Hi, just wondering, is the plan for the future som’s being released to support the original MNT Reform, the Pocket, and the Next? I probably prefer the trackball of the original due to disability reasons and am looking for a new full sized laptop to go alongside my Pocket, but I don’t want to be hamstrung with the existing SOM’s only.
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The idea is to make SoMs as replacable/compatible as possible because you are supposed to freely upgrade your device. Sometimes, this cannot work because of mechanical or electrical limitations, of course. But if you look at this table here:
Then you’ll see that most modules work everywhere except for the Reform Next. Main reason for that is that the Reform Next does not have the converter chip from mipi dsi to edp (the TI SN65DSI86) and boards that are not the RK3588 would need a small PCB tile to convert the display signal similar to what was done to support LS1028A in the classic Reform. Whether MNT will design such a chip remains to be seen and probably depends on how high demand for this is. I’d personally assume that most Reform Next users would like to use it together with RK3588 and not with one of the slower alternatives.
In the same table you will also see that the classic Reform, the one that you are considering is currently compatible with everything. The next SoM which is currently being evaluated is the Qualcomm QCS6490 (and other Qualcomm chips with compatible pin-out later) using the QUASAR adapter board. That SoM is designed for use with the MNT Reform Next and the MNT Pocket Reform. I see no reason why it would not be compatible with the classic Reform but @minute might want to correct me on that.
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