I am still a bit worried playing around with the Flash, since I don’t have anything to restore it back in case I made a mistake. So I think I will leave this part for a while.

For everyone who have NSD-100 with Serial Port attached to it, you can try a precompiled binary thah I have prepared, or you can compile from source. To use the binary version, you will need a USB disk (at least 2GB in size), and a TFTP server. Actually you only need about 256 megabyte if you prepare your own disk instead of using my image.

Here are the steps for the binary version:

1. Download the disk image from here
2. Decompress (bunzip) the disk image, use dd to write to your USB disk
3. Since there is no boot menu, entering single or multi user mode is done by booting different kernel. Download the multi user kernel or single user kernel and put it in your tftpserver
4. Boot the kernel

To boot the kernel, you need to access your device using serial port. I think You need to hold the reset button to enter the boot prompt (mine always goes to the boot prompt because Bruce did something with the configuration area). You should see

STR9100>

prompt.

setenv serverip 192.168.1.1
(you can also 'saveenv' to save the TFTP server address permanently)
tftpboot 0x1000000 name-of-kernel.bin
go 0x1000000

To build your own disk image, make an empty disk.img with the size that you want. Goto /usr/src and then (modified from instruction to make i386 image by Warner Losh)

export TARGET_ARCH=arm
make buildworld
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f disk.img
fdisk -I md0
fdisk -B md0
bsdlabel -w md0s1 auto
bsdlabel -B md0s1
newfs /dev/md0s1a
mount /dev/md0s1a /mnt/
make installworld DESTDIR=/mnt
make distrib-dirs DESTDIR=/mnt
make distribution DESTDIR=/mnt
echo /dev/da0s1a / ufs rw 1 1 > /mnt/etc/fstab
echo ifconfig_DEFAULT=DHCP > /mnt/etc/rc.conf
echo hostname=demo >> /mnt/etc/rc.conf

To compare your boot experience here is is the bootlog for the multi user mode, and the single user mode.

For the latest kernel source, you can see the perforce depot at:

http://p4db.freebsd.org/depotTreeBrowser.cgi?FSPC=//depot/projects/str91xx&HIDEDEL=NO

I bought this device from DealExtreme for 206.1 USD , this is the first expensive thing that I bought from DealExtreme (I only bought small things from then, usually my total is less than 20 USD). The thing shipped in about 10 days, but I need to get the thing from the post office, because I need to pay extra tax 350 baht (~11 USD).

SmartQ 7 is a 7″ MID (mobile internet device) running ubuntu. It has ARM processor (the SoC is Samsung S3C6410), the RAM is 128 Mb, with 1GB internal flash storage. There are 2 USB ports, one for USB Host, and the other for USB OTG. It doesn’t have an internal bluetooth, buat a bluetooth dongle is given, it looks like this thing in DealExtreme. It has 4500mAh battery. The screen resolution is 800×600.

My short opinion is: this thing is great, but needs better software. There is no accelerated driver for Xorg (X uses fbdev, an unaccelerated framebuffer driver). By default it allocates 128Mb swap space in the internal flash. I am a little bit worried about this (the flash have limited write cycle), and I move the swap to external SD Card. Because the memory is only 128Mb, it swaps a lot.

This SoC has a 3D graphics support, but of course, no driver for it yet. It also has a hardware JPEG decoder (no driver for it yet), hardware MPEG-4 video decoder (no driver for it also). I hope someone will make those drivers (or may be I will if I have finished the FreeBSD stuff).

The power management is still not so good. Sometimes it works perfectly, but sometimes not. On the first day, I can use it about 9.5 hours (according to uptime, part of this uptime is when the LCD is off when i left it for a while) reading comic books while installing several softwares using apt-get (the wifi is kept on). On the next day, it shows some strange behaviour, such as refusing to resume after sleep. And restarting it several times makes the battery drain faster (I think it lasted less than 5 hours). I still don’t know whether this behaviour is from the factory, or may be I have messed around too much.

Most sofware are not designed to be touch operated. I have seen several modal dialog box that appears beneath current window, and you can not switch to it. Plugging an external USB Keyboard seems to be the only good solution when it happens. Sometimes you ocan still escape by holding some combination of buttons, but sometimes plugging a USB keyboard or resetting the device is the only solution (or if you have installed an openssh server, SSH-ing to the device and killing the application).

You have several options for the operating system: the built in OS (Ubuntu), Mer, Google Android (just some initial support, I haven’t tested it), and Windows CE (Chinese version only for now). You can also do multiboot using those OSes (dual boot, tripeboot, or even quadboot).

Just a note: the device is perfect for reading Manga, but not American comic books. The size fits perfectly for a manga page (except when they show double page). I suggest you use latest Comix application, because it is more touch friendly.

