Unable to boot 11.0-release on Unisurf Notebook

[Ian Smith]

On Sun, 26 Mar 2017 19:30:40 +1100, Peter Jeremy wrote:
 > On 2017-Mar-25 10:19:57 +1100, Peter Jeremy <peter at rulingia.com> wrote:
 > >I've just bought a Unisurf Notebook[1] and am trying to boot it from a
 > >FreeBSD-11.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img.  The boot starts OK but hangs
 > >whilst probing devices.  With safe and verbose enabled, it hangs after
 > >complaining about ppc0 (see https://goo.gl/photos/3e7tLWygjsQ6ayBT9).
 > >At this point neither Ctrl-Alt-Del nor Ctrl-Alt-Esc have any effect and
 > >the only option is to hold the power button down until it powers off.

I did have a look at [1] http://unisurf.com.au/unisurf-14-Notebook.html 
and wondered who really made them.  INSYDE Corp., I see.  Cutely, their 
ACPI tables are mostly listed as 'INTEL INSYDE' :) and it's called a 
'CherryTrail'; all news to me.  Looks pretty well locked in to Windows.

 > For the record, I have both good and bad news:
 > The good news is that setting hint.uart.1.disabled="1" let it boot.
 > The bad news is that FreeBSD-11 (I didn't try head) can't see the eMMC
 > flash.  The worse news is that the WiFi adapter is attached to the SDIO.
 > I've given up and returned it.

I wondered what possessed you to buy it, going on specs and 'manual'? 
and what the '32GB Storage' might denote.  Good thing you could return 
it.  For reference, just how cheap are they in AU?

 > If anyone's interested, I've posted dmesg and similar information from both
 > FreeBSD-11 and xubuntu 16.04.2 at https://www.rulingia.com/~peter/unisurf/

I noticed: CPUs max speed/power 1.44GHz/2W, min 480MHz/600mW so it's low 
powered enough. but no Li-ion capacity info and it doesn't support S3 
suspend!  No thermal zone passive control, still, at 8W for 4 CPUs flat 
out that might be ok.  You'd likely want to force HPET event timer (to 
get C3 idle state), and get that MMC to show up for it to be any use.

cheers, Ian