Messages

1

SIMpad forum / Can't Access The Bl Monitor Menu

« on: April 01, 2006, 06:29:29 pm »

RX, TX and GND are sufficient - I'm using only these 3 lines myself (http://hunz.geekheim.de/?p=5)

Your terminal settings are ok.

Did you press it all the time? If not try the following:
- press esc, keep pressed
- press the reset button while keeping esc pressed
- keep esc pressed ;-)

after a few seconds the bootloader should react by printing the menu all the time while esc is pressed

have you verified that you can send data from the pc to the pad via serial with some program?

2

SIMpad forum / Sandisk Connect-plus Cf Wifi + 128 Mb Card And Lin

« on: March 14, 2006, 02:09:38 pm »

http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/te...eLog-2.6.16-rc6 :

Code: [Select]

commit 82d56e6d2e616bee0e712330bad06b634f007a46
Author: Dominik Brodowski
Date:   Fri Jan 27 19:15:02 2006 +0100

    [PATCH] pcmcia: properly handle pseudo multi-function devices
    
    The second pseudo multi-function device of a PCMCIA card may only be
    configured once the first one is initialized. Therefore, delay the
    registration of the second device until the first one is initialized.
    
    Signed-off-by: Dominik Brodowski




3

SIMpad forum / Sandisk Connect-plus Cf Wifi + 128 Mb Card And Lin

« on: March 12, 2006, 10:01:17 am »

The 2.6 kernel should be able to support both functions at the same time - maybe with little patching.
I tried it here with my notebook and initializing the 2nd function failed since the 1st function was also just initializing.
It should be solved by adding a delay in the 2nd function init.

But there's still quite some work to do for 2.6 kernel on the simpad.
pcmcia support is broken for the simpad and though I already got a framebuffer console (with bootlogo  ), it's quite slow and completely unaccelerated.

4

SIMpad forum / Sandisk Connect-plus Cf Wifi + 128 Mb Card And Lin

« on: March 12, 2006, 07:43:31 am »

I got this card too and I'm planning to build it fixed into the simpad with both functions enabled at the same time.

5

SIMpad forum / Status Quo?

« on: February 28, 2006, 08:15:53 am »

Simpad development seems to be stalled if it get this right.

I got a CL4 Simpad and it was getting dusty during the last few years.
I always had plans to reanimate it some time and start an own directfb-based distribution.

After fiddling around two days with various bootloaders and crosscompiling-environments I managed to install a modified version of the hh.org bootloader from (http://opensimpad.org/bootldr-simpad/blupdater.img - found the link here: http://opensimpad.org/opensimpad-forum/viewtopic.php?t=835).

However I had to modify the linuxrc script - it wrongly detected my CL4 as an SLC and thus the bootloader tried to flash erase beyond the end of the 16 MBytes.

First I tried to use the 2.5.1 siemens bootloader to boot a kernel from network, but I didn't get any output from the kernel - what now in retrospect could be caused by passing console=ttyS0 instead of ttySA0 - maybe I'll flash the old bl back the 10th time some day and check if this was the only problem %)

Been there, done that I crosscompiled the 2.6.14.5 kernel and got it started on the simpad with the modified ohh bootloader.
The problem is that I can't pass a commandline to the kernel - I tried to, but it seems to get overwritten somewhere by the bootloader.
(The bootloader also tries to tell the kernel it has 64MB of RAM which isn't the case)
Also I have no chance to save the modified params somehow...

The latest status was that the rootfs (from opie 0.9....) got mounted but my kernel with this damn commandline I'm unable to modify failed to execute /linuxrc.

Anyone an idea how override that damn commandline?
Neither compiling my own commandline into the kernel worked, nor did passing the args to boot vfat zImage <args>.
However I'm quite sure I get this done with some work - help is appreciated as it does accellerate it %)

And yes, I do know there's no mq200 support in the 2.6 kernel tree, but I'm willing to port the mq200 driver to the 2.6 kernel tree. I got the full mq200 datasheet so I'm also willing to add as much hw accel as possible since I want to run directfb on it anyway.

The tda8007 also isn't in the 2.6 tree what's a minor problem. But I also wasn't able to find any image (they're all 2.4 based) for the simpad with tda8007 support.

The reason I'd like to have the tda-driver working is the following:
I'd like to look at the CS (Chip Select) and RD/WR (Read/Write) lines of the tda with my oscilloscope to figure out how "fast" the bus is.

Why that? Well I also want to add SD-support, but not the GPIO-bitbanging style.
It costs quite a lot cpu-power to do it with the GPIOs and you probably don't get much throughput. Anyone here with GPIO-SD-performance readings?

So my approach is to remove the tda and glue a low-power CPLD to the former-tda connections and to an SD-card. (But one could also connect a CF card or CF-wlan etc. to it so one could but a microdrive or internal wireless lan card into the simpad...)
This way you get 1 Byte (tda is 8-bit connected, but >16bit is too much fiddling anyway...) per bus-cycle what results in Bus speed = CF/SD throughput in Bytes/sec.
(I expect the bus to be >=8 MHz what would be >=8MBytes/sec. throughput to the CF/SD)

Anyone here with interest in this project?

One of my first problems to solve is getting a new battery :\ the old one is completely broken :\