June 2005 - e3-hacking

Shell
by Jonathan McDowell 16 Aug '05

16 Aug '05

Turns out the E3 does obey the same sort of PBL format as the E2, but there's some sort of timing issue with pblq I think. I've hacked up something that does the job and rewritten my boot parameters to drop to /bin/sh and I'm in! Some files from /proc can be seen at: http://www.earth.li/~noodles/files/delta-proc.txt J. -- /------------------------------------\ | Make friends. | \------------------------------------/

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RE: [E3-hacking] Making life easy for you
by Cliff Lawson 22 Jun '05

22 Jun '05

But the board we have working (as anyone who's "broken in" to an E3 will know) is the 5910. We're not going to make a board specially for this but will simply re-use E3 boards but will probably go the trouble of making some form of case to house the board and the display. Cliff > -----Original Message----- > From: jasmine(a)electronpusher.org [mailto:jasmine@electronpusher.org] > Sent: 15 June 2005 18:15 > To: cliff(a)ourcottage.plus.com; Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer > hardware/software > Subject: Re: [E3-hacking] Making life easy for you > > > > Hi Cliff, > > On Wed, 15 Jun 2005, Cliff wrote: > > > You'd basically get an OMAP 5910 board > > (150MHz ARM925T + 150MHz C55x DSP) > > ...this is a shame. Couldn't we have a newer OMAP? Even > 1623, with its > stacked DDR part, would be a major improvement over 5910. > > 2420 would, of course, be a killer part :-) > > -J., > ex-TI > > _______________________________________________ > e3-hacking mailing list > e3-hacking(a)earth.li > http://www.earth.li/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/e3-hacking > This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and intended exclusively for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender immediately. This message is attributed to the sender and may not necessarily reflect the views of Amstrad Plc or its subsidiaries. For further information on Amstrad Plc please visit our website: www.amstrad.com Amstrad Plc. Brentwood House 169 Kings Road Brentwood Essex CM14 4EF Registered in England : No. 955321

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RE: [E3-hacking] Ever turning
by Cliff Lawson 21 Jun '05

21 Jun '05

> -----Original Message----- > From: linux(a)things.org.uk [mailto:linux@things.org.uk] > > So what thinkest? I was kind of assuming the purchaser was going to know most of the gcc command line options myself :-) Course there'd be nothing to stop an entrepreneur from first buying one £100 box, developing a "flashing light" system writing python scripts or whatever, then OEMing some more boxes at £100 and retailing their "programming system" at £150 and walking away with £50 per sale ;-) Cliff This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and intended exclusively for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender immediately. This message is attributed to the sender and may not necessarily reflect the views of Amstrad Plc or its subsidiaries. For further information on Amstrad Plc please visit our website: www.amstrad.com Amstrad Plc. Brentwood House 169 Kings Road Brentwood Essex CM14 4EF Registered in England : No. 955321

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RE: [E3-hacking] Making life easy for you
by Cliff Lawson 21 Jun '05

21 Jun '05

Fair enough but shortly the job of recycling our subsidised hardware is due to get a bit trickier for you I hope.(Assuming we've implemented SHA256 hashing and MD5+RSA signing correctly ;-) This isn't an attempt to break the "fun" that you guys have been having but realistically, if some Eastern European (for example) outfit decided to use the "backdoor" technology you've come up with to then buy up 10,000 of our phones at £50 and then recycle the electronics into some completely new product with their own software or even continue to use the h/w for their own telephony then we'd make a HUGE loss. We can't afford to run that risk so have to protect our investment in the per unit subsidy. It's not the fact that 5 or 10 talented engineers in the UK have managed to "break in" - that's no real problem for us - good luck to you and your ingenuity, you got £100+ worth of electronics for £50. In fact we owe you thanks for highlighting our security shortcomings - I'd be interested if anyone can "break in" to newly protected hardware (OK, desoldering the NOR doesn't count! ;-) I know this sounds a bit heavy handed but otherwise it turns into Alan's famous "Apprentice" quote of "selling £10 notes for a fiver a time" and Amstrad as a relatively small company, just cannot afford to do that. Cliff -----Original Message----- From: Gavin Andrews [mailto:GavinAndrews@yahoo.com] Sent: 16 June 2005 22:51 To: e3-hacking(a)earth.li Subject: [E3-hacking] Making life easy for you The reason I am interested in E3 hardware recycling is that the hardware is good value. It makes no sense to be to buy something at a reasonable price! It's the subsidy that makes the E3 make sense! Just being realistic. Regards, Gavin This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and intended exclusively for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender immediately. This message is attributed to the sender and may not necessarily reflect the views of Amstrad Plc or its subsidiaries. For further information on Amstrad Plc please visit our website: www.amstrad.com Amstrad Plc. Brentwood House 169 Kings Road Brentwood Essex CM14 4EF Registered in England : No. 955321

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re: [E3-hacking] Making life easy for you
by Otaku 19 Jun '05

19 Jun '05

>Fair enough but shortly the job of recycling our subsidised hardware is due >to get a bit trickier for you I hope.(Assuming we've implemented SHA256 >hashing and MD5+RSA signing correctly ;-) Oooh.. When ? :D >highlighting our security shortcomings - I'd be interested if anyone can >"break in" to newly protected hardware (OK, desoldering the NOR doesn't >count! ;-) Heh.. Thats kinda an unrealistic limitation, innit ? 's like saying "Our copy protection system is unbreakable (provided no-one uses a debugger, or a dumper)" ;) Oh, btw - whats the party line on releasing the real source to the MVL distro on the E3 ? Cheers O.

