April 2006 - e3-hacking

Sound working!
by Mark Underwood 05 Jun '06

05 Jun '06

Just thought I would let everyone know that sound now works (capture and playback). I'll clean up my work and post it tomorrow. Mark ___________________________________________________________ Switch an email account to Yahoo! Mail, you could win FIFA World Cup tickets. http://uk.mail.yahoo.com

2 3

Trying to load u-boot from NAND.
by Jonathan McDowell 18 May '06

18 May '06

As I've discussed on IRC I've been trying to write a simple 2nd stage bootloader that PBL will load from NAND that will then load u-boot. An uncompressed PBL block seems to have a limit of 16k, which is far too small for u-boot and I don't want to get into replacing PBL with u-boot entirely without JTAG. Anyway. While I can init serial and flash the LEDs, I don't seem to be able to manage to even ident the NAND. My code isn't a lot different from the NAND code I wrote for u-boot and the kernel, so I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong. I've tried a dumb loop as a delay, as well as the cleverer timer based delay routines that u-boot uses. But I don't think this should be the problem, as as long as the delay is the minimal length it shouldn't matter if it's more? The code is at: http://the.earth.li/~noodles/ldr-new.tar.gz It's rough and ready, but please, someone tell me what blindingly obvious thing I'm missing that means it doesn't work! J. -- Web [ I don't steal taglines, I replicate them. ] site: http:// [ ] Made by www.earth.li/~noodles/ [ ] HuggieTag 0.0.23

5 10

[PATCH] sound support
by Mark Underwood 30 Apr '06

30 Apr '06

Here (at last!) the Voice Modem sound patch. The driver is an ALSA driver and it along with OSS emulation and a few other things will need to be enable if you want any sound. I have tested it with rawrec/rawplay and mpg321 which can't seem to decode the MP3 quick enough (tested with a 192KB MP3). Mark ___________________________________________________________ 24 FIFA World Cup tickets to be won with Yahoo! Mail http://uk.mail.yahoo.com

4 5

Problems with Mailboard keymap
by David J. Singer 27 Apr '06

27 Apr '06

I've just tried the pre-built kernel image "uImage-2.6.16-omap2-e3" from http://the.earth.li/pub/e3/2.6.16/ which I believe has Matt Callow's mailboard patch applied. The mailboard gives me strange results... I can't get the forward slash to work, and some of the "shifted" symbols on the number keys generate the wrong symbol. I've missed something haven't I..? Do I need to setup a keymap under Linux to get this working? Or should it generate the right keys straight out of the box? -- David J. Singer doc(a)deadvirgins.org.uk "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana"

2 1

Re: [E3-hacking] Debian report
by David J. Singer 25 Apr '06

25 Apr '06

> It would also make a really good platform for developing E3-specific > applications. Surely that's the whole point; otherwise it's just another Linux Arm development system. The attraction for me is that with the E3 you have the embedded ARM processor and a lot of interesting hardware attached to turn it into a useful appliance. My ultimate ambition for the E3 would be to turn it into a point-to-point video phone... is that a realistic ambition? -- David J. Singer "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana"

3 3

Mailboard keymap
by David Given 25 Apr '06

25 Apr '06

Enclosed is a Linux kernel keymap that ought to get the mailboard properly up and running. It ought to support every face key on the device, including the Symbol keys and the accents. It *doesn't*, however, support the ° accent, because the Linux kernel doesn't support that (that I know of). Non-obvious features: - the special keys along the top row become function keys, except FAX which is unmapped. It's just too useful to have 10 function keys (because it makes it obvious what SHIFT+function and CTRL+function are supposed to do). Any suggestions? - STOP is ESCAPE, as with Matt's low-level AT keyboard mapping. - PRINT/CALC, ADDRESS BOOK and SYMBOL are mapped to CTRL, ALT and ALTGR respectively; the first two because it makes the mailboard more comfortable to use for PC users, and the latter to make the yellow glyphs work. - The mailboard is missing glyphs for | and, oddly, } --- SYMBOL+8 produces {, which makes that a very strange omission. I've mapped those to SYMBOL+P and SYMBOL+O respectively. What else have I forgotten? - I've completely ignored the keypad on the main device, as the mapping seems to be unfinished, and the range of keycodes it uses seems to overlap incompatibly with the mailboard's anyway. I'm not sure what could be done about those. I hope this is useful to someone; you can now do things like, say, type in URLs or switch virtual consoles, which you couldn't do before. I've almost certainly forgotten stuff. Feel free to prod me. -- +- David Given --McQ-+ "If you're up against someone more intelligent | dg(a)cowlark.com | than you are, do something insane and let him think | (dg(a)tao-group.com) | himself to death." --- Pyanfar Chanur +- www.cowlark.com --+

