<![CDATA[nixers - Other Embedded Platforms and Hardware Hacking]]> https://nixers.net/ Fri, 10 Apr 2026 09:05:26 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[HDL (Verilog, VHDL, Migen, Chisel, Clash...)]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-HDL-Verilog-VHDL-Migen-Chisel-Clash Sat, 23 Apr 2022 10:12:54 +0000 josuah]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-HDL-Verilog-VHDL-Migen-Chisel-Clash
This drift away a tiny bit from the main Unix topic of the forum, and for help with tinkering on Verilog, this place https://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/ could be the best. That is not what I wan to discuss here:

Let's poke and discover hardware. After all, by the time of some old timers, computer science and electronics were much closer than now with powerful abstractions to get us away from all the electronic trouble.

What are HDLs

Of course, large processors, and even the small chips, are not being built out of breadboards: it would be way too tedious to hand-assemble thousands of transistors by hand (yet if you look at the CRAY's wiring you might have doubts: https://www.flickr.com/photos/carrierdet...otostream/).

You would also have terrible timing offered by such large components. Clock speed at 10Hz anyone?

There is a lot of simulation involved, and simulators have to be fed a language. These language describe hardware. Therefore they are hardware description language. Bingo!

For real hardware?

But production of chips go straight from these hardware description languages to the chip content themself ! The wonders of VLSI!

Finally, because building a single chip costs roughly as much as building a thousand, and that crazy-huge costs are involved, a lot of tooling for verification are used. Have a look at these slides for more on that: http://zipcpu.com/tutorial/formal.html

Something something FPGA?

An alternative fate for these hardware description languages is, instead of being converted to patterns on a silicon crystal, is to land onto an FPGA.

Do you remember the news about Bitcoin? You might have be coming across GPU-based rigs for mining, but also much likely FPGA chips, such as these mid/high-end Altera (Intel) or Spartan/Artix (Xilinx, now AMD) boards.

FPGA are special-purpose chips that receive a compiled Verilog, VHDL, [...] design, and setlle it up onto a grid of gate connected together, according to the description given in the compiled file.

This permits to build-up any kind of harware chip, and therefore was much used to implement bitcoin-mining chips, accelerating the process of mining bitcoins. This made these chips talk a lot about themself.

But this is only one of the many use of FPGAs!

Basically, every time some corp needs a custom-purpose chip, but building a hundread of thousand of ASICs is out of reach, an FPGA comes as a great friend.

- datacenters use FPGA as accelerators for large processing power, like video conversion: Codecs change more often than hardware, building special-purpose hardware over and over would be a big waste.

- expensive equipment like RADAR/LIDAR, can make a great use of FPGA: if there is a very large telescope that needs an FPGA for controlling motors involved in optics or orientation, or processing and dispatching input data... There could be as few as one ASIC needed, if there is only one telescope of that kind. FPGA of course!

- While FPGA are expensive tools (there are more affordable CPLD chips too), they might contribute to driving costs down: CPUs are not very good at processing things in parallel, and if there is the need to interconnect many signals in parallel, a very-high speed CPU, or a tiny FPGA might both be used.

What now?

Should we all be learning HDL instead of these inefficient programming languages? Of course not! HDL are a link in the very long chain from high-level features of computers like user interfaces down to hardware. They only serve a slice of the stack, and connect electrical-engineering to software.

If you feel like trying, post it here, I'll offer pointers to get an environment setup.]]>
This drift away a tiny bit from the main Unix topic of the forum, and for help with tinkering on Verilog, this place https://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/ could be the best. That is not what I wan to discuss here:

Let's poke and discover hardware. After all, by the time of some old timers, computer science and electronics were much closer than now with powerful abstractions to get us away from all the electronic trouble.

What are HDLs

Of course, large processors, and even the small chips, are not being built out of breadboards: it would be way too tedious to hand-assemble thousands of transistors by hand (yet if you look at the CRAY's wiring you might have doubts: https://www.flickr.com/photos/carrierdet...otostream/).

You would also have terrible timing offered by such large components. Clock speed at 10Hz anyone?

There is a lot of simulation involved, and simulators have to be fed a language. These language describe hardware. Therefore they are hardware description language. Bingo!

For real hardware?

But production of chips go straight from these hardware description languages to the chip content themself ! The wonders of VLSI!

Finally, because building a single chip costs roughly as much as building a thousand, and that crazy-huge costs are involved, a lot of tooling for verification are used. Have a look at these slides for more on that: http://zipcpu.com/tutorial/formal.html

Something something FPGA?

An alternative fate for these hardware description languages is, instead of being converted to patterns on a silicon crystal, is to land onto an FPGA.

Do you remember the news about Bitcoin? You might have be coming across GPU-based rigs for mining, but also much likely FPGA chips, such as these mid/high-end Altera (Intel) or Spartan/Artix (Xilinx, now AMD) boards.

