Nishanth' tech rambles

One neat little trick of having an OTG port is the capability to have the board act as any type of device you'd want it to be.. in my case, I wanted to emulate a disk drive for the heck of it.. I found this link particularly useful. g_file_storage.ko which is generated once you enable file storage gadget as a module in the kernel build. Step 1: create the "disk" - essentially a file dd bs=1M count=64 if=/dev/zero of=fs fdisk fs (follow the steps in the link) fdisk -lu fs sudo losetup -o 4096 /dev/loop0 fs sudo mkdosfs /dev/loop0 mkdir r sudo mount -t vfat /dev/loop0 r vim r/hellow.txt (put what ever files we want here) sudo umount r sudo losetup -d /dev/loop0 ensure that fs file exists in the filesystem of the target Step 2: load it up.. insmod g_file_storage.ko file=./fs stall=n where fs is the file which we created in the first place.. and that'z it.. once you connect the musb to a windows PC, it appears as a disk ;)...

NOTE: This is a work in progress yet.. Get Code base: x-loader: git clone git://www.sakoman.net/git/x-load-omap3.git u-boot-v1 - omap3: git clone git://www.sakoman.net/git/u-boot-omap3.git cd u-boot-omap3 git checkout --track -b omap3-dev origin/omap3-dev Updated: see here if this did not work.. u-boot-v2: git clone git://git.denx.de/u-boot-v2.git omap-uboot-utils: git clone git://github.com/nmenon/omap-u-boot-utils.git signGP tool: wget http://beagleboard.googlecode.com/files/signGP.c Compilers: Cross compiler: arm-none-eabi-gcc: 2007q3-53 (4.2.1) Host compiler: x64bit: (Ubuntu 4.3.2-1ubuntu11) Build commands: Before starting the build process, lets set up a simple alias command: alias mymake='make ARCH=arm CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi- V=1' U-boot-arm: mymake omap3_beagle_config mymake U-Boot-v2: mymake omap3530_beagle_per_uart_defconfig mymake X-Loader: mymake omap3530beagle_config mymake [Update: 2008-12-13 - I completely forgot that we need to sign an image for it to boot ...

The following is thanks to Dirk Behme (based on ubuntu 8.10): Install packages: On Ubuntu, I have done: sudo apt-get install git git-email Stage1: development: set up your GIT variables(probably in ~/.bashrc) export GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL=yourEmail@somewhere.com export GIT_COMMITTER_NAME='YourName' export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL=yourEmail@somewhere.com export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME='YourName' git clone ... or git pull.. etc to get to the latest code. git branch branch_name git checkout branch_name Do changes git commit with commit message in incremental stages.. Stage 2: Generate email-able patch files. git-format-patch -s -n -o origin.. -s will generate the signed of-by -n will generate numbered patches (if you have just a single patch, you can ignore it) - but if you have multiple ones, this is a good idea to use to generate subject auto numbered 1/2, 2/2 etc.. -o is where the output patch files will be stored -> each commit is a separate file. Stage3: Email the patches:(for gmai...

It has been a long time desire to use usb2serial convertors for pserial application. :(.. Anyways, yesterday night, I looped back my usb2serial back to my PCI serial port and tried to write a bit of loopback code.. to figure out the issue with pserial, I wrote a simple little app to print the ttySx flags: #include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <termios.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <errno.h> /************* VARS ***************/ static int fd; static struct termios oldtio; int main(int argc,char * argv[]) { int ret; int i; if (argc!=2){ printf ( "error no args..%d\n" ,argc); return 1; } printf ( "port: %s\n" ,argv[1]); fd = open(argv[1], O_RDWR | O_NOCTTY); if (!fd) { printf( "terminal is not open!\n" ); return 1; } /* sa...

The following link is thanks to mru in beagleboard irc channel. the link to the discussion is here. The interesting thing is unless you work at oss/alsa layer, there are too many higher sound server options... IMHO, flexibility vs scaring folks off... ;)

Gumstix guys have been a fun bunch known to create tiny little boards at low costs.. Overo seems to be their solution for OMAP3! check it out here . lots of the linux guys hacking are in the beagle community too.. you can find many(such as Steve Sakoman) in the beagle irc also if you are interested..

