[E3-hacking] Re: I am trying to uncompress the Amstrad E3 cramfs file system

[David Given]

I do actually have the opportunity to pick up an E3. I deeply regret
getting rid of my old ones (I had all the models!) and am wondering whether
to get it... except I don't know whether it has PBL 5.1 on it. I do know
more about soldering now and *should* be able to get work around that ---
didn't someone find a JTAG port? --- but, hmm... is there any way to know
ahead of time whether it's a PBL 5.1 device? It's NOS in-the-box.

They're *so* iconic I feel like I should get it even if it's just for a
display piece...

On Sun, 24 Dec 2023 at 16:44, Tina Poole  wrote:

> Maybe my backup of the E3's nand is corrupt, I have had it a long time,
> has anyone got a copy on the E3's nand at all?
> All files are there in both file systems, but some files are missing data,
> so if you look at say busybox, it only has part of its data, the file is
> the right size, but the rest of the file is 0s so is empty... weird.
> I feel so close yet so far... 🙁
> The E3 I copied from has the Linux shell on it now so can not copy from it
> again(I wish I didn't do that now, now I know more about Linux, I didn't
> before), I do have another Amstrad E3 but it has PBL 5.1 on it, I do not
> use it because it activated, I would like to find a way of hacking that PBL
> 5.1, just do not know where to start, it has its config file on it too,
> that why I never use it, I do have E1 and E2 Plus too, they are activated
> too, the E2 has the configuration change in it, the confg change it just
> the `gamma_e_live.config file telling it to stay activated, I do not see
> why they wouldn't all use the same file just with alpha, gamma, delta name
> on the file, all emailers work the same.
> My idea is to rebuilt the E3 firmware in the Linux Shell, the menu
> system(the main software) runs from a elf binary file`stnc_sys_boot.elf`,
> so the E3 works like a Mini Console does, it's the same idea.
> I added a picture of the Amstrad E3 cramfs file system in this post about
> it, all stuff I find out I add to this website, all in one place... 🙂
> https://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net/thread/15/amstrad-iler-mailer
> --
> *From:* David Given 
> *Sent:* 24 December 2023 12:05
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software <
> e3-hacking@earth.li>
> *Subject:* [E3-hacking] Re: I am trying to uncompress the Amstrad E3
> cramfs file system
>
> Now, here's a thing I haven't heard for a long time! I wish I hadn't
> gotten rid of my E3s...
>
> I haven't touched flash with OOB directly, but it's possible that some
> sectors have been marked as unused by data in the OOB itself. e.g. to mark
> bad sectors in the flash. So you may need to be able to parse this data in
> order to determine whether the sector is really in use or you could be
> seeing a corrupt version of the data. Even if the sector is valid, there
> could also be error-correcting data in the OOB which needs processing in
> order to recover the correct version of the sector, otherwise there could
> be bit flips.
>
> I have a faint memory that there's a MTD flash emulator for Linux which
> does this for you, but I've never used it.
>
> On Sun, 24 Dec 2023 at 11:17, Tina Poole  wrote:
>
> I managed to uncompress its cramfs file system partly, so some of the
> files are missing data so are all 0s and some files are OK, am I missing
> something, can't work out why, can anyone here help me, that's if anyone's
> around?
>
> This is how I did it:
> About the cramfs and how to get it off the NAND Dump
>
> The OOB is 16 bytes after every block of 512 bytes. So for every 528 bytes
> you need to remove the last 16 bytes. In the E3-hacking email thread
> there's they Python script, that does it but also a simple command-line
> perl program that does it as well but modifies the existing file so you
> better copy it first:
> # cp e3-nand-backup.4 e3-nand-stripped.4
>
> LC_ALL=C perl -i -0777pe 's/(.{512})(.{16})/$1/gs' e3-nand-stripped.4
>
> So then e3-nand-stripped.4 is the copy of the nand part where the cramfs
> filesystems are without the OOB bytes.
>
> Now, to extract the actual cramfs parts you need to find where they are.
> From the E3-hacking email thread we know that each section in the nand
> starts with Q;Q; and also that the filesystem sections also have the word
> LNXFSYS. So it is easy to search for in hexedit. The first one you will
> find is at 0x1E4000:
> 001E4000   51 3B 51 3B  00 00 DB 2E  00 D1 1D 00  01 00 01 00  00 00 02 00
>  4C 4E 58 46  53 59 53 00  00 00 00 00  Q;Q;LNXFSYS.
> 001E4020   00 00 00 00  40 28 23 29  69 6E 69 74  72 64 2E 63  

[E3-hacking] Re: I am trying to uncompress the Amstrad E3 cramfs file system

[David Given]

Now, here's a thing I haven't heard for a long time! I wish I hadn't gotten
rid of my E3s...

I haven't touched flash with OOB directly, but it's possible that some
sectors have been marked as unused by data in the OOB itself. e.g. to mark
bad sectors in the flash. So you may need to be able to parse this data in
order to determine whether the sector is really in use or you could be
seeing a corrupt version of the data. Even if the sector is valid, there
could also be error-correcting data in the OOB which needs processing in
order to recover the correct version of the sector, otherwise there could
be bit flips.

I have a faint memory that there's a MTD flash emulator for Linux which
does this for you, but I've never used it.

On Sun, 24 Dec 2023 at 11:17, Tina Poole  wrote:

> I managed to uncompress its cramfs file system partly, so some of the
> files are missing data so are all 0s and some files are OK, am I missing
> something, can't work out why, can anyone here help me, that's if anyone's
> around?
>
> This is how I did it:
> About the cramfs and how to get it off the NAND Dump
>
> The OOB is 16 bytes after every block of 512 bytes. So for every 528 bytes
> you need to remove the last 16 bytes. In the E3-hacking email thread
> there's they Python script, that does it but also a simple command-line
> perl program that does it as well but modifies the existing file so you
> better copy it first:
> # cp e3-nand-backup.4 e3-nand-stripped.4
>
> LC_ALL=C perl -i -0777pe 's/(.{512})(.{16})/$1/gs' e3-nand-stripped.4
>
> So then e3-nand-stripped.4 is the copy of the nand part where the cramfs
> filesystems are without the OOB bytes.
>
> Now, to extract the actual cramfs parts you need to find where they are.
> From the E3-hacking email thread we know that each section in the nand
> starts with Q;Q; and also that the filesystem sections also have the word
> LNXFSYS. So it is easy to search for in hexedit. The first one you will
> find is at 0x1E4000:
> 001E4000   51 3B 51 3B  00 00 DB 2E  00 D1 1D 00  01 00 01 00  00 00 02 00
>  4C 4E 58 46  53 59 53 00  00 00 00 00  Q;Q;LNXFSYS.
> 001E4020   00 00 00 00  40 28 23 29  69 6E 69 74  72 64 2E 63  72 61 6D 20
>  41 4D 53 3A  30 30 30 31  00 00 00 00  @(#)initrd.cram AMS:0001
> 001E4040   00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00
>  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  
> 001E4060   00 00 00 00  F8 00 10 11  13 B5 13 B5  00 00 10 11  00 00 00 00
>  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  FF FF FF FF  
> 001E4080   FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF
>  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  
> 001E40A0   FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF
>  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  
> 001E40C0   FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF
>  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  
> 001E40E0   FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF  FF FF FF FF
>  FF FF FF FF  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  
> 001E4100   45 3D CD 28  00 00 01 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  43 6F 6D 70
>  72 65 73 73  65 64 20 52  4F 4D 46 53  E=.(Compressed ROMFS
> 001E4120   DC 49 D9 64  DE 0D 9A 00  68 8D F8 40  CF 52 8B 66  43 6F 6D 70
>  72 65 73 73  65 64 00 00  00 00 00 00  .I.dh..@.R.fCompressed..
>
> If you look more closely you see 0x1E4000-0x1E40FF is probably the header
> for this section with some info probably for the nand driver that Amstrad
> used? But as it is publicly information that a CRAMFS filesystem starts
> with a signature of 45 3D CD 28 it's easy to figure out where the acutal
> CRAMFS data starts (0x1E4100).
> Acording to how a CRAMFS system header is put together (
> https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/filesystems/cramfs.txt) there
> some more info to be had:
> 00 ulelong0x28cd3d45   CRAMFS signature
> 04  ulelong0x0001   size = 65535
> 08  ulelong0x   flags
> 12  ulelong0x   future 0x%x
> 16  string Compressed ROMFS signature
> 32  ulelong0x64D949DC   checksum
> 36  ulelong0x009A0DDE   edition
> 40  ulelong0x40F88D68   #of blocks = **1090030952** (!)
> 44  ulelong0x668B52CF   #of files = **1720406735** (!)
> 48  string Compressed   name
>
> But you already see something is off because the #blocks would be
> 0x40F88D68 and the number of files 0x668B52CF. Which is much too many, So
> this is already an indication that there is something odd.
>
> The next Q;Q; block starts at 0x464000 (this is the other CRAMFS
> filesystem, there are 2 cramfs) so the maximum length that the first CRAMFS
> data could be is  0x464000 - 0x1E4100 = 0x26FF00 = 2555648. This is a lot
> larger than the size in the header (65535) so also a bit fishy. They
> prob

Re: [E3-hacking] Anyone know the Pinout of the Amstrad E3 Videophone Mailboard

[David Given]

Huh, it is actually PS/2. I didn't know that.

https://github.com/octronic-uk/amstrad-mailboard


On Mon, 19 Aug 2019 at 17:26, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> Hi Long time no speak… 😊 Anyone know the pinout ,I want to connect it to
> a PS/2 connector, The PS/2 connector has 6 pins when the Mailboard has 4
> pins…?
>
> Anyone..?
>
> Spanner..
>
> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net
>
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> e3-hacking@earth.li
> https://www.earth.li/mailman/listinfo/e3-hacking
>


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┌─── http://www.cowlark.com ───
│ "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my
│ telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out
│ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
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Re: [E3-hacking] Hello!

[David Given]

Some models can be reflashed with stock Linux using various poorly
documented and largely forgotten tools; the Linux distribution is here:
http://the.earth.li/pub/e3/ and there's some writeup on it here:
https://www.earth.li/~noodles/hardware-e3.html

The downside is that that Linux distribution is actually built with
OpenEmbedded and won't run binaries built anywhere else, which is
irritating. I have successfully run Debian on an E3 via a USB hub with a
hard drive attached by simply cross-installing the userland from a PC and
then configuring u-boot on the emailer to boot from it. However the
emailer's only got 32MB of RAM so whatever you do it's going to have to be
very lightweight. Finding a sufficiently old userland might be hard, too
--- it'll need to work with a 2.6.19 kernel.

Also, Amstrad eventually locked down the bootloader and later versions
can't be flashed. If you have one of those, you may be out of luck.

You'll also need to build a serial cable. The signals are TTL 5V, except
*inverted*, so 0V = logic 1 and 5V = logic 0 (it's intended to be passed
directly to a level shifter).

The best thing you can probably do with one of these is to use it as a dumb
terminal --- USB ethernet devices work just fine with the OpenEmbedded
distribution, so you may be able to telnet into (or out of) it. The phone's
supported as an ordinary modem but I don't think I ever got it to work.

I'd suggest building the cable, trying to install the OpenEmbedded
distribution above, and seeing what happens. It's not like you can make it
less useful...

On Sun, 21 Jul 2019 at 11:28, Adam Ainsworth 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Came across this list while looking for hacking info on the Emailer. It's
> a bit out of my usual area of interest, normally I'm playing with 8-bit
> computers and old PC-alikes.
>
> I got an Emailer Plus in new condition about a while back, but forgot
> about it until recently when I picked up a Pocket Dockit to go with it. I
> just fired it up to see what it could do, and that turned out to
> be...nothing! I watched the Chinnyvision video on it, and he came to the
> same conclusion.
>
>  https://youtu.be/aY6R72nWJsU
>
> I did find a couple of articles, although one (where the author appeared
> to have Linux running on it) is presumably by someone on this list, given
> the URL. There was also mention of hooking up a Raspberry Pi to it. I'm
> also wondering if a wifi modem would do the trick, although presumably we'd
> need to know how the server software worked if it did connect.
>
> Without me going through all of the list archives, can someone just give
> me a quick update on the current status of hacking it? Has someone found a
> way in, or have I wasted £12 or so on the hardware?
>
> Thanks very much!
>
> Adam
>
> 
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>


-- 
┌─── http://www.cowlark.com ───
│ "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my
│ telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out
│ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
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Re: [E3-hacking] E3's Internal Storage

[David Given]

The internal storage should be visible via the /dev/mtd devices --- it's
raw flash rather than a normal block device, and you'll need flash-specific
tools or a flash-specific filesystem like JFFS. However, AFAIK the stock
firmware's filesystem is custom and hasn't been reverse engineered yet. (No
effort was put into this back in the day because we didn't want to get
Amstrad angry. They were selling E3s under cost, after all.)

Re ethernet: have you tried manually configuring an IP address with
ifconfig? And it's worth looking to see if a copy of dhcpd is on the
filesystem somewhere.

Never tried a serial adapter.