FPGA are special-purpose chips that receive a compiled Verilog, VHDL, [...] design, and setlle it up onto a grid of gate connected together, according to the description given in the compiled file.

This permits to build-up any kind of harware chip, and therefore was much used to implement bitcoin-mining chips, accelerating the process of mining bitcoins. This made these chips talk a lot about themself.

But this is only one of the many use of FPGAs!

Basically, every time some corp needs a custom-purpose chip, but building a hundread of thousand of ASICs is out of reach, an FPGA comes as a great friend.

- datacenters use FPGA as accelerators for large processing power, like video conversion: Codecs change more often than hardware, building special-purpose hardware over and over would be a big waste.

- expensive equipment like RADAR/LIDAR, can make a great use of FPGA: if there is a very large telescope that needs an FPGA for controlling motors involved in optics or orientation, or processing and dispatching input data... There could be as few as one ASIC needed, if there is only one telescope of that kind. FPGA of course!

- While FPGA are expensive tools (there are more affordable CPLD chips too), they might contribute to driving costs down: CPUs are not very good at processing things in parallel, and if there is the need to interconnect many signals in parallel, a very-high speed CPU, or a tiny FPGA might both be used.

What now?

Should we all be learning HDL instead of these inefficient programming languages? Of course not! HDL are a link in the very long chain from high-level features of computers like user interfaces down to hardware. They only serve a slice of the stack, and connect electrical-engineering to software.

If you feel like trying, post it here, I'll offer pointers to get an environment setup.]]> <![CDATA[A homemade alternative to Wake on LAN? Yes please.]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-A-homemade-alternative-to-Wake-on-LAN-Yes-please Sun, 09 Jun 2019 22:15:23 +0000 Wildefyr]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-A-homemade-alternative-to-Wake-on-LAN-Yes-please
I'm not sure how many here have tried using wake on lan either through a network or through using another machine connected on that local area network, but let me tell you - for me it has been nothing but a pain trying to get it to work consistently. I had the `wol` utility working fine, but only if the device you're trying to boot is on the same LAN as the machine you're on currently - so unless my phone was on the LAN as well, it wouldn't work. Now normally I am one for trying to hammer away trying all tricks to get the result I want, but instead a post I read on stackoverflow inspired me to think of an electrical solution instead of a software one.

On a motherboard there are two pins dedicated to the power switch on your front case I/O. All this switch does is close the circuit between these pins, allowing the motherboard to start all of its other, vastly more complex circuits. What can we use to remotely close these pins then? You guessed it, a raspberry pi. Using the GPIO pins we can simulate the power pins on the motherboard closing. To achieve this you need the following bits of hardware:

- A raspberry pi. In my case I used a raspberry pi zero W, so I can connect to wirelessly and because its form factor is small.
- A SD card to boot the pi off. I used Arch Linux ARM for the OS.
- GPIO pins. Normally you can get these pre-soldered when you buy a pi, in my case I didn't get a pi that had them so I had to buy them separately.
- An internal USB header to male micro B or USB A Female to plug a micro b cable in. To power the pi without having to leave the case open, nearly all motherboards have the feature to power usb devices while the machine is off.
- Jumper wires. I ordered a whole bunch off amazon because I'll probably use them in the future.
- Jumper wire splitters, so we can still use the power button on the case.

So in total, this hardware cost about 40 quid or so, the majority of the cost being the pi and sd card which you can use for other small software tasks as well.

The next thing we need to do is think about how we're going to use the pins to close the circuit. We only need to attach a ribbon cable to two pins, one to a ground pin, and one to a GPIO pin. Now we only have to know how to actually access these pins using our pi. I found this post which nicely details how to control the pins using the filesystem.

I quickly wrote up a script to do this nicely of course:

Code:
#!/bin/sh
#
# wake

GPIO="/sys/class/gpio"
pin=23

test ! -d "$GPIO" && {
    printf '%s\n' "No gpio directory found."
    exit 1
}

power() {
    # initialise pin
    test ! -d "$GPIO/gpio$pin/" && printf '%s\n' "$pin" > "$GPIO/export"

    # change direction of pin briefly to close power circuit
    printf '%s\n' "out" > "$GPIO/gpio$pin/direction"
    sleep 0.2
    printf '%s\n' "in" > "$GPIO/gpio$pin/direction"
}

shut() {
    # initialise pin
    test ! -d "$GPIO/gpio$pin/" && printf '%s\n' "$pin" > "$GPIO/export"

    # change direction of pin to close power circuit for longer
    printf '%s\n' "out" > "$GPIO/gpio$pin/direction"
    sleep 3
    printf '%s\n' "in" > "$GPIO/gpio$pin/direction"
}

case "$1" in
    on)
        power
        ;;
    off)
        shut
        ;;
esac

So as per the script I connected my positive pin 23 to the positive end of thesplitter wire and a ground pin to the negative end of the splitter wire, here's the results:

[Image: lkXJ2Ex.jpg]

So the workflow can be surmised as follows:
remote to home using dns provider-> access pi zero via ssh -> run script

In Action

A long boot time primarily because of the mobo boot firmware is slow, I have my systemd-boot screen and finally my 14tb raid pool has to spin up.

