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open bsd on tegra and power pc Nanonymous No.4831 [D][S][L][A][C]

hi there! am interested in developing computers and would like to design hardware for open bsd. i feel going with tegra X1 onward and power 9 onward is the cpu path i would like to focus on. may i receive some gentle guidance from more experienced tech enthusiasts? i feel i know a lot about tech; been immersed in it deeply since the early 90s and am pretty good with engineering projects, physics, math, et cetera (being aware of the limits of these fields in how they describe things and aid/hinder engineering). but there are a lot of things i don't understand and it is challenging to do feasibility assessments on designing new computers for modest-scale manufacturing.

are there good books to read on motherboard design and sample manufacturing? or should i focus more on component and feature selection and then approach supermicro or gigabyte or toshiba or someone to design the motherboards to spec? i can write up design documents and 3D model computer designs and such yet i imagine there will need to be a base of enthusiasts into these projects and support from the open bsd team before anyone commits engineering resources and substantive funding to such projects. before reaching out to many software authors for potential ports of great software from other architectures i would like to have some nice design PDFs ready. will work on 3D modeling some hardware concepts in the coming weeks as i tinker with a new modular mobile computing setup. lots of hardware varieties could come later but i would like to focus on making a few computer styles that are not offered by the windows, mac/ios, linux, and android hardware manufacturers. where to go beyond that would be up to the people committed to the initial projects. for transparency, i do think a bit like nintendo and sega and prefer to focus attention on a few iterative concepts at a time. it is good to conceptualize a lot of hardware designs, yet if we have clear goals with software design then a few computers would emerge from that design phase and attention would then turn toward refining those so that software designers can plan to utilize the full feature sets of the console-computers

Nanonymous No.4832 [D][U][F] >>4835
File: 8605a79c546184a6ae6a4187c7e3d17bc09e46b5f5545827b3a77c9c5e93f2c0.jpg (dl) (144.27 KiB)

>am interested in developing computers
Do you mean a PCB for laptop or the processor too? The later is much more complicated.
>tegra X1 onward and power 9
ARM and POWER9 support on OpenBSD is quite lacking. Most of the developers now use amd64 for developing. Also, Tegra wouldn't be a good option because of proprietary code. If you want ARM, look into i.MX6. This is the best SoC supported by OpenBSD.
If you want to go with amd64, look into AMD GX-412TC. Don't use Intel, most OpenBSD developers are not buying Intel anymore (due to the speculative attacks last year).
>motherboard design and sample manufacturing
See these links:
1 - https://sifive.cdn.prismic.io/sifive%2F080cdef9-4631-4c9b-b8f5-7937fbdec8a4_hifive1-a01-schematics.pdf
2 - https://boundarydevices.com/sabre_lite-revD.pdf
3 - http://beagleboard.org/static/beaglebone/BEAGLEBONE_SCHEM_A3.pdf
4 - https://teklager.se/media/filer_public/91/c6/91c66520-1fd1-4f82-9d99-0e5f13be8aa2/pc-engines-apu2c-schematics.pdf
5 - https://source.mntmn.com/MNT/reform

>then approach supermicro or gigabyte or toshiba
No, there's companies that print the PCB for you and some even do the soldering.
Don't go with generic firmware. Try to add Coreboot support (OpenBSD only boots with SeaBIOS, be aware of that).
>support from the open bsd team
Highly doubt they will support your project, but you can try to contact beck@ from OpenBSD Foundation.
>new modular mobile computing setup
You should base yourself on the old thinkpad design. These are the most well accepted between openbsd users.
Don't add useless features, such as camera/microphone.

Other references you can base on:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/DIY-Laptop/
https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/ec/
http://openssd-project.org/
https://ohdsp.weebly.com/
https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/hifi-shield-2/
https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware
https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-vu7a-plus-7inch-hdmi-display-with-multi-touch-and-audio-capability/
https://tehnoetic.com/tehnoetic-wireless-adapter-gnu-linux-libre-tet-n150

Nanonymous No.4834 [D] >>4835

Making Open Source Schematics Not Suck:
https://invidio.us/watch?v=lId2NJX8NBc

Nanonymous No.4835 [D]

>>4832
>>4834

Wow, thank you for the abundance of insightful comments and links. I will study a bunch of them and sometime afterward posts some thoughts and updates. Perhaps in early August, with fuller design papers some weeks afterward. Will check periodically before then but it's probably best if i prepare comprehensive materials in the way you have and present them together. Thank you again, take good care~