On Wed, 29 May 2019 at 09:45, ZudoBug2 .  wrote:

> Hi,
> I have an E3 that's still in its factory state (PBL V4.9 and never
> registered with Amstrad). It can boot into BusyBox Linux as per the
> instructions at https://wiki.earth.li/E3_Getting_Started
>
> Is it possible to access the E3's internal storage from the BusyBox
> command line?
> I am curious to read some of the config files etc.
>
>
> As an aside, I noticed that the E3's OS includes a driver for my "Pegasus
> II" USB Ethernet adapter, so I tried connecting this before power-up. The
> E3 doesn't obtain an IP address automatically via DHCP, but I wonder if it
> assigns a fixed IP that might permit access, for example via SSH?
>
> There also seems to be a driver for a Belkin USB serial adapter (but I
> don't have one to test it with). Anyone tried connecting one of these?
>
> Thanks,
> Jamie.
>
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>


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┌─── http://www.cowlark.com ───
│ "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my
│ telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out
│ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
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Re: [E3-hacking] The Pocket Dock IT..How does it work..??

[David Given]

It'll be some generic microcontroller inside the blob --- there'll be no
way to find out what without decapping it, etching with acid, and hoping
that the designer left a model number on the silicon!

On Mon, 29 Apr 2019 at 22:51, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net/thread/18/pocket-dock-work
>
> There is a picture of the insides of the Pocket Dock IT its board on
> there,Can’t post it on the Mailing List.
>
> Spanner..
>
> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net
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>


-- 
┌─── http://www.cowlark.com ───
│ "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my
│ telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out
│ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
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Re: [E3-hacking] E1

[David Given]

The Pocket Dockit interface is just a TTL serial connection attached to (I
think) the other UART on the processor, although I've no idea whether it's
inverted or not. It's probably really easy to reverse engineer and spoof,
with some basic electronics skills and a logic analyser. I know if anyone's
investigated it.

It'd theoretically be possible to exploit bugs in the emailer software, if
there are any, to break into the stock firmware that way even on a PBL 5.1
system. That'd be a *hellish* amount of work, though.

On Mon, 29 Apr 2019 at 02:02, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> I noticed you were talking about the E1 and the Pocket Dock IT, How far
> did your investigations get with the E1..?
>
> Does anyone know how the Pocket Dock IT works and the slot it connects to
> on the E-mailer(E1/2/3) I ask this because you can use the Pocket Dock IT
> to copy the Configuration Change Set Up from one E-mailer to another
> E-mailer but has to be the same model and activated. I was wondering how it
> copies the setup over to the Pocket Dock IT and back, if we could interface
> with the dock or Pocket Dock IT we could maybe save the setup from the
> E-mailer or Pocket Dock IT to the PC.
>
> If the batteries in the Pocket Dock IT run out, the setup from the
> E-mailer gets deleted.
>
> Just a idea..??
>
> Spanner..
>
> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net/thread/6/e1
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-- 
┌─── http://www.cowlark.com ───
│ "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my
│ telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out
│ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
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Re: [E3-hacking] How about the E3 screen as a Picture Frame..?

[David Given]

As said before, drawing a picture on the screen with the ams-delta Linux
distribution is as simple as copying a file from the USB stick to
/dev/fb0...

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
cat /mnt/image.dat > /dev/fb0

You'll need to get the image into the right format, and the E3 screen
format is kinda weird, so you'll need to experiment with tools to figure
out how to do this (and it may need some custom programming), but it
shouldn't be difficult. IIRC it's 12-bit RGB. Once that's done writing a
little shell script which displays an image carousel which runs on the E3
is trivial.

On Sat, 27 Apr 2019 at 22:14, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> So you can show pictures and video on the screen, there is info here about
> it here on how to do it on a laptop..
> http://www.amusings.com/linux-powered-digital-picture-frame/  There is
> nothing on how to do it on a E3, well there wouldn’t be, if anyone can give
> me some points on how to do this,but I don’t want to take the E3 a part
> just add the software to make it act like a Digital Picture Frame.
>
> One way of recycling it..😠
>
> Oh.. I am at the moment making one of the adverts that were on the E3,I am
> rebuilding the AOL advert, its the one in red and white and say AOL.. One
> Month Free, because I found it but its too small. I going to make more..😊
> It funny it say on the advert in small writing that a PC in required… lol
>
> Spanner..
>
> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net
>
> *From:* Nick Griffin 
> *Sent:* ‎Friday‎, ‎26‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎22‎:‎23
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> >So, does that mean you have two now?
>
> Yes I have 2 E3 now.. lol
>
> >What do you mean by "reset"?
>
> I mean if you hold Down Delete, Stop and Handfree when you boot up the E3
> it puts in back to factory defaults where you have to register it and says”
> Press the [Email] button to get connected”
>
> >Please remind me what this "trick" is?
>
> With the Main Software V2 if its deactivated you could lift hand set and
> press and hold email down until it says aborting email please wait.. and it
> would activate the phone, it don’t work on V4.
>
> >I disagree - a comparison (especially of the boot loader, not necessarily
> the
> main software) could be instructive.
>
> I can copy the firmware if you want it and share it…?
>
> >You mean copying the firmware for interest's sake, or with the idea of
> copying
> from the E1/E2 to the E3?
> No copying the firmware from the E1/E2 to copy it back to a E1/E2 that's
> deactivated to activate them.
>
> >Why do you always write this at the end of your emails?
>
> Spanner is my name, My real name is Nick, I have not been called Nick for
> about 15 years. Last person to call me Nick was my mum, she died 15 years
> ago in 2004. I go by Spanner or Span now… 😊
>
> Its a nickname I got at school, my partner started calling me it because I
> am good at working things out or fixing things then I started to use it as
> a username online.
>
> Spanner..
>
> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net
>
> *From:* Antony Stone 
> *Sent:* ‎Friday‎, ‎26‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎21‎:‎31
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> On Friday 26 April 2019 at 22:01:29, Nick Griffin wrote:
>
> > Ok thanks,I got my new E3 today
>
> So, does that mean you have two now?
>
> > and the seller told me it was working and able to make a call on it
> before I
> > bought it and its unregistered so deactivated…
>
> Sounds good so far...
>
> > dam it.. ☹ ,he said to me he don’t understand how it was reset when it
> was
> > working…???
>
> What do you mean by "reset"?
>
> > Its Main Software is V4 so the dial for email trick don’t work.
>
> Please remind me what this "trick" is?
>
> > so no point in copying the firmware
>
> I disagree - a comparison (especially of the boot loader, not necessarily
> the
> main software) could be instructive.
>
> > but I am glad I have the clock back,
>
> Be thankful for small mercies :))
>
> > Has anyone have a idea of copying the firmware on the E1 or E2,
>
> You mean copying the firmware for interest's sake, or with the idea of
> copying
> from the E1/E2 to the E3?
>
> I really doubt that E1/E2 firmware would work on an E3.  Different CPUs,
> for a
> start.
>
> > I have a E1 that activated too now.. 😊I don’t know how the E1/E2
> E-mailers
> > OS work maybe someone can explain, well it not Linux like E3 so what
> does it
> > use..?
>
> Remember that there was a day when people wrote firmware for devices from
> scratch, without using an "operating system".  It's only since the days
> when
> embedded devices like wireless routers, telephones, televisions etc have
> had
> enough CPU and RAM to run Linux that this has been a simpler starting
> point.
>
> > Spanner..
>
> Why do you always write this at the end of your emails?
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Antony.
>
> --
> "If I've told you once, I've told you a million times - stop exaggerating!"
>
>Please reply to

Re: [E3-hacking] Config / content filesystem

[David Given]

The E3 is based on an ARM reference design, isn't it? What's the
feasibility of emulating one?

On Wed, 24 Apr 2019 at 11:46, Ralph Corderoy  wrote:

> Hi Nick,
>
> > > That should be possible as you have the files, now without their 16
> > > bytes per 512 bytes overhead.  You need to work out how many blocks
> > > to erase based on the size of each file you're trying to put back.
> > > IIRC I pointed out a block is the unit of erasure and it's 16 KiB.
> >
> > So e3-nand.0 is 3584 KB so how many blocks go into it…? so how many
> > times dose 16KB going in to 3584KB…?? I don’t know..?? I can’t divide.
> > Iam a bit ok on Add not brilliant at Times but can’t do Divide.
>
> Having stripped the excess OOB data, I have these sizes for each file in
> bytes.
>
>  3670016  e3-nand-backup.0
>   262144  e3-nand-backup.1
>   262144  e3-nand-backup.2
>   262144  e3-nand-backup.3
> 28311552  e3-nand-backup.4
>   786432  e3-nand-backup.5
>
> You're right, 3,670,016 B is 3,584 KiB because
> 3,670,016 / 1,024 = 3,584
> so 1,024 goes into 3,670,016 exactly 3,584 times.
>
> But the size of the erase block is 16 KiB which is
> 16 * 1,024 = 16,384
> so we want to know how many times 16,384 goes into 3,670,016.
> 3,670,016 / 16,384 = 224
> 224 is what you worked out in your other email.
>
> Taking those six sizes above and repeating the same sum gives
>
>  3,670,016 / 16,384 =   224
>262,144 / 16,384 =16
>262,144 / 16,384 =16
>262,144 / 16,384 =16
> 28,311,552 / 16,384 = 1,728
>786,432 / 16,384 =48
>
> Now I haven't been carefully following along how to extract
> e3-nand-backup.* in the first place, and how to write them back.
> I'm aware there's a script involved and a command where one of the
> parameters is the number of 16 KiB blocks to erase.  Hopefully, plugging
> in those numbers above for each of the matching areas will work, but
> it's your responsibility whether to go ahead as you're the one actually
> doing all this;  I've just been sitting at a keyboard.  :-)
>
> --
> Cheers, Ralph.
>
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Re: [E3-hacking] Config / content filesystem

[David Given]

You wouldn't run imagemagick on the E3 itself. (Apart from anything else
the E3 distribution is, IIRC, something based on OpenEmbedded/Angstrom and
is very hard to get software for?) You'd run it on a PC and use it to
convert files to put on a USB stick, and then use simple scripting on the
E3 to draw them on the screen.

That said, I remember the E3 framebuffer format to be pretty weird, so you
may be better off writing a program (on a PC) to do some kind of custom
conversion. fbset on the E3 should tell you the exact format.

On Sun, 21 Apr 2019 at 23:45, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> What the ams-delta mini distribution ..?
> Which one do I download… https://www.imagemagick.org/script/download.php and
> how do I install it on the E3..?
>
> Spanner..
>
> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net
>
> *From:* David Given 
> *Sent:* ‎Sunday‎, ‎21‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎19‎:‎41
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> If you just want to put images onto the screen, write a tiny script that
> copies files from the USB stick and cats them to /dev/fb0. Converting
> images to the right format's a little bit harder but I wouldn't be
> surprised if ImageMagick could do it out of the box. That'll run happily in
> the ams-delta mini distribution.
>
> Alternatively, you can boot an old Debian from a USB stick using that
> kernel --- although you'll need to hunt around to find a userland old
> enough; I think Debian woody works. That'll give you a (very slow)
> development system running on the E3 itself. Then you can write your own
> SDL programs to draw whatever you like, although I should warn you against
> extended typing on that keyboard unless you hate your fingers.
>
> On Sun, 21 Apr 2019 at 12:40, Nick Griffin  wrote:
>
>> I do wish I never flashed E3 Linux on it now,theres no point to it,you
>> can’t put anything on it or run anything on it cos its too old and E3 Linux
>> didn’t go anywhere, its just a command line version because the E3 is not
>> powerful to run proper Linux. I installed E3 Linux release v2 (E3 Linux
>> sound better that just Linux or release v2 this way you know what I am
>> taking about)from the.earth.li/pub/e3/
>> <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http://the.earth.li/pub/e3/&data=02%7c01%7c%7ca0b9c24dc4674add1b8b08d6c688ee6f%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636914688762358339&sdata=FOzBMM3LtY1wHF6x7%2BBQNWYAGuV5iYw7lbtnVBH6OTk%3D&reserved=0>
>> what are the rest of the stuff in there, can I update it to 2.6.19,its at
>> 2.6.16 that what release v2 is…?
>>
>> I would like to put a program on it so it shows images on it screen you
>> have to make it on it and it don’t even have make on it to make a program
>> so make need to be installed first.
>> If I can’t put the original firmware back or put a program on it so it
>> shows a animated gif then it useless and I will end up putting it in the
>> bin. I have about 8 gifs of its old adverts and want to show them on the
>> E3s screen, can anyone help me please. I am not used to installing programs
>> from source code, I am use to installing it from a repository.
>>
>> Oh and what happen to this…
>> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net/thread/7/support-status-update
>> <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net/thread/7/support-status-update&data=02%7c01%7c%7ca0b9c24dc4674add1b8b08d6c688ee6f%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636914688762378349&sdata=NXv3LlBFMP0bxp1Ool7i0X0cLJG6yYCDwj0OeESE7AI%3D&reserved=0>
>> why did the work on E3 Linux stop and only get to 2.6.19…?
>>
>> and very interested in this bit at the end.. “BTW, my 12-bit framebuffer
>> display support has been accepted and included in
>> mplayer svn revision 31139 on May 6th. Using it, I can enjoy a prescaled
>> 422x316 5fps MSMPEG-4 encoded live video stream playing fluently in
>> fullscreen mode on my E3 display.”
>>
>> Leave a reply in there and tell us what happened to E3 Linux 2.6.34..
>>
>> Spanner..
>>
>> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net
>> <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net&data=02%7c01%7c%7ca0b9c24dc4674add1b8b08d6c688ee6f%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636914688762388360&sdata=xExnrysiLE/Vq28Z5a67CWbOwNjerR5gqFXWbALCjIc%3D&reserved=0>
>>
>> *From:* Nick Griffin 
>> *Sent:* ‎Saturday‎, ‎20‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎22‎:‎25
>> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
>> 
>>
>> OK sorted it out now, (thanks to Ollie), will I be able to use these
>&g

Re: [E3-hacking] Config / content filesystem

[David Given]

If you just want to put images onto the screen, write a tiny script that
copies files from the USB stick and cats them to /dev/fb0. Converting
images to the right format's a little bit harder but I wouldn't be
surprised if ImageMagick could do it out of the box. That'll run happily in
the ams-delta mini distribution.