The only bug: If the pi hasn't been turned on and the pins initialised for some reason this is causing a short somewhere and the machine refuses to turn on when I just press the power button. I might put a diode in somewhere to stop this from happening.]]>
I'm not sure how many here have tried using wake on lan either through a network or through using another machine connected on that local area network, but let me tell you - for me it has been nothing but a pain trying to get it to work consistently. I had the `wol` utility working fine, but only if the device you're trying to boot is on the same LAN as the machine you're on currently - so unless my phone was on the LAN as well, it wouldn't work. Now normally I am one for trying to hammer away trying all tricks to get the result I want, but instead a post I read on stackoverflow inspired me to think of an electrical solution instead of a software one.

On a motherboard there are two pins dedicated to the power switch on your front case I/O. All this switch does is close the circuit between these pins, allowing the motherboard to start all of its other, vastly more complex circuits. What can we use to remotely close these pins then? You guessed it, a raspberry pi. Using the GPIO pins we can simulate the power pins on the motherboard closing. To achieve this you need the following bits of hardware:

- A raspberry pi. In my case I used a raspberry pi zero W, so I can connect to wirelessly and because its form factor is small.
- A SD card to boot the pi off. I used Arch Linux ARM for the OS.
- GPIO pins. Normally you can get these pre-soldered when you buy a pi, in my case I didn't get a pi that had them so I had to buy them separately.
- An internal USB header to male micro B or USB A Female to plug a micro b cable in. To power the pi without having to leave the case open, nearly all motherboards have the feature to power usb devices while the machine is off.
- Jumper wires. I ordered a whole bunch off amazon because I'll probably use them in the future.
- Jumper wire splitters, so we can still use the power button on the case.

So in total, this hardware cost about 40 quid or so, the majority of the cost being the pi and sd card which you can use for other small software tasks as well.

The next thing we need to do is think about how we're going to use the pins to close the circuit. We only need to attach a ribbon cable to two pins, one to a ground pin, and one to a GPIO pin. Now we only have to know how to actually access these pins using our pi. I found this post which nicely details how to control the pins using the filesystem.

I quickly wrote up a script to do this nicely of course:

Code:
#!/bin/sh
#
# wake

GPIO="/sys/class/gpio"
pin=23

test ! -d "$GPIO" && {
    printf '%s\n' "No gpio directory found."
    exit 1
}

power() {
    # initialise pin
    test ! -d "$GPIO/gpio$pin/" && printf '%s\n' "$pin" > "$GPIO/export"

    # change direction of pin briefly to close power circuit
    printf '%s\n' "out" > "$GPIO/gpio$pin/direction"
    sleep 0.2
    printf '%s\n' "in" > "$GPIO/gpio$pin/direction"
}

shut() {
    # initialise pin
    test ! -d "$GPIO/gpio$pin/" && printf '%s\n' "$pin" > "$GPIO/export"

    # change direction of pin to close power circuit for longer
    printf '%s\n' "out" > "$GPIO/gpio$pin/direction"
    sleep 3
    printf '%s\n' "in" > "$GPIO/gpio$pin/direction"
}

case "$1" in
    on)
        power
        ;;
    off)
        shut
        ;;
esac

So as per the script I connected my positive pin 23 to the positive end of thesplitter wire and a ground pin to the negative end of the splitter wire, here's the results:

[Image: lkXJ2Ex.jpg]

So the workflow can be surmised as follows:
remote to home using dns provider-> access pi zero via ssh -> run script

In Action

A long boot time primarily because of the mobo boot firmware is slow, I have my systemd-boot screen and finally my 14tb raid pool has to spin up.

The only bug: If the pi hasn't been turned on and the pins initialised for some reason this is causing a short somewhere and the machine refuses to turn on when I just press the power button. I might put a diode in somewhere to stop this from happening.]]> <![CDATA[ROCK64 is amazing]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-ROCK64-is-amazing Fri, 28 Dec 2018 09:39:18 +0000 prx*]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-ROCK64-is-amazing I found the ROCK64 (https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=7147) on the OpenBSD supported hardware and I have some fun last few days.

It's small, it's fast and is very power saving. Plus, it's 100% free instead of raspberry pi and proprietary firmwares.
OpenBSD runs fine on this, I installed it on the eMMC memory.

Anyway, just wanted to tell that if you're interested by these arm64 chips, go ahead. :)

Does anyone else use it?]]> I found the ROCK64 (https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=7147) on the OpenBSD supported hardware and I have some fun last few days.

It's small, it's fast and is very power saving. Plus, it's 100% free instead of raspberry pi and proprietary firmwares.
OpenBSD runs fine on this, I installed it on the eMMC memory.

