Ive posted excerpts of a conversation about porting uClinux to the recorder on the forums, please chime in:
http://www.neurosaudio.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5714
Ive posted excerpts of a conversation about porting uClinux to the recorder on the forums, please chime in:
http://www.neurosaudio.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5714
Comments
Yono
This is a linux port to the Archos Av3xx.
http://linav.free.fr/index.php?page=files.php
Paul J
My experience at both Agenda Computing building a Linux PDA and the now defunct Musenki, where we developed an open source 802.11 router (that died for various reasons), leads me to believe that restricting dev to people with some kind of daughterboard is a bad idea. For maximum open source dev help, you want the ability for J. Random Hacker to provide that help to be as frictionless as possible. Having to solder, etc, is a bit much. How about an internal jumper thats a serial port for the console? Also, IMHO Ethernet, etc, should all hang off of USB
- thats what its there for. If that means that you need to throw
some dev dollars at getting someone to put USB-Ethernet support into a
bootloader, so be it.
If you want a daughterboard for expandability, thats different, but I *strongly* urge you not to make any kind of dev, even bootloader dev, depend on special hardware - all youre doing is limiting the pool of
potential hackers, which is exactly what youve said you want to avoid.
--pj
Paul J
A late thought (from looking at minty): if weve got USB, why not use it? hook the serial port to a serial-to-USB adapter and hang it off the same bus as the main USB port. So you plug it in an your dev PC sees a USB serial port in addition to the main USB port - that serial port is the console. Which the OS can disable (or not, if its a dev version) at boot time. Possibly confusing if someone boots their neuros while its plugged in (the serial device would show up, then disappear), but very nice as hackability goes.
The Helio (a PDA) has what I called a streetfighter sequence: when you press certian buttons in the right order, it activates some code in the bootrom that tells it to listen for S-records on the serial port.
The Agenda VR3 uses its serial port as the console, but youre SOL if you toast the bootloader b/c it takes a dev board to put a bootloader on a virgin (or bricked) VR3.
The Musenki M3 had a daughterboard with a serial port on it, and there was a shortage of them so the early adopters were all SOL and ended up with bricks in the end if they experimented much at all.
Just more food for thought.
ALecs
The problem with USB serial console is that its not available for bootloader use as it comes up WAY too late in the kernel boot sequence.
The daughterboard will be a GREAT thing for linux on the recorder. Of course, I swap SMT resistors on a semi-daily basis here at work, so adding it doesnt make me cringe; others may shy away.
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