Alternatively, you can boot an old Debian from a USB stick using that
kernel --- although you'll need to hunt around to find a userland old
enough; I think Debian woody works. That'll give you a (very slow)
development system running on the E3 itself. Then you can write your own
SDL programs to draw whatever you like, although I should warn you against
extended typing on that keyboard unless you hate your fingers.

On Sun, 21 Apr 2019 at 12:40, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> I do wish I never flashed E3 Linux on it now,theres no point to it,you
> can’t put anything on it or run anything on it cos its too old and E3 Linux
> didn’t go anywhere, its just a command line version because the E3 is not
> powerful to run proper Linux. I installed E3 Linux release v2 (E3 Linux
> sound better that just Linux or release v2 this way you know what I am
> taking about)from the.earth.li/pub/e3/  what are the rest of the stuff in
> there, can I update it to 2.6.19,its at 2.6.16 that what release v2 is…?
>
> I would like to put a program on it so it shows images on it screen you
> have to make it on it and it don’t even have make on it to make a program
> so make need to be installed first.
> If I can’t put the original firmware back or put a program on it so it
> shows a animated gif then it useless and I will end up putting it in the
> bin. I have about 8 gifs of its old adverts and want to show them on the
> E3s screen, can anyone help me please. I am not used to installing programs
> from source code, I am use to installing it from a repository.
>
> Oh and what happen to this…
> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net/thread/7/support-status-update
> why did the work on E3 Linux stop and only get to 2.6.19…?
>
> and very interested in this bit at the end.. “BTW, my 12-bit framebuffer
> display support has been accepted and included in
> mplayer svn revision 31139 on May 6th. Using it, I can enjoy a prescaled
> 422x316 5fps MSMPEG-4 encoded live video stream playing fluently in
> fullscreen mode on my E3 display.”
>
> Leave a reply in there and tell us what happened to E3 Linux 2.6.34..
>
> Spanner..
>
> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net
>
> *From:* Nick Griffin 
> *Sent:* ‎Saturday‎, ‎20‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎22‎:‎25
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> OK sorted it out now, (thanks to Ollie), will I be able to use these
> files to put the Amstrad firmware back on the E3 at all..?
>
> question is here too
> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net/thread/9/config-content-filesystem?page=1&scrollTo=92
> 
>
> You don’t need to register to reply or leave a new thread there now.
>
> Spanner..
>
> http://amstrad-e3-hacking.freeforums.net
>
> *From:* Ralph Corderoy 
> *Sent:* ‎Saturday‎, ‎20‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎18‎:‎39
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> Hi Nick,
>
> > sudo nand-oob-strip.py e3-nand-backup.0 e3-nand.0: No such file or
> > directory
>
> Two things.  You probably don't need sudo as your ordinary user should
> be able to read e3-nand-backup.0 and write e3-nand.0.  You have to
> specify a path to the nand-oob-strip.py script for the shell to find it.
> Since it's in the current directory, that's just `.', i.e.
>
> ./nand-oob-strip.py in.0 out.0
>
> If that complains, then it's because ./nand-oob-strip.py lacks the
> `execute' permission for you.  Either add it with chmod(1), or run the
> Python interpreter directly:
>
> python3 nand-oob-strip.py in.0 out.0
>
> Alternatively, to modify the file in place, so ensure they're not your
> only copies, you can do
>
> LC_ALL=C perl -i -0777pe 's/(.{512})(.{16})/$1/gs' \
> e3-nand-backup.{0..5}
>
> which substitutes every 512 bytes followed by 16 bytes with just the
> 512.
>
> --
> Cheers, Ralph.
>
> ___
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Re: [E3-hacking] Trying to Flashing the backup of the Original Firmware Again

[David Given]

There'll be a way to extract the data from the flash backups you have,
which you can then write to the device in a way that knows about the bad
blocks. The ams_delta installer script will be doing exactly this. I can't
remember what any of the E3 partitions do any more but the big one will
most likely be a JFFS2 filesystem. Loopback mounting those JFFS2 images is
a pain because you need to use mtdram to fake a flash device.

If all else fails, you can always run ams_delta on it.

On Mon, 15 Apr 2019 at 23:34, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> It looks like when it backs up the NAND its copies the blocks that are bad
> too making the image bigger,  so if you try and restore the E3 back to the
> way it was, you can’t because the bad Blocks stop it from installing,  if
> you want to use Linux on the E3 use it from the Ramdisk in Release V2 here
> ,Just don’t run
> ams-delta-install then you will not lose the Amstrad E3 Original Firmware.
> Like I did and I am gutted. I have to now buy another one and its going to
> cost me £30 because they are not cheap because they are retro, well…😊How
> can it be retro when the service only was close 8 years ago. A Commodore 64
> or ZX Spectrum is retro..😊
>
> Spanner..
>
> *From:* Nick Griffin 
> *Sent:* ‎Monday‎, ‎15‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎17‎:‎11
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> Well it didn’t flash, and I think it didn’t erase too so my code is wrong
> I think… looks like it has bad blocks too and they and made the
> files bigger in size than the partition..???
>
>
>
> *This process will completely restore your E3's NAND. This will try and
> restore The Amstrad firmware on the device. Are you sure you wish to
> continue? [y/N]: y*
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *Starting restore.. This might take a while... Found e3-nand-backup.0
> Erasing /dev/mtd0 Erase Total 0 Units  done   Writing e3-nand-backup.0 to
> /dev/mtd0 Image 3784704 bytes, NAND page 512 bytes, OOB area 512 bytes,
> device size 3670016 bytes Input file does not fit into device: Success Data
> did not fit into device, due to bad blocks : Success Found e3-nand-backup.1
>   Erasing /dev/mtd1 Erase Total 0 Units  done   Writing e3-nand-backup.1 to
> /dev/mtd1 Image 270336 bytes, NAND page 512 bytes, OOB area 512 bytes,
> device size 262144 bytes Input file does not fit into device: Success Data
> did not fit into device, due to bad blocks : Success Found e3-nand-backup.3
>   Erasing /dev/mtd3 Erase Total 0 Units  done   Writing e3-nand-backup.3 to
> /dev/mtd3 Image 270336 bytes, NAND page 512 bytes, OOB area 512 bytes,
> device size 262144 bytes Input file does not fit into device: Success Data
> did not fit into device, due to bad blocks : Success Found e3-nand-backup.4
>   Erasing /dev/mtd4 Erase Total 0 Units  done   Writing e3-nand-backup.4 to
> /dev/mtd4 Image 29196288 bytes, NAND page 512 bytes, OOB area 512 bytes,
> device size 28311552 bytes Input file does not fit into device: Success
> Data did not fit into device, due to bad blocks : Success Finished
> restoring the Amstrad E3 Firmware, Type Reboot to see if the Amstrad E3
> splashcreen comes up*
>
> Spanner..
>
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│ telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out
│ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
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Re: [E3-hacking] Is it possible to install a Desktop Environment into E3 Linux

[David Given]

Android's also way too big! Even the earliest version (I have one on my
desk) needed 192MB. Current versions get a bit uncomfortable in 2048MB..

Linux is really too big for the E3; the OS, even the 10-year-old version
the E3 used, doesn't scale down well that far. Now, if you wanted to port
something like Minix to it...

On Mon, 15 Apr 2019 at 12:40, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> Thanks, do I download the latest version, its a shame this can’t run
> Android, Android uses Linux to run, well Android is Linux in a way, it come
> from it If Linux didn’t exist Android wouldn't.
>
> Spanner..
>
> *From:* Ralph Corderoy 
> *Sent:* ‎Monday‎, ‎15‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎10‎:‎04
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> Hi Nick,
>
> > Has anyone got any ideas on how to show a gif on the E3 screen..?
>
> If you have a working framebuffer then fbvis is a image viewer by
> Ali Gholami Rudi who no longer uses X11.  See his `FRAMEBUFFER' section.
>
> https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flitcave.rudi.ir%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7Cc23d3bd2aac54a03c6ed08d6c181602e%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C636909158734999545&sdata=R9NgcWO9AfU17MsJECM78S1jZbOirwzBTlgvtOxnrXQ%3D&reserved=0
>
> --
> Cheers, Ralph.
>
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│ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
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Re: [E3-hacking] Is it possible to install a Desktop Environment into E3 Linux

[David Given]

Not a chance, sorry! Just running X is a stretch. The E3 only has 32MB of
RAM; you're going to struggle to get *anything* graphical in that. I
believe that back in the day I managed to get something working with
Kdrive, but most likely you'll need something framebuffer or console based.

On Sun, 14 Apr 2019 at 22:06, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> I was thinking of the GNOME Desktop, It would need a light, or is it not
> possible because the E3 is not powerful enough..?
>
> Has anyone looked into this..?
>
> Spanner..
>
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┌─── http://www.cowlark.com ───
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│ telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out
│ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
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Re: [E3-hacking] Understanding the E3s Partitions

[David Given]

It's pretty hard to brick them --- PBL's in a different ROM chip to the
main flash (and I think you can't reflash it anyway?), so even if you've
trashed the main flash PBL runs. So, you should be able to connect pbltool
or pblq to it and read and reflash, even if it doesn't boot.


On Sat, 13 Apr 2019 at 21:47, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> Dam..Just tried to flash the E3 and now it don’t boot, ah well..☹
> With that's code and it starred coming up with “Flashing Data to NAND
> Flash without EEC in not recommended”
>
> On Putty it just comes up with this and that's it..
> “Amstrad Delta - PBL V4.9 Build:1311 Assert Debug ICE
> PBL 32MB NAND
>
> 0MB.-->MEMv01.00.002,CopyLim=0022h,CodeEnd=0140h-->PBL..1MB...2MB*”
> Dam have to buy another one now. Ah well if you don’t try you’ll never
> learn.. 😊
>
> Spanner..
>
> *From:* Nick Griffin 
> *Sent:* ‎Saturday‎, ‎13‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎16‎:‎46
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> root@amsdelta:~#  cat /proc/mtd
> dev:  size   erasesize  name
> mtd0: 0038 4000 "Kernel"
> mtd1: 0004 4000 "u-boot"
> mtd2: 0004 4000 "u-boot params"
> mtd3: 0004 4000 "Amstrad LDR"
> mtd4: 01b0 4000 "File system"
> mtd5: 000c 4000 "PBL reserved"
>  Just realised there are all the same Block size, look at the erasesize.
> “flash_erase /dev/mtd0 0 16” whats the 16 for at the end of the line, is
> it what block size to  erase, ( can’t work out what number to put
> there)could I just erase the whole partition(mtd0) with “flash_erase
> /dev/mtd0 0 0”..? I don’t want to made a mistake..??
>
> Spanner..
>
> *From:* Nick Griffin 
> *Sent:* ‎Saturday‎, ‎13‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎16‎:‎24
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> mtd0
> Block Size 16384,Page Size 512, 00B Size 16
> Dumping data starting at 0x and ending at 0x0038...*
> mtd1
> Block Size 16384,Page Size 512, 00B Size 16
> Dumping data starting at 0x and ending at 0x0004...*
> mtd2
> Block Size 16384,Page Size 512, 00B Size 16
> Dumping data starting at 0x and ending at 0x0004...
> mtd3
> Block Size 16384,Page Size 512, 00B Size 16
> Dumping data starting at 0x and ending at 0x0004...*
> mtd4
> Block Size 16384,Page Size 512, 00B Size 16
> Dumping data starting at 0x and ending at 0x01b0...*
> mtd5
> Block Size 16384,Page Size 512, 00B Size 16
> Dumping data starting at 0x and ending at 0x000c...
>
> Why are there saying all the same block size..?
>
> Only need to restore mtd0, mtd1, mtd3 and mtd4 so ones with a star(*)
> on.mtd2, mtd5 are not flashed over.
>
> Spanner..
>
> *From:* Nick Griffin 
> *Sent:* ‎Friday‎, ‎12‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎19‎:‎32
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> Just copy the Amstrad Firmware to USB and as well flash Linux on the E3 so
> now I have to find a way to flash it back.. 😊 wow its takes a long time to
> boot, it took about a hour to copy the Amstrad Firmware over to USB.Is each
> file a copy of the partition(mtd0,1,2,3,4,5,) only mtd0,1,3 and 4 get
> flashed with the new system, so if the backups are complete copies then
> they could be flash back the same way, maybe something like this, taking
> the code for mdt0..
>
> ”if [ -e /media/sda1/e3-nand-backup.0 ]; then
>  echo Found Amstrad kernel.
>  echo "  Erasing /dev/mtd0"
>  flash_eraseall /dev/mtd0
>  echo "  Writing Amstrad kernel to /dev/mtd0"
> nandwrite -on /dev/mtd0 /media/sda1/e3-nand-backup.0
> fi”
>
> Mtd0,2,3,4,5 Size 16384,Page Size 512, 00B Size 16
> only need to restore mtd0,1,3 and 4 so ones with a * on.
> mtd0: Dumping Data Starting at 0x and ending at 0x0030*
> mtd1: Dumping Data Starting at 0x and ending at 0x0004*
> mtd2: Dumping Data Starting at 0x and ending at 0x0004
> mtd3: Dumping Data Starting at 0x and ending at 0x0004*
> mtd4: Dumping Data Starting at 0x and ending at 0x01b0*
> mtd5: Dumping Data Starting at 0x and ending at 0x000c
> I don’t know how much of the Nand you would need to erase for each
> partition..?
> So lucky I recored the install..😊 I be uploading soon once I have edited
> it.
> This is just guess work don’t know if it would work, need someone who
> knows about the code. If I manage to flash the Amstrad Firmware back and it
> works then you be able to flash any E3 firmware this way so even with one
> with the config change on it.
>
> There is info here how to flash to mtd ..
> https://forum.doozan.com/read.php?3,16789,16800
> 

Re: [E3-hacking] NAND backup

[David Given]

Hmm, I thought that was documented on the 'getting started' wiki page ---
turns out it's not.

