Marcin Juszkiewicz

Today I visited friend at his office and during talk I found dusted EDB9301 board at shelve. As he do not use it any more I was allowed to take it for experimenting.

First problem was bootloader — I am not so familiar with RedBoot so it took me a while to get it to load kernel from TFTP server. For reference: proper command is "load -v -r -b 0x01000000 /zImage-ep9301" where “/zImage-ep9301” is name of file to fetch. If you will get “Unrecognized image type: 0xe1a00000” message instead then you forgot “-r” switch (RedBoot do not know format of zImage kernel). I got some hints from HitchHacker Guide to ENP-2611 page.

Second was Linux kernel as support for EDB9301 was not present in 2.6.29 version. Quick search on LAKML gave me patch which adds EDB9301 support. But even with this patch kernel does not wanted to boot due to different machine ID (454 instead of 462) — small patch to “arch/arm/tools/mach-types” solved problem :D

Now I have board booted with root over NFS and wait for “base-image” build to end to have rootfs which will fit that device better then Openmoko one ;D

Today I finally connected BeagleBoard to LCD monitor — Samsung Syncmaster 205BW (20” 1680x1050px) which now works as my secondary display.

I can say one thing about how it works: OMG! This is fast, nice looking and shows power of OMAP3 graphics capabilities. Did not tried 3D acceleration yet (it works under Ångström) but even without it it is amazing!

Now I have 1280x800 resolution and so far tested playing of video files. DVD images (DivX encoded) works nice, 720p are not so usable but BB is at least capable to generate jumping preview.

After Easter I plan to spend more time hacking BeagleBoard platform. It shows where the future of small devices is. Now let TouchBook appear on market and I will definitely buy one.

Yesterday I unpacked Atmel NGW100 developer board. It is simple board without any whistles etc. but result is cheap device for those who wants to play with AVR32 architecture.

Board contains:

• one serial port (female instead of male)
• two Ethernet ports (I got 40Mbps with iperf)
• USB device port
• SD/MMC socket
• JTAG connector
• 32MB sdram
• 16MB flash
• few expension connectors with extra signals
• footprint for mictor-38 connector for NEXUS emulator

And this is how it looks on my desk:

I had to connect it like that because of female serial port I had to plug it directly to FTDI adapter because I lack straight serial cable :D

My desktop has few RS232 ports:

• one FTDI RS232-USB converter
• one connected to mainboard
• two on additional PCI card (which also gives me parallel port)

When I got BeagleBoard I had to remove the one connected to mainboard — connected that cable to BB itself. But today I got new package from Atmel: NGW100. And it means need for serial port too…

What for I use all those ports? Developer boards of course :)

• BUG
• BeagleBoard
• At91sam9263-ek from Atmel
• NGW100 from Atmel

To end that crazy situation I am planning to buy extended version of card which I use now but with 6 rs232 ports instead of just two. Will lose parallel port but I never used it and if will ever need it there will be a card with it somewhere in drawer/box.

I never thought that will need so many serial ports…

Some time ago I got BeagleBoard for one project. It is B7 revision so new version of CPU (with ES3.0 whatever it means) but without EHCI USB port.

Device is nice and powerful but default package comes without any accessories. So I had to check my drawers for some addons:

• SD card for rootfs (I use 2GB microSD one from my cellphone with adapter from other card)
• serial adapter (I took one from my desktop machine which had 3 serial ports anyway)
• power supply (got 3.5A one from friend)
• USB Host cable (hacked normal A->miniB cable to behave like host one with gender changer adapter)
• some kind of stand/legs to not keep board directly on table

Effect was good — board started, found USB hub and devices connected to it (currently only Ethernet adapter and Bluetooth dongle) and works fine. But using it with all wires floating is not good for longer time.