Anyway, just wanted to tell that if you're interested by these arm64 chips, go ahead. :)

Does anyone else use it?]]> <![CDATA[Solidrun Cubox-i]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-Solidrun-Cubox-i Thu, 22 Jun 2017 15:42:36 +0000 z3bra]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-Solidrun-Cubox-i
https://www.solid-run.com/freescale-imx6-family/cubox-i

I'm planning to get one of these mini PC soon (The i4pro) as a home server (music/VPNs/storage/backup), and I was wondering if anyone had experience with them already?
They seem pretty cool and look nice, and have rather good support it seems (openbsd, netbsd, arch, debian, ...)

Any though?]]>
https://www.solid-run.com/freescale-imx6-family/cubox-i

I'm planning to get one of these mini PC soon (The i4pro) as a home server (music/VPNs/storage/backup), and I was wondering if anyone had experience with them already?
They seem pretty cool and look nice, and have rather good support it seems (openbsd, netbsd, arch, debian, ...)

Any though?]]> <![CDATA[OSS single board computers]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-OSS-single-board-computers Sun, 24 Jan 2016 18:25:45 +0000 XcelQ]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-OSS-single-board-computers Which one have your eye? or eyes]]> Which one have your eye? or eyes]]> <![CDATA[GBC and TI]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-GBC-and-TI Sun, 11 Oct 2015 14:40:35 +0000 Houseoftea]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-GBC-and-TI

I'm still in the process of setting up my room.
I've been doing a lot of reading about hardware hacking and I thought something interesting would be a look at the computers that are all around us - even if we do not notice them.
Everyone uses a calculator at some point, and Gameboys are (or used to be) incredibly prevalent.
Both can be acquired cheaply used - I myself have been biking around to thrift shops in my area to look for old gameboys to play around with.

Sadly I cannot mess too much with my graphing calculator because I need it for calc still ;(
I might grab another one used to play around with though.

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fil...43966.html
This is a web browser for graphing calculators, pretty crazy.

http://www.knightos.org/
Is an operating system designed for graphing calculators.
"castle" is the application launcher

"fileman" is the file manager

"calendar" is a calendar application https://github.com/KnightOS/calendar

"bed" is a basic text editor

"kcc" knight c compiler

"periodic" The periodic table of elements

and lots of other goodies!



As for gameboys:
I have collected some resources and linked them below:
(specs) http://fms.komkon.org/GameBoy/Tech/Software.html

(Tons of resources) http://www.devrs.com/gb/

(couple tips) http://www.loirak.com/gameboy/gbprog.php


BONUS:
This goes in depth into programming for the game boy advance
(for gba) http://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/toc.htm

Also there is a thing called lsd (Little sound dj)
which turns your gameboy into a musical instrument
see: http://www.littlesounddj.com/lsd/


And finally this is nixers after all, so I leave you with:
http://www.kernelthread.com/publications/gbaunix/

Unix on a game boy advance

Have a great day everyone and I will post more when I get a hold of one!]]>

I'm still in the process of setting up my room.
I've been doing a lot of reading about hardware hacking and I thought something interesting would be a look at the computers that are all around us - even if we do not notice them.
Everyone uses a calculator at some point, and Gameboys are (or used to be) incredibly prevalent.
Both can be acquired cheaply used - I myself have been biking around to thrift shops in my area to look for old gameboys to play around with.

Sadly I cannot mess too much with my graphing calculator because I need it for calc still ;(
I might grab another one used to play around with though.

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fil...43966.html
This is a web browser for graphing calculators, pretty crazy.

http://www.knightos.org/
Is an operating system designed for graphing calculators.
"castle" is the application launcher

"fileman" is the file manager

"calendar" is a calendar application https://github.com/KnightOS/calendar

"bed" is a basic text editor

"kcc" knight c compiler

"periodic" The periodic table of elements

and lots of other goodies!



As for gameboys:
I have collected some resources and linked them below:
(specs) http://fms.komkon.org/GameBoy/Tech/Software.html

(Tons of resources) http://www.devrs.com/gb/

(couple tips) http://www.loirak.com/gameboy/gbprog.php


BONUS:
This goes in depth into programming for the game boy advance
(for gba) http://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/toc.htm

Also there is a thing called lsd (Little sound dj)
which turns your gameboy into a musical instrument
see: http://www.littlesounddj.com/lsd/


And finally this is nixers after all, so I leave you with:
http://www.kernelthread.com/publications/gbaunix/

Unix on a game boy advance

Have a great day everyone and I will post more when I get a hold of one!]]> <![CDATA[Linux(hnd, HACKNDeV) on PALM TX]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-Linux-hnd-HACKNDeV-on-PALM-TX Thu, 30 Apr 2015 14:48:04 +0000 deadgone]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-Linux-hnd-HACKNDeV-on-PALM-TX YESTERDAY: Ok. So I put linux on my SD card and inserted it into the PALM TX, it booted. Wifi & Bluetooth do not work.