Setting basics up: I use x-chat2 with uberscripts and festival plugin . Tired of the default festival voice, Today's effort was to change the voices ;). I found this to be the best available resource. Here are the instructions in command format. You can just copy paste the following. sudo apt-get install festival festlex-cmu festlex-poslex festlex-oald libestools1.2 unzip sudo apt-get install festvox-don festvox-rablpc16k festvox-kallpc16k festvox-kdlpc16 cd ~/tmp mkdir hts_tmp cd hts_tmp/ wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/2.0.1/festvox_nitech_us_awb_arctic_hts-2.0.1.tar.bz2 wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/2.0.1/festvox_nitech_us_bdl_arctic_hts-2.0.1.tar.bz2 wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/2.0.1/festvox_nitech_us_clb_arctic_hts-2.0.1.tar.bz2 wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/2.0.1/festvox_nitech_us_rms_arctic_hts-2.0.1.tar.bz2 wget -c http://hts.sp.nitech.ac.jp/archives/2.0.1/festvox_nitech_us_slt_arctic_hts-2.0.1.tar.bz2 wget -c http...

Jack Kilby invented IC this very day 50 years back :).. And guess what? in his memory, Texas Instruments has started Kilby Labs . We have come some way in the last 50 years.. and beagleboard is one of the shining lights of what our technology really is :)

thanks to beagle board irc (#beagle on freenode), found this link useful: http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.ddi0344e/index.html It is literally a goldmine for those working on ARM processors!

In the quest for a proper debug tool.. printfs have been my friend so far.. but printfs cannot help in many cases optimally.. JTAG is the right solution for such cases. keesj and I have been independently working on getting openocd working with flyswatter . http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardJTAG is the starting point in this quest! join us, provide your thoughts etc.. [ Update : Sept 3, 2008: 1. keesj has mailed an excellent report to the beagleboard list on his progress on the JTAG saga. Read about it here (excellent job Kees :) ). 2. As pointed by keesj, tincan tools have the adapter on the product page ] Today, the thought has been in creating a jtag debugger convertor - given that "ARM standard" and "TI standard" are not 1-1! Note: Tincan tools is planning on making a more professional connector than "mine" and most probably will work.. one thing I can say for sure.. OMAP still works after plugging this in.. and I can probe the chip ID from openocd we...

Finally, it is out.. nothing great as of each of the tools.. but these are handy little blokes to have around.. see the announce here Links to the project sites: * Source Code hosting: Git Hub http://github.com/nmenon/omap-u-boot-utils/ * Binaries, Defect tracking and Documentation: code.google.com - http://code.google.com/p/omap-u-boot-utils/ pserial history: They started off coz, I wanted something to work on windows and Linux equally well and I had nothing on hand.. the first app I ever wrote in this thread of thought was the perl script here . Now, perl is good but it can turn ugly too- esp for a new guy poking around.. hence wanted a pserial with a c version. While, doing that with windows, I set myself some weird targets: a) I will not use cygwin or vmware -> I wanted folks to use the exes without worrying about where the lib files should be got from! b) It will provide the user apis to be as similar as possible. I ended up with MingW compiler for windows, and the usual...

This following post is based on a reply I send to Vishal Bhoj, thought I'd share with all.. In general before starting, I suggest one does read the TRM and Data Manual pretty well. If you are starting from scratch, it may not be quick to get things running on OMAP,but the basics are same no matter which OMAP you do take.. Unfortunately, I don't think I could start explaining the entire OMAP architecture even if I wanted to.. :( I am not saying it is an herculean task doing a boot code, but it is challenging and is a good way to start really know OMAP's potential. The question was related to UART and character LCD on SDP2430/3430, and the following is a very very brief overview of what to think of as a starter.. Some basic Fundamentals: OMAP is a SOC (System On Chip) -containing ARM, DSP and other peripherals. ARM has a memory mapped interface to it's peripherals it can talk to. UART is one such peripheral, character LCD on SDP2430 on the other hand is emulated over FPG...

H/w I have: a) Beagle board rev A5 b) a 512Meg Micro SD card with adapter c) USB2Serial convertor (my laptop docking station has a PCI UART, but I hardly ever use docking stations) d) card reader Objective use the UI tools in Linux as much as possible to boot mmc card on beagleboard. Step 1: getting to know the usb sd/mmc card reader device: plugin the reader and run dmesg E.g.: [50306.414076] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 254208 512-byte hardware sectors (130 MB) [50306.419071] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off [50306.419080] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00 [50306.419084] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [50306.431052] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 254208 512-byte hardware sectors (130 MB) [50306.436051] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off [50306.436059] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00 [50306.436063] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [50306.436071] sdb: [50306.442153] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk [50306.442235] sd 6:0:0:0...