Mobilepro 900c and linux is possible?

thankyou cmonex and bsaunder ! the serial cable pinout to DB9 connector info was just what I needed.

I've soldered fine wires to pins 3 and 5 on the MB which go to pins 3 and 2 on a DB9 connector to crossover transmit and receive. Pin 5 on the DB9 is signal ground - that goes to pin 9 or just to ground on the motherboard. It works! tested the serial connection between wince terminal program on the mobilepro and minicom on my laptop. Wow - now I'm ready to try out a kernel.

I'll have a go at compiling something if I can't find a suitable precompiled ARM kernel for testing.

meanwhile here's some links:

Epson SID13806
Philips ISP1161A1
NeoMagic NMC1110
Wolfson Micro WM8731
TI MAX3243
Vishay TFDU6102

the links are to the manufacturer's specs pages for the relevant chips, and there's datasheets and application notes and maybe some programming examples in pdf format to download. (not sure about the legalities if I distribute these docs myself )

I'll try to look at the wiki stuff tomorrow unless someone beats me to it need to sleep now

cheers cosmo0

hey cosmo0. thanks for the further info your experience sounds way too cool i can only be a tester for now but let me know if i can help with some more info...

i'll check out the links.

don't be kidding about the jtag. my friends desoldered the cpu but never looked under the modem board?

i will tell them about your hint however.. oh and and i'll ask what they were using OK ?

btw what about we create an irc channel? try any efnet server and #hpcfactor channel there, so you can talk to me


oooh and the serial cable.. what you say sounds cool... wow!

Edited by cmonex 2007-04-14 4:28 PM

Ok i've set up a wiki page on handhelds.org

NEC Mobilepro900 wiki

do most people have the 900c (I do), much difference between 900 and 900c ? Anyway I made the project page to cover both - hope that's OK

I'm following the advice in the 'linux on new pda' document you guys linked to so I've requested a mailing list for us on handhelds.org too - will let you know when that comes up.

irc channel sounds like a good idea cmonex - I'm hopeless with irc but if you set it up I'll try to connect ...

hey cmonex I think you're contributing waaaaay more than just a 'tester' looking forward to more JTAG info - but yep we've all got time constraints etc

It's early days yet but I encourage everyone contribute to the wiki page (click on user prefs and make an account then you can edit / add info) or at least keep an eye on developments

Can I post pics here (btw I havn't figured out how to put pics on the wiki yet) ? I'll try to attach a jpeg of those pin headers and the JTAG label to this post. And I'll put up some pics of the serial mod soon.






Attachments
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JTAG_header.jpg (43KB - 3 downloads)

Well well what do we have here?

Lost out on a sparc auction on ebay today and found a little thing called a MobilePro 900c, my instant captivation was reinforced when i discovered, low and behold, a PC with an Xscale, and in a very attractive package i might add(with that all so important feature the host USB). Of course my first Google after that was "MobilePro 900c linux" and you lot happen to pop up. Ive visited the wiki and am going to idle in #handhelds.org on freenode. Im a coder that specializes in assembly languages and i'd be willing to help. Im not so much a hardware hacker but my friend who has yet to find out about this little device will be equally captivated and willing to help on that aspect.

I havnt received mine yet so i cant be much help more than theory, but i am at you're disposal.

tyraindreams@%^&*()gmail.com (remove the %^&*() obviously i dont have to tell you that though, simply habit.)

Also if that wiki doesnt suffice i have a stack of rackmounts and a T1 that arnt doing anything particularly important right now.

hey EddieGordo wow thats cool!! i like assembly too but i'm still a beginner.

everyone, lets meet at #hpcfactor channel at any efnet server and then we can go from there, discussing what a dedicated channel should be - or it can be #hpcfactor, there is not that much traffic to bother us and there's already some linux talk there.


Edited by cmonex 2007-04-17 3:14 AM

sounds coool - this sure is some nice hardware.

woot - I got a kernel to panic ON my mobilepro today successfully loaded into ram and executed from HaRET ...

Epson S1D13806 LCD framebuffer support is in the mainstream kernel (will need some tweaking)

so is the Philips USB host chip and WM audio has been done on ipodlinux

I think I'll try to compile a minimal uclinux dev environment but we all want a fullblown X etc I think, it's looking very doable ...

I will get back to it later in the week and try to catch you guys on irc

some more tech specs, the Epson is interfaced to the PXA255 through Static Chip Select 3 ... this means you can access it at physical memory address 0x0c00_0000 registers are there and display buffer is at 0x0c20_0000 ... with HaRET you can get a screen dump, fill screen with stuff and importanttly dump the registers, have a look at the Epson datasheets for in depth ...

EddieGordo - assembly skills a great plus and some server space would come in handy

cheers cosmo0

cosmo0: wow nice progress!

hmm these new tech specs, very useful, cool. i still didnt get through reading the datasheets

hope you can catch us at irc. EddieG is already there! join us fast!!

oh and server space. i might be able to supply some on my site. to some extent (my account is shared already)

cosmo0 i see i skipped a post of you..

i visited the wiki but dont know what to do there and how i've never used wikis before except for reading. i see you mention user prefs, iwill try. same feelings as what you might have with irc

900 and 900c are the same hw.

i'd love the pics of the serial mod, so i could get one too, as a spare - always afraid of breaking my only one

I went over cmonex's photos of the board and some stuff i know about the PIC 16LF877, its the serial controller.

