Affordable Mini PCs

[Paul Smedley]

Hey Guys,

I've wondering if something like this https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002642282828.html would work. Would more than likely need AOS 5.1 foe UEFI support....

Sure a good price

Just ordered - a have a suitable M2242 SSD spare, so got the one without an SSD for $A240 delivered.

It would be nice if it was powered by USB-C, but oh well.

OK this arrived last week, and I finally got time to test it. Turns out the 2242 SSD I had wasn't compatible, so I had to order another which arrived today.

Installation of AOS 5.1 latest beta is underway (this has UEFI only) - major issue for now is that the NIC is not supported. It's an I225-V that uses the igc driver on FreeBSD. This driver has not yet been ported to AOS

A 'testlog generic' from the AOS Installer is attached. For now, I'm going to create a 5gb transfer partition to transfer files via linux to allow updates to things like Uniaud.

Cheers,

Paul

Edit: added a post install 'testlog generic' and 'testlog uniaud' - audio isn't detected, I'll investigate that when time permits.

[Paul Smedley]

As mentioned, the AOS uniaud32.sys doesn't work with this hardware,  so I tried replacing uniaud32.sys with my latest build.

Unfortunately for reasons unknown to me right now, the boot stopped with:
ERROR: Initialization failed.
pci_register_driver: query device found fb 8086:4dc8 class=40300
checking bt878
OSS32_Initialize: FAILEDUnable to attach 32-bit driver
...
and a 'Press ENTER to continue...' that I can't get past as I'm using a
USB keyboard - which I guess isn't recognised yet....

Now I need to work out why my build of  uniaud32 isn't finding the hardware....

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Paul

Thanks for sharing the info. I created this page about your "ZX01 Mini PC Intel N5105"

I have some questions.
- It has no NVMe support, right? I guess the M.2 port is just SATA.
- Are you using Panorama for the video, right?
- It has two HDMI ports. Does one works and the other don't? Or both display the same image?
- Have you tested the SD Slot card. Does it work? Is it the Intel Jasper Lake SCS1: eMMC Controller 8086:4DC4 ? I don't know anything about it, neither how to start testing it.

Thanks Paul for trying it out.

Regards

[Paul Smedley]

Hi Martin!

1) No idea re NVMe vs M.2 - the SSD I used was https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0876KJ8CV
2) Yes, panorama
3) Will try the 2nd HDMI port when I get a chance
4) No I haven't tried the SD slot yet.

re: my builds of uniaud32 - I rem'd out uniaud16.sys and the system booted - alsa.log attached.

The pertinent lines seems to be:
 

Code: [Select]

Initializing rbtree cache

No i915 binding for Intel HDMI/DP codec

Destroying rbtree cache

Unable to bind the codec - err = -19

Cannot probe codecs, giving up

Off to look for 'No i915 binding for Intel HDMI/DP codec' in the uniaud32 source

Cheers,

Paul

[Paul Smedley]

Re: 3) the second HDMI port gives a blank screen.

Made some progress towards resolving the i915 error message, found a related source file that want being built, but it's still not working. Need to stare at the code a bit longer to see why

[Paul Smedley]

hmm... HDMI may be a bridge too far right now...

from: https://askubuntu.com/questions/694677/snd-hda-intel-0000001f-3-failed-to-add-i915-component-master-19

Code: [Select]

n order to support sound output over HDMI, video drivers for Linux register an "audio component" for the sound card driver (in my case Intel HD Audio a.k.a. snd_hda_intel) to connect to. Once this connection is made, the sound hardware can produce an audio stream for the GPU to multiplex onto the HDMI cable.

[Paul Smedley]

Interesting... I was wondering what was driving the headphone socket on the front of this PC.... looks like it's USB Audio... testlog shows:
  Port 6: Device 0573:1573 (Audio)-(Class 1)(Audio)-(Class 1)(HID) FS Zoran Co. Personal Media Division (Nog

I wonder if it will work with the usbaudio driver?

[Paul Smedley]

Interesting... I was wondering what was driving the headphone socket on the front of this PC.... looks like it's USB Audio... testlog shows:
  Port 6: Device 0573:1573 (Audio)-(Class 1)(Audio)-(Class 1)(HID) FS Zoran Co. Personal Media Division (Nog

I wonder if it will work with the usbaudio driver?

Update: Audio works with a test version of updated USB drivers from AN, in combination with Lars's latest usbaudio drivers