e3-hacking January 2006

e3-hacking@earth.li

21 participants
22 discussions

RE: [E3-hacking] Another hello
by Cliff Lawson 19 Jan '06

19 Jan '06

Yup, I have to say I was surprised when folks were saying they could connect an E3 to a PC without a MAX232?! Both E2 and E3 signals are at TTL levels so, by rights, you shouldn't be able to just connect direct and have it work as the 16550 in the PC is supposed to be expecting RS232 -/+12 but maybe some of them are a bit more "lenient" ? Also, as Andy says, the E3 signals are inverted (saved the cost of an inverter on the board!) so we use MAX232 boxes with a switched 74 series inverter in there too and use it non inverted for E2 and inverted for E3. Your mileage may vary. Cliff > -----Original Message----- > From: Andy [mailto:andy@entropy.demon.co.uk] > Sent: 18 January 2006 20:21 > To: Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software > Subject: Re: [E3-hacking] Another hello > > The short answer is what comes out is inverted, like RS232, > but is not > at valid RS232 voltage levels as it never swings negative. Some PCs > might let you get away with this, many wont. Being already inverted > connecting this to typical RS232 line driver chip then re-inverts the > signal and that wont work either. 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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Another hello
by mark 18 Jan '06

18 Jan '06

Hi, I just bought one of these too, although I only have little hardware experience I figured it was a cheap way to learn something. My first problem is I can't seem to send anything to the phone. I have the serial console working and using pblq or kermit with a standard serial port on linux I can view kernel output, but thats as far as it goes. I checked the serial port wiring, and thats Ok. Could it be because I've not registered the phone yet? I've not seen this documented anywhere else but if you press 1 (one)in the setup information page you get a list of all the driver versions and some other stuff email num/reg num/config http etc .... Pressing 0 (zero) in the setup menu brings up something like phone numbers and hex? at the top of the screen also from within the second menu (telephone line) pressing nine three times activates a toggle of some sort high/low beep. All this done on an unregistered phone. Mark.

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communications problem - solved
by mark 18 Jan '06

18 Jan '06

Hi, I managed to determine the write problem and I can now write to the E3, bitbox:~$ ./pbltool meminfo Talking to PBL v4.9 Build 1311 0 0x00000000 0x00020000 0x00000000 0x00020000 0x001F 0x0087 1 0x00400000 0x01B40000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x007F 0x9875 Its a bit scary when the lights stop flashing and the phone appears dead, there should be a warning about that somewhere, lol. Advice to others with the same problem ... check your wiring ;) Mark.

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RE: [E3-hacking] Another hello
by Cliff Lawson 18 Jan '06

18 Jan '06

> -----Original Message----- > From: James Tinmouth [mailto:james-amstrad@emailblock.co.uk] > > I've managed to successfully see stuff coming from the phone, > but weirdly I see > different bits of the output depending on what speed the > computer's set to. > Granted this is using HyperTerminal, but I'm not sure what > the difference > indicates..... OK, I'm intrigued, what are you seeing coming FROM the phone then? It doesn't start: Amstrad Delta - PBL V5.1 Build:1314 by any chance does it? Cliff PS personally I'd ditch HyperTerminal and use Tera Term Pro 2.3: http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002416/teraterm.html 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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Hello everyone
by Mark Underwood 17 Jan '06

17 Jan '06

Hi, I have just joined this list after finding out how cheap these things are :). 30 quid for a 1/2 VGA colour display, ARM9+DSP etc wow! I have done Linux kernel porting before and am currently working on a custom ARM9 based chip so I'm ready to get my hands dirty doing some kernel work (although as it's an OMAP so most of the device drivers are already done). What is the current status with the bootloader? Am I right in thinking that you are now at the stage of downloading kernels over the serial port? Can I flash my own kernel or do I currently have to download it every time I reset the device? I have downloaded the mv-2.4.18 kernel and will have a look through that but I would like to port a 2.6 kernel to the E3. Is anyone else already doing this? I have googled around and have found a compiler for the DSP which running under Linux (linux-DSP-tools) which should allow me to compile my own codec's for the DSP and run them via DSP gateway. I was wondering if anyone else had investigated this and could give me any pointers on how best to get started. I'm not getting my E3 till the weekend, but before the weekend has finished I will hopefully have it under my control :) Thanks for reading this rant! Mark ___________________________________________________________ Win a BlackBerry device from O2 with Yahoo!. Enter now. http://www.yahoo.co.uk/blackberry

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E2 dialing numbers
by William Conbhaill 15 Jan '06

15 Jan '06

Its quite easy to change the number which the emailer dials out to connect to Amstrad, just bar premium rate calls and a pop up will appear asking you to change the number, change it and it remains changed. I changed it to a friend's number and it tried constantly to dial that number about every five minutes! --------------------------------- Yahoo! Cars NEW - sell your car and browse thousands of new and used cars online search now ---------------------------------

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RE: [E3-hacking] Cheap emailers
by George Sanders 15 Jan '06

15 Jan '06

They were selling for £14.99 at Tescos recently...

