There are two openchronos projects, there’s the original OpenChronos project & the continuation openchronos project.
The openchronos code has a few modifications which are not upstream in poelzi’s OpenChronos repo, most importantly the changes to build under mspgcc 4, I was unable to build under mspgcc 3 as support for some versions of the MSP430 were missing, this may just be an issue specific to version currently in FreeBSD ports tree however.
To build the openchronos firmware on FreeBSD you’ll need the following ports installed:
devel/git
devel/msp430-libc
lang/python/
At the config stage of msp430-libc leave the “Use new msp430-gcc4 compiler” option left on & build.
Once everything is installed clone the repo listed on the openchronos website with git.
The config process for openchronos uses python & depends on the locale to be defined correctly, otherwise running gmake config on the shell will cause an error such as:
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u2503' in position 20: ordinal not in range(128)2
Defining LC_CTYPE with the appropriate UTF-8 encoding for your locale resolvers this, run locale -a for a list of supported types which you can declare.
Once that’s defined, running gmake config should show the configuration script, if you’re still receiving errors you may want to run gmake clean & try again.
You need to check the frequency setting is correct depending on the model of watch you bought.
Now save your configuration & run gmake to compile the code.
If you’re unable to compile the image successfully as the image generated is too large (see the problems section of README) either set “Metric only code” option in configure or try this patch which reduces the size of the image (Thanks to Andrey Ulanov for the pointer).
If build completes successfully, you’ll have two files in the build directory named eZChronos.elf & eZChronos.txt.
At this point I cheated & used Windows to flash the watch wirelessly.
Set the watch in rFbSL mode & run the Chronos data logger app, go to the wireless update tab, point it to the txt files & press “Update Watch”
A counter should show up to display the progress on the watch.
Once the flash is complete, all the elements on the LCD display should switch on
Posts Tagged ‘toys’
Building the MSP430 openchronos firmware on FreeBSD
Monday, February 13th, 2012More on the ThinkPad X61s
Saturday, August 20th, 2011I came across a couple of bits of information which are useful if your looking to improve performance on your ThinkPad.
First thing is though the X61s is specced as a system only capable of running 4GB of RAM, it can in fact take up to 8GB using 2x 4GB PC2-5300 or 6400 sodimms, Its can be quiet an expensive upgrade but very useful if you’re taking advantage of the VT extension on your CPU.
Second thing is the ICH8M chipset actually supports SATA II at 3Gbps but is soft locked in the bios to 1.5Gbps, this is a big difference in terms of performance, there is lots of information/rants/flames regarding the matter as it seems other vendors implemented the same restriction (completely missed this), it appears that there is a negotiation problem between the ICH8M chipset & marvel PATA to SATA bridges, this post provides a good summary of the situation & what changes are required to a bios image, but theres no need to get your hands dirty, there are modified bios images available from a couple of sources, I used the image available on the same forum, there are images available for other ThinkPads too, covering the X300, T61, T61p, R61 & R61e.
dmesg snippet from FreeBSD 9.0 before
ahci0:
ahci0: attempting to allocate 1 MSI vectors (4 supported)
msi: routing MSI IRQ 258 to local APIC 0 vector 58
ahci0: using IRQ 258 for MSI
ahci0: AHCI v1.10 with 3 1.5Gbps ports, Port Multiplier not supported
ahci0: Caps: 64bit NCQ SNTF ALP AL CLO 1.5Gbps PMD SSC PSC 32cmd CCC 3ports
ahci0: Caps2:
& after
ahci0:
ahci0: attempting to allocate 1 MSI vectors (4 supported)
msi: routing MSI IRQ 258 to local APIC 0 vector 58
ahci0: using IRQ 258 for MSI
ahci0: AHCI v1.10 with 3 3Gbps ports, Port Multiplier not supported
ahci0: Caps: 64bit NCQ SNTF ALP AL CLO 3Gbps PMD SSC PSC 32cmd CCC 3ports
ahci0: Caps2:
My MacBookPro3,1 is also locked to 1.5Gbps but there doesn’t seem to be any solution at the moment due to the signed firmware images.
Intel ICH8-M AHCI:
Vendor: Intel
Product: ICH8-M AHCI
Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.10 Supported
ThinkPad X61s
Wednesday, April 20th, 2011I couldn’t justify spending £1400+ on a built to order MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM, I settled on what has turned out to be a mint condition X61s with 8 cell battery & still under warranty for £172.98.
