View source for User:Phlash

== About me ==

Hey,

I'm an old skool coder (anyone remember BT [http://www.wireplay.co.uk Wireplay]?) who is seriously miffed that all my previous mobile phones have never quite done what I want, have never quite had the right (cf: up to date) software standards that let me develop fun apps and I couldn't do anything about it except spend more cash. Not any more.. mwahaha...

Looking forward to getting a Sat nav, VoIP handset, gaming platform and GSM communication tool in one cool little package :)

[http://ashbysoft.com/phil.html Phil].


== Neo notes ==

'''07-Aug-2007'''

I finally got my grubby mitts on a Neo1973 today - w00t!

*0 - turn it on - yay it boots, loads a kernel and stops as expected :)
*1 - flashing the right rootfs / kernel - used 26th July files from chooseopen.com, held breath and cut/pasted dfu-util commands, then rebooted... it's ok!
*3 - insert sacrificial SIM (UK T-Mobile) and SD card 
*2 - Test hardware:
**2.1 - well the CPU and display are ok, as are the Flash and RAM it seems
**2.2 - Copy mp3 file onto media card (using scp), play back with madplay - audio and SD card interface ok
**2.3 - Fire up libgsm-tool -m shell, attempt to power up GSM and register SIM - failed :(
**2.4 - Remove SD card, reseat SIM and try again - ok
**2.5 - Call mobile number - enjoy moment of nostalgia as RING appears :)
**2.6 - Answer call, no audio but that's expected - GSM chip ok
**2.7 - Just for fun call another mobile - also connected ok
**2.8 - Check time, 02:04hrs go to bed happy!

NB: Must test GPS if possible (looks tricky ATM)

'''08-Aug-2007'''

Take new toy to office (BT Labs, UK) and show off :)

'''09-Aug-2007'''

Try to join mailing lists - not working it seems, go to IRC channel instead.

'''12-Aug-2007'''

Managed to join the appropriate mailing lists (thanks to whoever resurrected mailman)

Have now discovered just how long the Neo currently lasts without a USB umbilical attached - about 2-3 hours.

Much poking about on the Wiki to see where I could help with the power management, and playing with the power monitoring script available there.

Discovered I can change the backlight level by writing appropriate numbers to the /sys control file - handy when it gets dark and I don't want my eyes fried!

Neo now permanently attached to my PC, since the kids use the PC a fair amount during the day while I am at work, thus keeping my Neo alive :)

'''21-Aug-2007'''

Thanks to the mailing lists, it seems OM 2007.2 has better power management, so that's going on the phone tonight..

'''26-Aug-2007'''

Cool! I put OM 2007.2 build 20070825 on this morning (following the instructions here [[Phase_1_Software_Testing]]), and I have a working GSM phone :) I've made a call both ways, incoming seems to work until you hang up at the remote end, after which the phone and / or gsmd doesn't recognise the RING signal. There does seem to be some interference from the GSM radio audible in the handset, perhaps I have a poor signal here and the radio needs more power than other people?

Power management still not done it seems: I had OM 2007.2 20070818 on the phone for a couple of days, and tested leaving the phone running overnight with 'Full PM' enabled - by morning it was flat (about 8 hours).

Jobs for the bank holiday: getting a development environment set up so I can actually have a go at building my own binaries... bye bye disk space!

'''29-Aug-2007'''

More good news: OM 2007.2 build 20070825 seems to have sorted out the power management problem: leaving the phone 'on' with Full PM enabled overnight and it had 80% charge left the following morning :) I've noticed that on resuming from suspend mode, the system clock isn't updated from the hardware clock... I brought the phone into work again yesterday, but the GSM failed to work for me at lunchtime, and I was unable to get any logs without attaching to a USB host.

Setting up the development environment is not so good: The instructions are fine (I'm using [[MokoMakefile]]), however the sheer size of the task seems too much for my single core 2.4GHz P4 :(

After downloading for a couple of hours it started building the toolchain (gcc-cross, qemu, etc.) which seems to have gone ok, then after several more hours at 100% CPU it was part way though the glibc build and overheating regularly (my CPU heat sink was full of fluff - it's better now I vacuumed it out!), a rough calculation based on task number (254 of 3362) tells me that it was 7.5% through the build after ~6 hours, so I estimated it would take another 3-4 days to finish. I hit Ctrl-C and let the kids play some games for the rest of the weekend.

According to the [[Building_OpenMoko_from_scratch#Building|Official instructions]] it should take ~7 hours on a 3.2 GHz Athlon 64, hmmn.

I wonder if there isn't a quicker way to bootstrap the build system? Perhaps downloading someone else's $OMDIR/build tree and updating the .conf file(s)?? I'm not familiar with OE / bitbake (yet!) - time for a question on the development list methinks...

'''1-Sep-2007'''

Nearly there with my first build - it failed around task 3100 with a compile fault in a library so I decided to try updating and rebuilding... this looks better as it started with task 2911 of 3329, rebuilding the gcc-cross compiler. I wonder though if it now needs to recompile everything as the compiler has been changed. Time to leave my PC on for another night!