I've also got the V2 release working without any major problems (a fantastic achievement, thanks Jonathan et al). I have a few observations and questions that may help others. I did stop the NAND backup process because it was incredibly slow. "top" showed that the system wasn't using much CPU but the load was over 2.0 Using "df" also revealed that the USB stick was only having 16 bytes written to it every second or so. The E3 keyboard is mapped as a standard desktop keyboard so most shifted characters are wrong and symbol-shift characters are ignored. I replaced the supplied 2.6.16 uImage with the one from the 2.6.17 directory in the hope that the keyboard mappings would be fixed. It worked but it only provided a shell login for the serial connection unlike the 2.6.16 image which provides both a serial and an onboard E3 login. The copying of the Linux image from NAND seems slow, I recall some discussion about this being fixed within u-boot. Does the copy of u-boot in the V2 release contain this fix? My USB-to-Ethernet dongle is a Psion Dacom Gold Port using the Kawasaki LSI KL5KUSB101B chip which was detected by both the 2.6.16 and 2.6.17 kernels (it uses the kaweth device driver). Upon connection it reports some "rx-16" problem or other but it works fine. Again, thanks to everyone involved in contributing to this project, Alex.
-----Original Message----- From: e3-hacking-bounces@earth.li [mailto:e3-hacking-bounces@earth.li] On Behalf Of David Given Sent: 19 September 2006 23:40 To: Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software Subject: [E3-hacking] v2 release
I've just given the v2 release a try --- impressive stuff! The download Just Worked. No more faffing around with serial downloads every time I want to boot the thing, hurrah. It's also really nice to have a real boot loader. Plus, thanks to the magic of jffs2 there's an astonishing amount of root file system space...
A few minor quibbles:
- Busybox's loadkmap is very stupid and can't cope with my ASCII keymap table. (It also wants to refer to the obsolete /dev/vc/0.) I can't figure out how to compile my keymap, or even if such a concept makes sense these days.
- Is there an ipkg feed available where I can get iwconfig? I've tried the same feed that I use for my NSLU2, but it's not compatible. The statically compiled version I built myself (I couldn't make a dynamically compiled version to work) is over five megabytes. Ho hum.
- OpenEmbedded wants to rebuild monotone's roster cache. Apparently this is going to take about four hours.
Currently I'm trying to build a working zd1201 driver for wireless networking, which is involving some entertaining messing around with cross compilers - -- it's suprisingly hard to find a decent cross compiler package for Debian.
-- +- David Given --McQ-+ "Gaping from its single obling socket was | dg@cowlark.com | scintillating, many fauceted scarlet emerald..." | (dg@tao-group.com) | --- Jim Theis, _The Eye of Argon_ (spelling +- www.cowlark.com --+ original)
On Tue, Sep 26, 2006 at 06:13:54PM +0100, Alex Goodyear wrote:
I've also got the V2 release working without any major problems (a fantastic achievement, thanks Jonathan et al). I have a few observations and questions that may help others.
I did stop the NAND backup process because it was incredibly slow. "top" showed that the system wasn't using much CPU but the load was over 2.0 Using "df" also revealed that the USB stick was only having 16 bytes written to it every second or so.
The E3 keyboard is mapped as a standard desktop keyboard so most shifted characters are wrong and symbol-shift characters are ignored.
There was a new keymap posted to the list by David Given a while back, though I had meant to update the one in the driver itself.
I replaced the supplied 2.6.16 uImage with the one from the 2.6.17 directory in the hope that the keyboard mappings would be fixed. It worked but it only provided a shell login for the serial connection unlike the 2.6.16 image which provides both a serial and an onboard E3 login.
2.6.16 is the one that supports most things; later kernels gradually get more of the devices supported by mainline linux-omap rather than having to be patched, but both the keyboard and sound drivers weren't written by me so they tend to end up last on my list of things to forward port. I'm hoping to find some time to get a 2.6.18 kernel up and running in the next week or two, along with the diminishing patch set.
The copying of the Linux image from NAND seems slow, I recall some discussion about this being fixed within u-boot. Does the copy of u-boot in the V2 release contain this fix?
No, the version in V2 is 1.4, but there's a patch against uboot git that adds support but also speeds up the Linux image loading. J. -- Synonym: word used when you can't spell the one you want This .sig brought to you by the letter Z and the number 48 Product of the Republic of HuggieTag
No, the version in V2 is 1.4, but there's a patch against uboot git that adds support but also speeds up the Linux image loading.
Umm... Where would that patch be ? :) I hope it's not u-boot-amsdelta-20060519.diff, because it made no difference for me :( -- Piotr Michniewski
On Fri, Sep 29, 2006 at 11:03:05AM +0200, Piotr Michniewski wrote:
No, the version in V2 is 1.4, but there's a patch against uboot git that adds support but also speeds up the Linux image loading.
Umm... Where would that patch be ? :)
I hope it's not u-boot-amsdelta-20060519.diff, because it made no difference for me :(
http://www.earth.li/pipermail/e3-hacking/2006-June/000537.html J. -- Web [ No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun. ] site: http:// [ ] Made by www.earth.li/~noodles/ [ ] HuggieTag 0.0.23
2006/9/29, Jonathan McDowell <noodles@earth.li>:
http://www.earth.li/pipermail/e3-hacking/2006-June/000537.html
This one boots really faster! Good job :) I was really tired of waiting for it to boot... Oh and by the way... I tried to modify the notldr mem layout, because there's no sense in reading 2 MB of Flash during booting, but PBL couldn't find it. I suspect that I have to adjust the CRC somehow in the MEM block, but I have no idea how to do it. Could you help me out a bit ? -- Piotr Michniewski
On Fri, Sep 29, 2006 at 11:50:37PM +0200, Piotr Michniewski wrote:
2006/9/29, Jonathan McDowell <noodles@earth.li>:
http://www.earth.li/pipermail/e3-hacking/2006-June/000537.html This one boots really faster! Good job :) I was really tired of waiting for it to boot...
Oh and by the way... I tried to modify the notldr mem layout, because there's no sense in reading 2 MB of Flash during booting, but PBL couldn't find it. I suspect that I have to adjust the CRC somehow in the MEM block, but I have no idea how to do it. Could you help me out a bit ?
I've never bothered modifying the MEM block. For the checksum look at: http://www.earth.li/pipermail/e3-hacking/2006-April/000477.html The 16 byte checksum ends up in offset 6 + 7 of the block IIRC. J. -- If God had intended Man to program, we'd be born with serial I/O ports.
participants (3)
-
Alex.Goodyear＠jet.uk -
Jonathan McDowell -
Piotr Michniewski