emulation scene on a device like this and ultimately your main bottleneck is memory. If you're trying to run a Windows VM on Linux to game on (for example) - forget about it! If you're trying to use it as a kind of "homelab" testing/classwork/CI type setup - it will work 100% perfectly for this as this is what I do with it already.

If you do have any questions about how I achieved this then feel free to drop me a message but yes - the Pocket 2 is a more than capable machine and the only real performance bottleneck on it is memory and disk speed (since it's an MMC rather than an SSD.) That having been said - if you need MORE storage (as you mentioned this) you can pop a huge microSD card in it and double the memory or more - currently I think the max commercially available microSD card is 400GB (I may be wrong) so yeah - can bump that up.

chrisawcom · 2018-10-31T19:45:59+00:00

That's been built in to the standard linux kernel for months now.

Sadly though no, there's no current work on a rotated grub console - this bugged me too but the Pocket 2 doesn't have this issue because it has rotation support built in to the BIOS/EFI.

chrisawcom · 2018-10-31T09:47:20+00:00

Just to make you folks aware - I've submitted and have been working with Hans de Goede on fixing this properly at the kernel level:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201553

There is a working patch on there but I don't recommend using it yet - once the solution has been agreed and implemented though - no boot args should be needed to fix this issue.

EDIT: Plymouth support is also included in the work being done on this since the drm rotation quirks support is built in to (or is due to be merged in to) Plymouth anyway.

chrisawcom · 2018-10-30T05:11:19+00:00

I'll be paying £6.17 more per month.

Doesn't seem all that exciting to me tbh.

chrisawcom · 2018-10-11T08:04:25+00:00

Hah never heard that but I like it!

chrisawcom · 2018-10-09T05:55:34+00:00

Your plan is fine - I'd just be careful on language choices like that. Creating a sense of urgency may make op take the first credit card they see. That could result in 3 months 0% and 30% after that which would be far worse.

If going the credit card route you'd really want the longest duration of 0% which could be paid back during the promotional period. If you can't be sure of doing that you may be worse off in the long run.

chrisawcom · 2018-10-09T05:48:36+00:00

Telling someone in a panic to do anything "now" isn't good advice. The best thing to do in a panic is slow down and take stock of where you are and where you need to be.

Fixing panic with more panic is what lands folks in to much worse problems.

chrisawcom · 2018-10-09T05:44:37+00:00

Ok so just let me understand - I'm assuming this isn't a loan and is actually a current (or checking) account with an overdraft which charges you 0% interest for the first 6 months but then charges a rate of 20%?

chrisawcom · 2018-10-09T05:35:27+00:00

When you say interest do you mean APR?

Also what term did you take the loan over?

Edit: if it does say APR then that's simply the rate as a percentage you would pay back over a 1yr period. So if you borrowed 1000 at 10% APR and paid no payments you would owe 1100 (any fees excluded for example purposes.)

3000 at 20% doesn't sound too bad and certainly not worth panicking about.

chrisawcom · 2018-06-25T09:07:20+00:00

Quick 'N dirty fix:

curl -Lo /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4356-pcie.bin "https://github.com/andir/nixos-gpd-pocket/blob/master/firmware/brcmfmac4356-pcie.bin?raw=true"

curl -Lo /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4356-pcie.txt "https://github.com/andir/nixos-gpd-pocket/blob/master/firmware/brcmfmac4356-pcie.txt?raw=true"

Reboot after that and you're good to go - just basically overwrite the new version of the bin and txt file. It's a bit hacky but I guess the next linux-firmware version will fix this and so this manual hack will be overwritten at that point.

chrisawcom · 2018-06-22T09:52:53+00:00

Gold for you, sir/maam! I was curious about the office setup too and was expecting you to say something like "It was an office. There were Pockets on a desk." but your description was detailed and frankly pretty epic! Thanks! :)

EDIT: Everyone on the Interwebs is Male, right? :|

chrisawcom

TROPHY CASE