If you are looking for a device that “just works”, then this not the device that youare looking for. If you are like me, who likes to mess around with stuff, then this device has many potential. I can use this device as a very large PDA, and I can use it as a netbook by connecting a USB keyboard. It is not pocketable, but it is very portable (smaller than my wife’s EEE PC). With the USB Host functionality, I can do almost everything that I can do with laptops, such as copying things from USB Disks.

My wife have an EEE PC for her traveling needs, and she also owns a MacBook Pro, which is quite portable around the house, but too heavy for long trips. I wanted to buy another netbook, but I think this device is better for me. I can carry the SmartQ, and put the USB keyboard on my bag. For my traveling preparation, I have bought a USB hub (with power adapter, for those devices that requires it) and a small keyboard, the total for both are 500 baht (~15 USD).

I wrote this post on SmartQ 7, using usb keyboard on Emacs, and then I copy paste the text to Midori web browser.

Three days ago, I got an email from abuse department, it says that I have been storing to many files. I have about 300 thousands files, and their limit (that they just set on May) is 50 thousands file. You may think that 50 thousands file is a lot, but in reality it is not. Many software uses thousands of small files, for example there are more than 1800 files on gallery2 (typical install, english only), there are more than 1000 files for wordpress. Joomla with virtuemart will use more than 6000 files. I think this new limit has something to do with their new UNLIMITED HOSTING offer.

That is only the default install. Many web applications uses more files. For example, gallery2 will cache the resized sizes (thumnail, normal view, full view, etc) so if you upload 1000 pictures, it may end up becoming 3000 files or more. I got quite many blog entries (because I have been blogging in my Indonesian blog for 3 years), so I need to install wp-cache to speed things up. The cache is file based, so in just one of my blog, I use about around 4000 files.

The worst part is Hostmonster also counts their configuration files, empty directories, log files, and emails in the total. So if you have several email account, and you haven’t pop your email for a while, your file count will be high. If you use IMAP, then you can not have many messages, because every message is a file.

After cleaning up my files, removing my photos, uninstalling gallery, I finally lowered down my file count to around 44000. Now I only use about 1.7 GB of the disk space. So much for unlimited space hosting

Here is the current FreeBSD port status:

1. Timer is now working, previously the timer tick works, but the time counter was too fast.
2. EHCI and OHCI is working, but there is still some caching problem, so i need to modify usb_busdma.c, this modification is not clean. I can access USB disks, and USB network adapter.
3. Network driver works, but it is still very slow . I am still trying to understand better the DMA handling in FreeBSD. There is still one bug: you can not stop the interface and start it again. The stopping part works, ifconfig ece0 down, but the starting again part doesn’t.
4. Multi user works. I can also activate network services, such as sshd.

I am still waiting for my perforce account. But anyone willing to test it can contact me. I still don’t know the best method to release a patch against CURRENT for people to try, because changes happens very quickly.

Here is the latest boot log: bsd-24-may-2009.txt

The remaining drivers that needs to be written are the OHCI and network. The OHCI shouldn’t take too much time, but I think the network will take quite a long time.

I was planning to clean up, and release the code today, but I was busy with something else, so may be I will release the code in the next few days. For those of you who are curious about the boot log, here it is:

