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Messages - thseiler

Pages: [1]
1
Cxx0 Hardware / Mysterious Contacts Besides The Battery
« on: April 27, 2005, 04:22:10 pm »
Hi Mr. Stephan

Quote
the contact pads are no secret i/o stuff, it's called
a checkpad and we know it since the SL-5000.

Ok, so these are only checkpads for the voltage regulators. Thanks for the info.
Do you think one can draw a few (~60) milliamps of power from these contacts ?

Best Regards
Thomas


BTW: Thank you for the nice repair work on my C760. Its like new !

2
Cxx0 Hardware / Mysterious Contacts Besides The Battery
« on: April 25, 2005, 01:12:07 pm »
Quote
I think that's for the mysterious "JTAG" support, which is an industrial diagnostics standard.

I hoped it would be a kind of serial port (I thought that JTAG had 7 signals + GND, hasn't it ?)

Quote
I suspect that it isn't much use to home hobbyists.

Sigh, yes it isn't. A Serial Port OTOH would be...
I have just found about a bluetooth module supporting H4 (3,3volt level), fitting in the space between the white battery cover and the SL-c760 and, best its available in single quantities. To bad..

Anyway thanks for clarifiying this.
Thomas

3
Cxx0 Hardware / Mysterious Contacts Besides The Battery
« on: April 25, 2005, 12:25:22 pm »
Hi

If I open the Battery compartiment of my SL-C760, I can see 6 contacs, just beside the battery.
Does anyone know what these contacts are used for and what they have for a pinout ?

Thanks
Thomas

4
Zaurus - pdaXrom / Even If Simple Alarm In Pdaxrom?
« on: January 14, 2005, 03:50:15 am »
To: scoutme
 ..I fear zaurus has not the hardware needed for wakeup functions

Intels Developer manual to the PXA255 processor states:

Section 1.2.14 Real Time Clock
... The RTC provides a constant frequency output and a programmable alarm register
This alarm register can also be used to wake up the processor from sleep mode...

It all boils down to reading the RTC register, addind the apropriate number of seconds one wants
to sleep , and then writing this back into the Alarm Register prior to going to sleep.

I think there must be some code somewhere that does it already.
Will investigate further...

thseiler

5
Zaurus - pdaXrom / Rc8 C860 No Sound
« on: January 14, 2005, 03:36:17 am »
To Laze:
Were any sound related patches applied to the kernel tree between RC5 and RC8 ?

the symtoms could be caused by a glitch in the audio driver's close routine
i.e a forgotten semaphore...

thseiler

6
Cxx0 Hardware / Audio Problems
« on: January 01, 2005, 10:13:51 am »
Hi dfeist,

The audio chip is separated on C-Series Models. See:
http://digit.que.ne.jp/visit/?Linux%A5%B6%...A5%A7%A5%A2#i15

All the chip does is audio. No touchscreen, no voltage monitoring.

Now for the symptoms, very strange... have you ever plugged in something different than a pair of headphones ?

thseiler

7
Cxx0 Hardware / C860 as usb host by software?
« on: December 19, 2004, 08:28:42 am »
regarding power,

There are ways to provide the 5 volts even when not connected to mains.
i.e. a step up converter chip could generate the 5 volts from the li-ion battery.

I still have to figure out how to generate a CS signal...

tom

8
Cxx0 Hardware / C860 as usb host by software?
« on: December 14, 2004, 10:35:48 am »
For the kernel side of things, there is a module for OHCI for ISP1161 in kernel 2.4
The device has 4 registers, 2 for the client and 2 for the host controller.

All we would need to to is to "emulate" the ISP1161 by changing the functions used to access these 4 registers, and the invent a protocol to transfer register accesses to the 16 bit microcontroller in the blackbox.

I don't know it it is doable, i think i prefer the build in solution, its simpler to do a driver for it.

tom

9
Cxx0 Hardware / C860 as usb host by software?
« on: December 14, 2004, 10:28:00 am »
Other suggestion, and this time it requires no change to the Z:

I think that it is possible to build a small black box, not unlike the one of CE-UC1 standart USB cable from SHARP.