3 2

[PATCH] [LEDS] Amstrad Delta LED support
by Jonathan McDowell 23 Apr '06

23 Apr '06

[Which tree should I be trying to submit this to? The patch is against and works fine with 2.6.17-rc2] Use the new LED infrastructure to support the 6 LEDs present on the Amstrad Delta. Signed-Off-By: Jonathan McDowell <noodles(a)earth.li> ----- diff -ruNp -X linux-2.6.17-rc2/Documentation/dontdiff linux-2.6.17-rc2/arch/arm/mach-omap1/board-ams-delta.c linux-2.6.17-rc2-leds/arch/arm/mach-omap1/board-ams-delta.c --- linux-2.6.17-rc2/arch/arm/mach-omap1/board-ams-delta.c 2006-04-21 18:28:27.618122000 +0100 +++ linux-2.6.17-rc2-leds/arch/arm/mach-omap1/board-ams-delta.c 2006-04-20 20:18:57.243860250 +0100 @@ -84,6 +84,15 @@ static struct omap_board_config_kernel a { OMAP_TAG_UART, &ams_delta_uart_config }, }; +static struct platform_device ams_delta_led_device = { + .name = "ams-delta-led", + .id = -1 +}; + +static struct platform_device *ams_delta_devices[] __initdata = { + &ams_delta_led_device, +}; + static void __init ams_delta_init(void) { iotable_init(ams_delta_io_desc, ARRAY_SIZE(ams_delta_io_desc)); @@ -94,6 +103,8 @@ static void __init ams_delta_init(void) /* Clear latch2 (NAND, LCD, modem enable) */ ams_delta_latch2_write(~0, 0); + + platform_add_devices(ams_delta_devices, ARRAY_SIZE(ams_delta_devices)); } static void __init ams_delta_map_io(void) diff -ruNp -X linux-2.6.17-rc2/Documentation/dontdiff linux-2.6.17-rc2/drivers/leds/Kconfig linux-2.6.17-rc2-leds/drivers/leds/Kconfig --- linux-2.6.17-rc2/drivers/leds/Kconfig 2006-04-21 18:28:38.314790500 +0100 +++ linux-2.6.17-rc2-leds/drivers/leds/Kconfig 2006-04-20 18:47:08.076993500 +0100 @@ -60,6 +60,12 @@ config LEDS_S3C24XX This option enables support for LEDs connected to GPIO lines on Samsung S3C24XX series CPUs, such as the S3C2410 and S3C2440. +config LEDS_AMS_DELTA + tristate "LED Support for the Amstrad Delta (E3)" + depends LEDS_CLASS && MACH_AMS_DELTA + help + This option enables support for the LEDs on Amstrad Delta (E3). + comment "LED Triggers" config LEDS_TRIGGERS diff -ruNp -X linux-2.6.17-rc2/Documentation/dontdiff linux-2.6.17-rc2/drivers/leds/leds-ams-delta.c linux-2.6.17-rc2-leds/drivers/leds/leds-ams-delta.c --- linux-2.6.17-rc2/drivers/leds/leds-ams-delta.c 1970-01-01 01:00:00.000000000 +0100 +++ linux-2.6.17-rc2-leds/drivers/leds/leds-ams-delta.c 2006-04-22 13:20:20.861031500 +0100 @@ -0,0 +1,161 @@ +/* + * LEDs driver for Amstrad Delta (E3) + * + * Copyright (C) 2006 Jonathan McDowell <noodles(a)earth.li> + * + * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify + * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as + * published by the Free Software Foundation. + */ + +#include <linux/config.h> +#include <linux/kernel.h> +#include <linux/init.h> +#include <linux/platform_device.h> +#include <linux/leds.h> +#include <asm/arch/board-ams-delta.h> + +/* + * Our context + */ +struct ams_delta_led { + struct led_classdev cdev; + u8 bitmask; +}; + +static void ams_delta_led_set(struct led_classdev *led_cdev, + enum led_brightness value) +{ + struct ams_delta_led *led_dev = + container_of(led_cdev, struct ams_delta_led, cdev); + + if (value) + ams_delta_latch1_write(led_dev->bitmask, led_dev->bitmask); + else + ams_delta_latch1_write(led_dev->bitmask, 