KDB: debugger backends: ddb
KDB: current backend: ddb
Copyright (c) 1992-2009 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
	The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 8.0-CURRENT #169: Sun May 10 01:25:55 WIT 2009
    yohanes@cameron:/usr/home/yohanes/freebsd/freebsd/src/sys/arm/compile/CNS11XXNAS
WARNING: DIAGNOSTIC option enabled, expect reduced performance.
Preloaded elf kernel "elf kernel" at 0xc12d30b8.
unknown CPU (ID = 0x66015261)
  WB enabled LABT
  16KB/16B 2-way Instruction cache
  16KB/16B 2-way write-back-locking-B Data cache
real memory  = 67108864 (64 MB)
Physical memory chunk(s):
00000000 - 0xffffff, 16777216 bytes (4096 pages)
0x1337000 - 0x3eaefff, 45580288 bytes (11128 pages)
avail memory = 61718528 (58 MB)
ULE: setup cpu 0
nfslock: pseudo-device
null: <null device, zero device>
random: <entropy source, Software, Yarrow>
mem: <memory>
econaarm0: <ECONA device bus> on motherboard
econa add children
econa add child econa_ic addr 7d000000
econa add child uart addr 78000000
econa add child timer addr 79000000
econa add child ehci addr f8000000
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000008
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000008
econa_alloc_resource start 78000000 end 78ffffff, count = 01000000
sys_res_memory
Alloc OK
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000008
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000008
econa_alloc_resource start 78000000 end 78ffffff, count = 01000000
sys_res_memory
Alloc OK
uart0: <Non-standard ns8250 class UART with FIFOs> mem 0x78000000-0x78ffffff irq 10 on econaarm0
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000008
econa_alloc_resource start 78000000 end 78ffffff, count = 01000000
sys_res_memory
Alloc OK
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000001
econa_alloc_resource start 0000000a end 0000000a, count = 00000001
sys_res_irq
Alloc OK
uart0: [FILTER]
uart0: fast interrupt
uart0: console (38461,n,8,1)
timer0: <Econa CPU Timer> mem 0x79000000-0x79ffffff irq 0,1 on econaarm0
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000001
econa_alloc_resource start 79000000 end 79ffffff, count = 01000000
sys_res_memory
Alloc OK
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000001
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end 00000000, count = 00000001
sys_res_irq
Alloc OK
STR9100 CPU Clock: 200 MHz
HZ = 100
reload value = 500000
IRQ Timer1 at int #0x0 clock 100000000(Hz)
timer0: [FILTER]
DONE timer
done00000000
ehci probe
ehci probe
ehci0: <CNS11XX USB EHCI> mem 0xf8000000-0xffffffff irq 24 on econaarm0
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000001
econa_alloc_resource start f8000000 end ffffffff, count = 08000000
sys_res_memory
Alloc OK
econa_alloc_resource start 00000000 end ffffffff, count = 00000001
econa_alloc_resource start 00000018 end 00000018, count = 00000001
sys_res_irq
Alloc OK
add USB device
setup intr
ehci0: [MPSAFE]
ehci0: [ITHREAD]
init ehci
usbus0: EHCI version 1.0
probe and attach
usbus0: <CNS11XX USB EHCI> on ehci0
done
initcloks
enabling timer
Timecounter "CPU Timer" frequency 50000000 Hz quality 1000
Timecounters tick every 10.000 msec
usbus0: 480Mbps High Speed USB v2.0
WARNING: DIAGNOSTIC option enabled, expect reduced performance.
ugen0.1: <Cavium> at usbus0
uhub0: <Cavium EHCI root HUB, class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1> on usbus0
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
ugen0.2: <Kingston> at usbus0
umass0: <Kingston DataTraveler 2.0, class 0/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 2> on usbus0
umass0:  SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x0000
register sim 0
scanning the sim
umass0:0:0:-1: Attached to scbus0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): TEST UNIT READY. CDB: 0 0 0 0 0 0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CAM Status: SCSI Status Error
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): SCSI Status: Check Condition
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): UNIT ATTENTION asc:28,0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Not ready to ready change, medium may have changed
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): (probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): TEST UNIT READY. CDB: 0 0 0 0 0 0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): UNIT ATTENTION asc:28,0
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Not ready to ready change, medium may have changed
Retrying Command (per Sense Data)
(probe0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Retrying Command
pass0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
pass0: <Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 1.00> Removable Direct Access SCSI-2 device
pass0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 1.00> Removable Direct Access SCSI-2 device
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 1906MB (3903578 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 242C)
GEOM: new disk da0
GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider da0s1a is ufsid/4a01b053676144f3.
GEOM_LABEL: Label for provider da0s1a is ufs/FreeBSDonUSB.
root_mount_prepare 100

Manual root filesystem specification:
  <fstype>:<device>  Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
                       eg. ufs:/dev/da0a
  ?                  List valid disk boot devices
  <empty line>       Abort manual input

mountroot> ufs:da0s1a
Trying to mount root from ufs:da0s1a
warning: no time-of-day clock registered, system time will not be set accurately
start_init: trying /sbin/init
Enter full pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh:
# ls /
.snap		dev		media		root		usr
COPYRIGHT	etc		mnt		sbin		var
bin		lib		proc		sys
boot		libexec		rescue		tmp

My wife just bought Nokia 5800, a Nokia series 60 5th edition phone. It means that i need to finish my SymbianBible port for 5th edition (mostly done, beta version is on symbianbible google groups). My wife also asked me to port MultiCounter to her new phone (done, not yet uploaded).

I have cleaned up the 2.6.29 port of STR9104 Soc, but i will need to clean up again, because of the new documentation from www.cnusers.org. I have also started the freebsd port, but the progress is not much yet.

When the NSD Emprex 100 arrived, i realized that I need more network ports. I only have 4 ports on my WRT54GL and all of them have been used. After looking at hubs and routes prices around chiang mai, they are in 500-1000 baht range, that is not cheap so I decided that I should just buy something a little bit more expensive that I can hack. I saw DLink DIR-300 sold at relatively cheap price 1490 baht (43 usd, cheap for Chiang Mai price), this is 700 baht (20 usd) cheaper compared to WRT54GL, with almost same hardware spec (4 Mb ROM, 16 Mb RAM). I spent some time installing openwrt on this router, because I was so confused with the factory built interface.