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RE: [E3-hacking] Making life easy for you
by Cliff Lawson 17 Jun '05

17 Jun '05

> -----Original Message----- > From: Cliff Lawson [mailto:clawson@amstrad.com] > > Don't the public documents I posted on the net about > NC100/NC150/200 include > info about the disk firmware API then? I thought they did. > Think there's a > copy at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/cliff.lawson/files.htm Actually the document I was thinking of was the NCIOPSPEC.TXT linked from: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/cliff.lawson/notepad.htm But sadly this seems to be the NC100 only version :-( Cliff This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and intended exclusively for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender immediately. This message is attributed to the sender and may not necessarily reflect the views of Amstrad Plc or its subsidiaries. For further information on Amstrad Plc please visit our website: www.amstrad.com Amstrad Plc. Brentwood House 169 Kings Road Brentwood Essex CM14 4EF Registered in England : No. 955321

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RE: [E3-hacking] Making life easy for you
by Cliff Lawson 17 Jun '05

17 Jun '05

A bit like Slartiblartfast proudly announcing "I was responsible for those twiddly bits"... I was responsible for the NC200 design. :-) Don't the public documents I posted on the net about NC100/NC150/200 include info about the disk firmware API then? I thought they did. Think there's a copy at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/cliff.lawson/files.htm Sadly, if they didn't then I fear I may have lost these things about 3 hard drive crashes ago (in the un-enlightened days before I stored everything on secure network servers :-( It's just vaguely possible that I may still have a printed copy though (though the pile has been "weeded" a few times since the late 80's too!). I'll have a rummage... Cliff > -----Original Message----- > From: David Given [mailto:dg@cowlark.com] > > (Also incidentally, I own a NC200. It's a lovely piece of > hardware. I'm trying > to hack that, too --- I have my own code booting from the > SRAM card, but I > haven't deciphered the floppy disk boot code yet...) This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and intended exclusively for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender immediately. This message is attributed to the sender and may not necessarily reflect the views of Amstrad Plc or its subsidiaries. For further information on Amstrad Plc please visit our website: www.amstrad.com Amstrad Plc. Brentwood House 169 Kings Road Brentwood Essex CM14 4EF Registered in England : No. 955321

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RE: [E3-hacking] Making life easy for you
by Cliff Lawson 17 Jun '05

17 Jun '05

Have you got JTAG working on an E3? Maybe what I should have said in place of "desoldering the Nor" should have been a more general "without major modifications to the hardware" ? ;-) >-----Original Message----- >From: Jasmine Strong [mailto:jasmine@electronpusher.org] >Sent: 17 June 2005 10:41 >To: Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software >Subject: Re: [E3-hacking] Making life easy for you > >What about using JTAG? This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and intended exclusively for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender immediately. This message is attributed to the sender and may not necessarily reflect the views of Amstrad Plc or its subsidiaries. For further information on Amstrad Plc please visit our website: www.amstrad.com Amstrad Plc. Brentwood House 169 Kings Road Brentwood Essex CM14 4EF Registered in England : No. 955321

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RE: [E3-hacking] Making life easy for you
by Cliff Lawson 17 Jun '05

17 Jun '05

> -----Original Message----- > From: paul(a)e3.sbrk.co.uk [mailto:paul@e3.sbrk.co.uk] > > I'm surprised you didn't do it to start with. At the moment anyone can > use your freephone numbers to send SMSs, download games, check mail, > etc. Seems like you haven't done much on the security front yet. > What are you going to do with your legacy E2 and E3s though? I think you'll find that if you dialup on that freephone number the Thus firewalls keep you constrained within their building - sure you can access your Thus based POP3 mailbox or send to their SMTP and do HTTP to the internal servers but you can't get out to the outside world on port 80 for example so the "fun" of getting free access diminishes fairly rapidly. Cliff This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and intended exclusively for the addressee. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender immediately. This message is attributed to the sender and may not necessarily reflect the views of Amstrad Plc or its subsidiaries. For further information on Amstrad Plc please visit our website: www.amstrad.com Amstrad Plc. Brentwood House 169 Kings Road Brentwood Essex CM14 4EF Registered in England : No. 955321

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Making life easy for you
by Gavin Andrews 16 Jun '05

16 Jun '05

The reason I am interested in E3 hardware recycling is that the hardware is good value. It makes no sense to be to buy something at a reasonable price! It's the subsidy that makes the E3 make sense! Just being realistic. Regards, Gavin

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