2.6.23 on Tosa

Thursday, November 15th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz

Thanks to work done by Dmitry Baryshkov we have 2.6.23 kernel working properly on Zaurus SL-6000 (Tosa). Ångström images are already present so users can test how does it works for them.

Today I reflashed Tosa with fresh build and did some testing. We still have problem with framebuffer (famous yellow lines) but otherwise it looks quite good. USB host is working very nice — I connected few devices:

root@tosa:~$ lsusb
Bus 1 Device 9: ID 1457:5122
Bus 1 Device 8: ID 046d:c70a Logitech, Inc.
Bus 1 Device 7: ID 046d:c70e Logitech, Inc.
Bus 1 Device 6: ID 046d:0b02 Logitech, Inc.
Bus 1 Device 5: ID 0a46:9601 Davicom Semiconductor, Inc.
Bus 1 Device 4: ID 05e3:0606 Genesys Logic, Inc.
Bus 1 Device 2: ID 0bb2:0302 Ambit Microsystems Corp.
Bus 1 Device 1: ID 0000:0000

Detailed checking as to wait until I charge this device to 100% because now it shutdown after few minutes.



x86 architecture mess

Sunday, August 26th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz

x86 architecture is total mess when it comes to naming. Basically there were “i386″, “i486″, “i586″, “i686″ — nothing more was used. But this gives lot of problems.

First one — which optimisations can be used on “i686″? It has MMX for sure but does it have SSE? SSEv2? SSEv3? 3DNow! technology? It depends on cpu… for example PentiumPro (the first “i686″) has MMX but lack any other addons. Athlon64 will have most of them (or even all in newest cores) but under 32bit Linux it still be “i686″.

Second thing is how Linux recognize CPU. On ALIX board I have AMD Geode LX which has MMX and 3DNow! but lack SSE. According to some data it is “i686″ but under Linux it is “i586″:

root@alix:~$ uname -m
i586

Currently I am running Ångström on it but is it built with “i686″ optimisations…



PC Engines Alix1c arrived

Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz

During GUADEC time Stelios Koroneos from Digital Opsis announced that PC Engines company donated two Alix1c boards to OpenEmbedded. As the board is interesting I wrote that if no one else will mail than I would like to play with it.

Today it picked it on post office and brought home. First reaction during unpacking: “Wow, this board is TINY!” because I had not used mini-ITX boards before. After connecting few cables (power, ethernet, vga, usb keyboard) and shorting “power switch” with screwdriver I got it booted and checked BIOS settings. Unfortunately I was unable to boot from PXE :(

I did search in drawer and took 256M CompactFlash card which I bought few years ago for “collie” and decided to install something on it. Decided that this time it will be Voyage Linux (Debian derived distribution for x86-based embedded platforms such as WRAP, ALIX and Soekris 45xx/48xx boards). Fetched their install CD (33M only) and started qemu with CF card as harddisk and that ISO. Few minutes later card was put into slot on Alix board and I got Voyage running.

Of course I could not resist and now board is upgraded to plain Debian ’sid’ and 2.6.22 kernel ;D After wedding I will replace NSLU2 with Alix board and add few functions for it:

  • Samba server
  • Bluetooth Access Point
  • CUPS based print server
  • NFS server

During that time I also plan to move it from CF card and Debian to 2.5″ harddisk and Ångström.



Got GTA01B_v4

Thursday, May 10th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz

Two Neo1973 phones I just got my GTA01B_v4 from UPS courier. This is send as “developer update” as package contains:

  • GTA01B_v4 phone
  • battery (charged)
  • Europlug -> US plug adapter (no idea what for)

After powering phone I started ‘DM2′ application which allow to make few simple tests of hardware. And let Mickeyl and Sean stop talking that Neo1973 has nothing common with “The Matrix” movie — the sound sample used to test audio subsystem is Morpheus telling Neo that he is “The One”.

What do I plan to do when I have two phones? First I will upgrade Bv4 to newer software. Then I have to decide which one will run OpenMoko and which Ångström — so I will be able to compare (now both has OpenMoko distribution installed). And I wonder will Bv4 recognize my SimPlus prepaid card (it is normal 250 entries sim) — Bv3 do not like it.

This time I had to pay customs and UPS — 109 PLN (~30 EUR) in total. And as this time it was sent to me as person not as company I can not add this into company costs. But it does not really matter — I have phone and this is more important :)



SD/MMC for Collie/2.6 progress

Friday, May 4th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz

Thomas Kunze provided newer version of his SD/MMC driver some time ago. Today I finally got some time to test it.

Result is awesome as most of my cards works now — only RS-MMC from Nokia 770 does not want to behave. I posted logs into proper bugraport and Thomas told:

hrw: fine. so nearly all cards work now. I have an idea what your rsmmc might need.

So it looks like this one will work too soon. New test images for Ångström will be available probably tomorrow.



Avahi looks interesting

Friday, March 23rd, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz

Yesterday I first time tried avahi on my Linux systems. And I have to tell that it looks interesting. All my machines provide informations about running services, I can connect to my phone via simple ssh neo.local instead of remembering which IP it has etc.

And all services can be checked from any host with one simple avahi-browse -a command:

Server version: avahi 0.6.16; Host name: home.local
E Ifce Prot Name                                          Type                 Domain
+ usb0 IPv4 Remote Terminal on neo                        SSH Remote Terminal  local
+ eth0 IPv4 Remote Terminal on c7x0                       SSH Remote Terminal  local
+ usb0 IPv4 SFTP File Transfer on neo                     SFTP File Transfer   local
+ eth0 IPv4 SFTP File Transfer on c7x0                    SFTP File Transfer   local
+ usb0 IPv4 home [3a:c2:64:5e:7b:1f]                      Workstation          local
+ usb0 IPv4 neo [92:5a:40:01:4a:77]                       Workstation          local
+ eth0 IPv4 c7x0 [00:10:7a:11:11:11]                      Workstation          local
+ eth0 IPv4 home [00:50:da:11:11:11]                      Workstation          local

UPDATE: Ångström will have avahi in default system ;)