BeeKey Atari on a key and now BeePi

[qq1975b]

30% of a CT60-100...I didn't know the 68060 was so powerful that the RPi3 only gets to the 30% of its CPU power.

[Gaiyan]

30% of a CT60-100...I didn't know the 68060 was so powerful that the RPi3 only gets to the 30% of its CPU power.

Without JIT. With JIT it's 2.26x CT60-100. Still it's emulation and not a direct indication of processing power.

[qq1975b]

Ok, sorry. So better with JIT once the crashes are solved. Thank you.

[ctirad]

I replaced the ubuntu.mate with raspbian and the jit works here. Excellent!

[Faucon2001]

I did another trial today with Raspbian Jessie Light : beekey setup is working great, with network too and in JIT. Stable and snappy

On the dark side, I had to decrease the sample rate frequency to 22050 Hz otherwise sound was cracking. (increase buffer size didn't help). It's impossible to read mp3, scumvm is stutering and Netsurf is too slow to be usefull: I am afraid that power is lacking.
[Dream Mode/]From what I understood, JIT is still in beta stage, so we can expect speed improvements, one day ; also some native features services could hopefully be developed to unload emulation side. [/Dream Mode]

On the bright side, all classical apps like Papyrus X, Texel, Artworx, Kandinsky, litchi, troll ..... are working great in a snappy environment.
Conclusion : Fully usable !

Now, if you want the turbo boost experience, buy an Intel Nuc i5 and use BeeKey : it's 15 times faster for 10 times the price

Work still has to be done before a first release, but it may not take too long ... hopefully.

[Atari030]

I have an old EEpc that might make a great Atari portable. Hmmmmmm.

Thanks for all the hard work.

[Faucon2001]

Well, 1 step forward and 2 steps backward. I am back to MiniBian.
The reason : On Raspbian Aranym runs 50% slower than on MiniBian
I believe the culprit may be the kernel set to economy mode, but hadn't time to search.

Anyway, MiniBian runs at full speed by defaults and I have fixed the crash with the network setup, so everything is good with a huge performance improvement compared to yesterday.
Overall speed is good, Netsurf is now usable, sound is much better though still at 22050 Hz and mp3 still don't pass.
Next step will be overclocking I guess

If you want to try :
https://minibianpi.wordpress.com/2016/0 ... 12-is-out/
Install it on your card, boot the blackberry and login.
Update the install:
>apt-get install wireless-regdb iw crda iptables apt-utils raspi-config
>apt-get update

With raspi-config configure :
1 Expand filesystem
5 Internationalization options : set to your taste
9 Advanced Options / SSH : activate
The others options don't work for this distrib.

Change the password :
>passwd

Reboot and install aranym as usually. Beware you are the root with full access.

[Faucon2001]

Just a quick update to say that BeePi has a good advancement, with the install almost fully completed.
Just for teasing :
Easy installation to micro SD card
2.2 GB install with EasyAraMint + Aranym 1.02 JIT on miniBian Jessie : 35 sec boot
Video, sound, network, splash boot screen, Raspberry config and Mint config launched at 1st boot for easy setup completion, DHCP, WiFi, native SMB shares mount, native remote printing, native USB mount, SSH and SMB servers for remote maintenance, global shutdown.

I still have to setup Wifi, update the FAQ and do some clean up. But later, as now it's time to take a rest.

[Playmobil]

Hi philippe !

Just for say, your web page say how to make a USB BeeKey for PC and Mac, but under Linux, How To ?

Because Emmanuel Barranger, the devlopper of EBModeler is under Linux, and he dont know how do the manipulation

Sorry for my poor english again

[Faucon2001]

Hi Vincent,

A PC doesn't run only on windows, also on Linux
So the same procedure applies if you want to do the install under Linux, and fortunately Unetbootin exists for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Install unetbootin http://unetbootin.github.io/ and follow the same procedure as for windows
Under Ubuntu you can also do it using the utility "Startup Disk Creator"

Now I go back to debugging the Raspberry Pi distribution (BeePi) and hopefully release it soon.
Next, I'll update BeeKey as there are many new stuff to be added, into others, external USB disk support, native networking and the integration of Hatari for a STE game and demo compatibility ... and may be midi as it seems to be stable now
Finally I'll do the update of EasyAraMint : I believe I am full until vacations

By the way, EBMODELER works great on BeeKey.

[Lostboysix]

"Finally I'll do the update of EasyAraMint" <--- Yes please!

[farvardin]

Do you have the md5sum of the iso image? I've tried to run it in virtualbox and on a real usb key (using unetbootin), and I get a kernel panic at startup.

[Faucon2001]

I had the same issue with virtual box. Beekey uses the frame buffer and I wonder if virtual box emulate it.
This is the md5sum : 4733acd550e6f8c80336d24bb5444d73 beekey_b8.iso

[ctirad]

Kernel panic looks like unknown root device rather then a framebuffer issue.

[farvardin]

thank you, it's the same checksum, so it's something else. I'll try to make another key. Anyway, if it's unknown root device, I don't know why it happened because on the same computer other iso worked fine.

[Faucon2001]

In fact the issue I had with virtualbox is not a kernel panic, as I ended on the terminal after
Anyway I have not managed to have it work on Virtual Box neither.
Format your key clean in fat32, and activate the flags boot and lba.

Otherwise I have succeeded in my first build of Hatari for x64
It seems to work fine and that's not such a big deal in fact.
Now same treatment for the Pi.

