After a gap of over three months, there seems to be some activity with the APC kernel and uboot source on GitHub.. https://github.com/apc-io/apc-8750 Changes were made on December 2nd, but would appear to have been in error, for some reason, and the latest ‘commit’ is marked ‘Revert’.. The kernel version seems to have been the same, but … Continue reading →
The availability of additional kernel code – and functionality – is good news, but the APC kernel version is still a relative antique.. 2.6.32.9 is over 2 years old, now, and the latest ‘mainstream’ Linux kernel is 3.5.4, and 3.6 will soon be released… Assuming the focus is still on Android, then an update to Android 4.1 … Continue reading →
After noting the success of the XBMC team in getting high-quality video playback on the Raspberry Pi, I tried to see what was currently possible with the latest version of the APC kernel.. Sadly, the XBMC player is only available for the proprietary Pi Broadcom chipset.. I did try installing the binary-only Android APC player, but it … Continue reading →
Now that Fedora 13 and the APC kernel provide basic functionality, a brief summary of where you can get the ‘bits’… Assumptions: You will need to be reasonably adept at the following: 1. Cross-compiling and patching a Linux / ARM kernel, from source obtained from GitHub. 2. Formatting and partitioning an SD-card (FAT and EXT3..) 3. Installing … Continue reading →
After compiling the latest release of the APC-8750 kernel source code, I am pleased to find that video/HDMI output to an hdmi-attached monitor now works! So… I now have XFCE Desktop running on the APC under Fedora 13, and Kernel 2.6.32.9-apc.. A bit old, but – it works! … Continue reading →
The ‘default’ Fedora 13 system for ARM mounts the root as nfs.. To change it to the (correct) ext3, modify /etc/fstab as follows: # cat /etc/fstab /dev/mmcblk0p2 / ext3 defaults 1 1 /dev/mmcblk0p1 /boot vfat defaults 1 0 devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0 tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 sysfs … Continue reading →
For Fedora 13 on the APC, the console on the usb/uart connection will ‘vanish’ on boot, after ………. Starting sshd: [ OK ] To get it back, and allow login as root, add the following to /etc/securetty: ttyS0 and modify /etc/sysconfig/init: from ACTIVE_CONSOLES=/dev/tty[1-6] to ACTIVE_CONSOLES=”/dev/tty[1-6] dev/ttyS0″ To stop the (re)login prompt from appearing over the console boot … Continue reading →
In a vain attempt to get the APC’s antique kernel to – at least – work with Fedora 14, I had been applying the series of ‘incremental’ 2.6.32.x patches available – amongst other places – at http://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/incr/ The kernel.org ftp site didn’t seem to have the full set.. This brought me as far as 2.6.32.27, which still … Continue reading →
In the hope of getting a newer version of Fedora Linux running, I have ‘updated’ the 2.6.32.9 APC kernel to 2.6.32.27.. This was achieved by the labour-intensive method of applying all the incremental kernel patches in sequence, and manually fixing any code that ‘failed’ the patch… So.. I am now running Fedora 13 with kernel 2.6.32.27 on … Continue reading →
As the currently-available source for the APC kernel does not include the necessary drivers for video output to a monitor (amongst other things..) but does include network drivers (Via Velocity..) it seemed logical that I could adopt the same approach to a graphical interface that I use for the Dreamplug (which is a real ‘headless’ device!). So.. … Continue reading →