Advogato: Blog for Gilbou

just received my lemote yeelong netbook, the 8101B model. it uses a loongson-2F chip (chinese made, MIPS-III based with some IV operands, very low power, 64-bit out of order execution). i took a lot of pictures of the machine from the box to pictures with a centimers/inches ruler so you can check its size. machine is notable for its open hardware approach : nothing inside of it uses nor requires a binary blob. even the bios is available in source : it's PMON, and written in C, with all sources available. every part of the machine is thus available for hacking which makes it, in my opinion, the hacker's choice. i do think this machine is currently the only one used by the venerable stallman. wikipedia has information about the chip and platform. it comes with linux and i believe debian can be installed on it. i am going to replace the linux with openbsd so i won't be able to tell you about linux on it, i won't even try it. can be bought from two places in europe : hackable devices (wim works there, of kd85 fame) and tekmote.nl ; if you are in europe, this will avoid you paying custom tax for ordering it (VAT will be paid in the country you buy it, either Belgium for hackable devices, or Netherlands for Tekmote). i will soon post a full article about how openbsd is installed and used on the platform, and make sure even a total noob with no bsd knowledge can buy one, install bsd and start learning what a real unix looks like, you penguin stuffing kiddies out there ! =)

19 May 2011 Gilbou » (Journeyer)