10:45 AM 04/30/15: Trying to compile a custom kernel that has PALM TX support, WIFI, and Broadcom BCM2035B1(Bluetooth) support. Having some troubles.]]> YESTERDAY: Ok. So I put linux on my SD card and inserted it into the PALM TX, it booted. Wifi & Bluetooth do not work.

10:45 AM 04/30/15: Trying to compile a custom kernel that has PALM TX support, WIFI, and Broadcom BCM2035B1(Bluetooth) support. Having some troubles.]]> <![CDATA[The Darwin on ARM Project]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-The-Darwin-on-ARM-Project Thu, 02 Oct 2014 18:06:22 +0000 srp]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-The-Darwin-on-ARM-Project
Supported Hardware Configurations:
  • ARM RealView Emulation Baseboard with Cortex-A8 CoreTile
  • ARM RealView Platform Baseboard for Cortex-A8
  • Samsung S5L8930X (Apple A4 – iPhone 4 GSM/CDMA/RevA, iPad 1, iPod touch 4G, Apple TV 2G)
  • Samsung S5L8922X (iPod touch 3G)
  • Samsung S5L8920X (iPhone 3GS)
  • Texas Instruments OMAP3530/3730 (BeagleBoard xM)

The current state:
"The kernel does boot past IOKit initialization and can start a usermode process. Validation of a simple binary that calls write() using standard UNIX syscalls did succeed. It also can boot from a multitude of booters including Apple’s own iBoot (albeit a very old revision of it). It also can additionally start launchd and actually execute dyld proper now. launchd now dies after forking, but hey, it’s a start."

The project is dual-licensed under the BSD and APSL licenses.

The entire thing is on GitHub: http://github.com/darwin-on-arm/xnu

Source/more information: http://winocm.com/xnu/projects/research/...us-of-xnu/]]>
Supported Hardware Configurations:
  • ARM RealView Emulation Baseboard with Cortex-A8 CoreTile
  • ARM RealView Platform Baseboard for Cortex-A8
  • Samsung S5L8930X (Apple A4 – iPhone 4 GSM/CDMA/RevA, iPad 1, iPod touch 4G, Apple TV 2G)
  • Samsung S5L8922X (iPod touch 3G)
  • Samsung S5L8920X (iPhone 3GS)
  • Texas Instruments OMAP3530/3730 (BeagleBoard xM)

The current state:
"The kernel does boot past IOKit initialization and can start a usermode process. Validation of a simple binary that calls write() using standard UNIX syscalls did succeed. It also can boot from a multitude of booters including Apple’s own iBoot (albeit a very old revision of it). It also can additionally start launchd and actually execute dyld proper now. launchd now dies after forking, but hey, it’s a start."

The project is dual-licensed under the BSD and APSL licenses.

The entire thing is on GitHub: http://github.com/darwin-on-arm/xnu

Source/more information: http://winocm.com/xnu/projects/research/...us-of-xnu/]]> <![CDATA[SB-Freeduino (a.k.a. Arduino DueMilanove)]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-SB-Freeduino-a-k-a-Arduino-DueMilanove Tue, 19 Aug 2014 16:14:50 +0000 sodaphish]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-SB-Freeduino-a-k-a-Arduino-DueMilanove
I see the USB device come on-line

Code:
battlelap ~ # dmesg
<snip>
[352930.480035] usb 3-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 82 using ehci-pci
[352930.578965] usb 3-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0403, idProduct=6001
[352930.578969] usb 3-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[352930.578972] usb 3-1.2: Product: FT232R USB UART
[352930.578974] usb 3-1.2: Manufacturer: FTDI
[352930.578975] usb 3-1.2: SerialNumber: A4003E9h
[352930.581485] ftdi_sio 3-1.2:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
[352930.581516] usb 3-1.2: Detected FT232RL
[352930.581518] usb 3-1.2: Number of endpoints 2
[352930.581520] usb 3-1.2: Endpoint 1 MaxPacketSize 64
[352930.581522] usb 3-1.2: Endpoint 2 MaxPacketSize 64
[352930.581524] usb 3-1.2: Setting MaxPacketSize 64
[352930.582028] usb 3-1.2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0

And the Arduino sketch environment/ide sees; I have manually set the board to Duemilanove and the processor to ATMega328, and when I try to write one of the example sketches to it (I'm using File > Examples > Basic > Blink), and when I upload it, I see the following in the console...

Code:
Sketch uses 1,030 bytes (3%) of program storage space. Maximum is 30,720 bytes.
Global variables use 9 bytes (0%) of dynamic memory, leaving 2,039 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 2,048 bytes.
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 2 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 3 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 4 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 5 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 6 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 7 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 8 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 9 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 10 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00


WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK?!?

I've tried all the programmers available...

