[NTLK] Einstein on linux rom issue

Matthias Melcher m.melcher at robowerk.de
Thu Nov 20 02:18:57 PST 2025


> 
>> What i am seeing is that when i try and start it says "rom not found" in /sdcard/Download/Einstein/717006.rom" but using a file browser i DO see it there. Any suggestions?
> 
> As I understand Android, '/sdcard' is not a simple thing. Some devices and some O/S have it, some have "/storage/emulated/0" but call it "/sdcard" in the GUI, others the other way around and it's basically a mess :)

Yes, that's what I assume too. The old Android port was my first and only dive into the Android world of Java, and these are the typical bugs that come due to the lack of Android experience.

Google has tightened security for Android a lot, and Einstein may simply not get access to that directory anymore, or at least not via the path we use. 

The newest Einstein source code on github has a proof-of-concept implementation using SDL as the rendering frontend. SDL is great in that it provides cross platform functions for all the stuff that I cooked myself, written by Android devs. It also support iOS and direct rendering into the framebuffer for Raspberry Pis and other minimal Linux machines - and possibly even some E-Ink devices.

So, SDL will be a new option for Einstein at some point, but as opposed to the FLTK solution, there are no UI elements in SDL, so no setting dialog and no tool bar. Everything is just plain NewtonOS.

 - Matthias



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