Unable to boot 11.0-release on Unisurf Notebook

[Peter Jeremy]

I've just bought a Unisurf Notebook[1] and am trying to boot it from a
FreeBSD-11.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img. The boot starts OK but hangs
whilst probing devices. With safe and verbose enabled, it hangs after
complaining about ppc0 (see https://goo.gl/photos/3e7tLWygjsQ6ayBT9).
At this point neither Ctrl-Alt-Del nor Ctrl-Alt-Esc have any effect and
the only option is to hold the power button down until it powers off.

Does anyone have any suggestions on troubleshooting?

[1] http://unisurf.com.au/unisurf-14-Notebook.html
--
Peter Jeremy

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2017-Mar-25 10:19:57 +1100, Peter Jeremy <pe...@rulingia.com> wrote:
>I've just bought a Unisurf Notebook[1] and am trying to boot it from a
>FreeBSD-11.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img. The boot starts OK but hangs
>whilst probing devices. With safe and verbose enabled, it hangs after
>complaining about ppc0 (see https://goo.gl/photos/3e7tLWygjsQ6ayBT9).
>At this point neither Ctrl-Alt-Del nor Ctrl-Alt-Esc have any effect and
>the only option is to hold the power button down until it powers off.

For the record, I have both good and bad news:
The good news is that setting hint.uart.1.disabled="1" let it boot.
The bad news is that FreeBSD-11 (I didn't try head) can't see the eMMC
flash. The worse news is that the WiFi adapter is attached to the SDIO.
I've given up and returned it.

If anyone's interested, I've posted dmesg and similar information from both
FreeBSD-11 and xubuntu 16.04.2 at https://www.rulingia.com/~peter/unisurf/

--
Peter Jeremy

[Ian Smith]

On Sun, 26 Mar 2017 19:30:40 +1100, Peter Jeremy wrote:
> On 2017-Mar-25 10:19:57 +1100, Peter Jeremy <pe...@rulingia.com> wrote:
> >I've just bought a Unisurf Notebook[1] and am trying to boot it from a
> >FreeBSD-11.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img. The boot starts OK but hangs
> >whilst probing devices. With safe and verbose enabled, it hangs after
> >complaining about ppc0 (see https://goo.gl/photos/3e7tLWygjsQ6ayBT9).
> >At this point neither Ctrl-Alt-Del nor Ctrl-Alt-Esc have any effect and
> >the only option is to hold the power button down until it powers off.

I did have a look at [1] http://unisurf.com.au/unisurf-14-Notebook.html
and wondered who really made them. INSYDE Corp., I see. Cutely, their
ACPI tables are mostly listed as 'INTEL INSYDE' :) and it's called a
'CherryTrail'; all news to me. Looks pretty well locked in to Windows.

> For the record, I have both good and bad news:
> The good news is that setting hint.uart.1.disabled="1" let it boot.
> The bad news is that FreeBSD-11 (I didn't try head) can't see the eMMC
> flash. The worse news is that the WiFi adapter is attached to the SDIO.
> I've given up and returned it.

I wondered what possessed you to buy it, going on specs and 'manual'?
and what the '32GB Storage' might denote. Good thing you could return
it. For reference, just how cheap are they in AU?

> If anyone's interested, I've posted dmesg and similar information from both
> FreeBSD-11 and xubuntu 16.04.2 at https://www.rulingia.com/~peter/unisurf/

I noticed: CPUs max speed/power 1.44GHz/2W, min 480MHz/600mW so it's low
powered enough. but no Li-ion capacity info and it doesn't support S3
suspend! No thermal zone passive control, still, at 8W for 4 CPUs flat
out that might be ok. You'd likely want to force HPET event timer (to
get C3 idle state), and get that MMC to show up for it to be any use.

cheers, Ian
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[Ian Lepore]

Marius is currently updating our mmc/sd stack for better support of
modern emmc, there's a good chance that support will hit 11-stable in a
while.

There is also work in progress on sdio, but that's still focused on the
lower level support.  Once that infrastructure is in place, another
round of work will be needed to create the wifi drivers.

-- Ian

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2017-Mar-27 00:39:32 +1100, Ian Smith <smi...@nimnet.asn.au> wrote:
>I did have a look at [1] http://unisurf.com.au/unisurf-14-Notebook.html
>and wondered who really made them. INSYDE Corp., I see. Cutely, their
>ACPI tables are mostly listed as 'INTEL INSYDE' :) and it's called a
>'CherryTrail'; all news to me. Looks pretty well locked in to Windows.

Well, ark.intel.com lists the Atom x5-Z8350 as "products formerly Cherry
Trail".

>I wondered what possessed you to buy it, going on specs and 'manual'?
>and what the '32GB Storage' might denote. Good thing you could return
>it. For reference, just how cheap are they in AU?

Something cheap and cheerful as a portable to play on - there wasn't
enough information available online to determine whether it would be
usable outside Windows. Aldi's "no questions" returns policy was one
of the things that swayed me to try it. It was AUD249 but I've found
something by "Pendo" for AUD229 that looks like it came off the same
production line.

I hadn't realised just how weird the insides of some "PC compatible"
computers had become.

--
Peter Jeremy