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RE: [E3-hacking] Cheap emailers
by George Sanders 15 Jan '06

15 Jan '06

Yes, it was probably the plus for £14.99, not e3

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Cheap emailers
by Mr Wibble 14 Jan '06

14 Jan '06

I've just bought a couple of the E3 emailers at Toys R Us. They have them on sale at £29.95 each. I hope to be doing a little bit of hacking on them in the near future... __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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E2 keyboard/PS2
by Matt Evans 08 Jan '06

08 Jan '06

Hi all, Have been tinkering with the E2 again and have got the keyboard going. I think this is documented somewhere else but just for clarity the pinout, looking into the socket on the board, is: _____------_____ | 1 2 3 4 | +--------------+ 1 (wire red) PS2CLK 2 (wire green) PS2DATA 3 (wire black) Ground 4 (wire blue) +5V power (switched!) It's a PS2-like port - not quite a proper PS2 port in that the PS2CLK is an input only ;( This precludes the E2 sending data to the PS2 device. (Which is annoying since I want to drive a synaptics trackpad from it, and that requires outputting some configuration.) This is fine for the supplied keyboard which requires no initialisation. So the connections are: PS2CLK drives pin 185 (input) on the LH79531, INTR4. This is inverted (i.e. the usual PS2 idle state (high) appears 0). The PS2CLK input floats low - which is weird - and the keyboard appears to have an internal pullup. If you want to attach a different PS2 device be sure you pull this pin high with, say, a 10K resistor. PS2DATA drives pin 12 (input) on the LH79531, PIO[70]. This is also inverted. The PS2DATA line is also drivable (as an 'output') by setting pin 203 high. (203 high = pull down PS2DATA, low = no pull-down.) The power is switched on by an output from the CPLD, pin 23. This is accessible using bit 0 of register 0 of the CPLD - writing '1' to '0xa0002000' will power up the keyboard. I'm not sure why PS2DATA can be pulled low yet PS2CLK cannot - I don't think any sensible output (in PS2 terms) is achievable without CLK being driven. I'll probably add my own pulldown at some point to get proper PS2 behaviour for my trackpad... It's probably easier to illustrate this with some code, a routine to initialise what's required and a routine to read the data: setupPS2Port: // 1. Set pin in/outness // a: 203 output, set to 0 please (don't pull down DATA) PIO[2] (Fn 2) ldr r0, =PIOA ldr r1, [r0, #0x10] orr r1, r1, #4 str r1, [r0, #0x10] ldr r1, [r0, #0x14] bic r1, r1, #4 str r1, [r0, #0x14] // mux2:mux1 = 01 = fn2 // 203 is PIO[2] now // Make sure output low: mov r1, #4 str r1, [r0, #0x0c] // Clear register ldr r1, [r0, #0x04] // control reg orr r1, r1, #4 str r1, [r0, #0x04] // Set as output // b: 12 input (DATA) PIO[70] (Fn 2) ldr r0, =PIOE ldr r1, [r0, #0x10] orr r1, r1, #4 // 12 = bit 2 str r1, [r0, #0x10] // mux1 = 01 = fn2 // 12 is PIO[70] now // Make sure output low: ldr r1, [r0, #0x04] // control reg bic r1, r1, #4 str r1, [r0, #0x04] // Set as input // c: 185 input (CLK) INTR[4] ooh ldr r0, =PIOF ldr r1, [r0, #0x10] bic r1, r1, #4 // 185 = bit 2 str r1, [r0, #0x10] ldr r1, [r0, #0x14] orr r1, r1, #4 str r1, [r0, #0x14] // mux2:mux1 = 10 = fn3 // intr type config: ldr r0, =INTC mov r1, #0 str r1, [r0, #0x200] mov r1, #1<<4 str r1, [r0, #0x204] // INTR4 is high level triggered (for now) // Clear INTR4: mov r1, #1<<4 str r1, [r0, #0x208] // 2. Power up the keyboard ldr r0, =0xa0002000 mov r1, #1 strb r1, [r0, #1] // data input is inverted // clk input also inverted; but also it seems to need a pullup! mov pc, r14 // A dumb routine to read a byte from the PS2 port. This isn't especially optimal, and obviously // a better scheme would be to use the CLK input as an IRQ input. ps2_read: stmfd r13!, {r1-r12, r14} ldr r12, =PIOE ldr r11, =INTC mov r0, #0 mov r2, #11 mov r3, #1 ps2_read_loop: // Wait for CLK to pulse low (for us, high...) 1: ldr r1, [r11, #0x004] tst r1, #0x10 beq 1b // Sample the DATA line: ldr r1, [r12, #0] and r1, r1, #4 eor r1, r1, #4 // Data's inverted mov r1, r1, lsl#(31-2) orr r0, r1, r0, lsr#1 // Wait for CLK to go high again (low) 2: ldr r1, [r11, #0x004] tst r1, #0x10 bne 2b subs r2, r2, #1 bgt ps2_read_loop // data is at bits 29-22: mov r0, r0, lsr#22 and r0, r0, #0xff ldmfd r13!, {r1-r12, pc} ----------- Very usefully, the scancodes are documented at: http://82.152.113.94/ misc/Amstrad_Emailer_Pinouts.txt Cheers, Matt PS: If anyone cares, I went to a Tesco Extra super-mega-hyper-store in Altrincham, Manchester, yesterday and there were about 15 E2s on the shelves at £14.97 each - apparently also at several other south Manchester Tescos. I don't know if this is a national thing.

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e3-hacking January 2006