Handmade Seattle RISCY BUSINESS booth

[neo_ar]

Hi all,

I’m going to have a booth at Handmade Seattle and I am planning on bringing my HiFive Unleashed-based RISC-V PC!

Does anyone have any recommendations regarding good images to demo? I am currently looking into the new OpenEmbedded Freedom-U-SDK and trying out the demo-coreip-cli and demo-coreip-xfce4 images. My set-up is the same one Atish from Western Digital documented here. I currently have that Fedora GNOME build on the nvme ssd but I’m open to recommendations!

Also, I designed a case to be 3D printed but I’m not sure yet that both pieces will ship in time for the conference… in any case the model is available here. Pull requests welcome if people have better measurements or want to add details I didn’t model

P.S. I managed to fit the RV32I instruction encoding (minus details of fence fields) onto the front of the bookmark I’m giving away

UPDATE: The snaps are too loose for the top and bottom halves of the case to hold together tight on their own, and I ended up sanding some areas to make things work… BUT… !!!

UPDATE 2: More sanding was done to provide a port to access the microusb for serial console, and holes have been drilled through the snaps so that it can be secured with screws. Thinking about sanding another access port to the mode selector switches if I’m going to do multiple image demos, maybe I can reach it with a toothpick… Got Fedora GNOME running on it as well as demo-coreip-xfce4 off a 16G sd card, quake 2 not running on the xfce4 env out of the box, anyone know what needs to be done to get that going?

Update 3: Wasn’t able to get quake II going in time so I’m only going to demo the fedora GNOME desktop this year. Shoutouts to @bitmask_reg on twitter for offering to do an up-to-date build of the fedora GNOME desktop image and very helpful suggestions regarding Quake II - I did not have time to upgrade the image on the SSD or try the suggestions regarding Quake II though as I need to pack for the flight!

Update 4: I made it through airport security fine and arrived in Seattle… but I forgot to pack the power cord!!! Luckily I was able to get a replacement at the local Staples here and have now confirmed the RISC-V PC survived the trip!

Update 5: Handmade Seattle & the RISCY BUSINESS booth were a great success! I’ll post one final update when pictures/videos are available from the event. For now, here is the playlist of my RISC-V PC build

Stay RISCY, everyone!

[ryanmendels]

Hi,
I’m trying to get the case built. Where did you get it made?

Thanks!

[neo_ar]

I used a 3rdparty service (craftcloud) and it found JawsTek for the bottom part (printed as polished nylon) and WeNext for the top (printed as clear resin)! My personal experience with all parties involved was great. You can watch the part where I ran through the process of exactly what I would order, where, and how here

Be warned that my case is tricky to assemble, lacks some nice-to-haves like easy access to the mode selector pins, micro-usb port for the serial console, and m.2 nvme ssd slot, the top and bottom do not snap together tight as I intended, and that you may need to sand the side of the slot for gfx card to make the card fit as I did not account for protrusions when you slide the card through the slot. My case also does not have any kind of fans included in the design, just some ventilation slits below the ssd, so it does get rather toasty in there. I haven’t tried to measure the temperatures but personally I haven’t had any overheating issues but that is one thing to keep in mind. I’d recommend updating the model at least to widen the card slots before printing it if you don’t want to break out the sand paper.

I’ll either do a brand new design or an updated version of this one in the future (I’m not sure which yet), but for now the version that is up on gitlab is exactly what I brought to Handmade Seattle.

If you still want to use the current version of my case after considering my warnings, I explain how I manage to get it assembled here

[neo_ar]

Final update! Devon (@tek256) has posted a vlog about the event as well as his footage of some of the project booths!

Devon’s Vlog

RISCY BUSINESS Booth

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The rest of his footage can be found in his playlist

Stay RISCY, everyone!