Re: wlan and voip

2006-11-16 Thread Gabriel Ambuehl
On Wednesday 15 November 2006 18:06, Hannes Hauswedell wrote:
  Thanks for your interest in OpenMoko. At this point we really cannot
  commit to a timeframe. Just understand that it's a key feature we'd love
  to see. We are just not willing to put binary modules in our kernel. So
  as of now, this is still a WiFi stopper.

 thats ok!
 better to have a completely free platform than those wannabe free gadgets!

I might be missing something, but it looks to me as the Ralinktech RT2500 
drivers for my Asus USB WLAN stick don't contain a blob? 

I would wager to guess that the guys at http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/phpBB2/ 
would know for sure.

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Re: wlan and voip

2006-11-16 Thread Gabriel Ambuehl
On Thursday 16 November 2006 11:33, Alessandro Iurlano wrote:
 I'm not an hardware hacker but a simple google search showed me this
 website that contains a list of wifi chipsets and their driver status on
 linux. I hope it helps.
 http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_alles.php?
 http://linux-wless.passys.nl/


Also http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux has a very thorough 
listing including comments on the drivers and licensing.


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Re: Multiplexing SDIO? Re: How to connect Wifi to Samsung's S3C2410? Re: Congratulations to you and FIC

2006-11-16 Thread Richard Franks
 First sorry if my thoughts on this list starts confusion
 (again I'm not a hardware expert) but I like to encourage
 the Neo1973 team to find a desin of the Neo1973 that
 - has much memory
 - has the potential to upgrade the number of memory
 - has the chance for Wifi
 - and no bottle neck for Wifi or memory access

The way I see it, the memory issue is mitigated somewhat by wifi access
-- affordable city-wide wifi (e.g. Toronto) would mean that for most of
my usage, I'd be happy to stream media or data as-required, from my home
machine. In fact, in many cases, it would be preferable to stream/cache
data rather than rely on the download-then-remember-to-delete paradigm.

Yup - that would require additional development to deploy for the
masses, but it could be simplified - assuming one end has a routable IP
and a friendly server to negotiate the initial connection.

Cheers,
Richard


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power of apt-get install example: Linksys NSLU2 is now official supported by Debian installer, 2. free ARM emulator QEMU

2006-11-16 Thread Robert Michel
Salve!

Some stimulation, especialy for those who didn't use Debian (daily),
and those who can't wait to get a Neo1973 - in this email:

1. Linksys NAS NSLU2 (ARM CPU) is now officiall supported by the
   Debian installer
   
1.b (Reminder of the use for additional signal lines on the PCB)
   
2. The free ARM emulator QEMU  allows you to install a Debian(ARM)
   on other systems




### 1. ###

   The first release candidate of the debian-installer for Debian's
forthcoming Etch distribution was released yesterday, offering 
nearly complete support to the Linksys $99 NSLU2 NAS gadget.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4448420055.html

Linksys NAS NSLU2 use an Intel XScale core inside, the IXP420, which 
is based on a ARMv5TE architecture...
http://www.intel.com/design/network/prodbrf/25249403.pdf

So with the cheap NSLU2 you can feel now the great potential of 
Debian with apt-get on a ARM plattform ;)

see:
http://www.cyrius.com/debian/nslu2/install.html
http://www.nslu2-linux.org

The NSLU2 is just another example that people like to use the full
power of the hardware
- dobble the CPU speed 133 Mhz to 266 Mhz (to have full 200 Mbit/s
  routing power with ethernet)
- add one RS232
- add one USB 1.1 Port
- upgrading Flash and RAM memory

And of corse the hackers are disapointed that the SoC offeres two
Networkdevices *BUT* see 
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/wiki/Info/CPUOverview  
for some limitations due the PCB - e.g.:

There are two MII interfaces of which only one is wired 
 to an Ethernet PHY. The other MII interface is not accessible 
 at all as the designers of the PCB did not bring the necessary BGA
 ball connections out.  (oh no!)
 
 The PCI bus is used to connect the NEC USB chip to the IXP420
 and it is not possible to connect anything else as the required
 lines are also not brought out. Removal of the NEC USB chip to gain
 access to the PCI signals is the only way.

Again: just one missing signal line can destroy a lot of the potential
of the device for hackers and developers ;)


BTW Security - the official Debian NSLU2 installation didn't include the
close source ethernet driver - I must express my thank and support for
Seans / OpenMoko decission to take care, that the is a clean, open,
trustable linux system on the Neo1973 - waiting for Wifi is better then
degenerate the Neo1973 to a untrustable plattform.
And Suns GPLizing of java shows that focusing on trustable, clear
systems will have succsess on the long term - when everybody would
make compromises with security from the start so thank you for
living the Debian spirit ;)


But back to the good points of the nslu2 news - to feel the power
when you can use Debian on your Worksation, your Laptop, your server,
in near future on your mobile and now on your cheap NAS
- imagine you own this cheap NAS, it is pluged to your network an
  one the PC you sitting in front now (while reading my mail)
  you have a shell (probably a SSH) to this nslu2.

