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wireless | 4 Feb 14:56
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OT: ? Embedded Patent Fraud

Hello,

It's not often that I would interject a subject like this
into a Gentoo discuss. However, from my reading of this
patent, the awardee may be able to cause significant grief
to anyone that use a uP, FPGA, or such with at CPU/GPU.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN%2F7607005

Hopefully, some of you will read about this patent and
conclude that this no way affects any embedded linux system
or any form of programmable embedded linux device,
particularly any where reconfigurable or programmable
hardware is contained therein....

This patent looks like the poster child for embedded system,
that should not have been issued. Hopefully Europeans are
not this stupid to allow this sort of patent-garbage to even
be filled, let alone enforced.

I see little in the way of original thought or work as every
claim made by the filers has existed before, from my
experiences. The "moron" that reviewed this:
"Primary Examiner: Connolly; Mark "
must be clueless about embedded systems, imho.

your thoughts?

James
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Francisco Ares | 7 Feb 15:17
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[OT] framebuffer hardware specs - where?

Hi

I'm planning on building a FPGA based gadget using it's Microblaze IP. And I
would like to have a video output.

There comes the question: how do I implement a video output module so that
it fits in the linux framebuffer specs, or how do I write a driver to be
compatible of the existing framework?

Thank for any tip
Francisco
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Angelo Arrifano | 9 Feb 01:03
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Re: [OT] framebuffer hardware specs - where?

On Dom, 2010-02-07 at 12:17 -0200, Francisco Ares wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I'm planning on building a FPGA based gadget using it's Microblaze IP.
> And I would like to have a video output.
> 
> There comes the question: how do I implement a video output module so
> that it fits in the linux framebuffer specs, or how do I write a
> driver to be compatible of the existing framework?

See /usr/src/linux/drivers/video/* you have plenty of examples there.
Also look at /usr/src/linux/Documentation/fb/*

TLDP might also have useful documentation.

Regards,
> 
> Thank for any tip
> Francisco
> 
> -- 
> "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then
> you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and
> I have one idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have
> two ideas." - George Bernard Shaw
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David Relson | 9 Feb 01:26
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disk image question

Hello,

I'm working with PC/104 cards with vortex86 and vortex86sx SOCs.  So far
the project has been using large 1GB DOM (disk-on-modules), but it's
now time to prepare for installation to 32MB and 128MB DOMs.

I've not done this kind of thing before, so have invented a scheme.
Hopefully it makes sense, but I thought I'd ask those of you with more
experience...

My current plan is to create 32MB and 128MB images (using a USB
flash drive) and put them on a bootable USB drive which will
allow the installlation procedure to use dd to program the embedded
DOMs. I'm planning on partitioning the DOM as 1/8 DOS (formatted msdos)
and 7/8 linux (formatted ext2), populating the partitions from my
workstation, using dd to preserve the images, then putting the two
images on the install flash drive.

Does this make sense?  Is there a better way to create the 2
differently sized install images and package them for installation?

Thanks!

David
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P. Levine | 9 Feb 06:48
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Re: emerge --root : users not created

2009/12/14  Sven Rebhan <odinshorse@...>
> The correct way to solve this would be to add an option to
> useradd, allowing to specify a passwd file other than /etc/passwd.
> Afterwards patch the corresponding eclass to use this option. Patches
> are welcome. ;-)
>
>> Quite annoying - workarounds would be highly appreciated!

I submitted a fix for this at http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=302570

Shadow doesn't seem to allow a purely static build.
Busybox is purely self-contained, so I used that.
It works on my end but it could use some testing.

Any feedback is appreciated.
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Peter Stuge | 9 Feb 09:41
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Re: OT: ? Embedded Patent Fraud

wireless wrote:
> This patent looks like the poster child for embedded system,
> that should not have been issued.