This is part of the turnkey Linux distribution for the E3. You can get it
here: http://the.earth.li/pub/e3/ Get the E3_release_v2.tar.gz file, and
follow the instructions in the README.

Really this should be front and centre when it comes to doing stuff with
the E3, but, well, this was all 14 years ago and the information's all
bitrotted (I'd certainly forgotten it ever existed until you prompted me).

On Mon, 8 Apr 2019 at 00:12, Nick Griffin  wrote:

>
> Whats the
> ams-delta-install script ..? And where can i get it from.never heard of
> it.remember i don't know about the flashing side to the emailer I am not
> aksing you to do anything i can do it just need to be pointed in the right
> direction. You can use a USB Stick to back it up...? Anyone have the
> script...?
>
>
>
> Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
>
>  Original message 
> From: Jonathan McDowell 
> Date: 07/04/2019 21:48 (GMT+00:00)
> To: Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software <
> e3-hacking@earth.li>
> Subject: Re: [E3-hacking] NAND backup
>
> On Sun, Apr 07, 2019 at 08:43:59PM +, Nick Griffin wrote:
> > Werid no one ever thought of backing up the firmware before putting
> > new firmware on it,what would happen if you didn’t work.
>
> Anyone who uses the ams-delta-install script will have a NAND backup -
> there are 6 partitions and it backed them all up to the install USB
> stick. Don't ask me what they were or if I happen to still have my
> copies though! I didn't spend a lot of time looking at the original
> Amstrad firmware, I was more focussed on getting a clean Linux install
> up and running.
>
> J.
>
> --
> Sleep?  Isn't that some inferior replacement for caffeine?
>
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Re: [E3-hacking] Fw: I found Cliff Lawson old website about Amstrad

[David Given]

readflash won't work. I'm not kidding about it being slow --- it's only a
few bytes per second. PBL doesn't have a command to read data, so what pblq
does is to tell it to checksum one byte at a time, and it figures out what
the byte is from that. It's strictly a hack.



On Sun, 7 Apr 2019 at 22:44, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> Werid no one ever thought of backing up the firmware before putting new
> firmware on it,what would happen if you didn’t work.
>
> You don’t have anything on the program you made pblq..?
>
> This is the bit I want to get working..
>
> “readflash   
>   Reads data from the NAND flash (very, very slowly)”
>
> What's the offset and length, I don’t know what that means..?
>
> Spanner..
>
> *From:* David Given 
> *Sent:* ‎Sunday‎, ‎7‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎17‎:‎37
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> I don't think I had anything written down --- this was all years ago,
> remember. I have managed to dig up this old Getting Started page, with
> instructions on reflashing the E3 with Linux:
> https://wiki.earth.li/E3_Getting_Started
> <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://wiki.earth.li/E3_Getting_Started&data=02%7c01%7c%7c0e1a78592f874400258108d6bb774552%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636902518268872757&sdata=jSA8dIr7CFXUXgZwB59gzrKtzW7KRwpMzxRnlplSnv0%3D&reserved=0>
>  Remember
> that we were all interested in running stock Linux on the machine rather
> than hacking the built-in firmware. Those instructions are all based around
> pbltool, which was the *other* tool for talking to PBL and which I'd
> completely forgotten about, but should work fine. Bear in mind that this
> will replace the stock firmware.
>
> Regarding forums... I've never met a forum yet which was as easy to use as
> email, let alone coming close to the convenience of getting messages
> delivered directly to my inbox. (If this had been a forum I would never
> have seen your posts!)
>
> Have you seen the mailing list archives at
> https://www.earth.li/pipermail/e3-hacking/
> <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://www.earth.li/pipermail/e3-hacking/&data=02%7c01%7c%7c0e1a78592f874400258108d6bb774552%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636902518268882768&sdata=qH/ycQtfYV6AwdUsRX94KqcBx3jpohM0Pscv9V5mZQg%3D&reserved=0>
> ?
>
> On Sun, 7 Apr 2019 at 17:15, Nick Griffin  wrote:
>
>> I need help with PBLQ I don’t understand its commands and options what am
>> I as pose to know how to use it, when there are no instructions on how to
>> use it, all it has is a read me,please can David Given help me because he
>> made it..?? or anyone who has used it…??
>> Like “ writeflash  ” I don’t understand what is offset
>> and length is ,is length the size of the NAND..
>> I am don’t know about pbl commands..??? Has anyone used this program
>> before,I just hope I am not talking to myself or I will go mad…lol
>>
>> ”live@commodoreos ~
>> READY.
>> pblq -h
>> pblq: Amstrad PBL boot load client v0.3.pre1.
>> (C) 2005 David Given.
>> Usage: pblq [] 
>> Options:
>>-h Displays this message
>>-v Switch on verbose mode (what that)
>>-r Reuse an already existing connection
>>-e  Set which emailer model to use (what Mode do not understand)
>>-p   Sets the serial port to use
>>-s   Sets the slow baud rate
>>-f   Sets the fast baud rate
>>-m   Sets the maximum packet size (0=ask PBL)
>> Commands:
>>ping   Pings the device, testing communication
>>term   Start simple serial terminal (is this like Putty, when I
>> reset the email there is no txt just binary.)
>>bless 
>>   Makes a PBL image bootable (does this copy PBL to your PC
>> as a bootable image or something)
>>execute 
>>   Executes an on-device program and enters the terminal (not
>> sure need more explaining)
>>checksum  
>>   Calculates the checksum of an area of memory ( not sure is
>> the binary code,so need the code for the area in the Memory so it can grab
>> it)
>>read   
>>   Reads data from RAM into the specified file ( Reads data
>> from the memory and copies into a file,so you can copy it back)
>>write  
>>   Writes data from the specified file into RAM ( same as
>> above but the opposite)
>>readflash   
>>   Reads data from the NAND flash (very, very slowly)( not
>> sure need help with offset and length do not understand)
>>  

Re: [E3-hacking] Fw: I found Cliff Lawson old website about Amstrad

[David Given]

I don't think I had anything written down --- this was all years ago,
remember. I have managed to dig up this old Getting Started page, with
instructions on reflashing the E3 with Linux:
https://wiki.earth.li/E3_Getting_Started Remember that we were all
interested in running stock Linux on the machine rather than hacking the
built-in firmware. Those instructions are all based around pbltool, which
was the *other* tool for talking to PBL and which I'd completely forgotten
about, but should work fine. Bear in mind that this will replace the stock
firmware.

Regarding forums... I've never met a forum yet which was as easy to use as
email, let alone coming close to the convenience of getting messages
delivered directly to my inbox. (If this had been a forum I would never
have seen your posts!)

Have you seen the mailing list archives at
https://www.earth.li/pipermail/e3-hacking/?

On Sun, 7 Apr 2019 at 17:15, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> I need help with PBLQ I don’t understand its commands and options what am
> I as pose to know how to use it, when there are no instructions on how to
> use it, all it has is a read me,please can David Given help me because he
> made it..?? or anyone who has used it…??
> Like “ writeflash  ” I don’t understand what is offset
> and length is ,is length the size of the NAND..
> I am don’t know about pbl commands..??? Has anyone used this program
> before,I just hope I am not talking to myself or I will go mad…lol
>
> ”live@commodoreos ~
> READY.
> pblq -h
> pblq: Amstrad PBL boot load client v0.3.pre1.
> (C) 2005 David Given.
> Usage: pblq [] 
> Options:
>-h Displays this message
>-v Switch on verbose mode (what that)
>-r Reuse an already existing connection
>-e  Set which emailer model to use (what Mode do not understand)
>-p   Sets the serial port to use
>-s   Sets the slow baud rate
>-f   Sets the fast baud rate
>-m   Sets the maximum packet size (0=ask PBL)
> Commands:
>ping   Pings the device, testing communication
>term   Start simple serial terminal (is this like Putty, when I
> reset the email there is no txt just binary.)
>bless 
>   Makes a PBL image bootable (does this copy PBL to your PC as
> a bootable image or something)
>execute 
>   Executes an on-device program and enters the terminal (not
> sure need more explaining)
>checksum  
>   Calculates the checksum of an area of memory ( not sure is
> the binary code,so need the code for the area in the Memory so it can grab
> it)
>read   
>   Reads data from RAM into the specified file ( Reads data
> from the memory and copies into a file,so you can copy it back)
>write  
>   Writes data from the specified file into RAM ( same as above
> but the opposite)
>readflash   
>   Reads data from the NAND flash (very, very slowly)( not sure
> need help with offset and length do not understand)
>writeflash  
>   Writes data into the NAND flash ( same as above but the
> opposite)
> Addresses should begin 0x if you want them in hex. ( hex ok  so starts
> with 0x so 0x1234567)
> WARNING. Use this program at your own risk. The author accepts no
> responsibility
> for any damage this program may do to your hardware. You have been
> warned!”
>
> This needs a manual on how to use it properly,some I understand not all. I
> have notice there is not a lot of info on flashing the emailer and its not
> explained well, its like you put it up to show you have hacked it, but how
> do you expected to do it yourself, I have looked there is nothing on how to
> read the NAND from the E3,please someone make a walkthrough or explain
> offset and length..?
>
> Not beaning funny but posting on here is hard, I have never used  email so
> much,well I don’t use email, I know people on here don’t like Facebook so
> what about a Forum so all info can be in one place not scattered over
> different websites, it very hard to look up any thing in the Mailing list
> Archive because it has no search options so you have to press on each
> thread one by one.
>
> Would you be happy If I make a forum for the Emailer, no point me making
> one if no one uses it..?? I am proberly 8 years to late…lol, I am good at
> making them, I make one for TheC64 Mini. http://thec64community.online
>
> I think I know why you made the E3 Hacking Mailing list because you could
> at the time look at it on the Emailer by redirecting the emails to your
> email addy on Amserve.… 😊 would of cost a bomb to look at it at the time
> at 20p a collection. I only connected email once a day when I was using
> it and that was about £6.20 a month so it cost abo

Re: [E3-hacking] About connecting to the serial on the E3

[David Given]

It belatedly occurs to me that inverted TTL serial probably looks just like
non-inverted TTL serial except the data will be garbled. So most likely you
have it hooked up to the right pins but you somehow need to invert the
signal.

I found an article, which shows almost exactly the same result that you
have: https://www.sparkfun.com/news/2461



On Fri, 5 Apr 2019 at 20:05, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> Its still getting garbled text with CP 2102. 15200 was a typo on here.. 😊
> in Putty its 115200.
> I thought I try my FTDI 232,its text is garbled too… it does it on both of
> them.??
> I am connecting it to pc then to FTDI232 or CP 2102 they connect to E3
> then running Putty on PC and unplugging the E3 to restart it and garbled
> text on Putty. I can’t see the boot log text is unreadable…?
>
> I have only one more thing I can try, I have a USB to RS232 Cable that's
> Prolific USB to Serial and see if that works.
>
> Spanner..
>
> *From:* David Given 
> *Sent:* ‎Thursday‎, ‎4‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎17‎:‎57
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> It's probably a typo, but just to check: you said 15200, but it should be
> 115200?
>
> On Thu, 4 Apr 2019, 18:52 Nick Griffin,  wrote:
>
>> Could it be that I might have the RX and TX round there wrong way..? red
>> is TX (Ring) so it connected to TX pin on CP 2102,White is RX (Tip) so it
>> connected to RX pin on CP 2102,black is Ground (Sleeve) connected to GND
>> pin on CP 2102..??
>>
>> Spanner..
>>
>> *From:* Nick Griffin 
>> *Sent:* ‎Thursday‎, ‎4‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎17‎:‎38
>> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
>> 
>>
>> This is my settings in putty, 15200, 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop bit.
>> And no flow control.
>> from https://wiki.earth.li/E3_Getting_Started
>> <https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://wiki.earth.li/E3_Getting_Started&data=02%7c01%7c%7cf0dec062bb9b4f39405408d6b91eacb8%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899938727285441&sdata=6mx9RKhkgvgpcoK8%2Bg%2BHvDpWdaW5jbBVujdVKbfL2Ao%3D&reserved=0>
>> website.
>>
>> Spanner..
>>
>> *From:* Antony Stone 
>> *Sent:* ‎Thursday‎, ‎4‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎16‎:‎51
>> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
>> 
>>
>> On Thursday 04 April 2019 at 17:47:21, Antony Stone wrote:
>>
>> > On Thursday 04 April 2019 at 17:44:13, Nick Griffin wrote:
>> > > I have connected the CP2102 and I am getting garbage text in Putty..
>> >
>> > That suggests the wrong baud rate to me.
>>
>>
>> https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridgewargames.org.uk%2Fmembers%2Fandy%2Femailer%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C1582cfe263ef4d5cdbde08d6b915666b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C636899898889909349&sdata=zjSspT0Ft5FobfMYnBdrxtc6MvEywB4MRky%2B6hHxkaY%3D&reserved=0
>> <https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http://www.cambridgewargames.org.uk/members/andy/emailer/&data=02%7c01%7c%7cf0dec062bb9b4f39405408d6b91eacb8%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899938727295446&sdata=er/vonGJwLudAOVY%2BLEH4%2BkvsIZ1HKDuvk97AHfTbEs%3D&reserved=0>
>> and
>>
>> https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.earth.li%2F~noodles%2Fhardware-e3.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7C1582cfe263ef4d5cdbde08d6b915666b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C636899898889919354&sdata=rOH%2Fb0v1uOAfmesV3LLdYH3lctIkFptlTV4wZlWHIWU%3D&reserved=0
>> <https://nam03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http://www.earth.li/~noodles/hardware-e3.html&data=02%7c01%7c%7cf0dec062bb9b4f39405408d6b91eacb8%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899938727305457&sdata=9LGKgveQXDSG5hLVHsdK3s1C9bbqDLH3GLgzW16oE80%3D&reserved=0>
>> say 115,200 8n1 no handshake.
>>
>>
>> Antony.
>>
>> > >
>> ▒y▒▒7▒w5'=▒▒▒_{g▒S{-'7▒▒}5w5;1▒myu▒▒▒e{▒c}cwV▒ii
>> > >  ▒V
>> > >
>> > >
>> W▒▒▒6▒g-%▒/▒y!75u#7▒/▒_{g▒▒gY
>> > > ▒▒
>> > >
>> ▒▒y▒▒/▒5%▒%!7'5▒'!=75▒▒gw[▒S{-'7▒▒}5▒e!7▒9=#▒▒!▒
>> > > ▒▒▒
>> > >
>> ▒▒▒eue▒3'=/_}[eY▒3'=/▒▒▒
>> > > ▒gw
>> [▒3'=/gmcUO▒3'=/▒Q▒+
>> > >
>> ▒▒'5▒9/59)-#1▒gw[▒S▒▒=▒▒▒='-5'!=7▒▒▒9/59)-#1▒gmc
>> > > UO
>> > >
>> ▒S▒▒=▒▒▒