Reading through the `avrdude` man page, I see there are some options to specify the product, provided avrdude was compiled with libusb support (which I checked; `ldd \`which avrdude\`` shows libusb-0.1.so.4 is provided by my system.) SO, I tried `avrdude` from command-line...

Code:
[1]battlelap ~ # avrdude -p ATmega328 -b 56000 -n -P /dev/ttyUSB0 -c stk500
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_getsync(): timeout communicating with programmer

avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
^C

I've googled this and asked elsewhere, was wondering if anyone here might have a clue how to unfuck my stupidity.

Cheers,

Soda]]>
I see the USB device come on-line

Code:
battlelap ~ # dmesg
<snip>
[352930.480035] usb 3-1.2: new full-speed USB device number 82 using ehci-pci
[352930.578965] usb 3-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0403, idProduct=6001
[352930.578969] usb 3-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[352930.578972] usb 3-1.2: Product: FT232R USB UART
[352930.578974] usb 3-1.2: Manufacturer: FTDI
[352930.578975] usb 3-1.2: SerialNumber: A4003E9h
[352930.581485] ftdi_sio 3-1.2:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
[352930.581516] usb 3-1.2: Detected FT232RL
[352930.581518] usb 3-1.2: Number of endpoints 2
[352930.581520] usb 3-1.2: Endpoint 1 MaxPacketSize 64
[352930.581522] usb 3-1.2: Endpoint 2 MaxPacketSize 64
[352930.581524] usb 3-1.2: Setting MaxPacketSize 64
[352930.582028] usb 3-1.2: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0

And the Arduino sketch environment/ide sees; I have manually set the board to Duemilanove and the processor to ATMega328, and when I try to write one of the example sketches to it (I'm using File > Examples > Basic > Blink), and when I upload it, I see the following in the console...

Code:
Sketch uses 1,030 bytes (3%) of program storage space. Maximum is 30,720 bytes.
Global variables use 9 bytes (0%) of dynamic memory, leaving 2,039 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 2,048 bytes.
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 2 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 3 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 4 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 5 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 6 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 7 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 8 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 9 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 10 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00


WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK?!?

I've tried all the programmers available...

Reading through the `avrdude` man page, I see there are some options to specify the product, provided avrdude was compiled with libusb support (which I checked; `ldd \`which avrdude\`` shows libusb-0.1.so.4 is provided by my system.) SO, I tried `avrdude` from command-line...

Code:
[1]battlelap ~ # avrdude -p ATmega328 -b 56000 -n -P /dev/ttyUSB0 -c stk500
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_getsync(): timeout communicating with programmer

avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
avrdude: stk500v2_ReceiveMessage(): timeout
^C

I've googled this and asked elsewhere, was wondering if anyone here might have a clue how to unfuck my stupidity.

Cheers,

Soda]]> <![CDATA[Installing OpenWRT on the Zipit Z2 for a $20 pocketable linux experience]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-Installing-OpenWRT-on-the-Zipit-Z2-for-a-20-pocketable-linux-experience Tue, 30 Jul 2013 05:40:01 +0000 hades]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-Installing-OpenWRT-on-the-Zipit-Z2-for-a-20-pocketable-linux-experience Zipit Z2. With a 312 MHz processor and 32MB of RAM, it's sufficient for running a minimal linux system and doing some everyday tasks. I've used mine for emulating Gameboy games, playing vitetris, browsing the forums here, playing music, and chatting on IRC.

Now, I intend for the remainder of this post to be a tutorial. If you want to spend the best 20 dollars you've ever spent (Okay, 28 if you count the price of an SD card), then go ahead and bookmark this thread.

You can order a Z2 for 14 bucks (plus shipping, which equalled 20 for me) here. Once you have your Zipit ordered, you'll need a MiniSD card. Of course, most laptops have a regular-sized SD port, so you'll probably want to order one of these types of sets- a microSD card with a miniSD and Standard SD adapters - which is what I used.

Once both of those things arrive, download this zipped archive. Unzip it and copy its contents to your miniSD card. This is mozzwald's "Flashstock" script, which installs the U-boot bootloader onto the tiny flash memory on the Z2, overwriting the Z2's original OS. Once you're done copying this to the SD card, open a terminal, enter "sync", then unmount the SD card. Put the card into your Z2 and power it on. Follow the onscreen dialogues to flash your device.