So I bought metal case for it:

It is not finished at all — I just mounted BB and made holes for audio connectors. Current todolist:

• cut some holes for connectors
• put USB hub inside
• make short USB host cable
• put USB Ethernet inside
• one power supply for BB and Hub

After all there will be still lot of space inside :D

Today I played a bit with Vortex86sx based device again. This time I wanted to get X11 working on it.

In short: it “works”. Default driver should be “sis” but it fails with messages which shows that libpciaccess has a problem on that device:

(EE) SIS(0): Unable to map IO aperture. Invalid argument (22)
(EE) SIS(0): **************************************************
(EE) SIS(0):                       ERROR:
(EE) SIS(0): Could not map MMIO area
(EE) SIS(0):                   END OF MESSAGE
(EE) SIS(0): **************************************************
(EE) SIS(0): **************************************************
(EE) SIS(0):                       ERROR:
(EE) SIS(0): SiSMapMem() failed
(EE) SIS(0):                   END OF MESSAGE
(EE) SIS(0): **************************************************

I switched to “vesa” driver — it works, gives 1280x1024 resolution. But it is so sluggish… Even my few years old Zaurus c760 is faster (I checked how Vortex86sx works with VGA resolution).

Tried also “fbdev” driver — same slowness. All was done with full X.org server not “kdrive” one.

Looks like I will have BeagleBoard soon which is great. But project will require also graphical output from it so here goes small problem — how to display it?

Currently I have 20” LCD which is capable of 1680x1050px resolution and have two video inputs:

• DVI where my desktop gfx card is connected
• D-Sub where I have Koala NanoPC connected

BeagleBoard require DVI or HDMI input so I can not connect it to current panel. So there are few choices:

• buy cheap 17-20” LCD with DVI input and connect BB to it
• buy FullHD (1920x1200 or 1920x1080) monitor with DVI/HDMI/D-Sub and use instead of current one.
• like second option but use current one with BeagleBoard
• do not buy any and use VNC to look what does BB display

OK, buying cheap LCD is not a problem — there are lot of them in local shops. The bigger problem is when I want to buy FullHD one. So far I created list of panels which are not an option and similar list of worth considering ones. So the choice for now looks like this:

Can someone suggest other options?

It is hard to believe but I started using OpenEmbedded 5 years ago…

• 2004-02-11 — bought Sharp Zaurus SL-5500
• 2004-03-20 — my first submission to OE (SubApplet 1.0.7)
• 2004-05-08 — my first push to OpenEmbedded repository
• 2005-04-05 — got first donation due to my OE/OZ work — Zaurus C760
• 2005-06-28 — joined OPIE developers team to push OE patches into upstream (left on 2007-06-01)
• 2006-03-06 — my first release of OE based distribution (OpenZaurus 3.5.4)
• 2006-05-20 — my first fixes which were paid by companies which use OpenEmbedded for own development
• 2006-09-09 — my company was created
• 2007-02-01 — started to work for OpenedHand as full-time Poky/OpenEmbedded developer
• 2007-04-26 — ended life of OpenZaurus distribution as Ångström took over it
• 2007-08-01 — Poky 3.0 ‘blinky’ was released
• 2008-02-01 — donated my SL-5500 to Thomas Kunze
• 2008-03-04 — Poky 3.1 ‘pinky’ was released and I am still supporting it
• 2008-10-15 — ended my work for OpenedHand
• 2008-10-30 — started to work for Bug Labs

When I was planning to buy Zaurus I did not know that this device will give me great new hobby and that hobby will change into well paid job. Today I have few OpenEmbedded powered devices on my desk (or under it) and none of them is used as PDA. New devices are on a way to me or on a “need to order soon” list. Many devices passed thought my hands due those 5 years (for example most of Zaurus models which were donated to OE landed on my desk before was given to our developers).

I learnt a lot about (cross) compiling, know how to play with many different tools used for building and I am good at creating patches.

Ok, there is one bad thing in it — my last application was written for AmigaOS over 8 years ago. Since then I touched code in many projects but never wrote application from scratch. But if we all would be programmers who would work on OE? :)