In this box, there would be a ISP1161 and a 16 bit microcontroller.
The ISP1161 Host #1 would connect to the normal Zaurus USB client.
The ISP1161 Host #2 would be available as a normal USB Host Port.
The ISP1161 Client port would be connected to the same USB Host Port.

This cable can work as normal cable to sync your PDA, charge it and so on...
Additionally when your mains is plugged in, you can use it as USB Host
and when your running from battery, as USB on the go, and connect to other devices that have power integrated, like Digital Still Cammeras.

The problem is, that it would never reach USB's 12Mbit/s peak performance.
I don't know how fast/slow it will be.

tom

10
Cxx0 Hardware / C860 as usb host by software?
« on: December 14, 2004, 09:57:21 am »
Quote
But if you *really really really* want a real USB Host / OTG function in your Zaurus C7XX, I think it would be possible to add an Philips ISP1161A USB host controller
I have thought about this a bit more...

Bus:
Many of the needed signals are accessible on the P2ROM of the zaurus. Its the chip that contains the Bios, service menus and diag menus, and is read only, so no risk of accitently deleting the bios. This leaves us with the folloing signals to investigate:

RESET: is not really needed; to reset the chip into known state, one can simply turn the Z off and on
INT: any GPIO pin of PXA255 can be used to generate an interrupt, we have to find a free one
DMA: there are two external DMA lines in PXA255, both of which are multiplexed with a GPIO line. I think they use the pins for keyboard multiplexing....

Room:
the P2ROM is packed in 44TSOP package. This is a very thin package, and there is room left above it. It should be possible to put the ISP1161 directly on this chip. (I wonder if we manage to find a socket that allows us to "plug" onto the P2Rom chip ?)

Price:
I have found pricing of the Chip in single quantities via Arrow is 13 euros.
To this, we would need to add a connector, and some passive elements, a
quarz and a connector. Estimative BOM of arounf 25 euros.

Power:
The zaurus is charged with 5.0 Volts. The USB socket provides 5.0 volts !
Coincidence or Destany  :-)
So this mod would give you a real USB host port as long as your Z is plugged into mains. On battery, the port would degrade into USB On the Go mode, and not
provide power, but would still allow to access Digicams and other equipment with
its own power source.

Connector :
The usb lines have to go outside the zaurus somewhere. But where ???
Should we hijack Sharps USB lines of the Docking Port ?
Or add a new port somewhere ?

tom

11
Cxx0 Hardware / C860 as usb host by software?
« on: December 13, 2004, 06:05:46 pm »
Quote
I have been wondering about this for a while now. Since USB is bidirectional, is there a way to emulate a usb host in software using the client port on the c860?
I don't think that this is possible. The state machines in PXA255 usb controller are hardwired, and it is not possible to change them to support host functions (like enumeration, etc...)

But if you *really really really* want a real USB Host / OTG function in your Zaurus C7XX, I think it would be possible to add an Philips ISP1161A USB host controller
http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/pip/ISP1161ABD.html

For this to work, one would have to
* get a ISP1161A
* open the Zaurus (shrudder)
* Find a volume of free space (7 x 7 x 1.4 mm to put the chip)
* Identify the following signals on the main board
   GND, VCC33 (power for the chip)
   D0...D15   (16 bit Data Bus)
   A0, A1      (two adress Lines)
   RD, WR    (Write / Read Control Lines)
   INT          (somewhere )
   RESET      (Reset)
   CS           (A unused Chip select ??? )
* wire them to the apropriate pins of ISP1161A (total of 23 wires)
* patch the kernel to include the OHCI interfaces
* put the usb lines somehow outside of the zaurus.

I do not say that this is easy, but I think once this works, it sould be possible to craft a mod, that is reasonably unintrusive and hides itself inside space between the Z and the large battery cover.

Problems:
* we need a memory map and details about the banking of all Zaurus C7XX models.
* we need to hijack 4 memory adresses for this
* we need a Chip Select ?
* Waranty is void...
* The connector has to be taken to the outside world somwhere...
* Power (5 volts)

Benefits:
* 12 MBit/s USB host, 12MBit/s USB Client
* all the usb hardware that is supported by linux.

Does anybody know of a super small, flat  usb wifi dongle that is supported by linux?
because the ISP 1611A has *two* host ports....