I’m really pleased with it so far but it’s still no MacBook Air (I went into the Apple store to double check) 
Though they’re both “ultraportable laptops” they both scratch a totally different itch for me, the macbook is a sleek, tightly integrated with Mac OS, the ThinkPad is an extendible machine which is far more accommodating to various operating systems.
The reason I was looking to move to an ultraportable was so I have something I can with me at all times (obviously) which was to replace my back breaking 17″ MacBook Pro with the ability to run multiple operating systems with ease.
I was able to successfully multi-boot MacOS, FreeBSD & OpenBSD on my MacBook Pro using the gtpsync tool from rEFIT but support for the hardware wasn’t great e.g as It had an nVidia graphics card there was no resume support on OpenBSD, power management didn’t really work under FreeBSD either If I remember right & having a single mouse button meant it was a pain to use X, having to use workarounds with the eject button on the keyboard to emulate right clicks.
The 11″ MacBook Air seemed like the perfect machine for me, but the whole sealed unit really grinds my gears, it’s not that I wanted to take a screw driver to it but I’d like to have the option to extend the system at a later date instead of having to decide on the system configuration which would be set in stone, requiring a new system if I wanted to expand, the ram being the most important thing, buy it with 4GB of ram or be stuck with 2GB. Though 2GB is fine for OS X alone, it really doesn’t cut it when you’re multi tasking with iChat, Terminal.app, iTunes, Thunderbird, Safari, Omniweb or Opera. These are the apps which are usually always open on my system & my 2007 Mac Mini really struggled with this work load with 2GB or RAM, grinding to a halt regularly as the system swapped furiously, moving to 3GB gave the machine a new lease of life & stopped this behaviour, I would hate to be in the same position with a new system so the BTO Air was the only option for me.
I would also be stuck with another nVidia based system if I went for the Macbook Air which means I would still have problems with sleep & X acceleration so the second hand Thinkpad X61s with the intel chipset was the way to go.
The machine is currently multi-booting OpenBSD-CURRENT, FreeBSD-CURRENT & OpenIndiana 148a development build quiet happily.
The system works a treat under OpenBSD, sleep support is still not there in FreeBSD 9.0-CURRENT but I suspect that may just be a bug in acpi_ibm(4). I was hoping to be running Schillix on this system but was unable to get the system to boot after install, I suspect a change in device paths between booting from the optical drive in the ultrabase & hard disk is the cause but didn’t look into it in-depth settling for OpenIndiana after trying Solaris 11 express (which freaked out after the rwn driver was installed) while I work through the DTrace book , though I’ve compiled in dtrace support for FreeBSD & it’s there out of the box on MacOS X most of the examples in the book don’t work as covered in the book on these platforms.
Hardware wise I ditched the supplied intel wireless card & installed a AzureWave AW-NE766 Ralink chipset wireless card. The ThinkPads check minipci-e & wireless usb devices against a device id whitelist in the bios & if not listed the system presents a “1802: Unauthorized network card is plugged in – Power off and remove the miniPCI card” error & refuses to boot. Reflashing the bios with a modified bios image by someone called Zender turns this off & allows the system to boot without any problems.
All in all a great system which is cheaper than a netbook, far superior in build & spec but inferior to a MacBook Air in some ways
Dell PowerEdge T105 & *BSD
Friday, February 1st, 2008Dell where running a special offer this week on the PowerEdge T105 servers.
For £173inc Vat & Shipping they make perfect test boxes, I placed the order on monday & they where here on thursday.
I’ve spent some of today trying ou the AMD64 flavours of FreeBSD 6.3 & 7.0-RC1, NetBSD 4.0 & 200802010002Z snapshot, OpenBSD 4.2 RELEASE & CURRENT.
One word of warning the onboard broadcom network card is a POS, you will need an additional network card installed in the system if you’re planning to have any means of connectivity to you box.
I used a cheapo intel pro/1000 GT PCI network card.
Here are some dmesgs:
FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE AMD64
FreeBSD 7.0-RC1 AMD64
The broadcom network card was enabled in the bios but wasn’t detected by the kernel
I was unable to NetBSD 4.0 & 200802010002Z as the setup program claimed there where any disks installed.
OpenBSD 4.2-RELEASE GENERIC kernel
OpenBSD 4.2-RELEASE GENERIC.MP kernel
OpenBSD 4.2-CURRENT GENERIC kernel
The broadcom network worked fine during the install process as far as I was able to obtain a IP address from a DHCP server, upon reboot when the system went multiuser & the network card was initialised the system would panic, using the intel card instead stopped the panic onboot, but still panicked on reboot, disabling the broadcom network card in the bios solved any panics. Screenshot
I was unable to test the 4.2-CURRENT GENERIC.MP kernel as the system failed to boot, complaining about em0: watchdog timeout -- resetting
&
wd0a: device timeout writing fsbn 1885728 of 1885728-1885759 (wd0 bn 1885791; cn 11 tn 98 sn 12), retrying Screenshot
I also booted the system off the FreeBSD-CURRENT snapshot using the bootonly iso, the broadcom network card was detected but panicked when attempting to obtain a IP address via DHCP.