Re: [E3-hacking] Can you use a USB Ethernet Dongle on the E3

[David Given]

I think I had USB ethernet working using the custom Linux kernel (I wasn't
interested in using the stock firmware). It's only USB 1, though, and I
have very faint memories of it not liking hubs very much?

BTW, Nick: I just discovered a bunch of your messages in the Gmail spam
folder. It looks like you're using live.com --- there shouldn't be a
problem there, surely? Maybe it doesn't like your custom font?

On Thu, 4 Apr 2019 at 13:11, Nick Griffin  wrote:

> Thanks, I guested that your would need your own firmware on the 
> Emailer..[image:
> 😊]
>
> Spanner..
>
> *From:* Sean Furey 
> *Sent:* ‎Thursday‎, ‎4‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎10‎:‎51
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> On Wed, Apr 03, 2019 at 09:26:04PM +, Nick Griffin wrote:
> > Looking at the mailing list there was someone from Amstrad called Cliff
> Lawson commenting,shame he's not here now.He could help unlocking the E3
> now ..
>
> Cliff mentioned using USB ethernet, but in the context of replacing the
> firmware with your own code.  I don't believe he ever suggested the amstrad
> firmware supported it.
>
> Sean
>
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│ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup
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Re: [E3-hacking] About connecting to the serial on the E3

[David Given]

It's probably a typo, but just to check: you said 15200, but it should be
115200?

On Thu, 4 Apr 2019, 18:52 Nick Griffin,  wrote:

> Could it be that I might have the RX and TX round there wrong way..? red
> is TX (Ring) so it connected to TX pin on CP 2102,White is RX (Tip) so it
> connected to RX pin on CP 2102,black is Ground (Sleeve) connected to GND
> pin on CP 2102..??
>
> Spanner..
>
> *From:* Nick Griffin 
> *Sent:* ‎Thursday‎, ‎4‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎17‎:‎38
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> This is my settings in putty, 15200, 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop bit.
> And no flow control.
> from https://wiki.earth.li/E3_Getting_Started
> 
> website.
>
> Spanner..
>
> *From:* Antony Stone 
> *Sent:* ‎Thursday‎, ‎4‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎16‎:‎51
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> On Thursday 04 April 2019 at 17:47:21, Antony Stone wrote:
>
> > On Thursday 04 April 2019 at 17:44:13, Nick Griffin wrote:
> > > I have connected the CP2102 and I am getting garbage text in Putty..
> >
> > That suggests the wrong baud rate to me.
>
>
> https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridgewargames.org.uk%2Fmembers%2Fandy%2Femailer%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C1582cfe263ef4d5cdbde08d6b915666b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C636899898889909349&sdata=zjSspT0Ft5FobfMYnBdrxtc6MvEywB4MRky%2B6hHxkaY%3D&reserved=0
> and
>
> https://eur01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http:%2F%2Fwww.earth.li%2F~noodles%2Fhardware-e3.html&data=02%7C01%7C%7C1582cfe263ef4d5cdbde08d6b915666b%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7C1%7C0%7C636899898889919354&sdata=rOH%2Fb0v1uOAfmesV3LLdYH3lctIkFptlTV4wZlWHIWU%3D&reserved=0
> say 115,200 8n1 no handshake.
>
>
> Antony.
>
> > >
> ▒y▒▒7▒w5'=▒▒▒_{g▒S{-'7▒▒}5w5;1▒myu▒▒▒e{▒c}cwV▒ii
> > >  ▒V
> > >
> > >
> W▒▒▒6▒g-%▒/▒y!75u#7▒/▒_{g▒▒gY
> > > ▒▒
> > >
> ▒▒y▒▒/▒5%▒%!7'5▒'!=75▒▒gw[▒S{-'7▒▒}5▒e!7▒9=#▒▒!▒
> > > ▒▒▒
> > >
> ▒▒▒eue▒3'=/_}[eY▒3'=/▒▒▒
> > > ▒gw
> [▒3'=/gmcUO▒3'=/▒Q▒+
> > >
> ▒▒'5▒9/59)-#1▒gw[▒S▒▒=▒▒▒='-5'!=7▒▒▒9/59)-#1▒gmc
> > > UO
> > >
> ▒S▒▒=▒▒▒='-5'!=7▒▒▒9/59)-#1▒eue▒S▒▒=▒▒▒='-5▒
> > > ▒▒▒
> > >
> '!=7▒▒▒s▒▒▒9/59)-#1▒_}[eY▒S▒▒=▒▒▒='-5'!=7▒▒뗿e!7'
> > > 5▒5
> > >
> 57=▒='-7▒▒▒gw[▒/-#)▒1'!;='▒#%;53!/5%▒-▒s!#7▒%!7▒▒gmcUO▒▒S▒▒▒=▒▒▒
> > > ▒▒▒
> > >
> ▒s!#7▒%!7▒▒_}[eY▒▒S▒▒▒=▒▒▒g-#▒9!%%=#7▒'-#▒!▒57-s!#7▒%!7▒
> > > ▒gm cUO▒▒S▒▒▒=▒▒▒U▒!#7▒▒▒g-#▒=▒=%▒▒}# *▒-#1▒g-#▒
> > >
> > >▒:▒▒
> > >
> > >
> ▒-#1▒/5▒)5'▒▒▒Vi▒▒5▒▒A%'▒▒▒=%▒75'=▒▒75▒▒'-#W-7▒;▒▒--!#▒=9/-#5
> > > ▒
> > >
> ▒}eY▒wugW}▒ae}_▒▒J!75%▒5#=;'5▒a#▒#!75▒▒▒!='=15!#5▒▒▒
> > > ▒▒▒ =15▒▒▒!#5▒▒▒=15▒▒▒!#5▒▒▒5▒9%3#▒▒-#-▒▒=9%3▒-#5▒▒9!#!'5▒
> > > ▒75▒737;▒▒=%A%%!7A;=5sss=%A%%!7A-
> > >
> > >  5▒▒sss▒%5%▒▒▒e▒=%A%!7A5
> > >
> > > ▒'!!dً▒▒{!1!em_Y▒▒YMIH▒h!#!'5▒▒9!'!7%%
> > >
> ▒9!#3-17▒▒V]▒[S[▒▒VM▒▒:▒▒-559▒▒-/▒#!▒5'▒!-!#▒5#=;'57▒
> > > ▒▒
> > >
> Q(▒▒▒뺿▒333;▒▒-▒▒-▒=▒ae}_▒U}[W▒▒▒Q(▒▒▒뺿▒5;-▒▒-▒=~Y%=Y
> > > ey▒
> > >
> ▒HIOT▒9▒▒[Wy▒!5▒5▒755957▒▒▒*u#=;'-#1▒[WyS:▒%5▒y'!9)▒w▒▒R▒JZ▒
> > > ▒▒▒ '!▒555▒▒;=9/▒▒▒ݵe▒▒7-#--='- 57▒[}e▒7-)▒!3▒i▒-
> > >
> > >5▒▒;'!9)-
> > >
> > > 5▒▒W▒u▒#▒s{▒▒9▒▒▒[-715[#▒▒m#9▒▒▒V Jj▒▒
>
> --
> Police have found a cartoonist dead in his house.  They say that details
> are
> currently sketchy.
>
>Please reply to the
> list;
>  please *don't* CC
> me.
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Re: [E3-hacking] About connecting to the serial on the E3

[David Given]

Yes, you're right, that's clearly nonsense.

Why would the E3 generate an inverted signal, anyway? If it's just the raw
output from the processor (which I think it is) then it should be standard
TTL levels, because it's supposed to be fed into something like a MAX232
for conversion to RS232 levels. Inverting it but leaving it at TTL seems
very odd.

On Thu, 4 Apr 2019, 14:25 Sean Furey, 
wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 04, 2019 at 12:18:56PM +0200, David Given wrote:
> > Provided the E3 and the USB device ran off isolated supplies, you might
> be
> > able to get away with connecting the 5V (or whatever) on the USB adapter
> to
> > the GND on the jack. That would cause the logic levels to be interpreted
> > inverted.
>
> I'd have thought that would make the USB dev see the E3's 0V - 5V as 5V -
> 10V, and the E3 to see the USB's 0V - 5V as -5V - 0V.  Which doesn't sound
> like it helps - am I missing something?
>
> Sean
>
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Re: [E3-hacking] About connecting to the serial on the E3

[David Given]

Provided the E3 and the USB device ran off isolated supplies, you might be
able to get away with connecting the 5V (or whatever) on the USB adapter to
the GND on the jack. That would cause the logic levels to be interpreted
inverted.

Note, this does not constitute advice, not responsible for any device
destruction caused by doing this, etc...

On Thu, 4 Apr 2019, 11:51 Sean Furey, 
wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 04, 2019 at 08:19:35AM +0100, Brian Walton wrote:
> > If the E3 has a TTL serial port as reported here then a USB to TTL serial
> > adapter should work fine.
>
> I seem to remember the logic levels used by the E3 to be the reverse of
> what is normally used for TTL serial, hence the need for an invertor.
> Don't know if the USB TTL serial devices support that variation.
>
> When I briefly was playing with this a long time ago I used:
>
> - USB to RS232
> - MAX (of some sort) to level shift to TTL
> - MAX (well same one, it had two sets of level shifters) to level shift
> back to RS232
> - E3
>
> From what I remember, the MAX was liberal enough on the RS232 rx side
> attached to the E3 tx line to cope with the non-RS232 levels.  As for the
> E3 rx line, I presume it coped ok, but in hindsight I'm a little surprised.
>
> Sean
>
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Re: [E3-hacking] About connecting to the serial on the E3

[David Given]

Oh yeah, there's more information here.
http://www.earth.li/~noodles/hardware-e3.html

On Thu, 4 Apr 2019 at 00:36 David Given  wrote:

