Notices by Leah Rowe is not a Rowebot (libreleah@mas.to), page 2

New Libreboot release expected in a few days.

I've extended the Libreboot 9020 clearance sale to November 25th; I'm spending the time to polish Libreboot for a new stable release around that time, November 25th.

https://minifree.org/

I'm Libreboot's founder and lead developer. Sales fund Libreboot. Libreboot (preinstalled) is free/opensource firmware replacing proprietary BIOS/UEFI.

Your choice of Debian Linux, other distro or BSD.

Libreboot 9020 price further reduced; was £218, then 138, now 118. New products to launch by the 25th.

I need a real playstation like this, because I've been studying a playstation emulator called DuckStation, which recently became proprietary software. I've been working on an opensource fork of it, from before it went proprietary.

I'm a bit delayed because of Libreboot/Minifree stuff taking priority, but I plan to have the new emulator out by Christmas.

I need to be able to test behaviours on hardware vs emulator, so, I need a real PlayStation that can play burned discs, with accurate timings.

You may recall I did one of these for a customer recently. I did one for myself yesterday!

Sony PlayStation, with mods:

* Stealth modchip (OneChip), disables copy/region restriction
* Replace GPU's NTSC master clock with 53.69mhz signal, for true NTSC timings (59.82hz vsync instead of 53.27hz)
* Replace the clockgen's 4.43Mhz subcarrier with signal from GPU, which changes according to PAL/NTSC mode; true NTSC instead of PAL60
* Blue power LED powered by laser sled; it flashes when a CD is read

@kithrup I'll probably still have some of these left over after I discontinue it anyway, or leave it online for a while when the new products launch.

Got loads left. I think the latter is what I'll do: discontinue the 9020SFF perhaps at the end of November or early December. But the new machines are launching soon (around mid-November).

@TheCreativeNothing Probably the Dell OptiPlex 3050 Micro, to replace the 9020 SFF. It's about the same performance CPU-wise but has better graphics performance, can still do 32GB RAM, has nvme ssd slot and sata slot... but it's much smaller and consumes less power.

It was added recently, to Libreboot. The upcoming release basically makes that mainboard completely perfect, versus Libreboot 20241008.

Full code execution possible on MEv11 (3050 is 7th gen), so libre ME is feasible in the future.

@JustinDerrick I probably could do some of those NUC mainboards in Libreboot, though I have no commercial interest in the intel NUC productns. I've added some to my TODO list, based on coreboot's compatibility list.

@kithrup Send me an email to info@minifree.org and I'll sort you out. The T1650 is the machine that I recommend for your purposes.

The T1700 (haswell) is also compatible, using the 9020 MT image, but as I said that platform currently lacks ECC in coreboot's native raminit; ECC will work on the T1650 so it's what I recommend.

The T1650 is similar in size to the 9020 MT. Note that I sell the 9020 SFF. The MT is a micro ATX tower, and normal 1150 socket but takes Xeon processors with ECC support.

@kithrup I can do you a Dell Precision T1650 tower. It's the generation before the 9020, but can take ECC RAM which is fully working in coreboot.

(it's also working in coreboot on Haswell, but needs a blob called the MRC; we have native raminit which replaces the MRC but the native init doesn't support ECC yet - but on ivybridge, which the T1650 uses, the native raminit supports ECC)

@nemobis I haven't measured it myself, but for example the CPUs range from 50-100W TDP or so, depending on CPU model. By the way I always ship with four sticks of RAM (4x4GB or 4x8GB) on these machines.

With that, and an SSD, plus intergrated graphics, I'd say it probably consumes no more than about 100-150W on the highest of workloads, probably much lower on idle. Add 50W, if you have a graphics card.

The PSU is rated 80PLUS and nominally 250W or so; therefore, I would expect lower than 200W.

@jackeric However many you need. Though I'm selling these until they run out because I'm launching new products soon.

I'll probably still do 9020's on request though in the future, if someone asks for one. For example, I still occasionally set up the ThinkPad X200 and so on when asked, despite having discontinued it on Minifree years ago.

So, discontinuation in this sense simply means that it would cease to become a main product, but it would not cease to be serviceable or viable commercially.

Reminder: Libreboot machines heavily discounted:

https://minifree.org/

I'm Libreboot's founder and lead developer. Sales fund Libreboot. Libreboot (preinstalled) is free/opensource firmware replacing proprietary BIOS/UEFI.

New stable Libreboot release coming soon, by November 15th.

Your choice of Debian Linux, other distro or BSD.

Libreboot 9020 price further reduced; was £218, then 138, now 118. I'll discontinue the 9020 next week and will launch new, better products. All 9020's must go!

I say, Australia's Labor Party seems to be a bigger risk of harm towards youths than anything else.

Not that such a ban would actually be enforceable; when you tell young people *not* to do something, they will do it even more.

The young are generally tech-savvy and know how to circumvent internet censorship. The only way to really implement such a ban would perhaps be requiring photo ID to use such sites, but you could use a VPN for instance, accessing it from a country that has no such laws.

Tell me, is it the job of the government (whichever country you're in) to parent your children?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzd62g1r3o?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-gb

Australia's government seems to think so.

Parenting is the job of *parents*, training youngsters how to emotionally handle the world. Social media is a valuable source of information and contact, one which the Australian government believes must be censored from young people.

I would argue that such a ban is an attack on human rights (the right to read, and to free speech).

Did this for a customer. It's shipping today!

Sony PlayStation, with mods:

* Stealth modchip, disables copy/region restrictions. Play burned/foreign games.

* Dual Oscillators (DO) mod - not to be confused with DFO / Dual Frequency Oscillator mod. DO cuts the GPU's NTSC clock, replaces it with the correct 53.693175MHz clock for accurate timings on USA/Japanese games. PAL clock input (still wired, hence DO) is 53.2MHz; the GPU has pins for both.

I invented the DO myself! (again: it's not DFO)

@daniela don't copy that floppy

@teajaygrey @astronomerritt I sell Libreboot, and Libreboot accessories.

https://minifree.org/

Messing with U-Boot, in the Libreboot build system. Adding it as a payload on x86. I'm most interested in its UEFI implementation.

I have a working patch locally, for the 32-bit U-Boot build; now I'm doing the 64-bit one, which is what will be chosen on most boards.

I'm not making it a main payload for now. It'll be a secondary payload, selected from the GRUB(payload) menu.

This screenshot shows the QEMU target running U-Boot. Libreboot provides coreboot images for QEMU.

Canoeboot 20241102 released!

Free/opensource BIOS replacement.

https://canoeboot.org/news/canoeboot20241102.html

Highlights:

* Sony PlayStation support (PCSX Redux Open BIOS)

* Dell Latitude E4300 support

* Dell OptiPlex 780 MT support

* Dell OptiPlex 780 USFF support

* Various build system improvements, inherited from Canoeboot Build System Audit 2, in turn inherited from Libreboot Build System Audit 6.

This complements the recent Libreboot 20241008 release; I also have another Libreboot release planned soon.

New release of Libreboot, soon.