I am planning to go to Indonesia for 10 days, so during that time, I don’t think I will be able to do much hacking, but I want to still continue studying freebsd. So I decided to install FreeBSD on our EEE PC 901. This was not difficult, but it took quite some time to setup everything.

Here are some of the things that i’ve done on the EEE PC: setup FreeBSD ARM cross compile, setup Linux ARM cross compilation, setup LXR for FreeBSD current sources. Unfortunately WIFI is still not supported on EEE 901, and all (I only have 2) of my USB bluetooth doesnt work.

Note: I haven’t made tha 64 Mb Linux Kernel Image. I was affraid that someone made a mistake flashing it to 32 Mb device, which will made it unusable. Of course serial port can still save it, but not every one can make a serial port. With the new documentation I found, I will be able to make kernel image that can autodetect the memory size.

and the config file:

http://tinyhack.com/agestar/config-2.6.29-star

or if you want the image that i already compiled and test (image is compiled with 32 MB memory). This is NOT a FIRMWARE

http://tinyhack.com/agestar/zImage-2.6.29

when i have the time, i will work on creating a new firmware image.

Some changes:

• The machine ID is now registered in http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/developer/machines/
• The network problem instability has now been fixed
• Added new configuration option to select memory size based on your board memory (16, 32, or 64 mb). Note: selecting values larger than the supported size will cause crash.

The other news is that Bruce M Simpson has donated me an Emprex NSD 100 for porting FreeBSD to it. I have started my work, but the progress will be slower from the Linux at the beginning, because:

1. I am more familiar with Linux kernel compared to FreeBSD kernel
2. Currently FreeBSD kernel itself doesn’t support many ARM devices yet, so to find an exmple of something I need to look at NetBSD, (and it helps, for example the Faraday 526 processor support is already in NetBSD).
3. I am rather busy this and coming month (planning to go to Indonesia for about 10 days)

My wife was happy with her Asus EEE 701, but she would like something better with the same size. We sold the old Asus 701 to my brother, and she bought Asus EEE 900A. Compared to EE PC 701, the EEE PC 900A has a faster processor (Intel Atom 1.6 ghz vs the 900 Mhz EEE), more memory (1 gb vs 512 mb), bigger disk space (16 gb vs 4 gb), higher resolution (1024 x 600 vs 840×400), and better graphic processors (Intel GMA 950 vs Intel GMA 900). The only problem is the 16 GB SSD is much slower than the EEE 701 4 GB SSD. You can really feel it when running almost any applications, especially the firefox browser.

My wife uses Windows XP on the new Asus. After reading several blog posts and many forums, the conclusion is: to make everything faster, try to reduce the number of disk access. Here is how to reduce the disk access in Windows XP:

1. Buy more memory, we bought 2 GB memory  (quite cheap, around 690 baht/20 usd) to replace the 1 GB default
2. Allocate some of the memory (384 Mb for RAM disk). I set the environment variables TEMP and TMP to point to the RAM Disk. I also point firefox cache to the RAM disk.
3. Turn off page file
4. Disable indexing on all drives
5. Disable System restore
6. Don’t install firefox on the SSD. Firefox 3 will try to write its history every few seconds. I use Firefox portable on SD Card, and it is much faster now.

- Wiimote only operation is possible. Not all things will work though. You can play point and click games that relies only on mouse. Press HOME to access the menu (change disk, change ROM, etc). To avoid wasting your time, you can test the game on Hatari for Windows/Linux to see if you can control everything using only mouse.

- I have included a simple flicker filtering to reduce the filtering. This is not the final solution to the problem. I will need to rewrite the SDL port to use GX.

Note:

- Mono mode still doesn’t work yet.

You can download it here:

http://tinyhack.com/wii/hatari/hatari-18-01-2009.zip

Sorry, forgot to update the mouse handling

http://tinyhack.com/wii/hatari/hatari-19-01-2009.zip

Some notes

1. You will need USB keyboard to use this emulator
2. Mouse is emulated using Wiimote (A for click), you can also use USB Mouse
3. Press F12 to access the menu (probably i should assign one of the Wiimote key for this),
4. Options can be saved to disk
5. Press home, or alt-q to quit
6. Floppy images can be placed in \hatari\fd
7. EmuTOS image have been included. With EmuTOS ROM, the green screen flickers a lot. It doesn’t happen with some real Atari ROMs that I tested.
8. Sound works (usually), jus enable it through the options

You can download the emulator from

http://tinyhack.com/wii/hatari/hatari-0.0.1.zip

Source code is in

http://tinyhack.com/wii/hatari/

The source code for the SDL port have been put into wiiapple SVN at

http://wiiapple.googlecode.com/