Linux on 7" mini netbook ARM-VT8500 ?

[Joe of loath]

I never tried the sound under Linux, but AFAIK it's just a slightly messed around AC97. People got it to work, but only using OSS, and it wasn't terribly stable.

Your netbook seemed to have the worst of both worlds. I couldn't install to mine, as I had an internal USB drive, but I could boot from SD card no trouble.

Mine got nuked when I tried to install android. I need to use a serial console to rebuild the uboot, because somehow the android install killed the lcdinit part of the boot sequence. The netbook boots, but the screen is blank.

[X-Windows]

Would be great to get sound working on this, would be a decent little device then.

I'm sure you already tried everything but I can upload the script file that boots mine into debian root terminal if you think it might help. Also heard that reinstalling windows can fix the uboot.

[Joe of loath]

I can boot Debian, and SSH in fine, but the LCD won't fire up. Installing Windows might work, but it will have to be an unattended install, because I can't see what's going on

[abrasive]

I can boot Debian, and SSH in fine, but the LCD won't fire up. Installing Windows might work, but it will have to be an unattended install, because I can't see what's going on

Try using this kernel instead. It's built from projectgus' tree, with my latest patches - which should make the display work on all 8505 machines, and has a large number of other bugfixes and improvements over the original bento-linux release.

[Fallingwater]

How about installing Debian on this netbook or this one (they seem almost the same, except the black Android one can use 32GB SD cards while the other is apparently limited to 16)? Their 350MHz 8650 CPU should be a bit faster than the 8500 netbooks and they have twice the RAM (256MB).

Also, if I were to install Android instead, is there a limit to what version I can install?

[Joe of loath]

Now, they look identical to mine, but the SoC appears to be different. I guess you'd need to have one in front of you to know.

[justsomeguy11]

. i downloaded 2 different files from that link above (thanks again). 1 was the 8505 and the 2nd was the vt8505..the 2nd one has gotten me the progress. i've managed to get it to step 3 of upgrading..which is safe mode. it says upgrade safe mode sucessfull....then it's just hanging..but this is a step forward at least !!! i tried to upgrade it 2 times in a row now but it keeps hanging at the same spot.cheers

Try using this kernel instead. It's built from projectgus' tree, with my latest patches - which should make the display work on all 8505 machines, and has a large number of other bugfixes and improvements over the original bento-linux release.

just wondering if this will work with my sistuation quoted above? no matter what file i've tried to put on my machine it ALWAYS does the exact same thing and freezes at the exact same spot...hopefully this file will work although i have given up all hopes of seeing this machine actually boot up and become useable

[franvalmo]

ok for the mount test.
ok for the tar (except some badblocks but it gave me the prompt back)
i shut it down & ... it asks for login & password ... hummmmmm?...

hello, and thanks in advence. I found as answer of my epc minilaptop -just when I try t install linux debian - the flllowing message: ... Can't find extpart.tgz on SD card. I push ENTER and in console I write:
# ls /dev/mmsblk0*
/dev/mmcblk0 /dev/mmcblk0p1
then I try to mount ...
# mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/sd
mount: mounting /dev/mmcblk0p1 on /mnt/sd failed. Device or resource busy
.. What supposed am I to do? Help and Thanks in advance

[abrasive]

hello, and thanks in advence. I found as answer of my epc minilaptop -just when I try t install linux debian - the flllowing message: ... Can't find extpart.tgz on SD card. I push ENTER and in console I write:
# ls /dev/mmsblk0*
/dev/mmcblk0 /dev/mmcblk0p1
then I try to mount ...
# mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/sd
mount: mounting /dev/mmcblk0p1 on /mnt/sd failed. Device or resource busy
.. What supposed am I to do? Help and Thanks in advance

It looks like mmcblk0p1 is already mounted... and it can't find 'extpart.tgz' on it! Did you remember to copy that on to the card?

[franvalmo]

And Would you be so kind to up this files somwhere else not bento what is down, please, I´ve been looking for that for many days without good result. I 've been looking for information about how to mount linux on wm8505 and in mine not goes as well as I'm expecting. Please up it and notice the link.
franvalmo or email me infosiaco@gmail.com

hey there. long story short i've been following the thread for a week or two and recently got a WM8505 (spicy red color), been in touch with abrasive and some other peoples via the IRC room ( irc://irc.freenode.net/#easypc ) and we've been able to A) figure out an issue that ships with these devices and B) a way to work around it by using both an SD card AND a USB stick.

If you have been trying to boot debian live via SD card on a WM8505 and have not been able to, likely by getting a loader that never finishes loading, then instructions on a temporary easy work around are to follow. The issue specifically is that the SD reader itself on the motherboard and/or the kernel mounts the SD card itself in Read Only mode -- which makes it impossible for Debian to do its ninja magic and get itself running. Abrasive thought maybe his SD reader was broken, so he performed a hardware work around, but both myself and another user in IRC have been able to verify that this is the case. Have no fear! this totally works:

How to Live Boot Debian via SD + USB

Going to briefly describe the basic steps required to prepare both an SD card and a USB flash drive for live booting Debian without installing or overwriting your nand. Basically, the SD card provides instructions on what to do and which filesystem to load, and then it loads the debian filesystem off the USB stick so you can play live. All the packages you install and changes you make will stick.

You will need to format your SD card and USB stick much in the same way you previously did, difference being SD card holds the script directory and is FAT32 while the USB stick is EXT2 and holds the Debian filesystem. The following references fdisk specifications.

SD Card
Type: b (WIN95 FAT32)
Size: 32MB
Contents: scripts folder (extracted from fatpart.tgz or fatpartusb.tgz)

USB flash drive
Type: 83 (Linux) aka EXT2
Size: Up to you, but at least 256mb preferably.
Contents: debian filesystem (extracted from extpart.tgz)

Probably going to skip describing how to go about formatting, partitioning, and preparing the SD card and USB stick using linux and fdisk or otherwise, but will probably end up posting it at some point (if not here, then at the site we're working on for these devices and linux)

Both partitions (SD / USB) for use in this should be the 1st and primary partition #1 -- following instructions will expect that debian filesystem is at /dev/sda1 which it always is with 1 usb device plugged in and debian filesystem as first partition. You can adjust as needed with the manual instructions.

Manual preparation of cmd / scriptcmd
If you would like to do this manually, or need to make adjustments to where the debian fs is loaded from (perhaps you're using partition 2 and want to make it /etc/sda1p2 ? ) follow these basic instructions:

1. this assumes you're using linux
2. navigate your way into the /scripts directory on the sd card
3. edit the cmd file with your favorite editor
4. change root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 to root=/dev/sda1
5. add rootdelay=10 after root/dev/sda1
6. should read: setenv bootargs mem=112M root=/dev/sda1 rootdelay=10
7. now execute ./make_scriptcmds
8. place SD in wm8505 and plug USB stick in
9. reboot, and voila.. dinner is served

Download SD + USB - fatpart.tgz / scriptcmd
extpart.tgz for the USB stick is the exact same, but here is a download to the adjusted scriptcmd and adjusted packaged version, fatpartusb.tgz

• fatpartusb.tgz
• scriptcmd

The originals:
http://bur.st/~abrasive/wm8505_linux/1.0/fatpart.tgz
http://bur.st/~abrasive/wm8505_linux/1.0/extpart.tgz


Thank you very much for all your help and hard work abrasive, he's definitely the only reason i was able to figure out how to get it to work in this way thanks also to everyone else thats helped me from the IRC room, much appreciated