0); +} + +static struct ams_delta_led ams_delta_leds[] = { + { + .cdev = { + .name = "ams-delta:camera", + .brightness_set = ams_delta_led_set, + }, + .bitmask = AMS_DELTA_LATCH1_LED_CAMERA, + }, + { + .cdev = { + .name = "ams-delta:advert", + .brightness_set = ams_delta_led_set, + }, + .bitmask = AMS_DELTA_LATCH1_LED_ADVERT, + }, + { + .cdev = { + .name = "ams-delta:email", + .brightness_set = ams_delta_led_set, + }, + .bitmask = AMS_DELTA_LATCH1_LED_EMAIL, + }, + { + .cdev = { + .name = "ams-delta:handsfree", + .brightness_set = ams_delta_led_set, + }, + .bitmask = AMS_DELTA_LATCH1_LED_HANDSFREE, + }, + { + .cdev = { + .name = "ams-delta:voicemail", + .brightness_set = ams_delta_led_set, + }, + .bitmask = AMS_DELTA_LATCH1_LED_VOICEMAIL, + }, + { + .cdev = { + .name = "ams-delta:voice", + .brightness_set = ams_delta_led_set, + }, + .bitmask = AMS_DELTA_LATCH1_LED_VOICE, + }, +}; + +#ifdef CONFIG_PM +static int ams_delta_led_suspend(struct platform_device *dev, + pm_message_t state) +{ + int i; + + for (i = 0; i < ARRAY_SIZE(ams_delta_leds); i++) + led_classdev_suspend(&ams_delta_leds[i].cdev); + + return 0; +} + +static int ams_delta_led_resume(struct platform_device *dev) +{ + int i; + + for (i = 0; i < ARRAY_SIZE(ams_delta_leds); i++) + led_classdev_resume(&ams_delta_leds[i].cdev); + + return 0; +} +#endif + +static int ams_delta_led_probe(struct platform_device *pdev) +{ + int i; + int ret; + + for (i = ret = 0; ret >= 0 && i < ARRAY_SIZE(ams_delta_leds); i++) { + ret = led_classdev_register(&pdev->dev, + &ams_delta_leds[i].cdev); + } + + if (ret < 0 && i > 1) { + for (i = i - 2; i >= 0; i--) + led_classdev_unregister(&ams_delta_leds[i].cdev); + } + + return ret; +} + +static int ams_delta_led_remove(struct platform_device *pdev) +{ + int i; + + for (i = ARRAY_SIZE(ams_delta_leds) - 1; i >= 0; i--) + led_classdev_unregister(&ams_delta_leds[i].cdev); + + return 0; +} + +static struct platform_driver ams_delta_led_driver = { + .probe = ams_delta_led_probe, + .remove = ams_delta_led_remove, +#ifdef CONFIG_PM + .suspend = ams_delta_led_suspend, + .resume = ams_delta_led_resume, +#endif + .driver = { + .name = "ams-delta-led", + }, +}; + +static int __init ams_delta_led_init(void) +{ + return platform_driver_register(&ams_delta_led_driver); +} + +static void __exit ams_delta_led_exit(void) +{ + return platform_driver_unregister(&ams_delta_led_driver); +} + +module_init(ams_delta_led_init); +module_exit(ams_delta_led_exit); + +MODULE_AUTHOR("Jonathan McDowell <noodles(a)earth.li>"); +MODULE_DESCRIPTION("Amstrad Delta LED driver"); +MODULE_LICENSE("GPL"); diff -ruNp -X linux-2.6.17-rc2/Documentation/dontdiff linux-2.6.17-rc2/drivers/leds/Makefile linux-2.6.17-rc2-leds/drivers/leds/Makefile --- linux-2.6.17-rc2/drivers/leds/Makefile 2006-04-21 18:28:38.314790500 +0100 +++ linux-2.6.17-rc2-leds/drivers/leds/Makefile 2006-04-20 18:47:18.297632250 +0100 @@ -11,6 +11,7 @@ obj-$(CONFIG_LEDS_SPITZ) += leds-spitz. obj-$(CONFIG_LEDS_IXP4XX) += leds-ixp4xx-gpio.o obj-$(CONFIG_LEDS_TOSA) += leds-tosa.o obj-$(CONFIG_LEDS_S3C24XX) += leds-s3c24xx.o +obj-$(CONFIG_LEDS_AMS_DELTA) += leds-ams-delta.o # LED Triggers obj-$(CONFIG_LEDS_TRIGGER_TIMER) += ledtrig-timer.o ----- J. -- 101 things you can't have too much of : 4 - Chocolate.