Pretty much, it looks like. It covers any CPU+FPGA system where the
FPGA is used for any of signal I/O, co-processing, HID, graphics,
signal processing, communications and battery charging. :)

I'm sorry, but I find it too hilarious that "a system with an FPGA"
can be patented. It's a little bit like patenting the patent system..
;)

> Hopefully Europeans are not this stupid to allow this sort of
> patent-garbage to even be filled, let alone enforced.

I wouldn't bet on it..

//Peter
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wireless | 9 Feb 12:21
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Re: OT: ? Embedded Patent Fraud

Peter Stuge wrote:
> wireless wrote:
>> This patent looks like the poster child for embedded system,
>> that should not have been issued.
> 
> Pretty much, it looks like. It covers any CPU+FPGA system where the
> FPGA is used for any of signal I/O, co-processing, HID, graphics,
> signal processing, communications and battery charging. :)
> 
> I'm sorry, but I find it too hilarious that "a system with an FPGA"
> can be patented. It's a little bit like patenting the patent system..
> ;)

Wide open was my take too. Way to broad, so I sure it will
get challenged as soon as somebody tries to enforce it. The
real danger is if somebody like Microsoft buys the patent,
then there is trouble against small companies who innovate.

>> Hopefully Europeans are not this stupid to allow this sort of
>> patent-garbage to even be filled, let alone enforced.
> 
> I wouldn't bet on it..
> 
> 
> //Peter

I find this most disturbing. America is owned by lawyers and
crooks, in the disguise of corporation. Europe was the last
bastion of anti-imperialism........?
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Martin Guy | 9 Feb 12:31
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Re: OT: ? Embedded Patent Fraud

On 2/9/10, Peter Stuge <peter@...> wrote:
> wireless wrote:
>  > This patent looks like the poster child for embedded system,
>  > that should not have been issued.
> Pretty much, it looks like. It covers any CPU+FPGA system where the
>  FPGA is used for any of signal I/O, co-processing, HID, graphics,
>  signal processing, communications and battery charging. :)

It should be unenforceable due to prior art (and should not have been
granted for the same reason). Of course, the idiots in question might
still try to waste your time. Intellectual property? Intellectual
theft!

   M
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Manuel Lauss | 10 Feb 18:34

MIPS32 Rootfs

Hello!

For the last few years I've been "maintaining" a small Gentoo installation for
FPU-less little-endian MIPS32 processors (my main target is the "Alchemy" line).

I've put up a tarball of the actual filesystem as well as a collection of
individual packages at [1] and [2].  The rootfs is ~2GB unpacked, and
includes everything required to do the Gentoo thing.  (List of files
at [3] and [4]).

I'll keep updating the snapshots at irregular intervals.

Thanks and have a nice day,
      Manuel Lauss

[1] http://mlau.at/files/gentoo/mips32elsf-gentoo-rootfs-100204.tar.bz2
[2] http://mlau.at/files/gentoo/mips32elsf-packages-100204.tar
[3] http://mlau.at/files/gentoo/mips32elsf-gentoo-rootfs-100204.tar.bz2.CONTENTS
[4] http://mlau.at/files/gentoo/mips32elsf-packages-100204.tar.CONTENTS
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Relson, David | 10 Feb 19:57

USB Boot Problem

G'day,

I've got a USB boot problem.

My target hardware is a PC/104 card with a Vortex86sx processor and a
128MB DOM (disk-on-module) for mass storage.  

Currently the test version of the card has a 1GB DOM which is
partitioned as follows:

       Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks  Id System
    /dev/hda1   *           1         141      142096+  6 FAT16
    /dev/hda2             142         991      856800  83 Linux

The BIOS boots to the FAT16 partition where ldlinux.sys takes over and
starts linux and all is fine.  

When I insert my USB flash drive, it is recognized as:

    usb 1-1.2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
    usb 1-1.2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
    scsi0 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
    usb-storage: device found at 3
    usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning

    scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access   SanDisk  Cruzer Micro  0.1  PQ: 0
ANSI: 2
    sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 2001888 512-byte hardware sectors: (1.02 GB/977
MiB)
    sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
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Gmane