Nishanth' tech rambles

Damn... they killed my template!!!!!! by the way, USB 3.0 is out!!! here is more what my friend passed on: USB 3.0 ---------- Superspeed Personal USB interface 10 times faster than the present USB optimized for low power and improved protocol efficiency USB 3.0 ports and cabling will be designed to enable backward compatibility as well as future-proofing for optical capabilitie USB 3.0 specification is expected by the first half of 2008 Intel, HP, NEC, NXP, TI, Microsoft are the 3.0 promotors Ref: http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20070918comp.htm http://focus.ti.com/docs/pr/pressrelease.jhtml?prelId=sc07155

Brain dead Windows Vista says: C:\Users\XYZ>ipconfig /release The requested operation requires elevation. Zen and the art of higher conciousness in Vista??? or is it yogic powers?? XP used to be down to earth like us common folks.. ;)

It is interesting to see http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2766418755.html .. if windriver manages to get taken over by IBM, do we see a better set of patches coming the opensource way? i'd say there'd be finally a good competition to Montavista in embedded support sphere Keep track of kernel developments... if u track kernel trap like me.. u'd want this too in ur list: http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Linux_Weather_Forecast

With Denx opening the gates on Dat's Das Uboot, it is kind of interesting to see how things will flow on the "much belated" uboot push into the uboot official tree. For those interested: Uboot home page: http://www.denx.de/wiki/UBoot Custodians: http://www.denx.de/wiki/UBoot/Custodians ARM custodian is:Peter Pearse ARM Tree weblink: http://www.denx.de/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=u-boot/u-boot-arm.git;a=summary How to pull a uboot git: http://www.denx.de/wiki/UBoot/CustodianGitTrees Patch status: http://www.denx.de/wiki/UBoot/PatchStatus Compiler to use was already covered in my document: http://www.geocities.com/crecmca98/Linux/omap2430_From_almost_scratch.pdf Codegen is the best.. Things I am planning on doing: start with 2430, move to 3430 patches. I am thinking strongly of forcing muxing of individual drivers(not in uboot) to be done exclusively by kernel..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy1uqv9nNGs The board looks good.. the next generation of boards much more "compressed" and deadlier!!! Love being on the bleeding edge of tech!!!

Searching for a ready made rpm is pain if yum does not pull it out automagically. instead download source, and run "rpmbuild -ta git-1.5.2.3.tar.gz"

Denx is out looking for a new u-boot maintanence mechanism similar to what Linux has. some new(?) guidelines on development: http://www.denx.de/wiki/UBoot/DesignPrinciples See this thread on the maintainer stuff: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=20070704002828.E7F34353B2C%40atlas.denx.de&forum_name=u-boot-users here is more on code refactor stuff: http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=E1I5qQW-0007cq-3i%40jdl.com&forum_name=u-boot-users

Yesterday night, I was looking at my linux box, and thought, let me revamp my old kernel driver skills.. thought I'd write a small character LCD driver.. checked the datasheet, gathered that it was childish. Till i started looking at userspace functionality... Thats when I groaned.. Options: LCDProc: http://lcdproc.omnipotent.net/ LCD Module: http://lcd.sourceforge.net/ LCD mod: http://lcd-mod.sourceforge.net/ etc.... in the end.. hmm.. I kind of have decided on lcd proc.. dunno how difficult it is.. the worst part is that.. there are no standard interfaces in the kernel itself.. Will update this post as I develop on this..

http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-6194139.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-5&subj=news As of last, Linus was against pulling in GPL3 for kernel... what sayeth he now??? Gotta read it sometime later this weekend.. Update: http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS6228340866.html GPL V3: http://gplv3.fsf.org/ - there is GPL and LGPL - Good!! One feature I am worried upon is the "non tviozation" concept: Imagine.. one day Linus says ok to GPL v3 for linux, all apps are GPL V3. Now, using today's technology, the h/w vendor who releases a GPL V3 based software for a cellphone..needs to ensure that you dont have a malicious "cracked" version running on the board. How does they do it? by providing signature for images.. Does "non tvio" software mean the signatures are published? Errr.. beats the purpose right? Does this imply that the vendor should impart the tools to make the modified s/w run on thier boards -Errrr.... why should the vendor want to give the key to t...

Intrest Story: Amusia Musica La MainFrama : http://www.wired.com/culture/art/news/2007/07/IBM1401_Musical Ze Linux Killer?? Reiser SNAFU! For some one who had hacked around with File systems, name such as JFFS2,JFFS3 etc reminded strongly of reiserfs -> the filesystem that made ext2fs look crap.. Now.. this!! http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-07/ff_hansreiser Voca Silencia : http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070626-internet-radio-day-of-silence-hushes-thousands-of-stations.html Signed-off-by: Nishanth Menon http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070628-rep-inslee-game-simply-not-over-for-net-radio-now-or-on-july-15.html Essentially.. get ur ipods and shared drives ready.. internet stations are dying!!! Power: Lol.. intel understands it today??? but then the media was always slow compared to research community.. http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/power-plays.ars Open Kerala Project: Will the Open Kerala become Open Karela (bittergord in Hindi)?? Knowing th...

