Hi all,
Came across this list while looking for hacking info on the Emailer. It's a bit out of my usual area of interest, normally I'm playing with 8-bit computers and old PC-alikes.
I got an Emailer Plus in new condition about a while back, but forgot about it until recently when I picked up a Pocket Dockit to go with it. I just fired it up to see what it could do, and that turned out to be...nothing! I watched the Chinnyvision video on it, and he came to the same conclusion.
I did find a couple of articles, although one (where the author appeared to have Linux running on it) is presumably by someone on this list, given the URL. There was also mention of hooking up a Raspberry Pi to it. I'm also wondering if a wifi modem would do the trick, although presumably we'd need to know how the server software worked if it did connect.
Without me going through all of the list archives, can someone just give me a quick update on the current status of hacking it? Has someone found a way in, or have I wasted £12 or so on the hardware?
Thanks very much!
Adam
========
Some models can be reflashed with stock Linux using various poorly documented and largely forgotten tools; the Linux distribution is here: http://the.earth.li/pub/e3/ and there's some writeup on it here: https://www.earth.li/~noodles/hardware-e3.html
The downside is that that Linux distribution is actually built with OpenEmbedded and won't run binaries built anywhere else, which is irritating. I have successfully run Debian on an E3 via a USB hub with a hard drive attached by simply cross-installing the userland from a PC and then configuring u-boot on the emailer to boot from it. However the emailer's only got 32MB of RAM so whatever you do it's going to have to be very lightweight. Finding a sufficiently old userland might be hard, too --- it'll need to work with a 2.6.19 kernel.
Also, Amstrad eventually locked down the bootloader and later versions can't be flashed. If you have one of those, you may be out of luck.
You'll also need to build a serial cable. The signals are TTL 5V, except *inverted*, so 0V = logic 1 and 5V = logic 0 (it's intended to be passed directly to a level shifter).
The best thing you can probably do with one of these is to use it as a dumb terminal --- USB ethernet devices work just fine with the OpenEmbedded distribution, so you may be able to telnet into (or out of) it. The phone's supported as an ordinary modem but I don't think I ever got it to work.
I'd suggest building the cable, trying to install the OpenEmbedded distribution above, and seeing what happens. It's not like you can make it less useful...
On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 at 11:28, Adam Ainsworth adam.ainsworth@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
Came across this list while looking for hacking info on the Emailer. It's a bit out of my usual area of interest, normally I'm playing with 8-bit computers and old PC-alikes.
I got an Emailer Plus in new condition about a while back, but forgot about it until recently when I picked up a Pocket Dockit to go with it. I just fired it up to see what it could do, and that turned out to be...nothing! I watched the Chinnyvision video on it, and he came to the same conclusion.
I did find a couple of articles, although one (where the author appeared to have Linux running on it) is presumably by someone on this list, given the URL. There was also mention of hooking up a Raspberry Pi to it. I'm also wondering if a wifi modem would do the trick, although presumably we'd need to know how the server software worked if it did connect.
Without me going through all of the list archives, can someone just give me a quick update on the current status of hacking it? Has someone found a way in, or have I wasted £12 or so on the hardware?
Thanks very much!
Adam
======== _______________________________________________ e3-hacking mailing list e3-hacking@earth.li https://www.earth.li/mailman/listinfo/e3-hacking
Hi David,
thanks for the reply and apologies in the delay in responding - it's been very busy at work and it was my son's birthday at the weekend.
It does indeed sound like a bit of a mission to get it up and running, and I may just be completely out of luck. It's a shame that's the case, as it's a nice piece of kit, but sadly the money men have sought to limit it for a quick buck.
As it stands, I've had to put my Emailer in storage for a few weeks as I'm having a re-jig of my man cave, but I hope to get it out again when I have some time in the autumn.
Thanks again for your advice,
Adam
========
On 2019-07-21 20:08, David Given wrote: Some models can be reflashed with stock Linux using various poorly documented and largely forgotten tools; the Linux distribution is here: http://the.earth.li/pub/e3/ and there's some writeup on it here: https://www.earth.li/~noodles/hardware-e3.html The downside is that that Linux distribution is actually built with OpenEmbedded and won't run binaries built anywhere else, which is irritating. I have successfully run Debian on an E3 via a USB hub with a hard drive attached by simply cross-installing the userland from a PC and then configuring u-boot on the emailer to boot from it. However the emailer's only got 32MB of RAM so whatever you do it's going to have to be very lightweight. Finding a sufficiently old userland might be hard, too --- it'll need to work with a 2.6.19 kernel. Also, Amstrad eventually locked down the bootloader and later versions can't be flashed. If you have one of those, you may be out of luck. You'll also need to build a serial cable. The signals are TTL 5V, except _inverted_, so 0V = logic 1 and 5V = logic 0 (it's intended to be passed directly to a level shifter). The best thing you can probably do with one of these is to use it as a dumb terminal --- USB ethernet devices work just fine with the OpenEmbedded distribution, so you may be able to telnet into (or out of) it. The phone's supported as an ordinary modem but I don't think I ever got it to work. I'd suggest building the cable, trying to install the OpenEmbedded distribution above, and seeing what happens. It's not like you can make it less useful... On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 at 11:28, Adam Ainsworth adam.ainsworth@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all, Came across this list while looking for hacking info on the Emailer. It's a bit out of my usual area of interest, normally I'm playing with 8-bit computers and old PC-alikes. I got an Emailer Plus in new condition about a while back, but forgot about it until recently when I picked up a Pocket Dockit to go with it. I just fired it up to see what it could do, and that turned out to be...nothing! I watched the Chinnyvision video on it, and he came to the same conclusion. https://youtu.be/aY6R72nWJsU I did find a couple of articles, although one (where the author appeared to have Linux running on it) is presumably by someone on this list, given the URL. There was also mention of hooking up a Raspberry Pi to it. I'm also wondering if a wifi modem would do the trick, although presumably we'd need to know how the server software worked if it did connect. Without me going through all of the list archives, can someone just give me a quick update on the current status of hacking it? Has someone found a way in, or have I wasted £12 or so on the hardware? Thanks very much! Adam ========_______________________________________________ e3-hacking mailing list e3-hacking@earth.li https://www.earth.li/mailman/listinfo/e3-hacking
-- ┌─── http://www.cowlark.com ─── │ "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my │ telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out │ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup _______________________________________________ e3-hacking mailing list e3-hacking@earth.li https://www.earth.li/mailman/listinfo/e3-hacking
-
Adam Ainsworth -
David Given