A way to PalmOS-less device ]|[

So after some more tinkering with linux kernel, I got a decent, cleaned up version of the sources ready. Without further ado, get the sources here:

http://marex.hackndev.com/palmtc/

What still has issues is the keypad, I'll have to talk about it with Eric Miao since he made some changes to the original driver. The WiFi works, sadly, the module was faulty so I replaced it with another one. Also, sound is now fixed as well. I'll prepare some kind of linux installer soon.

A way to PalmOS-less device ][

And here comes one more entry today. Once I have a nice uboot on PalmTC now, why not give linux a go, right? Actually, collecting all the ancient patches for PalmTC I produced last year, I managed to compile a kernel from them and load it on PalmTC. Many things work, though there are some that do not. Here's the list of those that need fixing:

• Keyboard (needs to be replaced by gpio-matrix-keypad that will land in mainline soon ... I hope)
• WiFi (this might be caused by the highly suspicious state of the WiFi module, I need to test with another one)

Sound has one issue as well, the palmtc-asoc driver doesn't work, but with the native PXA driver, the UCB1400 chip is properly detected and touchscreen works as well. Therefore it'll be an easy fix.

U-Boot on PalmTC, way to PalmOS-less device

About a month ago, I made initial port of u-boot bootloader to Palm Tungsten|C. Back then it was bootable from PalmOS and pretty safe to tinker with. But just recently I gave it a go on real hardware. The hardware of choice was an old PalmTC I had lying around here for some time, covered with dust since I thought it was somehow damaged. To my surprise, after a few hours with JTAG ( more info on JTAG with Palm hardware ) and openwince-jtag tool, I managed to get serial console ( for that I used FTDI-based RS-232/USB converter from asix.cz ). Tinkering with it further got me a proper LCD support and MMC support (therefore it's even safe to damage kernel in flash as it still can boot from MMC card if inserted).

The patch is here: http://marex.hackndev.com/uboot/0001-Hacky-PalmTC-support-for-uboot.patch

Just apply it on top of uboot sources, compile and you should be ready to test it, but be careful, writing to flash can damage your device and the only way out is to solder JTAG to the board and reflash using that (the way I did the initial revival process for my PalmTC unit).

Blog revived

After a few years of silence on this blog, I decided to revive it. I prepared a ToDo list for this summer holiday and I'd like to make it all in time.

Here it is: http://marex.hackndev.com/ToDo.txt

Palm Wireless Keyboard

I recently borrowed Palm Wireless Keyboard from |miska| to write a driver for it. First of all, it's not a good idea to polute kernel sources with more and more keyboard driver modules. Moreover when there already is a nice and clean solution called kbdd for handling all those serial/bluetooth/irda keyboards too, so I decided to use it. The following patch adds palmwk support to kbdd.

Patch: http://marex.hackndev.com/01-add-palmwk.patch

To use it just compile kernel with CONFIG_SERIAL_PXA_IR=y and run "kbdd -p /dev/ttyS2 -t palmwk". If you configure kbdd using kbdd.conf, it's even easier since at least in angstrom it's started automagically every time you boot and you wont have to type that command at all. There are just minor changes in the original palmwk keymap, that is "Green FN" + Numbers works as Fx keys (convenient eg. in mc) instead of special characters.

Opie-borderapplet 0.2

I added PalmTX support to borderapplet, you can download it here:
http://marex.hackndev.com/borderapplet-0.2.tar.bz2
SHA1: 6bf2ec837b49f6d07e770b01f9640f2b7bc739ee

For further information about borderapplet, refer to this article:
http://marex-hnd.blogspot.com/2007/07/lifedrive-borderapplet-for-opie.html

PalmTX: PCMCIA

That's one small hack for Marex, one giant leap for PalmTX port ;-) . Yup, I finally finished the PCMCIA driver for Palm T|X. Now the WiFi card is detectable by pccardctl and friends. See following results ...

root@palmtx:~$ pccardctl info
PRODID_1="SyChip"
PRODID_2="Cheetah6064 802 11b Module"
PRODID_3="WLAN6100"
PRODID_4="01"
MANFID=02db,6064
FUNCID=6

root@palmtx:~$ pccardctl ident
Socket 0:
product info: "SyChip", "Cheetah6064 802 11b Module", "WLAN6100", "01"
manfid: 0x02db, 0x6064
function: 6 (network)

root@palmtx:~$ pccardctl status
Socket 0:
3.3V 16-bit PC Card
Subdevice 0 (function 0) [unbound]