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There are so many things to do lately, but so little time. Plus i have so many dental problems lately, three of my molar teeth has been pulled out in the last 2 months, and going to have the fourth taken next month. Going to dentist and waiting for the recovery always takes away my free time.

My wife just bought Nokia 5800, a Nokia series 60 5th edition phone. It means that i need to finish my SymbianBible port for 5th edition (mostly done, beta version is on symbianbible google groups). My wife also asked me to port MultiCounter to her new phone (done, not yet uploaded).

I have cleaned up the 2.6.29 port of STR9104 Soc, but i will need to clean up again, because of the new documentation from www.cnusers.org. I have also started the freebsd port, but the progress is not much yet.
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I’ve finally updated my patch to 2.6.29, the patch can be downloaded from:
http://tinyhack.com/agestar/patch-2.6.29-star.gz

and the config file:

http://tinyhack.com/agestar/config-2.6.29-star

or if you want the image that i already compiled and test (image is compiled with 32 MB memory). This is NOT a FIRMWARE

http://tinyhack.com/agestar/zImage-2.6.29

when i have the time, i will work on creating a new firmware image.

Some changes:

• The machine ID is now registered in http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/developer/machines/
• The network problem instability has now been fixed
• Added new configuration option to select memory size based on your board memory (16, 32, or 64 mb). Note: selecting values larger than the supported size will cause crash.

The other news is that Bruce M Simpson has donated me an Emprex NSD 100 for porting FreeBSD to it. I have started my work, but the progress will be slower from the Linux at the beginning, because:

1. I am more familiar with Linux kernel compared to FreeBSD kernel
2. Currently FreeBSD kernel itself doesn’t support many ARM devices yet, so to find an exmple of something I need to look at NetBSD, (and it helps, for example the Faraday 526 processor support is already in NetBSD).
3. I am rather busy this and coming month (planning to go to Indonesia for about 10 days)

I have an old GADMEI USB TV BOX, in the back it says MODEL: TVR200. I haven’t use this since few years ago in Windows. I am planning to learn a little bit about Wii homebrew, so I thought if I can use my computer as display, I don’t have to go back and forth to my TV. When I plugged the USB TV BOX, the kernel display some messages about em28xx:

[ 3662.345631] em28xx #0: Your board has no unique USB ID and thus need a hint to be detected.
[ 3662.345634] em28xx #0: You may try to use card= insmod option to workaround that.
[ 3662.345636] em28xx #0: Please send an email with this log to:
[ 3662.345638] em28xx #0: 	V4L Mailing List 
[ 3662.345640] em28xx #0: Board eeprom hash is 0x00000000
[ 3662.345643] em28xx #0: Board i2c devicelist hash is 0xc51200e3
[ 3662.345645] em28xx #0: Here is a list of valid choices for the card= insmod option:
[ 3662.345647] em28xx #0:     card=0 -> Unknown EM2800 video grabber
[ 3662.345650] em28xx #0:     card=1 -> Unknown EM2750/28xx video grabber
[ 3662.345652] em28xx #0:     card=2 -> Terratec Cinergy 250 USB
[ 3662.345654] em28xx #0:     card=3 -> Pinnacle PCTV USB 2
[ 3662.345656] em28xx #0:     card=4 -> Hauppauge WinTV USB 2
[ 3662.345659] em28xx #0:     card=5 -> MSI VOX USB 2.0
[ 3662.345661] em28xx #0:     card=6 -> Terratec Cinergy 200 USB
[ 3662.345663] em28xx #0:     card=7 -> Leadtek Winfast USB II
[ 3662.345665] em28xx #0:     card=8 -> Kworld USB2800
[ 3662.345667] em28xx #0:     card=9 -> Pinnacle Dazzle DVC 90/DVC 100
[ 3662.345670] em28xx #0:     card=10 -> Hauppauge WinTV HVR 900
[ 3662.345672] em28xx #0:     card=11 -> Terratec Hybrid XS
[ 3662.345674] em28xx #0:     card=12 -> Kworld PVR TV 2800 RF
[ 3662.345676] em28xx #0:     card=13 -> Terratec Prodigy XS
[ 3662.345679] em28xx #0:     card=14 -> Pixelview Prolink PlayTV USB 2.0
[ 3662.345681] em28xx #0:     card=15 -> V-Gear PocketTV
[ 3662.345683] em28xx #0:     card=16 -> Hauppauge WinTV HVR 950
[ 3662.685938] em28xx #0: V4L2 device registered as /dev/video0 and /dev/vbi0

So I tried modprobe em28xx card=0 and then card=1, and then card=2, thankfully it worked with card=2. I used tvtime program to see the output of the usb tv. To make it permanent, add this line:

options em28xx card=2

to your /etc/modprobe.conf, or create a new file (any name is fine) at /etc/modprobe.d and fill it with that line. Note: audio is not working yet, but I don’t really need it right now.

Warning/Note: This is not an update to the existing firmware. This is for installing Debian. If you don’t know anything about Linux, this is not for you. This firmware DOES NOT contain web interface.

I haven’t looked again on Debian installer for Agestar, but I have built a new firmware for Debian on Agestar using the latest kernel patch (faster network). If you have installed Debian using the instruction in here, you can download zImage-20092008 to Agestar, and then do:

dd if=zImage-20092008 of=/dev/mtdblock1

If you haven’t installed Debian, then when following the instruction, but instead of using star.bin use star-20092008.bin. To make it clear, use zImage-20092008 to update existing installation, and star-20092008.bin for new installation (starting from the original Agestar firmware). If you made a mistake, then you need a serial port to unbrick your Agestar. NOTE: the web update method only works on agestar, other models can work by using serial port and latest patch for kernel source (2.6.29 or later).

