Linux on 7" mini netbook ARM-VT8500 ?

[PrFaas]

So: we now have the colours blue, yellow and green

On a more serious note, a slightly different CPU (another arm-926-like though..) and a different LAN chip... Your LAN-chip appears to be a real/complete ethernet chip. A 10 MBps one for UTP as far as i can see, but it does support 100MBps on fibre network 'Mine' is a so-called PHY chip: only the interface from a 4-bits-wide datastream to the UTP interface. In the VT8500/WM8505, the equivalent of 'other half' of the LAN chip is part of the CPU chip. Concluding from that, i'd say that 'your' CPU is really a bit different from the VT8500/WM8505. Other than that, your machine looks really like 'ours'

Does your board also show traces of a serial interface? Just curious...

[PrFaas]

PrFaas: Brilliant!

Please post that 3.3v schem, as I'm eager to get this kernel booting properly!

I'd attach the kernel image that I've build but max upload is ~950K and the bin file is 1.4MB...

Could you 'post' the kernel '.config' & version number please. That would give some reference as to what you've configured and what you've compiled. A .config should only be a few kbytes, safely below the 'limit'.

[celem]

I was poking around on eBay and found a HongKong company listing a machine very, very similar to our machines. It has the same exterior, 2GB NAND disk and 256MB RAM. It uses an ARM1176JZF-S SoC. But it comes with your choice of Linux or Windows. Their price for quantity one is too high but they seem to have a viable Linux ARM kernel.

eBay Listing:
http://tinyurl.com/ykqvrny

[DonutFUN]

Hey, I'm sorry if I'm being distracting or just asking stupid questions, but since I do have the software pack of the internet that does reformat it to its system defaults, what do I do do boot off of that without losing all of my stuff, say I set the background to big (which I've done, if you set it to a higher resolution it crashes) and just want to delete the picture without losing other stuff I've put on it, so I just delete the "AutoRun.exe" to make it just boot off of the SD card? or will it just format over it no matter what?

[litch84]

Hey, I'm sorry if I'm being distracting or just asking stupid questions, but since I do have the software pack of the internet that does reformat it to its system defaults, what do I do do boot off of that without losing all of my stuff, say I set the background to big (which I've done, if you set it to a higher resolution it crashes) and just want to delete the picture without losing other stuff I've put on it, so I just delete the "AutoRun.exe" to make it just boot off of the SD card? or will it just format over it no matter what?

Inserting the SD card with the default software supplied on it will format the system flash, anything you have saved on the 2GB internal flash will likely remain 'as is'.

Booting in to the thin client Linux thats listed on this site may allow you to access the system partition if you've saved anything on that.. But the process is rather complex to log in remotely, mount the desired partitions and transfer the files via what ever application is available.

Read the previous threads on how to log in to the Linux distro via the network, once you get that far do a:

# cat /proc/partition

This will list the available partition you can mount. One of them will be the drive you saved everything to.

For each entry like /dev/sda1 etc, try:

# mkdir /mnt/sda1
# mount -t vfat -o ro /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1

If it succeeded, you can change directory to that mount folder and browse:

# cd /mnt/sda1
# dir

Since I haven't bothered booting that linux yet, I can't tell you if it has SCP or TFTP or FTP but one of those application can be used to copy what ever files you wish to keep off the Netbook and on to what ever your using to access it.

[litch84]

Kernel .config attached.

Kernel version 2.6.28.10 with this patch applied:
* http://www.arm.com/products/os/linux_download.html
* (File: Patch-2.6.28-arm2.gz, about half way down page)

My config based on the original .config under the above link, section "RealView Versatile PB926/AB926"

Built with:
* http://www.codesourcery.com/ EABI toolchain for ARM 926EJ-S
* (Note: build it from source! Binary installer doesn't help at all)

[Matriark TerVel]

Be ready for another long post. the circuit diagram & description of the RS232 buffer; I've also attached the 'meat' as a text-file for in case the forum-software 'mangles' the text all too badly...

Oh, and before i forget: no warrany, at your own risk and 'the usual' w.r.t. blasting your little computer to 'kingdom come' I've done my best to produce a correct circuit-diagram, but that's all i can promise...


It is going to be ASCII-'art' for the circuit diagram i'm afraid :-/

Based on your ASCII art, and description I've rendered the following image with gschem. It may be easier for some and/or more difficult for others to follow.

It's been a while since I've used gschem, but I hope it hits the nail on the head.

[PrFaas]

Thank you for taking the trouble to convert my ASCII-art to a more decent diagram

Only one remark w.r.t your 'schema': i did mention to connect the inputs of the unused inverters to either 5V or gnd; I should perhaps have put that in the diagrams as well . The reason for connecting them is that the unused inverters could start to draw quite some current if their inputs are left floating. I'm not *very* sure that is actually needed with the HCT-ttl series, and with a schmitt-trigger input it could even be quite unneeded, but:

- it does no harm
- from my experience with HC and similar C-mos circuits, i found that is is sometimes really needed.....

NB: the worst i've ever seen was with an S-ttl chip, where the chip was completely destroyed, and the only possible reason i could find was that a number of inputs of an unused flipflop on the chip where unconnected.

The 'meat' of the cirsuit seems ok to me, but i must admit that i've not triple-checked the interconnections of the RS-232 control lines

Oh, and on very close inspection: on my board, the 'order' of the pads for the RS-232 is different from what you indicate on the schema; Could well be that 'what you draw is what you see' on your board, but on 'mine' the pins are gnd, tx,rx,5V in that order, from left to right.

[nemezisplk]

Hi!
Could somebody tell me what type (model) of lcd are in this netbooks.

Thanks!

[Nhyckolah]

Hej hej!

I recently bought the netbook equipped with the ARM-VT8500 and I tried everething you said about how to fix the keyboard/mouse problem but i didn't manage to make it work. Does't anybody know how I can figure out if the problem comes from the keyboard or the motherboard?
By the way I'm also looking forward for a Linux version to be available for our mini netbook.

Thanks;