Any thoughts, comments ?

tom

12
C1000/3x00 Hardware / SL-C3000 dissect pics
« on: December 12, 2004, 06:04:43 pm »
Quote
I did a Systran.com translation of part of this article (credit to tke918 for posting the link). There is some info that gives me hope for the C3000, if the translation proves to be correct. I will not comment on the article, though, because even where I can decipher the translation, I only have a vauge understanding of the technical information.

(PXA270 Graphics Capabilities)
Quote
As for main CPU, PXA270 of Intel. The clock is 416MHz. Function of wireless MMX and the like is added in comparison with PXA255, accumulates also the various peripheral circuits as the one for PDA device. This time there is no ATI W100, but the LCD controller of PXA270 built-in is utilized in regard to indication. In addition, the function and the like where W100 processed until recently in the type seems that is actualized with the software entirely.

The LCD controller of PXA270 corresponds to the largest 800×600 dot, those whose two graphic overlays are possible. When there is an overlay display function, playback processing of the animated picture data becomes simple. Because it should have kept writing the animated picture frame data to the overlay private memory territory animated picture playback application - without considering Shaun's itself indicatory and display position and the like. In addition, in the overlay indication of PXA270, YCbCr which is used with JPEG and MPEG not only RGB type (brightness and color difference) indication being possible even with type, it is not necessary to do color spatial conversion at the time of indication. The frame buffer is taken into memory, uses DMA and to LCD has reached the point where output is done.

The LCD controller of PXA250/255 which was used with SL-C700 - 860, is thought that display function of the simple frame buffer furthermore the device like ATI W100 in the shelf damaging and indication of the multimedia data was necessary. Vis-a-vis this, the LCD controller of PXA270 function becomes high, in addition, because there is also wireless MMX order and the like the external graphic controller unnecessary. In addition, it meaning that the device decreases, it is possible that much to decrease electric power consumption.


Thoughts, anyone?
Hi ZeeUser,

The ATI W100 in current Zauri does more ore less two things

* Color Space Transformation
* Video Overlay / HW Scaling

Color Space Transformation :
If you would have to describe an Image, you could save for every Pixel the amount of Red, Green and Blue that is needed to get its color. Such a Color Space is called RGB and you need 3 values per pixel.  This is basically a *.BMP image

In video coding another way of describing an image is common: YCrCb
There you have aswell 3 values per pixel (Y = "luminance", intensity of a B&W image, Cr = "Chrominance Red", how much more red than green, Cb = "Chrominance Blue" - How much more blue than green)
You still have 3 values per pixel, But the eye is less sensitive to Color Difference that to light intensity, so it is possible to compress color difference more agressively
This would correspond to a *.jpg with maximum quality setting.

Now the problem is when you want to play back a video that was coded using YCrCb (like MPEG/divx) you will have to convert it back to RGB at some point, because the LCD works internally in RGB. In 700 Series this was done by ATI W100 because the PXA255 had no hardware converter and not enough computing power to do it in software alone. If you take a look at figure 7-1 of Intels PXA27X spec's you will find that PXA27X includes a hardware based Color Space transformer in its internal LCD controller.

Video Overlay / Scaling:
If you want your video (which uses YCrCb) in a window ontop of your desktop which uses RGB, you need a way to Mix Color Spaces . This is what the Overlay is for. It lays the video image over the normal one. PXA27X has actually *two* overlay units.
Then there is the scaler, which basically scales your video from its resolution to the reolution of the LCD (otherwise it would not be possible to to fullscreen video) This had to be done by ATI W100 in current Zauri, because PXA255 is not fast enough. But with Wireless MMX, this has changed.

IMHO this is a good thing:
* PXA27X is fully documented unlike the W100
* yon dont have an additional chip to buy, and
* you save power. SL-C7XX series uses W100 but PXA's internal controller is still there and consumes power doing nothing.

Over all Sharp had to put a W100 on the side of PXA255 because it was not yet up to the job. But PXA27X has grown and can stand on its own feet, so no need for W100 anymore.

tom

PS: I think, the mplayer which needs W100 will not work with C3000.
You need to wait until somebody adapts mplayer for PXA27X.

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