Jetway J7F2WE1G5D-OC-PB
Saturday, November 24th, 20076 Months ago I bought a mini itx motherboard to replace my current ancient web server / firewall, I went for the Jetway J7F2WE1G5D-OC-PB as it was cheaper then the VIA ones & it also supports expansion via daughterboards, there’s a whole range to choose from, I went for the AD3RTLAN-G which gives you three additional gigabit interfaces which are based on the Realtek 8169 chipset. Sadly this chipset does have some limitations as mentioned in re(4) on OpenBSD
The RealTek 8169, 8169S and 8110S chips are only capable of transmitting
Jumbo frames up to 7440 bytes in size.
But I’m sure that should be good enough for a network of 1 user! =)
Hopefully within the next couple of weeks I well get OpenBSD 4.2 installed on this box & replace the current server, the only holdup for me atm is the builtin VIA Rhine-II interface doesn’t support adjustment of the mtu, which is going to cause some problems as I’m using pppoe(4) & don’t want use mssfixup in PF, using one of the gigabit interfaces instead would be a waste.
My new toy, Nokia 770
Thursday, July 19th, 2007I got myself a Nokia 770 after Richard pointed me in the direction of a etailer which had them in stock dirt cheap, I’ve been using the unit for the past 2 days & all I can say is the screen is amazing, the strength of the wifi areal is really really good, its a little slow loading apps but that’s not an issue for me, I’ve got all the essentials on there, openssh, rdesktop & vncviewer, mplayer & scummvm on there plus there’s a whole load more at maemo
The tiny screen which runs at 800×400 means you can use rdesktop & every single detail on your screen is readable, something which my Axim can’t do.
New Toy!! Workpad Z50
Tuesday, August 1st, 2006The postman delivered my Workpad Z50 today. Just gotta wait for a 1GB CF card to turn up now & then I can get cracking on with NetBSD.
Could have gone for a microdrive but the longer battery life is much more important.
Me & my Axim X50
Sunday, July 16th, 2006Well, it’s just a little over a year since I got my Axim X50 PDA & I have finally put it to good use. After a couple of plays with PocketMac Pro I purchased my license for Missing Sync from Mark/Space
Though PocketMac Pro had a couple of really usefull features which aren’t included in Missing Sync (extract .cab files from .exe’s & sync iTunes library), Life is so much better with Missing Sync. Missing Sync is soooooo much more stable for starters (I’m running a alpha version of Missing Sync aswell), it also allows doesn’t get confused if you factory reset your pda & try to re-sync it. I was never able to re-sync my pda with pocketmac if I let my battery run flat, I’d have to uninstall Pocketmac & re-install so that It’d give me the option to scan for a device & install its sync components onto the device.
Another problem with PocketMac was that it was extremely unstable when used with wifi & bluetooth usually causing the system to panic!!
I have also upgraded my Axim to Windows Mobile 5 which kinda makes PocketMac redundent as they still don’t support it!
Sun Blade 100 Compatible RAM
Wednesday, June 21st, 2006Im using 2 Dimms from Crucial the model number on the dimms is CT16M72S4D8E.9LTG
A good source of info for compatible dimms & other stuff about the workstation is the Unofficial Sun Blade 100 FAQ
New addition to the toy collection, Sun Blade 100 Workstation
Wednesday, June 21st, 2006Picked up a Sun Blade 100 at a bargain price just because the seller thought the unit was dead cause they didn’t plug a Sun keyboard into it!
After sticking 2x128MB ECC PC100 Dimms into it and powering up this came out of the console:
Sun Blade 100 (UltraSPARC-IIe), No Keyboard
OpenBoot 4.0, 256 MB memory installed, Serial #50638801.
Ethernet address 0:3:ba:5:a4:2, Host ID: 8305a402.
Awaiting A New Toy
Wednesday, June 15th, 2005I placed a order for a Axim X50 with Dell yesterday, fingers crossed, it’ll hopefully be here on tuesday ready to goto glastonbury with me!
More Toys, YAY!!!!
Thursday, May 26th, 2005Since I last posted I have bought myself a beautiful new 17″ PowerBook & a cool new iSight.
