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OpenBSD/GabeDeck part II

Carrying on from my previous post, I tested OpenBSD on the steamdeck.

Preliminary result: Mostly good!

Test conditions:

OS: FuguIta 7.6 with the latest patch as of today

HW: Steamdeck OLED PCB version 5, type-c hub, 64G USB drive, keyboard and mice.

Result:

OpenBSD boots normally. From OS’s perspective the hardware is unremarkable. The only funny hardware is 28de:1205, the build in Valve controller. The hardware is otherwise a normal APU based microPC.

At Idle the CPU is at 39C and power consumption is at 7 watts, there might be room for improvements with lower brightness setting via xbacklight, which I forgot to test.

X11 works, WiFi card uses the qwx driver, should work, but untested, I need to find an Ethernet adapter for firmware download.

EDIT

So I did more testing with firmware installed. Here are my observations:

xbacklight did not initially work, But, after installing amdgpu firmware, it works perfectly! The OLED screen blasts at full brightness is retina searing, the internal screen would not have been very comfortable to use without brightness control.

Touch screen semi-works, it register my touch as mice input, but the cursor is always an inch away from my finger! Is there a way to calibrate?

reeeee! The build-in wifi wouldn’t work after firmware install. It emits ‘fw init timeout’ and ‘qwx_core_fetch_board_data_api_n: failed to fetch board date’ error. It looks like the wifi card requires some Valve specific firmware binary?

I don’t know, maybe one could fit the steamdeck into some pelican case with a small keyboard/urtwn dongle/power bank and turn it into an openbsd cyberdeck?

Posted in: s/OpenBSD

😎 decant

Dec 11 · 7 days ago · 👍 drh3xx, HanzBrix, AsherFisc

4 Comments ↓

🔭 thewanderer · Dec 11 at 09:57:

Nice work. Thanks for providing details.

💀 requiem · Dec 11 at 12:50:

IF it has USB you don't need Ethernet for firmware download, you can put the fw on a USB thumbdrive. I've done it before:

`fw_update -p /mnt/usbdrive`

I think you might need to replicate the usual directory structures and put the fw files in sg like found at http://firmware.openbsd.org/firmware/. I would just grab the entire 7.6 folder. I think you also need to have the index.txt file, if I remember correctly.

🐸 HanzBrix · Dec 11 at 14:41:

@decant Glad it worked out!

😎 decant [OP] · Dec 13 at 08:02:

yeah, I defo need a urtwn dongle, the qwx driver is very green atm (first commited a year ago), it will only support up to 802.11g even if it works.