type in:

apt-get install asterisk return

and now you will have in a few minutes the power of asterisk
(www.asterisk.org) the great powerfull open telefon server
on your small NAS box
just from the debian servers - without building own packets
or compiling

The same way you will able to install powerfull software
on your mobile - with the Neo1973 and OpenMoko ;)


GNU/Linux and especialy Debian does have a lot of programms that
could run without frontend, without GUI 
So with the Neo1973 we didn't need to start from the scratch
with everything Debian-ARM offers allot of power, today!
:





### 2. ###

With the linuxdevices news I found another possibility to play with
Debian on an ARM plattform before we get the first Neo1973:


   Free ARM emulator beats real hardware
Sep. 27, 2006
French Debian developer Aurelien Jarno has published a how-to
about installing Debian (or another Linux distribution) on the
open-source QEMU emulator. When run on newish AMD-based PCs, 
the setup can outperform actual hardware development targets, 
he says.
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS9983843412.html

Arm emulation even with X :)))
Using Xorg

 You now have a full Debian arm system that you can use for 
 development or whatever. You You can even run Xorg using the 
 fb device. Not that you have to select a 256-color mode, 
 with a resolution up to 1024x768. 
http://www.aurel32.net/info/debian_arm_qemu.php


I will play with this emulation nextime and I think that this
emulator will be usefull for us ;)

1. Installing
- documentation how to use QEMU

2. Booting a live system
- QEMU with OpenMoko on a live Linux CD like Knoppix
   www.knoppix.org

3. no installing, no rebooting:
- QEMU with OpenMoko on vservers with FreeNX so that interested
   developer could get an access to use this with a Java-FreeNXclient
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_technology  
   http://freenx.berlios.de/ 
   LinuxJournal had published 

Re: power of apt-get install example: Linksys NSLU2 is now official supported by Debian installer, 2. free ARM emulator QEMU

2006-11-16 Thread Rod Whitby
Robert Michel wrote:
 1. Linksys NAS NSLU2 (ARM CPU) is now officiall supported by the
Debian installer
 It has been support by the slugos installer for some years now, and slugos 
 is built with
 openembedded like openmoko.
 
 Ok, but with Debian support I does not know or care about slugos
 installer - same source, same tools

The Debian support (as far as the central kernel support, network driver
support, LEDs support, RTC support, etc goes) is based on the
SlugOS/OpenEmbedded work done by the NSLU2-Linux project (which I lead).

NSLU2-Linux just doesn't have the same Press Release capabilities and
experience that Debian has :-)

It's all steps in a process.  First someone works out how to hack the
vendor firmware.  Then add-on packages are released which work with the
vendor firmware.  Then a customised open-source firmware is released,
with it's own set of packages.  Then a desktop distribution (like Debian
or Gentoo) has support added for the new target.

Luckily, for OpenMoko, the first three steps of that process have been
short-circuited by the foresight of this new paradigm in consumer
electronics.

For the NSLU2, it took a year of custom firmware (which as Koen notes,
is based on the same base system as OpenMoko) before we could even
convince Debian people to look at the device.  And it has taken nine
months from the first Debian proof-of-concept to the point now where all
the features which were in SlugOS from the beginning have now been
integrated into Debian.  Some people still say that the SlugOS firmware
has better recovery features than the Debian installer firmware.  The
Debian installer firmware is certainly easier to install for someone who
does not know how to use the Linux command line.

 BTW Security - the official Debian NSLU2 installation didn't include the
 close source ethernet driver

The SlugOS/OpenEmbedded distribution is testing the new open-source
ethernet driver, which replaces the proprietary Intel driver.  SlugOS
has supported the internal ethernet device from day one (over two years
ago).  We believe it is the popularity of the NSLU2 project which has
encouraged the development of an open-source replacement for the Intel
driver.

 type in:
 
 apt-get install asterisk return
 
 and now you will have in a few minutes the power of asterisk
 (www.asterisk.org) the great powerfull open telefon server
 on your small NAS box
 just from the debian servers - without building own packets
 or compiling

Type in:

ipkg install asterisk

and you get the same thing on SlugOS/OpenEmbedded, but you had it six
months earlier than you could do it on Debian.

 OE has been using qemu to emulate various things during crosscompiling for a 
 while now.

 I guess old news gets recycled once debian does it ;)
 
 Ok, could be old (cold) coffee for most on this list
 - sorry to bother you ;)
 
 But debian makes things easyer to use (with less knowledge)
 and more populare.

Indeed it does, but the basic new features (at least in the NSLU2 case)
have always been prototyped and shown to work on the custom
OpenEmbedded-based firmware first.  I would be more inclined to expect
OpenEmbedded developers (who only work with embedded devices) to be able
to get the most out new embedded device firmware, compared to the
majority of Debian developers who only ever work on an x86 desktop (and
perhaps do not even know what cross-compiling is).  No disrespect to
Debian - they have caused a 12.5% increase in NSLU2-Linux custom
firmware downloads (40,000 - 45,000), so there definitely is an
audience of users who need a simple to install, but perhaps not as
optimised or robust, platform.

-- Rod Whitby
-- NSLU2-Linux Project Lead, waiting for a Neo ...

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