April Update: New Developments

pine64.org

49 points·fheld··9 comments

> We are presently stuck using the pre-built SPL and Trust binaries from Rockchip-Android until mainline ATF is released.

Anyone know what SPL and ATF are in this context? Web search gives me Secondary Program Loader and ARM Trusted Firmware, but I don't grok what that means - some early boot blobs?

As near as I can tell the SPL is part of early stage boot that initializes RAM, then loads the later stage bootloader to it (like uboot).

Yes, that is what they are:

SPL is the very very first thing the ARM chip boots, similar to the old BIOS that was at the front of your HDD?

ARM Trusted Firmware roughly (VERY roughly) analogous to Intel's ME, it is a trusted execution environment for ARM

@dang / HN mods - can we update the title i this to include “Pine64” ? pretty vague without

It already includes it in the brackets.

My RSS reader doesn't include the brackets

Always a treat to read these. Not looking forward to the recurring theme of schedule slips because of the chip shortages. Unfortunately, this is probably just the beginning.

The only shortage on PinePhone was a magnetometer but that chip has been replaced with an almost identical one, to no ill effect in the latest units.

The software not being "ready" as in "it's still beta" is more the issue.

Making a million and handing them out like smarties is all well and good, but you'll get 750,000 back with "<program> doesn't work".

The community is doing fantastic things, leaps and bounds. Pretty much everything works, but tinkering is still very much on the cards for owners.

Looking forward to tomorrow to have more details about the keyboard. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com