3 3

Debian report
by David Given 16 Apr '06

16 Apr '06

Well, I now have a new member of my family --- tarras, my E3 running Debian etch. It's using a USB hard disk for storage and swap and a ZD1201 wireless network widget for networking. The general verdict: slow, but usable. Doing stuff on the shell, either locally on the mailboard or remotely via ssh, is pretty snappy provided keep your expectations realistically low. Installing it basically Just Worked. I decompressed the etch initrd for the CATS and wrote it to a partition on the hard disk, and then booted a custom kernel via the serial port mounting the partition as root. The rest of the installation was completely normal, including fetching all the packages over the network. After setting up some basic services --- sshd, cron, sysklogd --- boot time is about 120 seconds. Using the device after installation is surprisingly responsive. Small, old-skool apps work fine --- it's a good opportunity to brush up on doing things The Unix Way. Larger, more complex apps are definitely sluggish. Installing sshd, building the keys took a long time; apt-get is usable, but aptitude (with its more complex database) is not. (It takes aptitude 270 seconds simply to start up.) From watching the disk activity, it would appear that these are both CPU-bound activities. Scaling up a bit, gcc isn't actually that bad --- I compiled and built the dhrystone benchmark on the device, and it took about 5-10 seconds. (125000 dhrystones per second, if you're interested. My 1.5GHz Athlon gets 3.3 million.) Getting this far, of course, I had to try building a kernel. It worked: Amstrad E3 1.5GHz Athlon --------------------------------------- real 222m31.301s 5m23.053s user 190m50.440s 3m48.011s sys 20m41.680s 0m19.573s The Amstrad's user:sys ratio is 9.5; the Athlon's is 12, indicating that the Amstrad is spending proportionately more time on I/O than calculation. This is what I expected, given the very slow mass storage, but I was expecting things to be a lot worse. It would seem Linux' disk buffering actually works, even with only 32MB of RAM. hdparm gives this as disk transfer speeds: /dev/sda: Timing cached reads: 92 MB in 2.08 seconds = 44.14 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 4 MB in 5.12 seconds = 800.43 kB/sec I also tried running LMBench, but had some problems I had to work around (such as its configuration tool insisting that the device only had 1MB of RAM). Also, I noticed disk activity during the memory benchmarks, despite having had all services disabled and swap turned off --- which means I think its figures are suspect. I'm enclosing the summary sheet at the end for interest value. Are there any other benchmarks or tests that would be worth trying? I couldn't get Doom running on the framebuffer --- fbcon didn't seem to want to know, and directfb can't handle 4/4/4 surfaces --- but it ran quite happily under AAlib and seemed reasonably smooth. Conclusion: I'd never recommend this for someone wanting to use the thing as a genuine appliance, but if you want to treat the E3 as a workstation and use it for light ssh-ing, text editing and shell use, you could do a lot worse. It's actually faster than some of the machines I've developed on. It would also make a really good platform for developing E3-specific applications. (It's interesting to compare the E3 with the NSLU2, which has very similar specifications apart from a USB2 port.) L M B E N C H 3 . 0 S U M M A R Y ------------------------------------ (Alpha software, do not distribute) Basic system parameters ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Host OS Description Mhz tlb cache mem scal pages line par load bytes --------- ------------- ----------------------- ---- ----- ----- ------ ---- tarras Linux 2.6.16- armv4tl-linux-gnu 147 32 16 1.0400 1 Processor, Processes - times in microseconds - smaller is better ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Host OS Mhz null null open slct sig sig fork exec sh call I/O stat clos TCP inst hndl proc proc proc --------- ------------- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- tarras Linux 2.6.16- 147 2.17 9.28 66.7 114. 351. 