http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;262730519;fp;4;fpid;319049444

Business : --Programmer shortage: A problem, but what kind? How bad? And how to solve it?-- Convinced that the software programmer crisis is due to fewer college students coming into technical fields, Jack Ganssle points to "stark numbers" that have convinced him of the urgency of the problem. http://newsletter.embedded.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBAJ10FyTZ10FrY0FLqX0Ex --Five chipmakers control 32% of manufacturing, says analyst-- Samsung, TSMC, Intel, Toshiba, and UMC had the five largest shares of the world's chip manufacturing capacity at the end of 2006, with a combined capacity of just over 2.9 million 200-mm equivalent wafer per month. They accounted for 32 percent of total wafer capacity as of year-end 2006, according to market research company IC Insights. http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/eBALV0FyTZ10FrK0FLvK0EG --Big shakeup predicted in flash memory markets-- The market for trapped charge and phase change memories is set to outpace many other flash memory sec...

People who know me, know my love for UML. Ever since I used it for my Master's project, I have been a fan of UML. After years of experimentation between Visio and Rational Rose(depending on the resources available to the project I worked on), I have always felt that Rational Rose took the prize! In my opinion, opensource was always lagging behind. I played with ArgoUML , KUML , Dia and bunch of other projects, never got convinced.. Today, the search began again, since my Rational Rose 98 License expired and I was lazy to contact IT for getting a new one.. Then hit this deadly project: Star UML . Love its capability - a cross between Visio and Rational Rose. It can read my Rose MDL files, generate C++ code and overall pretty usefull.. Loves: Formatting Options -> For someone who plays with usecases, aligning them properly was a pain in Rational Rose, easy on Visio.. Ability to generate code easily (unlike Grr.. Rational rose which needs a deployment and component view to do anyt...

From u boot mailing list - one lil nugget of a link: http://download.micron.com/pdf/technotes/nand/tn2916.pdf At least the concepts remain same for all platforms... they might miss a little bit on certificates etc.. Oh by the way, Mentor Graphics is sponsoring how they "empowered" USB on TI's DaVinci processor, next month on embedded magazine!! grok brok pow mow...

For someone of physics background... this news is interesting: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/15-06/st_best Future vehicles: http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/news/2007/06/future_engines

For those who have seen Tesla in the movie Prestige will enjoy this: http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/e8rv0FyTZ10FrX0FKEC0AM --Wibree becomes Ultra Low Power Bluetooth--The Bluetooth Special Interest Group and Wibree forum are merging in amove that makes the Nokia pioneered ultra low power wirelesstechnology part of the Bluetooth specification as an ultra low powerBluetooth technology. http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/e8rv0FyTZ10FrX0FKEA0AK --Intel details R&D on multi-core--In a handful of recent technical papers, Intel Corp. is disclosingmore details about its research into the future of multi-coreprocessors. http://newsletter.eetimes.com/cgi-bin4/DM/y/e8rv0FyTZ10FrX0FKD80AA

http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/mailinglists/etiquette.php Love his spelling... If you reply to a message, avoid top-posting like this: Thank you for your reply. Wouldn't it be a better idea to frobnicate foo? Bob -----Original Message----- From: Alice [ mailto:alice@example.com ] Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 8:47 PM To: Bob Cc: linux-arm-kernel Subject: Re: What is foo supposed to do? It's to make sure bar does not eat the gnats.

For those folks interested in audio drivers... ALSA Vs OSS debate rolls on... Thread: http://linuxaudio.org/pipermail/linux-audio-dev/2007-June/019294.html

Micro AB receptacles to replace Mini AB receptacles http://www.usb.org/developers/Deprecation_Announcement_052507.pdf announces this. So, to see a such a connector or cable, a bit of google: From here I got the following info: Micro-A plug (white) Micro-AB receptacle (gray) Micro-B plug (black) Micro-B receptacle (black) hehe that is useful for color blind folks too :) Standard-A receptacle to Micro-A plug (no other adaptors allowed). Quote: Micro-USB plug is rated for 10,000 connect-disconnect cycles. It is about half the height of the mini-USB connector in widespread use today but features a similar width. I hear it is stainless steel also :).. Ok, now my Mot A1200 gets plugged in and out of USB cable at my desk around 5 times a day, and once in house on average, that gives me like 4 year or so life time for my cable.. Err.. where are those days where u buy a TV and expect it to last 20 years ;).. just kiding ofcourse.. (my dad has a 15 year old TV and loves it).. Tons of pages lat...

Khasim finally started posting OMAP 3430 patches to git.. will take me a while to get to looking at the patches.. but.. it is good to see them come finally!! interestingly some devices using various OMAPs: http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=pdamaster i suppose lots of similar sites exist.. Yesterday Steve K showed me a cool setup -> he got himself a USB->VGA convertor (some 70 bucks), plugged the 2430 to a USBhub, plugged in a USB keyboard, and vroom.. he is all set.. lovely.. all those stuff.. throw them out.. just provide tons of USB ports ;)