> Okay, so this is unclear. That article's talking about connecting the
> emailer via actual RS232 via a TTL-to-RS232 level converter. Nobody does
> this any more; instead you use a USB TTL serial adapter. But it sounds like
> the emailer's output levels are inverted, so logic 1 is 0V and logic 0 is
> 5V.
>
> I have no memory of this whatsoever --- but this was years ago.
>
> *Don't* connect the emailer directly to a RS232 port. You'll fry it.
> RS232 voltages are +/- 12V and are way too high. (I killed mine that way.)
>
> I definitely had the thing working with the cable pictured on my website,
> but I have no idea whether that chip emits inverted signals or not. I'm
> afraid you'll just have to try it and see what happens.
>
>
> On Wed, 3 Apr 2019 at 22:41 Nick Griffin  wrote:
>
>> There is 2 reason why I want to do this..
>> 1.) So I can find a way to restore its services and be able to use it
>> like a normal phone and maybe more.
>> 2.)I have a Amstrad Emailer Plus(E2) too, Its has the Configuration
>> Change on it, if I can back up its Nan then I can share the back up who
>> want to get there's working that's deactivated(Locked) and be able to use
>> it like a normal phone too.. 😊
>>
>> I have a go at getting it working tomorrow.
>>
>> Spanner..
>>
>> *From:* Nick Griffin 
>> *Sent:* ‎Wednesday‎, ‎3‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎20‎:‎52
>> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
>> 
>>
>> OK, thanks, I was looking at this site..
>> http://www.cambridgewargames.org.uk/members/andy/emailer/
>> <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http://www.cambridgewargames.org.uk/members/andy/emailer/&data=02%7c01%7c%7cc50113d7016041be38d508d6b86ddbf5%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899179308605202&sdata=zDMBbvlEKuNMEGdkRXFdUSmjFj/tSiXcoAokoZGATkw%3D&reserved=0>
>>
>> It says on here 3.3v device so was guessing it would work but I don’t
>> understand the inverting the TX Line, would I need to do that with this..?
>> I was reding this…
>>
>> ”Amstrad emailer E3 serial port (18/01/06)
>>
>> A fair bit of confusion exists on the serial port of the E3 with some
>> sources saying a line driver chip is needed, and other saying one is not
>> needed, to connect this to a PC.
>>
>> I've spent a bit of time looking at this and can now offer some
>> explanation. A normal RS232 port will transmit a digital 1 as a negative
>> voltage, usually at least -5V. A 0 is transmitted as a positive voltage,
>> typically at least +5V. The emailer does *not* do this. Using a rather
>> old poorly calibrated scope it appears to actually transmits either 0V or
>> +5V.
>>
>> Now some serial ports will probably accept this, but a 0V input is not a
>> logical anything as far as the RS232 spec is concerned. So your PC, like
>> mine, may ignore this. The fact that this works for some peoples PCs
>> implies it is transmitting a logical 1 as 0v and a logical 0 as +5V.
>>
>> A typical RS232 line driver expects a logical 0 to be 0v and a logical 1
>> to be +5v (or +3.3V if using a 3.3v device). So you end up with an inverted
>> RS232 data and like me and see horrible gibberish on hyperterminal
>>
>> Now, to get a boot log you need to invert the TX signal from the E3 (I
>> used a 74HC04) then pass this to a line driver chip. The only line driver
>> chip I had to hand was a MAX3233E, which is a 3.3 volt part. For this
>> reason I ran both chips from 3.3V and placed a 100ohm resistor between the
>> E3's TX pin nad the input to the inverter. Some logic families get very
>> upset if you exceed the supply voltage on an input by more than about
>> 0.6v... The series resistor limits the current and is a paranoia measure,
>> quicker than looking up the datasheet :-) Anyway, it was a horrible quick
>> bodge but it worked.
>>
>> Here is the output captured from hyperterminal *boot.txt*
>> <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http://www.cambridgewargames.org.uk/members/andy/emailer/boot.txt&data=02%7c01%7c%7cc50113d7016041be38d508d6b86ddbf5%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899179308625218&sdata=OUBqGj0EApDvIHRdhvvmZg35n7k6/Dr9tadAv5z%2BzGc%3D&reserved=0>
>>  settings were 115,200 8n1 no handshaking.
>>
>> I'll try and post up a diagram of something better in the next few days.
>> I've also built something for the reverse direction but h

Re: [E3-hacking] About connecting to the serial on the E3

[David Given]

-adaptor-for-arduino&data=02%7c01%7c%7cc50113d7016041be38d508d6b86ddbf5%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899179308635223&sdata=m4ppt5/iAq8M6841kX3u3si/KxGiO5JzCWse1n5xmoU%3D&reserved=0>
> There is no info on using one of theses because in 2006 they didn’t
> exsits.. 😊
> They exist now because of Raspberry PI and Arduino, The Amstrad Emailer
> uses a singer board computer inside it, The RPI and Arduino are what has
> become of the technology the Emailer uses. The mini consoles use the
> technology too.
>
> Spanner..
>
> *From:* David Given 
> *Sent:* ‎Wednesday‎, ‎3‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎19‎:‎57
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> RS232 is actually +/- 12V! My recollection is that the E3 runs at 0V/5V (I
> described it as TTL back in 2003). A 3.3V serial converter might work, I
> couldn't say.
> On Wed, 3 Apr 2019 at 20:52 Nick Griffin  wrote:
>
>> On your site..
>> “In order to talk to the E2, you need the appropriate cable.
>> Irritatingly, while the E2 has a serial port, it runs at TTL line levels
>> not RS232 levels. This means that if you're going to connect it to a PC,
>> you need a line level converter”
>>
>> So I can use a CPC 2102 USB to TTL serial converter because its a line
>> level converter… 😊 and its RX line is 3.3 volt, this can’t take 5
>> volts because it could blow the UART0…?
>>
>> Spanner..
>>
>> *From:* David Given 
>> *Sent:* ‎Wednesday‎, ‎3‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎18‎:‎52
>> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
>> 
>>
>> I've got a tool which speaks the PBL protocol and will let you read and
>> write the flash: http://cowlark.com/amstrad/
>> <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http://cowlark.com/amstrad/&data=02%7c01%7c%7cc50113d7016041be38d508d6b86ddbf5%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899179308645228&sdata=N6frWE0wYMl19JThGTV17ul8SQlXYtAXFbGXUwOYfkg%3D&reserved=0>
>>
>>
>> It's also got details of the serial pinout.
>>
>> On Wed, 3 Apr 2019 at 19:07 Nick Griffin  wrote:
>>
>>> As far as I know when you connect this to serial you don’t get a
>>> console, like if you connect TheC64 Mini to Putty using a CPC 2102 USB to
>>> TTL serial convertor, you can log on with your root user and password so
>>> you can add files, change games and edit files and that ,TheC64 Mini uses
>>> Uboot to boot up with not PBL so it must be the PBL that's stopping the
>>> console coming up so if we could hack the PBL (Primary Boot Loader) and
>>> keep the firmware on the NAND so its still boots up with Amstrad E3 logo
>>> and that, we need to see the system files and see what can be changed. PBL
>>> is on the NOR Flash and the Kernel and System is on the NAND Flash. I don’t
>>> know anything about PBL so we need someone who does.it
>>> <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http://does.it&data=02%7c01%7c%7cc50113d7016041be38d508d6b86ddbf5%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899179308655245&sdata=8UZdLqM5pNVmuKUId0Z6DfzP%2BfN8nRfg4Bldo1cYYP0%3D&reserved=0>
>>> all most works the same as TheC64 Mini,(Its a small Commodore 64, Mini
>>> Console, its here.. https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/THEC64Mini
>>> <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/THEC64Mini&data=02%7c01%7c%7cc50113d7016041be38d508d6b86ddbf5%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899179308665244&sdata=jDpZ%2BY8H9VejOHHIyT6bgRDRgoqh0HKMYultFQdX6%2BU%3D&reserved=0>)
>>> The mini has 2 partitions, One for Uboot and other for the Kernel and
>>> System. but only has one chip, NAND Flash, its made by Toshiba too.. 😊.
>>> Amstrad E3 has 2 chips NOR and NAND Flash. and is using a different Boot
>>> loader.
>>>
>>> Oh.. Can I use my CPC 2102 USB to TTL serial converter to connect to the
>>> serial on the E3..? this is a pic of it here..
>>> *https://sc02.alicdn.com/kf/HTB11eb9PFcLaXXXq6xXFXXXd/CP2102-USB-2-0-to-TTL-UART.jpg_350x350.jpg*
>>> <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://sc02.alicdn.com/kf/HTB11eb9PFcLaXXXq6xXFXXXd/CP2102-USB-2-0-to-TTL-UART.jpg_350x350.jpg&data=02%7c01%7c%7cc50113d7016041be38d508d6b86ddbf5%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899179308675255&sdata=jgPvSV2Dt5JyFTBhUCKufS2xOPxdlwNSriXHkTnmgQ4%3D&reserved=0>
>>>  I
>>> have used it on my TheC64 Mini and my Gotek Drive.
>>>
>>> Spanner..
>>> ___
>>> e3-hacking m

Re: [E3-hacking] About connecting to the serial on the E3

[David Given]

RS232 is actually +/- 12V! My recollection is that the E3 runs at 0V/5V (I
described it as TTL back in 2003). A 3.3V serial converter might work, I
couldn't say.
On Wed, 3 Apr 2019 at 20:52 Nick Griffin  wrote:

> On your site..
> “In order to talk to the E2, you need the appropriate cable. Irritatingly,
> while the E2 has a serial port, it runs at TTL line levels not RS232
> levels. This means that if you're going to connect it to a PC, you need a
> line level converter”
>
> So I can use a CPC 2102 USB to TTL serial converter because its a line
> level converter… 😊 and its RX line is 3.3 volt, this can’t take 5
> volts because it could blow the UART0…?
>
> Spanner..
>
> *From:* David Given 
> *Sent:* ‎Wednesday‎, ‎3‎ ‎April‎ ‎2019 ‎18‎:‎52
> *To:* Discussion of the Amstrad E3 emailer hardware/software
> 
>
> I've got a tool which speaks the PBL protocol and will let you read and
> write the flash: http://cowlark.com/amstrad/
> <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http://cowlark.com/amstrad/&data=02%7c01%7c%7c0ff5e97479d549450d8208d6b85d225c%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899107478251836&sdata=1rV57mYpj1Hs38RqCM3fqnEhqzLh5F3vWhwQWqW9AuM%3D&reserved=0>
>
>
> It's also got details of the serial pinout.
>
> On Wed, 3 Apr 2019 at 19:07 Nick Griffin  wrote:
>
>> As far as I know when you connect this to serial you don’t get a console,
>> like if you connect TheC64 Mini to Putty using a CPC 2102 USB to TTL serial
>> convertor, you can log on with your root user and password so you can add
>> files, change games and edit files and that ,TheC64 Mini uses Uboot to boot
>> up with not PBL so it must be the PBL that's stopping the console coming up
>> so if we could hack the PBL (Primary Boot Loader) and keep the firmware on
>> the NAND so its still boots up with Amstrad E3 logo and that, we need to
>> see the system files and see what can be changed. PBL is on the NOR Flash
>> and the Kernel and System is on the NAND Flash. I don’t know anything about
>> PBL so we need someone who does.it
>> <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http://does.it&data=02%7c01%7c%7c0ff5e97479d549450d8208d6b85d225c%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899107478261846&sdata=cKbkujL//PuqTj5W5Dtacrb2GoLLKmqXMA81FjPrIDE%3D&reserved=0>
>> all most works the same as TheC64 Mini,(Its a small Commodore 64, Mini
>> Console, its here.. https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/THEC64Mini
>> <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/THEC64Mini&data=02%7c01%7c%7c0ff5e97479d549450d8208d6b85d225c%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899107478271851&sdata=bd45fNPeGF/ASugX1AaQYewd6OIAxHko0Z9iDRsRAbI%3D&reserved=0>)
>> The mini has 2 partitions, One for Uboot and other for the Kernel and
>> System. but only has one chip, NAND Flash, its made by Toshiba too.. 😊.
>> Amstrad E3 has 2 chips NOR and NAND Flash. and is using a different Boot
>> loader.
>>
>> Oh.. Can I use my CPC 2102 USB to TTL serial converter to connect to the
>> serial on the E3..? this is a pic of it here..
>> *https://sc02.alicdn.com/kf/HTB11eb9PFcLaXXXq6xXFXXXd/CP2102-USB-2-0-to-TTL-UART.jpg_350x350.jpg*
>> <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://sc02.alicdn.com/kf/HTB11eb9PFcLaXXXq6xXFXXXd/CP2102-USB-2-0-to-TTL-UART.jpg_350x350.jpg&data=02%7c01%7c%7c0ff5e97479d549450d8208d6b85d225c%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899107478281862&sdata=P8EsfPfMK3uzbtWcuKbOcwf1gTPEVk3IFhNWzhTzLIk%3D&reserved=0>
>>  I
>> have used it on my TheC64 Mini and my Gotek Drive.
>>
>> Spanner..
>> ___
>> e3-hacking mailing list
>> e3-hacking@earth.li
>> https://www.earth.li/mailman/listinfo/e3-hacking
>> <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://www.earth.li/mailman/listinfo/e3-hacking&data=02%7c01%7c%7c0ff5e97479d549450d8208d6b85d225c%7c84df9e7fe9f640afb435%7c1%7c0%7c636899107478291867&sdata=1y6cn51sOKEHHpvkAfK37Sm4yBmS3QNSEadRK1KH6dY%3D&reserved=0>
>>
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Re: [E3-hacking] About connecting to the serial on the E3

[David Given]

I've got a tool which speaks the PBL protocol and will let you read and
write the flash: http://cowlark.com/amstrad/

It's also got details of the serial pinout.

On Wed, 3 Apr 2019 at 19:07 Nick Griffin  wrote:

> As far as I know when you connect this to serial you don’t get a console,
> like if you connect TheC64 Mini to Putty using a CPC 2102 USB to TTL serial
> convertor, you can log on with your root user and password so you can add
> files, change games and edit files and that ,TheC64 Mini uses Uboot to boot
> up with not PBL so it must be the PBL that's stopping the console coming up
> so if we could hack the PBL (Primary Boot Loader) and keep the firmware on
> the NAND so its still boots up with Amstrad E3 logo and that, we need to
> see the system files and see what can be changed. PBL is on the NOR Flash
> and the Kernel and System is on the NAND Flash. I don’t know anything about
> PBL so we need someone who does.it all most works the same as TheC64
> Mini,(Its a small Commodore 64, Mini Console, its here..
> https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/THEC64Mini)  The mini has 2 partitions, One
> for Uboot and other for the Kernel and System. but only has one chip, NAND
> Flash, its made by Toshiba too.. 😊. Amstrad E3 has 2 chips NOR and NAND
> Flash. and is using a different Boot loader.
>
> Oh.. Can I use my CPC 2102 USB to TTL serial converter to connect to the
> serial on the E3..? this is a pic of it here..
> *https://sc02.alicdn.com/kf/HTB11eb9PFcLaXXXq6xXFXXXd/CP2102-USB-2-0-to-TTL-UART.jpg_350x350.jpg*
> 
>  I
> have used it on my TheC64 Mini and my Gotek Drive.
>
> Spanner..
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Re: [E3-hacking] HI I have a Amstrad E3 Emailer that's deactivated and I was wondering..