16.6 61.9 8386 28.K 97.K Basic integer operations - times in nanoseconds - smaller is better ------------------------------------------------------------------- Host OS intgr intgr intgr intgr intgr bit add mul div mod --------- ------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ tarras Linux 2.6.16- 6.9200 6.9200 38.2 861.3 152.2 Basic float operations - times in nanoseconds - smaller is better ----------------------------------------------------------------- Host OS float float float float add mul div bogo --------- ------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ tarras Linux 2.6.16- 6441.7 5751.0 8178.6 35.0K Basic double operations - times in nanoseconds - smaller is better ------------------------------------------------------------------ Host OS double double double double add mul div bogo --------- ------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ tarras Linux 2.6.16- 8176.1 10.2K 14.4K 53.8K Context switching - times in microseconds - smaller is better ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Host OS 2p/0K 2p/16K 2p/64K 8p/16K 8p/64K 16p/16K 16p/64K ctxsw ctxsw ctxsw ctxsw ctxsw ctxsw ctxsw --------- ------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------- ------- tarras Linux 2.6.16- 277.6 219.1 304.7 256.0 *Local* Communication latencies in microseconds - smaller is better --------------------------------------------------------------------- Host OS 2p/0K Pipe AF UDP RPC/ TCP RPC/ TCP ctxsw UNIX UDP TCP conn --------- ------------- ----- ----- ---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ---- tarras Linux 2.6.16- 277.6 693.8 999. 1218. 1669. 4493 File & VM system latencies in microseconds - smaller is better ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Host OS 0K File 10K File Mmap Prot Page 100fd Create Delete Create Delete Latency Fault Fault selct --------- ------------- ------ ------ ------ ------ ------- ----- ------- ----- tarras Linux 2.6.16- 685.0 0.215 62.1 327.0 *Local* Communication bandwidths in MB/s - bigger is better ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Host OS Pipe AF TCP File Mmap Bcopy Bcopy Mem Mem UNIX reread reread (libc) (hand) read write --------- ------------- ---- ---- ---- ------ ------ ------ ------ ---- ----- tarras Linux 2.6.16- 10.0 8.66 9.32 30.4 45.5 22.9 23.1 46.3 50.9 Memory latencies in nanoseconds - smaller is better (WARNING - may not be correct, check graphs) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Host OS Mhz L1 $ L2 $ Main mem Rand mem Guesses --------- ------------- --- ---- ---- -------- -------- ------- tarras Linux 2.6.16- 147 14.0 276.9 284.7 769.8 No L2 cache? -- +- David Given --McQ-+ "If you're up against someone more intelligent | dg(a)cowlark.com | than you are, do something insane and let him think | (dg(a)tao-group.com) | himself to death." --- Pyanfar Chanur +- www.cowlark.com --+

1 0

E2 died suddenly, now
by Jonathan H 15 Apr '06

15 Apr '06

I know this is the E3 list, but I can't find anything closer! My parents had an e2 with all their addresses, emails, voicemails etc on it. Apparently, one day the screen went "bitty" and it was complaining about memory (I'd stuck an old 8Mb camera card in about 3 years ago, which was working fine). So, they cleared most of the voicemails and emails, but next day, all the happened was thet the voicemail and email lights were flashing alternately, no dialtone, no screen. I've read this: http://inputplus.co.uk/ralph/emailer/faq.html#reset but it didn't work, although I DID find that by pushing three buttons on the right, I could get an interesting "three lights flashing" sequence. I thought I could recover the messages and address book, but my PC doesn't seem to want to read the Smartmedia card. (Yes, we tried powering off and removing the memory card, in case it was that) I had the lid off and wiggled things - you never know! Also looked at this http://www.cowlark.com/amstrad.html but it's all a bit hardcore for me! Is there ANY rescuing this?

1 0

mailboard patch for 2.6.16
by Matt Callow 12 Apr '06

12 Apr '06

Hi all, attached is my patch to enable the external keyboard (mailboard) It should be applied to the 2.6.16 kernel tree after all the other patches on noodles site. Matt

5 5