Once you're done with that, power off your device and put your SD card back into your computer. Format the card as Ext2. Now, download the unofficial port of OpenWRT for the Z2 here. OpenWRT is a version of linux designed for routers - it's perfect for embedded systems and is extremely lightweight, which makes a lot of sense for the Z2. A minimal install of OpenWRT can be squeezed into 2MB. Anyway, when you're done downloading that tar.gz file, open a terminal once again and become root - you must be root from this point on. move the tar.gz file to the SD card, then use the tar command to extract it. Once you're done, run "rm *.tar.gz" for cleanup, "sync" to make sure the SD card is free from processes, and then unmount the SD card. Put the SD card in your Zipit and boot. Once the text hasn't scrolled for a good 5 seconds, press enter to start the shell. Hit the stop button at the top of the keyboard to switch shells (there are two open at a time). To configure the wi-fi, you'll need to use vi to edit /etc/config/wireless (which is commented to guide you). As soon as you're connected, run "opkg update" and then try installing something - I highly recommend the text editor of the gods, vim - so just type "opkg install vim". To run a graphical package, you'll need to be in the second terminal - don't ask me why, it just works that way. I highly recommend running "opkg vitetris ohboy elinks vim irssi"

Here's the official Z2 OpenWRT page, which has more helpful info: http://chainxor.org/openwrt-zipit/

Anyways, it you have any questions, feel free to ask me, and if you really get in a bind and need help, get on irc.freenode.net #zipit. The folks who ported OpenWRT to the Zipit are all there and ready to help.

Of course, with U-boot, you can try other distros. There's a port of Debian for the Z2, a port of Arch, a port of Ubuntu (eww), a pen-testing distro called Sidetrack, and tons of others. The procedure is almost always the same, just unzip (as root) the rootfs onto the SD card and you're good to go.

Good luck, guys! I hope this device makes someone here as happy as it has made me! And of course, pictures are coming soon!]]> Zipit Z2. With a 312 MHz processor and 32MB of RAM, it's sufficient for running a minimal linux system and doing some everyday tasks. I've used mine for emulating Gameboy games, playing vitetris, browsing the forums here, playing music, and chatting on IRC.

Now, I intend for the remainder of this post to be a tutorial. If you want to spend the best 20 dollars you've ever spent (Okay, 28 if you count the price of an SD card), then go ahead and bookmark this thread.

You can order a Z2 for 14 bucks (plus shipping, which equalled 20 for me) here. Once you have your Zipit ordered, you'll need a MiniSD card. Of course, most laptops have a regular-sized SD port, so you'll probably want to order one of these types of sets- a microSD card with a miniSD and Standard SD adapters - which is what I used.

Once both of those things arrive, download this zipped archive. Unzip it and copy its contents to your miniSD card. This is mozzwald's "Flashstock" script, which installs the U-boot bootloader onto the tiny flash memory on the Z2, overwriting the Z2's original OS. Once you're done copying this to the SD card, open a terminal, enter "sync", then unmount the SD card. Put the card into your Z2 and power it on. Follow the onscreen dialogues to flash your device.

Once you're done with that, power off your device and put your SD card back into your computer. Format the card as Ext2. Now, download the unofficial port of OpenWRT for the Z2 here. OpenWRT is a version of linux designed for routers - it's perfect for embedded systems and is extremely lightweight, which makes a lot of sense for the Z2. A minimal install of OpenWRT can be squeezed into 2MB. Anyway, when you're done downloading that tar.gz file, open a terminal once again and become root - you must be root from this point on. move the tar.gz file to the SD card, then use the tar command to extract it. Once you're done, run "rm *.tar.gz" for cleanup, "sync" to make sure the SD card is free from processes, and then unmount the SD card. Put the SD card in your Zipit and boot. Once the text hasn't scrolled for a good 5 seconds, press enter to start the shell. Hit the stop button at the top of the keyboard to switch shells (there are two open at a time). To configure the wi-fi, you'll need to use vi to edit /etc/config/wireless (which is commented to guide you). As soon as you're connected, run "opkg update" and then try installing something - I highly recommend the text editor of the gods, vim - so just type "opkg install vim". To run a graphical package, you'll need to be in the second terminal - don't ask me why, it just works that way. I highly recommend running "opkg vitetris ohboy elinks vim irssi"

Here's the official Z2 OpenWRT page, which has more helpful info: http://chainxor.org/openwrt-zipit/

Anyways, it you have any questions, feel free to ask me, and if you really get in a bind and need help, get on irc.freenode.net #zipit. The folks who ported OpenWRT to the Zipit are all there and ready to help.

Of course, with U-boot, you can try other distros. There's a port of Debian for the Z2, a port of Arch, a port of Ubuntu (eww), a pen-testing distro called Sidetrack, and tons of others. The procedure is almost always the same, just unzip (as root) the rootfs onto the SD card and you're good to go.

