ClockworkOS Reference documents for A06

DevTerm
1

Hello All,
I am developing a series of videos on ClockworkOS for my youtube channel and they will be freely available for everyone.

I have a few queries and I will need your help.

  1. Is there any website where I can find reference for commands of the ClockworkOS?
  2. I guess it is debian derivative like Raspberry Pi OS. Does it have any special Devterm A06 specific commands (sudo rpi-update, vcgencmd measure_temp, etc)
  3. How to update the firmware with a command (rpi-update)?

Thanks a lot in advance. I will upload detailed videos on these things.

2

It’s armbian-config; but I would advise against touching it - updating stuff through it can kill some parts of the OS, including WiFi and sometimes USB, and the only way to recover from it is to reflash the SD card.

3

Hi,
Thanks. I will keep that in mind. Where can I find the OS image for A06? Is the process same as Flashing a RPi OS image to a microSD card?

4

Hi, you can download OS image files from;
http://dl.clockworkpi.com/
http://dl.clockworkpi.com/DevTerm_A06_v0.1a.img.bz2

Is the process same as Flashing a RPi OS image to a microSD card?
Yes, you can use any flash software you like. (I use Rufus on Windows10)

5

ClockworkOS do not exist. The only thing remotely close to be called “Clockwork OS” is the front end you can find on the GameShell.

DevTerm are just plainly normal Debian based linux distribution with just a couple of sparkled tools/drivers specific for the DevTerm, other than that, it is just linux with nothing special.

There is no specific “update command” other than the standard Debian’s apt command.

6

So, the ARMBIAN build for Devterm-A06 includes some patches for things like the specific power management unit, display, wifi module used. Every single patch to Armbian is here: DevTerm/Code at main ¡ clockworkpi/DevTerm ¡ GitHub. There are no new contributions - like brand new drivers - just tweaks to armbians codebase.

There are no special commands, no /boot/config.txt files to alter. As was mentioned earlier - even the ‘armbian-config’ command - related to ‘raspi-config’ is NOT USED.

The only specific commands to Devterm-A06 is the ‘devterm-a06-gearbox’ command. This sets what cores are active and what speed they are running.

I deeply respect youtube content creators, but if you are looking for clicks - this is a very small community. If you are looking to be the expert in Devterm instructional videos, then you’ll probably need to get into the armbian build process to be useful, or building support into some other arm64 supported OS. The videos out there show the very beautiful design of this Devterm, and the fun that comes from assembly. But the actual use of it is very much a hobbyist endeavor. It’s just a portable raspberry pi.

For me, the pleasure in it was getting an old emulator for the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 working on the Devterm. Honestly, most of the work on that was while SSH’d/VNC’d in to it from my laptop. Then I moved on to custom keyboard code in Arduino, developing it on my laptop. Now I’m messing with building the OS image. Once again, on my laptop. All things I’m truly enjoying. And would make a horrible youtube video. ¯\(ツ)/¯

7

Thanks a lot for sharing the information with me. I could see that there are 5 different distributions. I guess Clockwork OS is only for GameShell and DevTerm A06 is specialized for A06 model. Will Clockwork OS work on A06? Has anyone tried it?

8

Thanks a lot for sharing the information with me. I could see that there are 5 different distributions. I guess Clockwork OS is only for GameShell and DevTerm A06 is specialized for A06 model. Will Clockwork OS work on A06? Has anyone tried it?

No, it won’t. Completely different hardware.

9

Ok Steven,
I understood.
Clockwork OS = GameShell
DevTerm A06 OS = DevTerm A06

And the vice versa is not true. Thanks a ton for your help in this regard.

1 Like
10

I have one more query. The homepage also mentions Debian, Ubuntu, and Raspberry Pi OS. Where can I find the images of all these for DevTerm A06?