Marcin Juszkiewicz

There are nice things in Alix board design and few not quite nice.

Nice ones:

• only 12V voltage needed (small external PSU is in package)
• DC-DC converter on board (so no need for ATX PSU or PicoPSU + 12V external PSU)
• slot for CompactFlash storage on board (no need for CF->ATA adapter)
• miniPCI slot
• low profile (board has height of dual USB connector)
• 22 GPIO lines
• 256MB of RAM soldered on board (so no space taken by memory slot)
• no fan, no heatsink

What I do not like:

• lack of ATX back cover for ports (so when you put it in case you will get big hole for dust)
• lack of memory slot (even SO-DIMM one if someone want more then 256MB RAM)
• ATA connector is 44 pin one for 2.5” harddisks (looks like it is impossible to buy 2.5”->2.5” cable in Poland)

So if someone know where to buy 2.5” -> 2.5” ATA cable in Poland then please write in comment.

Yesterday evening was nightmare — after 2 years my wrists started to pain again ;( Especially right hand is worrying me — there are moments when tendons feel like being pulled too much…

During next days I am going to visit orthopedist to get any kind of solution for hands. Probably for start it will be some medicines and wrist brace like it was in 2005 year when I had problem mainly with left hand.

During GUADEC time Stelios Koroneos from Digital Opsis announced that PC Engines company donated two Alix1c boards to OpenEmbedded. As the board is interesting I wrote that if no one else will mail than I would like to play with it.

Today it picked it on post office and brought home. First reaction during unpacking: “Wow, this board is TINY!” because I had not used mini-ITX boards before. After connecting few cables (power, ethernet, vga, usb keyboard) and shorting “power switch” with screwdriver I got it booted and checked BIOS settings. Unfortunately I was unable to boot from PXE :(

I did search in drawer and took 256M CompactFlash card which I bought few years ago for “collie” and decided to install something on it. Decided that this time it will be Voyage Linux (Debian derived distribution for x86-based embedded platforms such as WRAP, ALIX and Soekris 45xx/48xx boards). Fetched their install CD (33M only) and started qemu with CF card as harddisk and that ISO. Few minutes later card was put into slot on Alix board and I got Voyage running.

Of course I could not resist and now board is upgraded to plain Debian ‘sid’ and 2.6.22 kernel ;D After wedding I will replace NSLU2 with Alix board and add few functions for it:

• Samba server
• Bluetooth Access Point
• CUPS based print server
• NFS server

During that time I also plan to move it from CF card and Debian to 2.5” harddisk and Ångström.

Yesterday during evening talk I found out one funny thing — all my trips related to OpenEmbedded was to cities which name starts with “B” letter.

First it was Berlin — first OEDEM (in 2006). Then it was FOSDEM 2007 in Brussels. Latest one was GUADEC 2007 in Birmingham. Next one will be OEDEM 2007 — Berlin again.

Before or after OEDEM I will probably also attend Bromley to visit OpenedHand office but this does not rather count as Bromley is part of London.

I am using the same ISP for over three years — it gives me internet access via cable TV. It works reliable (I had maybe 3-4 moments without network) but they got hit by popular problem — overbooking…

According to contract I have 3072/512kbps connection but during last weeks it is rather 3072/90kbps and it blocks me from sharing of my work with people (how long can you wait to push 40MB file over network?). All calls to their support sounds similiar — “we will contact our technical guys to check what is going on” ;(

Which ISP it is? It is ICP Poznań.

Today OpenedHand team (which I am proud to be a part of) released Poky Linux 3.0 ‘blinky’. I was working on it during last months. If you have free time then I suggest going to website and try it.

What interesting in this version? For me it is whole set of Matchbox components in new versions:

• mb-desktop2 with much more usable navigation then it was in mb-d1
• new panel which allow to remove window borders from screen (important on small resolutions)
• menus integrated with panel (it reminds me PalmOS time)

And there is new look&feel named “Sato” and whole set of PIM applications named “Pimlico” (which is also used on OpenMoko powered phones).

In two weeks from today I will marry Ania. The ceremony will take place in Szczecin, Poland at 16:30 local time (CEST).

So feel free to to come and wish us good luck ;)

Due to fact that some of embedded devices require using vendor tools I decided to install Microsoft Windows XP Professional on my Dell D400. As this machine lack CD-ROM drive I had to find other way. “Unattended” project provides boot discs which allow to make installation over PXE (netboot).

I followed DOS way and gave my tweaked copy of installation CD for it. The first problem was that I got “Partition Signature !=55AA” message after reboot and machine was unbootable. Hopefully I can boot grub4dos over PXE so I was able to go back to the Debian.

How to fix it? In my situation marking FAT32 partition as bootable solved problem.

The message is messy because there was 0x55aa signature at the end of MBR…