If you are interested to make your own firmware, this is what you should do:

1. Download armboot.bin and put it to a directory
2. Download mergefile.c to the same directory as armboot.bin
3. Compile mergefile.c (just do cc mergefile.c -o mergefile)
4. Compile your kernel according to the instruction at http://tinyhack.com/2008/09/08/how-to-compile-kernel-for-agestar/ to create zImage, copy/move it to the same directory as armboot.bin
5. Type ./mergefile to merge armboot.bin and zImage to star.bin.

You can use star.bin to flash (replace) original firmware. If you already installed Debian, and you want to update your kernel, you only need to build zImage and do dd if=newzImage of=/dev/mtdblock1.

Here is a guide how to compile a kernel for your Agestar. In this latest patch from me, I have included the network driver with scatter/gather support. For FTP transfer, HTTP, or other transfers that uses sendfile syscall, the speed is about 50% faster than before, for ordinary transfer, it almost doesn’t change.

1. Download vanilla kernel from kernel.org (use version linux-2.6.25.4)
2. Extract kernel , and apply this patch file (patchfile-20080907.gz)
3. Download initramfs.cpio.gz put it in the kernel directory and extract it
4. Download my configuration file config-20080907 put it into kernel directory, rename it as .config
5. Install an arm compiler, your distribution may have them (for instance in Debian you can use aptitude with emdebian.org repository), or download from codesourcery.com.
6. Edit Makefile, find CROSS_COMPILE and change the value to the location and prefix of your compiler. For example, of your compiler is /opt/arm/920t_le/bin/arm_920t_le-gcc, fill in /opt/arm/920t_le/bin/arm_920t_le- (without the gcc part)
7. To configure the kernel, type “make menuconfig”
8. Type make to build zImage

NOTE: the zImage is NOT a FIRMWARE. You can write zImage to /dev/mtdblock1 on the agestar to update your kernel but not through the web interface. I will write another tutorial on how to make zImage into a firmware that can be flashed using the web interface.

If you want a newer kernel, start from the current kernel, and keep on patching with the next incremental patch until you reach the kernel number that you want. This is not always easy, because sometimes a patch will conflict with the changes that i have made.

Chris (Whites11) and several others have pointed that the source code for a device similar to Agestar have been released by a German company (http://www.multicase.de/en/products/76/ns348s.html). I have not looked carefully at the source code of this one, but none of the people on the mailing list have got it working with networking enabled.

Kari Ahtiala who owned several NAS devices (SLUG, NCB3AST, NCH3AHT), said that you can just move your disk from NSLU (SLUG) to Agestar just fine:

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I have prepared a firmware and tutorial to Install Debian here, this time without the need for serial port. I have tested this, and it seems that everything works. But of course I will not be responsible if anything happens. If you think there are some missing, unclear or inaccurate steps, or if you doubt about something, then don’t install it. If you have anything to ask just email to yohanes [at] gmail.com, or just post your questions as comments.

NOTE: the web update method only works on agestar ncb3ast, other models can work by using serial port and latest patch for kernel source (2.6.29 or later).

My wife agrees that I can buy another Agestar to hack and use the other one for our network storage. With this new Agestar I can continue my hacks. Currently I am working on building a firmware that can be used to install Debian without serial port. On the first stage, I will build a generic firmware without automatic installer, so the user still needs to do some manual steps to install Debian. So it is something like the manual Debian install on NSLU2 (http://www.cyrius.com/debian/nslu2/unpack.html).  Actually because this is generic command line, you would be able to install Gentoo or something else. The next step would be to make an automatic installer like in NSLU2(http://www.cyrius.com/debian/nslu2/install.html).

The main reason why I started with manual installer is because I am not yet familiar with the Debian installer. Currently the manual installer is almost complete, I just need to test it thoroughly to make sure that this will really works without serial port. I hope I can release this in the next few days (or this weekend at the latest).

I have spent many hours to work on the RTC part, and I decided to give up for now. I have been able to activate the clock, set the clock, and make it run. But the RTC is not useful. First, it is not battery backed, so when you turn off your device, it will not keep the time. Second, it can store only the seconds, minutes, hours, and day of month. The problem of not having a documentation is sometimes you get stuck, and don’t know what to try next.

There is one feature that is supposed to be useful if I can make it work: the alarm capability. With alarm some cron-like applications can set to be notified when a particular time comes (it will ease the CPU burden). As far as I know the cron daemon doesn’t use this feature, so it is not a great loss.

There is one thing that still puzzles me. The original firmware uses X1205 through I2C bus. From my understanding the X1205 have different abilities compared to the STR9100 RTC. So I don’t know whether there is actually another RTC on the board.

Since the RTC is not very useful. I will let go hacking this part, until I find other clues.

Here is the output of the original firmware.

X1205: I2C based RTC driver.
i2c-core.o: driver X1205 registered.
X1205: found X1205 on STR9100 I2C Adapter
ccr_write_enable: verify SR failed
i2c-core.o: client [X1205] registered to adapter [STR9100 I2C Adapter](pos. 0).
X1205: i2c_add_driver RTC driver.
X1205: misc_register RTC driver.

I was very tired lately because I have to do many other things beside hacking the agestar kernel. So when I have time this morning, I decided to work on the easiest part on my list: LED driver. Agestar NCB3AST only have one controllable led, inside the casing, so I don’t know how useful this is (I think you can peek a little bit when the casing is closed). The LED and LCD display front is actually controlled by different unit, not controllable by CPU. Because this part is not important, I decided to upload the patch later.

Right now I am starting to look at the RTC driver. Hopefully this one will be more useful.