I bought this device from DealExtreme for 206.1 USD , this is the first expensive thing that I bought from DealExtreme (I only bought small things from then, usually my total is less than 20 USD). The thing shipped in about 10 days, but I need to get the thing from the post office, because I need to pay extra tax 350 baht (~11 USD).

SmartQ 7 is a 7″ MID (mobile internet device) running ubuntu. It has ARM processor (the SoC is Samsung S3C6410), the RAM is 128 Mb, with 1GB internal flash storage. There are 2 USB ports, one for USB Host, and the other for USB OTG. It doesn’t have an internal bluetooth, buat a bluetooth dongle is given, it looks like this thing in DealExtreme. It has 4500mAh battery. The screen resolution is 800×600.

My short opinion is: this thing is great, but needs better software. There is no accelerated driver for Xorg (X uses fbdev, an unaccelerated framebuffer driver). By default it allocates 128Mb swap space in the internal flash. I am a little bit worried about this (the flash have limited write cycle), and I move the swap to external SD Card. Because the memory is only 128Mb, it swaps a lot.

This SoC has a 3D graphics support, but of course, no driver for it yet. It also has a hardware JPEG decoder (no driver for it yet), hardware MPEG-4 video decoder (no driver for it also). I hope someone will make those drivers (or may be I will if I have finished the FreeBSD stuff).

The power management is still not so good. Sometimes it works perfectly, but sometimes not. On the first day, I can use it about 9.5 hours (according to uptime, part of this uptime is when the LCD is off when i left it for a while) reading comic books while installing several softwares using apt-get (the wifi is kept on). On the next day, it shows some strange behaviour, such as refusing to resume after sleep. And restarting it several times makes the battery drain faster (I think it lasted less than 5 hours). I still don’t know whether this behaviour is from the factory, or may be I have messed around too much.

Most sofware are not designed to be touch operated. I have seen several modal dialog box that appears beneath current window, and you can not switch to it. Plugging an external USB Keyboard seems to be the only good solution when it happens. Sometimes you ocan still escape by holding some combination of buttons, but sometimes plugging a USB keyboard or resetting the device is the only solution (or if you have installed an openssh server, SSH-ing to the device and killing the application).

You have several options for the operating system: the built in OS (Ubuntu), Mer, Google Android (just some initial support, I haven’t tested it), and Windows CE (Chinese version only for now). You can also do multiboot using those OSes (dual boot, tripeboot, or even quadboot).

Just a note: the device is perfect for reading Manga, but not American comic books. The size fits perfectly for a manga page (except when they show double page). I suggest you use latest Comix application, because it is more touch friendly.

If you are looking for a device that “just works”, then this not the device that youare looking for. If you are like me, who likes to mess around with stuff, then this device has many potential. I can use this device as a very large PDA, and I can use it as a netbook by connecting a USB keyboard. It is not pocketable, but it is very portable (smaller than my wife’s EEE PC). With the USB Host functionality, I can do almost everything that I can do with laptops, such as copying things from USB Disks.

My wife have an EEE PC for her traveling needs, and she also owns a MacBook Pro, which is quite portable around the house, but too heavy for long trips. I wanted to buy another netbook, but I think this device is better for me. I can carry the SmartQ, and put the USB keyboard on my bag. For my traveling preparation, I have bought a USB hub (with power adapter, for those devices that requires it) and a small keyboard, the total for both are 500 baht (~15 USD).

I wrote this post on SmartQ 7, using usb keyboard on Emacs, and then I copy paste the text to Midori web browser.

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.

When the NSD Emprex 100 arrived, i realized that I need more network ports. I only have 4 ports on my WRT54GL and all of them have been used. After looking at hubs and routes prices around chiang mai, they are in 500-1000 baht range, that is not cheap so I decided that I should just buy something a little bit more expensive that I can hack. I saw DLink DIR-300 sold at relatively cheap price 1490 baht (43 usd, cheap for Chiang Mai price), this is 700 baht (20 usd) cheaper compared to WRT54GL, with almost same hardware spec (4 Mb ROM, 16 Mb RAM). I spent some time installing openwrt on this router, because I was so confused with the factory built interface.

I am planning to go to Indonesia for 10 days, so during that time, I don’t think I will be able to do much hacking, but I want to still continue studying freebsd. So I decided to install FreeBSD on our EEE PC 901. This was not difficult, but it took quite some time to setup everything.

Here are some of the things that i’ve done on the EEE PC: setup FreeBSD ARM cross compile, setup Linux ARM cross compilation, setup LXR for FreeBSD current sources. Unfortunately WIFI is still not supported on EEE 901, and all (I only have 2) of my USB bluetooth doesnt work.

Note: I haven’t made tha 64 Mb Linux Kernel Image. I was affraid that someone made a mistake flashing it to 32 Mb device, which will made it unusable. Of course serial port can still save it, but not every one can make a serial port. With the new documentation I found, I will be able to make kernel image that can autodetect the memory size.

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)

[ 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.

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.

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.

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:

after upgrading the firmware, boot the Agestar without the disk, ssh to it, plug in the disk, mount it and chroot to it, and then mount -t proc /proc proc, and everything works as if the Agestar had been booted off the hard drive.

This is fine if you want to just borrow the disk for testing or cloning purposes. To convert it to be used on the Agestar exclusively, I copied /etc to /etc-slug (so I can revert by "mv etc etc-agestar" and "mv  etc-slug etc" and enited fstab, network/interfaces and modules and issued the command "e2label /dev/sdb1 /" as you instructed.

And here are some tips from him:

I pretty much cloned my SLUG so the Agestar is now a NFS and Samba server, Web server and X server. The Xfce4 applications are usable on the Agestar – Mousepad is an OK editor and Thunar is OK for a file manager (these have a habit of Segfaulting, though, but at least X works: xterm, kpat, xpat2 and spider!). Using "ssh -CY" instead of "ssh -X" doesn’t seem to make much difference.

Usbmount is very useful: plug in a USB drive and it is accessible on your local network if you share /media via samba. Just edit /etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf: the default filesystems are ext2 and ext3 but you can add vfat and ntfs but you need to add some options:
FS_MOUNTOPTIONS="-fstype=ntfs,rw,errors=remount-ro,dmask=0000,fmask=0000 -fstype=vfat,dmask=0000,fmask=0000"

To get read-write on an NTFS drive, you need to cheat a bit: first install ntfs-3g and then
ln -s /usr/bin/ntfs-3g /sbin/mount.ntfs (this is because ntfs-3g is a program and the old ntfs is a module).

A tip from me is that if you have a problem with your Agestar, just search google for your problem, and add "NSLU" "debian" (or NSLU2 debian). The solution for debian NSLU2 should apply to Agestar with Debian.

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).

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).

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.