Hi James :) James <[email protected]> [14-11-14 02:38]: > <meino.cramer <at> gmx.de> writes: > > > > http://www.acmesystems.it/arietta > > A very neat looking device for arm9. > > > I setup a sdcard as described there and the board boots -- > > as far as I can tell, since the user led on the board starts to > > play the heartbeat blues ;) > > > Now... > > > I cannot access the board. > > > It looks (quick scan of their site only) like the vendor is only supporting > their debian image. So I would work with that image to profile and gain > insight into what the kernel supports/needs and aget everything working > first with their debian image....
The first (and only) thing I wanted to do with the debian image was to check, whether the board is ok and running (no case of warranty). After that: GENTOO! :)) > > > As far as I understood the docs, the board uses ethernet over usb > > and I thought (read: dont know for sure), that gentoo should > > load the appropiate kernel modules itsself ... but it doesnt. > > Look carefully at the docs the vendor supplies. Reseach what is > typcially included with a generic arm9 processor and what features > they make available, to the pins on there board. There might me > a serial port console hardwared to a grooup of 2 or 3 pins. You might > have to "toggle" some of the debian software to activate the serial > console, as it is normal for embedded board vendors to support a lesser > number of pins on the circuit board to minmize the size, while claiming > a greater number of features that (possibly) exist in sofware. Often you > have to pay extra for keen features to be enable. In the meanwhile I found the IP Adress, the board is falling back to. I managed to setup RNDIS and Ethernet over USB and could ifconfig an new usb0 to an appropiate address. Finally I found the password for that board and could login via ssh. O happy day! (read: "Oh happy early night"...I started 3:00 o'clock this morning...hrrmppphhf) > Understand this about "ARM" processors. ARM ltd owns reference designs > and implementations. Different vendors either license and modify (customize) > the arm processor or license from another licensee a unique arm > implementation. So the Vendors 100% control the actual processor's features > and most use a matrix to figure out what and whom to make available to > it's customers. I. E. there is no such thing as a "Arm 9" processor > because there are thousands of variants. This is one the keenest reasons > for theirn(ARM Ltd) success as their licensees have a granularity of control > over their products that no other silicon (wholesaler) vendor allows, > except for expensive custom FPGA and ASIC based processors. > > So this also means that both the NSA and Other countries intelligence > services can have undocumented features (backdoors if you like) into > any hareware that you purchase; not limited to ARM. > > Your vendor holds the keys to what you seek. However, over time folks > discover things by "brute force experimentation" very simimlar to > software hacking...... WRT (& others) has many images that work on many > different arm processors, so that is also a good keyword to include in your > searches. ...will look for a stage 3 image/archive of gentoo for this little beast. Many distribution are too colorful ;) and to much "emulating ...hrrrmmmm.... known OSes" for me. I do like more these old school stuff...not so much OK/CANCEL decisions to confirm that I really want what I have confirmed, which is my will. Just:Do it! ... so in the worts case, my faults remain /my/ faults ;) Ok, I could log into the board in the meanwhile and it seems to work. Mission accomplished. Next will be to setup GENTOO for that board. By the way: It is really fascinating...when UNIX recognized the electrical light of the world, computers had a printer and a keyboard and were of the size of a greater room. And one could count the CPU cycles in realtime. PDP10/PDP11 and friends... Now...I login into a board of 5cm x 2.5cm size and I am nearly sure that it will be possible to run SIMH on it to emulate a PDP11/PDP10 and start one of the old UNIX system tapes... and with a little luck with 100% of the original speed. > If you are stuck on running gentoo on an arm 9, find a reference > implementation for embedded gentoo on an arm-9 and start there. If > that does not exist, start with the debian embedded linux the vendor > offers. Arm 9 emulator on your workstation might also help decyphering > and debugging codes and hardware in the arm 9 family. ...ARM9 emulator...nice idea. Does such thing exists for Linux? > > Good hunting! ...thanks! Your good wish has already worked! I got access to the board 8) > James Best regards, Meino