[David Given]

It used to be a firm rule here that we didn't help people crack devices,
but frankly I think they're now so old that nobody will care...

That said, I don't know *how* to do this, but if you're willing to extract
the flash and fiddle with it it's probably straightforward to bypass.
You'll need to build a cable and use a Linux tool. See
http://cowlark.com/amstrad/index.html. Stupidly I got rid of my E2 and E3 a
while back so I can't really help. Interesting devices, though; I might
attempt to acquire another one off ebay... they're probably not expensive
any more!


On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 at 01:34 Antony Stone 
wrote:

> On Thursday 14 March 2019 at 23:15:10, Nick Griffin wrote:
>
> > I through we need to go with the times and needed a FB group, I made it
>
> Please bear in mind that not everyone uses (or wants to use) Facebook.
>
> Signing up to a mailing list is a lot simpler and "safer" for those of us
> who
> don't like Facebook's systems and/or policies.
>
> On Friday 15 March 2019 at 01:07:00, Nick Griffin wrote:
>
> > There is other stuff I found, there on the Facebook group.
>
> Please post useful stuff here as well, to maximise your audience.
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> Antony.
>
> --
> I bought a book about anti-gravity.  The reviews say you can't put it down.
>
>Please reply to the
> list;
>  please *don't* CC
> me.
>
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Re: [E3-hacking] Newbie help please .......

[David Given]

On 08/02/13 20:10, Andy Brown wrote:
[...]
> “ kernel panic – not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root FS on unknown
> block(1,0)”
>
> I do get the “penguin” and a load of text on the E3 screen before the
> error, so I rekon I’m not far away.

Yup, that means the Linux kernel is running; it just can't find the root
filesystem. This does mean it's almost working.

I'd hazard a guess that it means it's failed to correctly upload the
initrd image --- it's large and the serial link isn't very reliable.
Does pbltool say anything interesting during the upload process?

You could also try copying the ramdisk image (uncompressed) onto a USB
key and changing the root= parameter to root=/dev/sda or root=/dev/sda1.

I've always had luck using the E3_release_v2 system at
http://the.earth.li/pub/e3 --- this has the advantage that it will also
reflash the device for you, so it'll boot automatically into Linux and
you don't need to use the serial link each time. (Instructions inside
the package.)

-- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│ "Of course, on a sufficiently small planet, 40 km/hr is, in fact,
│ sufficient to punt the elastic spherical cow into low orbit." ---
│ Brooks Moses on r.a.sf.c



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Re: [E3-hacking] em2001uk

[David Given]

On 28/10/12 20:42, Anthony Griffiths wrote:
> I've got an amstrad emailer em2001uk that is locked up and unusable -
> 'Hold down (email) button to restore service', so I'm here as a
> beginner to see what I can do about it. All I want is to use it as an
> ordinary phone. I know my way a bit around a linux pc if that helps.
> Thanks for any advice.

(Did you email me directly as well?)

I haven't touched mine for ages, but... you get that message when the
emailer's unable to call home to download adverts. I *thought* they'd
disabled that requirement last year. Has your emailer been in storage
for a long time? If so it may not have downloaded the update, and if
Amstrad's servers aren't running any more you may be out of luck.

Just to check: it is plugged into a telephone line, right?

-- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│ "Of course, on a sufficiently small planet, 40 km/hr is, in fact,
│ sufficient to punt the elastic spherical cow into low orbit." ---
│ Brooks Moses on r.a.sf.c



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[E3-hacking] Serial port oddity

[David Given]

I realise that the E3 is almost entirely irrelevant these days, but just
in case anyone wants to get one working...

I recently pulled mine out of storage and tried to put Debian on it. (I
want to use it as a modem.) Unfortunately PBL wouldn't handshake.
Investigation showed that at baud rates of 57600 and above, the E3's
serial port seemed to be unable to receive data reliably, getting
frequent single-bit errors. Transmission seems fine.

I eventually managed to get everything working by dropping the baud rate
to 38400 (uploading the kernel and initrd takes an *age* at that speed),
and everything works now.

This might be age-related; my E3 is now years old. A flaky capacitor
causing the pulses to get smeared so that the UART isn't registering
them properly? This seems particularly likely given that I don't have a
level shifter, so I'm driving the UART at out-of-spec voltages.
Alternatively it could be clock drift, but given that the UART is on the
processor this seems unlikely.

So if anyone has an E3 which won't handshake any more, try lowering the
baud rate and seeing if that helps. (pblq has an option for this.)

...

Incidentally, I don't suppose any of the uboot patches got accepted by
upstream, did they? Editing the environment with a hex editor is
slightly harrowing and it'd be so nice to have a version which could
store them in NAND...

-- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│ "I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my
│ telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out
│ how to use my telephone." --- Bjarne Stroustrup



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Re: [E3-hacking] FW: Factory reset of e3 emailer

[David Given]

On 05/11/10 17:13, SJSD . wrote:
[...]
> I just bought three of the E3 machines  from e-bay and I'm having no joy
> trying to reset them back to factory state.

Dredged up from the depths of the archive I find:

---snip---
The boot process goes like this:

 1. Splash screen (pretty picture of the emailer).
 2. Title screen (with 'Personal Communication Centre' across the
middle).
 3. Main menu.

If on the transition between 1 and 2, you are pressing STOP+HANDSFREE,
the machine will reset itself back into a virgin state.
---snip---

It might work...

-- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│
│ life←{ ↑1 ⍵∨.^3 4=+/,¯1 0 1∘.⊖¯1 0 1∘.⌽⊂⍵ }
│ --- Conway's Game Of Life, in one line of APL



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Re: [E3-hacking] Support status update

[David Given]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 20/05/10 01:46, Matt Callow wrote:
[...]
> I think the E3 card reader is just done in software - bitbang on a
> couple of GPIO pins.  So I think it should be possible to use if for
> SPI/MMC. I think USB is less likely

Bitbanging MMC is pretty grim. Although, now we have the FIQ handler
less grim than it was...

Can one still get mass storage smartcards? The only ones I ever heard
about were M-Systems' MegaSIM, which then became SanDisk's SIM5000, and
then vanished completely.

And speaking of SPI --- isn't there a proper SPI interface somewhere
inside? Like, one with a FIFO? Given that all SD and MMC cards support
SPI, could this be used as an easy mass storage option (and hopefully a
faster one than the smartcard interface).

- -- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│
│ life←{ ↑1 ⍵∨.^3 4=+/,¯1 0 1∘.⊖¯1 0 1∘.⌽⊂⍵ }
│ --- Conway's Game Of Life, in one line of APL
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAkv1ZSAACgkQf9E0noFvlzirXACgiZnxanmfUpBS0+w1F/OGo84j
KJsAn1qxoHvElVfKjWsTTzZv8FILJZZg
=I6ft
-END PGP SIGNATURE-

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Re: [E3-hacking] Support status update

[David Given]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 19/05/10 19:53, Janusz Krzysztofik wrote:
[...]
> I'm not sure what smart card interface could we use for if ever supported. 
> Removable storage perhaps?

That's an intriguing idea. ISO7816-3 says:

http://www.cardwerk.com/smartcards/smartcard_standard_ISO7816-3.aspx

...that the clock rate defaults to 9600 b/s. OTOH, depending on how you
read the excruciating spec, it may be possible to increase it to either
54 kb/s or 860 kb/s, which correspond to 5 kB/s and 90 kB/s after
framing. About twice floppy disk speed...

Does the E3's smartcard reader support this? Is it flexible enough to
support any of the weirder smartcard protocols which use the two aux
pads to turn the whole thing into an MMC or USB device?

[...]
> Getting DSP core supported seems most problematic. There was an effort, 
> code name DSP Gateway, but has been abandoned in favour of a new project, 
> DSP Bridge. Unfortunately, the new code seems lacking OMAP1 support, only 
> OMAP2/3/4's work.

I had a quick look a while back but found that doing anything with OMAP
was hampered by the total absence of free tools. I don't know if that's
still the case.

> Last, the dock-it port. I have no single idea what we could do about it.

I have a Dock-It. It's possibly the most stupid computer I've ever
owned. I suspect the most useful thing to do with the Dock-It port is to
keep pencil and paper in it.

(Is the Dock-It protocol known?)

- -- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│
│ life←{ ↑1 ⍵∨.^3 4=+/,¯1 0 1∘.⊖¯1 0 1∘.⌽⊂⍵ }
│ --- Conway's Game Of Life, in one line of APL
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iD8DBQFL9EBCf9E0noFvlzgRApjuAKCFHkrbFW4zMS8Uq0f748nJyT/qYwCfQKgt
lMyioqpL6w5XA1N9Z06o78Y=
=2XQj
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Re: [E3-hacking] Support status update

[David Given]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 18/05/10 19:24, Janusz Krzysztofik wrote:
[...]
> It's good to know there are still people over there who are interested ;).

I'm definitely still interested --- I even have a Killer App for my
emailer in mind: console and modem for my SheevaPlug.

Unfrotunately something's gone a bit weird with my setup. I seem to get
the first half of the PBL boot signature but not the second half. The
lights all flash correctly so I don't think the device is fried, but I
haven't gotten around to rebuilding the cable yet to try and figure out
what's going on.

It's good to see work being done on the kernel; thank-you for all the
hard work! Is there anything left to do, or is all the hardware supported?

- -- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│
│ life←{ ↑1 ⍵∨.^3 4=+/,¯1 0 1∘.⊖¯1 0 1∘.⌽⊂⍵ }
│ --- Conway's Game Of Life, in one line of APL
-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iD8DBQFL8uTqf9E0noFvlzgRAjt1AKDRwMczYC8m+nUX2/pMhLhd3jaBAwCfQx1N
RIjTTu0ICr3GqV4xm2kKeCw=
=lZRb
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Re: [E3-hacking] How to open the E3 case?

[David Given]

Janusz Krzysztofik wrote:
Could someone please give me an advice how I could disassemble my E3 without 
breaking the case? I have removed 6 screws from the bottom side and still 
don't know how to open its rear without applying much force. Is it necessary 
to remove the panel first?


You also need to unclip the keyboard overlay, which will reveal some 
more screws.


The panel doesn't actually come off, alas (and the wires inside aren't 
quite long enough the lay the top cover on its side next to the open 
case. Running it with the top off is a hassle. Have we learned nothing 
from the Commodore Pet?).


--
David Given
d...@cowlark.com

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Re: [E3-hacking] pblq 0.3.pre1

[David Given]

Dave Mills wrote:
[...]
> I'm using the paranoid serial cable from the wiki:
> http://wiki.earth.li/Serial_cable_for_the_paranoid

Ah --- I see the problem!

The E2 and the E3 need *different* serial cables! The E2 uses TTL, while
the E3 uses *inverted* TTL (0V for logic 1 and 5V for logic 0).

(In fact, strictly you should use a MAX232-ish circuit for the E3 as
well; it emits 0V for logic 1, which isn't <-3V as the RS232 spec
decrees, but most PC serial ports seem to cope anyway. I just plug mine
straight in with no circuitry, using a cable for an old Canon digital
camera --- sorry, can't find it to get the exact pinout; the cable, with
a 9-pin serial plug on one end and a stereo jack on the other, would
have had exactly the right pinout had I not chopped it up to look at the
wiring.)

> I'll give pblq2 a try again to see if that talks to the E2, with my
> setup. It didn't compile with gcc4 when I tried, then I saw your update
> was out and didn't try again with pblq2.

If you're playing with an E3 you're probably better off with pbltool. It
does pretty much the same job, but is known to work on an E3, and is all
nicely streamlined into the Linux distro.

-- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│
│ ⍎'⎕',∊N⍴⊂S←'←⎕←(3=T)⋎M⋏2=T←⊃+/(V⌽"⊂M),(V⊝"M),(V,⌽V)⌽"(V,V←1⎺1)⊝"⊂M)'
│ --- Conway's Game Of Life, in one line of APL



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Re: [E3-hacking] pblq 0.3.pre1

[David Given]

Dave Mills wrote:
[...]
> I've just given this version a try - no joy though. It just sits there
> "Waiting for device reset..."
> 
> I am trying to talk to a fresh out of the box E2 with a simple zener
> diode voltage limiter serial cable.  One thing that might be causing
> problems is my USB>RS232 converter - I shall have to find a laptop with
> a real serial port to try again.

Don't forget that the protocol requires the E2 to talk back. RS232 is
>+3V for logic 0, <-3V for logic 1, and the E2 expects TTL voltages with
0V for logic 0 and 5V for logic 1 --- so the sense is inverted with
respect to RS232. I don't think you can convert in both directions with
a simple voltage limiter.

I used a hacked mobile phone cable --- details on my website. I don't
think that specific model's in production any more, but once you know
what to look for RS232-TTL converters are reasonably easy to come by.

-- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│
│ ⍎'⎕',∊N⍴⊂S←'←⎕←(3=T)⋎M⋏2=T←⊃+/(V⌽"⊂M),(V⊝"M),(V,⌽V)⌽"(V,V←1⎺1)⊝"⊂M)'
│ --- Conway's Game Of Life, in one line of APL



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[E3-hacking] pblq 0.3.pre1

[David Given]

I've uploaded the latest version, kinda, of pblq:

http://www.cowlark.com/amstrad

This is a whole lot better than 0.2 and features faster blessing code
(ripped off from pbltool, ta muchly), better protocol handling, much
more efficient flash erase, it now defaults to the right baud rates,
etc, etc.

This is mostly useful for talking to the E2. It will also talk to the
E3, but that's much less tested. In particular, the sync protocol on the
E3 is different from the E2; for some reason the E3 (or, *my* E3)
doesn't send a handshake byte after you've synced with it, the way the
E2 does, which makes figuring out when it's ready for packets rather
messy, which explains why syncing is always a bit unreliable.

It's a pre1 because my E2 died in the middle of testing. No, I don't
think pblq killed it.

-- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│
│ ⍎'⎕',∊N⍴⊂S←'←⎕←(3=T)⋎M⋏2=T←⊃+/(V⌽"⊂M),(V⊝"M),(V,⌽V)⌽"(V,V←1⎺1)⊝"⊂M)'
│ --- Conway's Game Of Life, in one line of APL



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Re: [E3-hacking] E2 hackery & coding

[David Given]

Matt Evans wrote:
[...]
> Great, thanks!  Will have a play with that, looks fun. :)

Prex looks rather nice. Dead simple but sufficiently powerful to be
useful. Rather like Minix, but more flexible and better laid out. All
the work of one guy, too. It's worth playing with the PC bootable floppy
image.

[...]
>  From distant vague disassembly memory, the NAND routines take a  
> "struct nandDevice *" and all of the FTL and IO stuff indirects  
> through this.

Hmm. The routine I found at 0x4d18, which I got from rifling through the
 code that searches for BOT files, doesn't seem to take one of these...
see boot/arm/ae2/head.S, boot/arm/ae2/bootinfo.c.

It's at times like this that I find myself hoping that the PBL symbol
tables might fall off the back of a lorry... unlikely, though, given
that it's probably based on some commercial embedded OS executive.

[...]
> PS: You got a scope?  The EXP serial port's buffered through a couple  
> of transistors IIRC, your bare serial port on the MCU may still  
> work...maybe? :)

Someone's offered me a logic probe --- er, sorry Andy, I forgot to get
back to you. But as I'm currently swamped with Nanowrimo and another
coding project it'll have to wait until December. I want to figure out
the E1 serial port, as well.

Semirelated: what's the easiest way of hooking up an I2C/SPI device to a
PC? Given that most computers these days have about a dozen such buses
in them, it should be easy --- but I'm not convinced about the wisdom of
connecting random bits of dev hardware to critical peripheral buses.

-- 
David Given
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Re: [E3-hacking] E2 hackery & coding

[David Given]

Matt Evans wrote:
[...]
> Yeah post it! :)  Prex sounds cool, get anywhere fun with it?  I got  
> about 5 lines into uclinux booting and ... Well, it's covered in dust  
> now. :-/

Here you go.

My UART got fried just as I was about to do the first boot calling into
the kernel, to see if I would get any tracing out. In other words, none
of my kernel changes are at all trustworthy (a lot of the code is just
copied straight from the Game Boy port to make it run). The boot loader
ought to work, though.

The boot loader (built to boot/bootldr) is created with a PBL header and
should be written to the beginning of the flash. When booted it will
look at each 8kB page header in the first 256MB of flash. If it finds
one, it'll get loaded, and then the Prex boot code will continue.
AFAICT, what Prex does is:

- load and relocate the first file in the .ar (the kernel).
- load, relocate and link the second file to the first file (the device
drivers).
- load and relocate any subsequent files (the applications).

Then it'll pass control to the kernel. But I haven't gone into this
stuff in detail because ELF makes me come out in hives. All I know is
that I flash it with prexos.a and it seems to work.

The patch includes my handy scripts for doing the blessing and flashing;
but you'll probably need pblq-0.3 for that, which I haven't uploaded
yet. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow.

This is all against Prex 0.8.0, BTW. It'll probably need work for Prex
0.8.1 (which, incidentally, now supports ARMs with MMUs and so would
probably be suitable for the E3 as well. However, the low-traffic
mailing list does seem to suggest that the MMU support is a bit buggy.)

[...]
> By MMC, I mean an MMC card.  A bit like an SD card.  Or, an SD card in  
> MMC mode.  :-)  (I was just bit-banging it from the smartcard  
> header.)  I got fairly tired of the smartmedia cards & NAND in general  
> & didn't finish convincing PBL to do more than fetch blocks from it  
> (it wanted something else to select it as 'current FS' -- possible it  
> plainly doesn't work, but the code appeared to support selection of  
> either device).  (It may have missed initialisation & required some  
> other tickle early on to look for the SM card.)

I never even knew PBL *did* support the SM card --- it would be awesome
if we could make it work, if my E2 had a SMC socket, if my E2 still
worked... but yes, I quite agree about SMC vs MMC. MMC and SD are so
wonderfully simple to drive that they could almost have been designed
for homebrewers...

-- 
David Given
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: [E3-hacking] E2 hackery & coding

[David Given]

Matt Evans wrote:
[...]
> Never did get round to finishing the OS, or the uclinux port... (It's  
> too painful to keep downloading dev kernels at 11k/s, I embarked on  
> getting the e2-monitor to boot from MMC but that too got  
> sidetracked... :D )

Before my e2 esploded I got the Prex boot loader up and running --- it
would pull an ar file full of ELF files out of flash (using the PBL
entry points, so it was compatible with PBL's NFTL system and you could
upload files with pblq), and link and relocate them into RAM. Of course,
since I never got as far as trying to run the kernel I don't know if
it's doing it *right*, but the code might be useful to someone.

BTW, if by MMC you mean SMC, then you should be aware that at least some
E2s (such as mine) don't have the card reader. There's a slot in the
case and an unpopulated set of pads on the motherboard, but no socket.

-- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│
│ ⍎'⎕',∊N⍴⊂S←'←⎕←(3=T)⋎M⋏2=T←⊃+/(V⌽"⊂M),(V⊝"M),(V,⌽V)⌽"(V,V←1⎺1)⊝"⊂M)'
│ --- Conway's Game Of Life, in one line of APL



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Re: [E3-hacking] E2 hackery & coding

[David Given]

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Dave Mills wrote:
[...]
> I've been given an E2, it has never been connected to the 'phone line,
> so is still running factory fresh software. Has anyone managed to get
> their own code running on one of these beasts? Any pointers on where to
> start?

Yes, it's actually fairly straightforward, provided you have the special
cable. I have some information here:

http://www.cowlark.com/amstrad/index.html

Once you have the cable, you can use pblq to upload code via the serial
cable or to reflash it. Be aware that pblq 0.2 is a bit old; I was in
the process of working on it when I managed to fry my E2. I'll try and
get 0.3 up on the website soon, along with some more technical stuff I
figured out.

You should be aware that the E2's processor has no MMU, which means you
can't run normal Linux on it. Porting ucLinux is quite possible but most
likely a horrible job. I was partway through porting Prex (a rather nice
little Minix-like embedded OS) onto mine when I my UART esplode, but
I'll I managed was the boot loader and the very basics of the kernel
startup procedure; so while running custom code on an E2 isn't hard,
there's not a lot of code to run...

- --
David Given
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: [E3-hacking] E1

[David Given]

Ralph Corderoy wrote:
[...]
> I suspect it's more primitive than the E2's PBL so I doubt a passkey is
> required.  Request 00 always replies with a NAK in PBL V3.1 but perhaps
> it does something useful in the earlier version and was changed to be a
> constant NAK later?  Do you get anything from request 01?

I haven't tried 01 specifically, but pblq pings stuff with request 02
(GETVERSION) on connect, and I don't get any response. I'm not receiving
*anything* from it, not even the 0x06 when PBL interrupts the boot sequence.

At this point I suspect I definitely need a capturing scope to try and
see if anything at all is coming out. Alas, they're not cheap.

Incidentally, I also took the lid off the Pocket Dockit. As expected
it's calculator technology --- ICs glued directly to the PCB with resin
blobs poured on top --- but I do notice a bunch of pads labelled Vdd,
GND, RESET, SDAT and SCLK. SPI, perhaps? There may even be a real PIC
under there...

-- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│ "...it's not that well-designed GUI's are rare, it's just that the
│ three-armed users GUI's are designed for are rare." --- Mike Uhl on
│ a.f.c



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Re: [E3-hacking] e3-hacking starter guide

[David Given]

Nathan Friend wrote:
> Hi all, I've been lurking on this list for a while now.  Are there any
> e3 hacking starter guides?  I've got some e3's and would like to see
> what they can do.

You probably want to go here:

http://the.earth.li/pub/e3/

...and download E3_release_v2.tar.gz. This is a complete kit that (once
you make the right cable) will put a stripped-down OpenEmbedded based
Linux distro on your E3. You end up with a complete if basic distro
running from flash with about 27MB free.

That's pretty basic, but from there it's possible to bootstrap yourself
into Debian if you're sufficiently masochistic. The E3's only got USB1
which means that external storage is rather slow but it's surprisingly
useable.

-- 
David Given
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: [E3-hacking] E1

[David Given]

David Given wrote:
> I'll try hooking up a
> voltmeter and seeing what the E1's TX is producing.

With PBL running, I'm reading about -9V at the E1's Tx pin and +9V at
CTS and DSR. When PBL's not running it leaves CTS and DSR low. This
sounds like a real serial port to *me*.

But nothing seems to come out. I need a scope.

It might be waiting for some sort of passkey, although this seems a
little unlikely. If so, though, our only options are either hope that
some nice person from Amstrad tells us what it is, or else to build a
JTAG adaptor and extract the ROM...

Incidentally, I took another peek inside looking for jumpers, and I did
notice two unpopulated 0.1" headers: one is a 16-pin one, but next to it
is a 20-pin one with a box around it. It's not labelled other than as
JB1, but it could very well be a standard JTAG header. I would *not* be
keen on soldering pins to that, though, particularly if I wanted them to
be in a straight line.

BTW, any recommendations on JTAG hardware? It occurs to me that now I've
fried the UART on the E2, I might as well have a go with attaching JTAG
pins --- I can't make it any less useful than it is now.

-- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│ "...it's not that well-designed GUI's are rare, it's just that the
│ three-armed users GUI's are designed for are rare." --- Mike Uhl on
│ a.f.c



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Re: [E3-hacking] E1

[David Given]

Ralph Corderoy wrote:
[...]
> Or baud rate?  You could be right on the level-shifting.  Any clue from
> peering inside?

The socket's on the back of the main board, which means all the traces
are hidden between the main board and the other board, so I haven't
managed to figure out what it's connected to. The baud rate seems to be
9600, because it doesn't respond on anything else. I'll try hooking up a
voltmeter and seeing what the E1's TX is producing. If it does need
level shifting then it obviously doesn't want inverting as well, because
it *is* responding to 0x1b.

Hopefully I haven't managed to damage something connected RS232-level
signals to it...

-- 
David Given
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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[E3-hacking] E1

[David Given]

While doing some work on my E2 I managed the serial port. Apparently it
doesn't like repeated power cycling. So I went scrounging on Freecycle
for another one; I didn't get one, but I *did* get an E1.

The E1 is a decidedly more primitive device than the E2. It's heavier
and the styling is definitely older --- it's even got a BT logo on it!
The screen is the same, but it's on a 2D swivel rather than the simple
hinge of the E2 and E3. The keyboard has hard plastic keys rather than
the soft rubber Spectrumalike keys of the more recent models and is
actually surprisingly comfortable to use. Inside the case was a bit of a
shock; rather than the elegant little PCB of the E2 and E3, there are
two, count 'em, chunky PCBs wired together. Unfortunately the wiring
loom is complex and well stuck on so I didn't want to tinker too much,
but the CPU is a LH77790B. I did spot an Alliance AS4C1M16E5 2MB DRAM
chip, though.

The built-in software is pretty much identical to the E2. The 'Settings'
menu claims it's got a Venus 33.6 ISA 1520-37LV modem and PBL V9.0
Build:0256.

The interesting thing is round the back; instead of USB there's a 25-pin
PC printer port, and instead of the EXP jack there's a standard female
9-pin serial socket.

Plugging this into a PC with a straight-through serial cable shows
nothing at all on boot. However, pinging it with the usual 0x1b bytes on
startup triggers PBL and the LEDs start flashing. But I don't get
anything back down the cable, so I can't talk to it. So either the
protocol's different, or else it's non-standard wiring (or my cable is
broken), or the E1 has a fried UART, or it might not be a standard port
after all and may need level-shifting.

I'll clean it up and post some photos at some point, but I suspect this
is really only of historical interest.

(I also got a Pocket Dockit. Can I do anything interesting with one of
these?)

-- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│ "...it's not that well-designed GUI's are rare, it's just that the
│ three-armed users GUI's are designed for are rare." --- Mike Uhl on
│ a.f.c



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[E3-hacking] Simulation

[David Given]

I know that both the e2 and the e3 are based on standard reference
designs; does anyone know if these designs are sufficiently standard
that I can usefully simulate either an e2 or e3 with something like qemu
or skyeye without too much pain?

('Usefully' meaning at least a serial port. Graphics would be nice.)

-- 
┌─── ｄｇ＠ｃｏｗｌａｒｋ．ｃｏｍ ─ http://www.cowlark.com ─
│
│ "All power corrupts, but we need electricity." --- Diana Wynne Jones,
│ _Archer's Goon_



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