[Faucon2001]

Well, almost a month and a half without a sign on this topic. Good news ! I have 2 major updates now ready for testing

BeeKey has been heavily upgraded with native smb mount, usb mount, printing to pdf and remote printer, ... and the integration of Hatari. BeePi is exactly the same but for Raspberry Pi3 (should work on a Pi2 but not tested)

More info and download here :
https://sites.google.com/site/emaappsar ... eavailable

[Atari030]

Nice work. I'll have to have a play with it. Are there any hardware restrictions on Beekey? I might have a crack with an older media PC I have lying around.

[Faucon2001]

It needs a 64 bits processor, 1 GB ram, a not too exotic video card, basic to usb soundcard, doesn't like 4K screens nor bluetooth, and appreciate a network connection. USB3 is not necessary but it's a huge plus.
The main issue is that not every PC is able to boot on USB, and old ones less.
Tell me how it works.

[Atari030]

Thanks, will do, I have a few boxes lying around that meet those requirements.

[kolli]

Hi Philippe,

thank you very much for your work! I hab the same idea some time ago, to build a raspi system booting directly into aranym running EasyAraMint, but hab problems with all the details, starting with things like splash screen for example. So I appreciate what you did!

Compared to EasyAraMint, the look and feel is much more modern and very nice.

But I gave up on configuring BeePi, because Netsurf is quite unusable. On http-Sites it is okay, but when it tries to fetch https-Pages, the raspi gets to its limits. So I transferred the host_fs-path to a dual pentium system. where it works flawless and fine. But this way I hab do rebuild some of the stand alone nature of EAM...

Some small problems of the beta I experienced:

- Taksbar has a font set, that is not installed by default, so there is an error message in the configuring dialog.
- Font selector is not set in mint.cnf.
- Your archive extraction tool (don't remember the name) does not work, only throws an GFA-Error.

Greats,
Kolli

[Knezzen]

Would be wonderful if BeeKey could be distributed as a VirtualBox harddrive image as well.
Would make a kick ass dev environment on the road

Tried getting the USB image to work in VirtualBox, but I only get to the Ubuntu login prompt, and I don't know the password

[Faucon2001]

But I gave up on configuring BeePi, because Netsurf is quite unusable. On http-Sites it is okay, but when it tries to fetch https-Pages, the raspi gets to its limits. So I transferred the host_fs-path to a dual pentium system. where it works flawless and fine. But this way I hab do rebuild some of the stand alone nature of EAM...Kolli

Yes, the Raspberry is lacking power for Aranym and also the JIT in Aranym is not yet activated for the FPU which is slowing down a lot the execution of many apps. I don't know if it will be ported one day. In the mean time it can be a cheap alternative.
As Aranym is a power ogre, I would recommend a fast intel proc, with a high benchmark per thread ; you don't need a crazy multicore as Aranym won't use it, but a high performance dual core like a Core i3 above 3Ghz will give a strong boost. There is a 1 to 1 correlation between single thread PassMark CPU benchmark and Chronos processor power : have a look at it : https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html
Value wise an Intel Pentium G3258 @ 3.20GHz seems to be the best option for money.

- Taksbar has a font set, that is not installed by default, so there is an error message in the configuring dialog.
- Font selector is not set in mint.cnf.
- Your archive extraction tool (don't remember the name) does not work, only throws an GFA-Error.

Thanks for the feed back. I'll correct the font issue as I had changed all the fonts to opensource before releasing BeePi and surely forgot to update some setups
For the unpacking app, I am surprised, I had never noticed any issue ; are you sure that the archive is not corrupted? I am far from my machine now, I'll check it later.

Regarding Virtual Box, I have not managed so far to have beekey work with it ; I guess it's because I am using the framebuffer and not X. I'll look at it if there is several people interested in as I may need to use a different Linux distribution. Regarding the login it's "root" and password is "beekey"
On the other hand, you can easily do it with another distribution ; if you are interested I can explain.

[kolli]

Yes, the Raspberry is lacking power for Aranym and also the JIT in Aranym is not yet activated for the FPU which is slowing down a lot the execution of many apps. I don't know if it will be ported one day. In the mean time it can be a cheap alternative.

Besides the issue with the slow ssl in netsurf (and maybe in troll, didn't test) the pi 3 is absolutely usable with aranym-jit. I changed the setup a bit and put the partition images on real partitions on the sd-card. Speed felt much better.
I hab to byte swap the LNX partition, to get it mounted under linux and to put it on a real ext2 filesystem, but that was no problem with dd and parameter conv=swab. Only hab to change the byte swap parameter in the aranym config file to get it work. And the user needs to be member of group "disk". Possibly not good for system security...

As Aranym is a power ogre, I would recommend a fast intel proc, with a high benchmark per thread

My aranym machine is a Pentium dual core E6700 at 3.2 GHz, fast enough for most of the stuff. Just sound is not that clean and video plays with scrambled sound. Do you know some tricks to get that better?

For the unpacking app, I am surprised, I had never noticed any issue ; are you sure that the archive is not corrupted? I am far from my machine now, I'll check it later.

Could be a problem between chair and keyboard. I thought, it was a packing programm shell, but your answer sounds like I should have given a packed file as parameter?

Regarding Virtual Box, I have not managed so far to have beekey work with it

Why should anyone emulate an x86 machine to run a 68040 emulator on a machine that is able to run aranym natively???

Greats,
kolli

[Knezzen]

Why should anyone emulate an x86 machine to run a 68040 emulator on a machine that is able to run aranym natively???

It's not emulation, it's virtualization. You don't emulate with VirtualBox, you virtualize. Not the same thing at all.