Subject: [E3-hacking] Re: Possible GPL Violation of Linux in Amstrad's E3 Videophone.

From: Jonathan McDowell <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 13:43:10 +0000

On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 09:48:52PM +0000, Jonathan McDowell wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 01, 2004 at 04:59:44PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> > If anyone has a copy of the emailer source btw (or gets one for review
> > so has a download option ;)) then it would be nice to stick it up for
> > ftp for all.
> No one seems to have done this, and the offer Amstrad makes requires the
> sending off of £25 to them to cover admin and distribution costs rather
> than allowing a download of it. I did this a few days ago so will
> hopefully hear from them in the next week or so.

I've now received this and it's linked from:

http://www.earth.li/~noodles/hardware-e3.html

Interesting (to me at least) points:

* Camera source included and seems to present as a standard v4l device.
* The keyboard driver is a module (not included) - there's a stub
  present presumably so basic init works.
* The Pegasus USB networking module is compiled in; I've confirmed it
  initialises such a device, but see no network traffic (CONFIG_IP_PNP
  and friends are enabled in the .config provided, but I guess this may
  be from a debug tree?)
* There's Belkin USB serial device support in the .config as well, but I
  can't see any output when I hook up such a device.

I've setup a list at:

http://www.earth.li/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/e3-hacking

for anyone who wants to discuss the hardware/software of the device.

What I'd really like to see is a dump of the flash from the device, in
the hope that the startup scripts might do something with the ethernet.
However I don't have the appropriate kit to be able to do this.
Alternatively it looks like there's a serial console on ttyS0 (UART1 on
the OMAP?), but I can't see any obvious pads where that's brought out
to.

(Oh, and as a semi related aside; if anyone has GPL contacts in Linksys
I'd be most interested to know about them - I'm completely failing to
get hold of kernel source for the WMA11B, which runs 2.4.17-rmk3-cot1.)

J.

-- 
"I can see an opening for the four lusers of the Apocalypse... 'I
didn't change anything', 'My e-mail doesn't work', 'I can't print' and
'Is the network broken?'." -- Paul Mc Auley, asr

---

From: Jonathan McDowell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 16:47:33 +0000

On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 01:43:10PM +0000, Jonathan McDowell wrote:
> I've now received this.

Which turns out not to actually be what they're using; what I have
source for is "2.4.18_mvl30-E3" whereas my E3 has
"2.4.18_mvl30-ams-delta". Also there's no sign of a dfdblk/MFS-DFD
driver in the provided source, but the dmesg output of the E3 clearly
shows such a driver initialising before any filesystem is mounted,
ruling out the possiblity of it being a module.

I contacted Amstrad about this over a week ago, but to date haven't had
a response.

J.

-- 
9 out of 10 men who tried Camels prefer women.