Everyone interested should join irc room previously stated.

You might also try getting input over at the oesf.org/forums too....

The pdaXrom group there is very active and lively.....

HTH....

heh no bad feelings about irc cmonex - just a lack of time the last few days (well I hardly ever use irc but I will try to catch you guys - promise)

meanwhile you can figure out my email address from

mkpetch youknow-nospam internode dot on dot net

and EddieG feel free to mail me too

I'll definitley send you those serial photos and we can figure out somewhere to host them (then I can link them into the wiki page too - eh yeah wiki editing, not my favourite pastime either but it's good to have somewhere central for some info)

thanks for the pointer ArchiMark I'll check it out, I'm digging into the kernel to see what is easy to get going for now ...

cheers guys

hey cosmo0 - we've been getting worried..

when are you going to visit us on irc

wow this email address is complicated.

Indeed, ill drop you an email. Please do visit us on irc, also if you dislike wiki's i can setup a XOOPS cms on one of my servers, fairly decent for project intergration...comes with the basic article posting/news junk/forum/file management with some other interesting modules available for code development wikis arnt my favorite either. Ive also been collaborating with my brazillian associate on optimisation for this machine and also ive been reading into boot loaders and kernel contruction for the arm platform.

hey - finally I got on #hpcfactor

so progress, here's some kernel messages

 
Uncompressing Linux....................................................................... done, booting the kernel. 

Linux version 2.6.17.11mp900c (michael@qbert) (gcc version 3.4.5) #9 Mon Apr 23 17:13:14 EST 2007 

CPU: XScale-PXA255 [69052d06] revision 6 (ARMv5TE) 

Machine: MobilePro900C 

Memory policy: ECC disabled, Data cache writeback 

Memory clock: 99.53MHz (*27) 

Run Mode clock: 199.07MHz (*2) 

Turbo Mode clock: 398.13MHz (*2.0, active) 

CPU0: D VIVT undefined 5 cache 

CPU0: I cache: 32768 bytes, associativity 32, 32 byte lines, 32 sets 

CPU0: D cache: 32768 bytes, associativity 32, 32 byte lines, 32 sets 

Built 1 zonelists 

Kernel command line: console=ttyS0,115200n8 root=/dev/sda1 

PID hash table entries: 512 (order: 9, 2048 bytes) 

Console: colour dummy device 80x30 

Dentry cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes) 

Inode-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes) 

Memory: 64MB = 64MB total 

Memory: 62640KB available (1808K code, 351K data, 68K init) 

Mount-cache hash table entries: 512 

CPU: Testing write buffer coherency: ok 

NET: Registered protocol family 16 

MobilePro900C init routine 

SCSI subsystem initialized 

usbcore: registered new driver usbfs 

usbcore: registered new driver hub 

NET: Registered protocol family 2 

IP route cache hash table entries: 512 (order: -1, 2048 bytes) 

TCP established hash table entries: 2048 (order: 1, 8192 bytes) 

TCP bind hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes) 

TCP: Hash tables configured (established 2048 bind 1024) 

TCP reno registered 

JFFS2 version 2.2. (NAND) (C) 2001-2003 Red Hat, Inc. 

Initializing Cryptographic API 

io scheduler noop registered (default) 

pxa2xx-uart.0: ttyS0 at MMIO 0x40100000 (irq = 15) is a FFUART 

pxa2xx-uart.1: ttyS1 at MMIO 0x40200000 (irq = 14) is a BTUART 

pxa2xx-uart.2: ttyS2 at MMIO 0x40700000 (irq = 13) is a STUART 

pxa2xx-uart.3: ttyS3 at MMIO 0x41600000 (irq = 0) is a HWUART 

loop: loaded (max 8 devices) 

NFTL driver: nftlcore.c $Revision: 1.98 $, nftlmount.c $Revision: 1.41 $ 

INFTL: inftlcore.c $Revision: 1.19 $, inftlmount.c $Revision: 1.18 $ 

physmap flash device: 2000000 at 0 

phys_mapped_flash: Found 1 x32 devices at 0x0 in 16-bit bank 

 Intel/Sharp Extended Query Table at 0x0031 

Using buffer write method 

cfi_cmdset_0001: Erase suspend on write enabled 

cmdlinepart partition parsing not available 

RedBoot partition parsing not available 

ftl_cs: FTL header not found. 

116x: driver isp116x-hcd, 03 Nov 2005 

Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... 

usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage 

USB Mass Storage support registered. 

TCP bic registered 

VFS: Cannot open root device "sda1" or unknown-block(0,0) 

Please append a correct "root=" boot option 

Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

with HaRET from http://www.handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/HaRET i'm loading testing kernels

you need the haret.exe, a suitable zImage and a .txt file like this all in one directory

 

# kernel.txt  

# we try to boot a kernel with Haret script 

set KERNEL zImage 

set MTYPE 659 

set CMDLINE "console=ttyS0,115200n8" 

bootlinux 

need to get a root filesystem going next and LCD would be fun

will make kernel images and rootfs available when there's something a bit more advanced, oh well you can find me on irc sometimes for now ... stay tuned ...

Hi Cosmo,

looks great. My microdrive is waiting for transfering the files for running Linux on my MP900c

regards

nickel3