Good luck, guys! I hope this device makes someone here as happy as it has made me! And of course, pictures are coming soon!]]> <![CDATA[Alternative ARM Devices]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-Alternative-ARM-Devices Mon, 25 Feb 2013 13:05:23 +0000 jmbi]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-Alternative-ARM-Devices
Here is the link: http://boundarydevices.com/products/sabr...-imx6-sbc/

For $199 you get:
Code:
Quad-Core ARM® Cortex A9 processor at 1GHz
1GByte of 64-bit wide DDR3 @ 532MHz
Three display ports (RGB, LVDS, and HDMI 1.4a)
Two camera ports (1xParallel, 1x MIPI CSI-2)
Multi-stream-capable HD video engine delivering
H.264 1080p60 decode, 1080p30 encode and 3-D video playback in HD
Triple Play Graphics system consisting of a Quad-shader 3D unit capable of 200MT/s, and a separate 2-D and separate OpenVG Vertex acceleration engine for superior 3D, 2D and user interface acceleration
Serial ATA 2.5 (SATA) at 3Gbps
Dual SD 3.0/SDXC card slots
PCIe port (1 lane)
Analog (headphone/mic) and Digital (HDMI) audio
Compact size (3″x3″)
10/100/Gb IEEE1588 Ethernet
10-pin JTAG interface
3 High speed USB ports (2xHost, 1xOTG)
1xCAN2 port
I2C
GPIOs

Now, I find that a pretty good deal. Here is a link to a cheap ass Parallel RGB screen that I may purchase (I'm pretty sure this is wholesale, so I might have to buy 10 or 20 minimum. But hey, they are $1-2 a piece)

http://www.globalsources.com/gsol/I/TFT-...742854.htm

So yeah, post other small devices. I know the Raspberry Pi isn't for everyone.]]>
Here is the link: http://boundarydevices.com/products/sabr...-imx6-sbc/

For $199 you get:
Code:
Quad-Core ARM® Cortex A9 processor at 1GHz
1GByte of 64-bit wide DDR3 @ 532MHz
Three display ports (RGB, LVDS, and HDMI 1.4a)
Two camera ports (1xParallel, 1x MIPI CSI-2)
Multi-stream-capable HD video engine delivering
H.264 1080p60 decode, 1080p30 encode and 3-D video playback in HD
Triple Play Graphics system consisting of a Quad-shader 3D unit capable of 200MT/s, and a separate 2-D and separate OpenVG Vertex acceleration engine for superior 3D, 2D and user interface acceleration
Serial ATA 2.5 (SATA) at 3Gbps
Dual SD 3.0/SDXC card slots
PCIe port (1 lane)
Analog (headphone/mic) and Digital (HDMI) audio
Compact size (3″x3″)
10/100/Gb IEEE1588 Ethernet
10-pin JTAG interface
3 High speed USB ports (2xHost, 1xOTG)
1xCAN2 port
I2C
GPIOs

Now, I find that a pretty good deal. Here is a link to a cheap ass Parallel RGB screen that I may purchase (I'm pretty sure this is wholesale, so I might have to buy 10 or 20 minimum. But hey, they are $1-2 a piece)

http://www.globalsources.com/gsol/I/TFT-...742854.htm

So yeah, post other small devices. I know the Raspberry Pi isn't for everyone.]]> <![CDATA[Maemo thread (Nokia 770/N8x0/N900)]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-Maemo-thread-Nokia-770-N8x0-N900 Sun, 13 Jan 2013 21:25:54 +0000 ampharos]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-Maemo-thread-Nokia-770-N8x0-N900 http://i.imgur.com/VAeAc.png)

Thread all about Nokia's kick-ass tablets/phones that run pure Linux, with X11. I have an N800, which while doesn't have a lot of RAM, a little slow, and has minor problems, it's awesome.

Anyone else with a Nokia N-series?]]> http://i.imgur.com/VAeAc.png)

Thread all about Nokia's kick-ass tablets/phones that run pure Linux, with X11. I have an N800, which while doesn't have a lot of RAM, a little slow, and has minor problems, it's awesome.

Anyone else with a Nokia N-series?]]> <![CDATA[FreeBSD on RPi]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-FreeBSD-on-RPi Mon, 31 Dec 2012 19:39:07 +0000 zygotb]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-FreeBSD-on-RPi http://www.peach.ne.jp/archives/rpi/

There's a link to a FreeBSD ARM image.

More about Go on RPi running FreeBSD. ]]> http://www.peach.ne.jp/archives/rpi/

There's a link to a FreeBSD ARM image.

More about Go on RPi running FreeBSD. ]]> <![CDATA[HP Touchpad + Arch + KDE Plasma/Active?]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-HP-Touchpad-Arch-KDE-Plasma-Active Wed, 05 Dec 2012 13:13:40 +0000 Phyrne]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-HP-Touchpad-Arch-KDE-Plasma-Active
I haven't jumped the gun and made the purchase already as I'm struggling to find documentation on getting Arch on this thing, it'd be nice to know if it was still maintained. Also, battery life is a huge concern of course, and I haven't seen it mentioned yet.

Just thoughts right now, what say you?]]>
I haven't jumped the gun and made the purchase already as I'm struggling to find documentation on getting Arch on this thing, it'd be nice to know if it was still maintained. Also, battery life is a huge concern of course, and I haven't seen it mentioned yet.

Just thoughts right now, what say you?]]> <![CDATA[Running Linux on A BlackBerry]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-Running-Linux-on-A-BlackBerry Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:09:53 +0000 bash]]> https://nixers.net/Thread-Running-Linux-on-A-BlackBerry