Hello. I recently acquired a NetWinder...

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

On Mar 6, 2006, at 10:00 AM, Ralph Siemsen wrote:

> Hello Daniel,
>
> Daniel Gimpelevich wrote:
>
>> http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/conspire/2006-February/001829.html
>
> New one to me!  Cabal linux users group, hmm, sounds like fun!   
> Except, I thought there was no cabal! :)

I could interpret that comment in one of 00000010 different ways, and  
both are correct.

>> It appears the netwinder.net site went offline toward the end of  
>> 2004.  Any idea who inherited the copyrights and licenses for stuff  
>> you  couldn't put on netwinder.org before after that?
>
> The www.netwinder.net site is still active as far as I can tell (there  
> is still a website there I mean).  It hasn't been updated in a long  
> time, and I do not know who is really maintaining it.  Last we heard  
> from them, they had packed up shop and moved out to the east cost, and  
> were never really heard from again.

I was referring to the website of NetWinder, Inc. The site currently at  
that address appears to be nothing more than a server running blogging  
software that had a few random quotes from the previous website pasted  
in. WHOIS shows something in the South Pacific. I can only surmise that  
at some point, NetWinder, Inc started hemorrhaging assets, and that's  
who picked up the website.

> > I assume the
>> distributability of the NeTTrom has been resolved, since I was able  
>> to  download and use the last official version. Any progress on  
>> opening up  the source to it?
>
> There is no change here; all binaries were removed from the primary  
> site.  Mirrors should not be carrying copies.  I have done some work  
> at a replacement firmware (fully GPL'ed of course) but nothing really  
> usable at this point.  As there have been several requests in the last  
> little while, I may revive this project.

I was under the impression that the firmware included a miniature Linux  
kernel. Wouldn't that make it a derived work?

>> There was mention on this list of Fedora-based  development going on  
>> on the hardware recovered from the old colo, but  not posted anywhere  
>> due to a lack of internet access there and a lack  of disk space at  
>> the current netwinder.org; any chance that stuff could  all be put on  
>> netwinder.osuosl.org along with all the stuff currently  missing from  
>> the netwinder.org website?
>
> The latest image was nw-9, roughly redhat-9 based.  Some work was done  
> on fedora core; but not completed.  There really did not seem to be  
> much requests for it, and other options (Debian, Gentoo) seemed to  
> draw many of the potential users.

Mark Lord's nw-9 live image is what I installed for the time being. It  
had some brokenness that needed tweaking (e.g. X was not setuid root),  
but it seems to be, in a way, the worst of both worlds: missing some of  
the NetWinder-specific stuff characteristic of the DM images, yet  
missing the currentness of Debian (I have not yet looked into Gentoo  
for ARM, but based on my past Gentoo experiences, I don't expect to be  
choosing that option.). BTW, the "stuff currently missing from the  
netwinder.org website" also includes a period of mailing list archives  
that may or may not prove somewhat enlightening to me.

>> The standard daughterboard has  placeholders for missing (telecom?)  
>> chips, but the unused RJ-11  connectors are included anyway. Is there  
>> a schematic for this board  anywhere, so that I can look into  
>> possibly using those connectors for  other purposes?
>
> Not that I know of.  You can probably trace the signals from the  
> connector to pads where the telco magnetics would have gone.  The cost  
> to license 56k modem technology was higher than buying an external  
> modem, hence this card was never fully developed.

Easier said than done, since the board appeared to be multilayered. If  
I knew why they actually included the connectors instead of just pads  
like for the chips/magnetics, I might have a better idea.

>> Where is nwlilo?
>
> It is in the nwutils package.  The latest directly available version  
> is:
> http://netwinder.osuosl.org/users/s/stewart/redhat/RPMS/versioned/ 
> nwutil-1.6-1.armv4l.rpm
>
> There has been some development on this package recently, version 1.8  
> is released, but I have not managed to upload it yet.  Nwlilo didn't  
> see any changes, but the package did see several cleanups and  
> additions.  It will appear in my directory (/users/r/ralphs/) in the  
> near future.  In the meantime it should be available somewhere on  
> debian.org, as the Debian folks were the ones who requested all the  
> changes.

Only 1.4-3 is available on debian.org, and most recent word on the  
matter appears to be this:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2005/11/msg00026.html

Version 1.8-1 has been "pending upload" for two weeks. BTW, your  
directory includes some of the NeTTrom binaries you said should not be  
anywhere.

>> What is the difference between the  nwfpe and fastfpe modules?
>
> Compliance versus speed.  NWFPE offers double and extended precision  
> modes and passes all the IEEE tests, as far as I know.  Fastfpe is  
> faster in benchmarks, not sure how compliant it is.
>
> Both are irrelevant now that software floating point is readily  
> available in the toolchain.  Expect NWFPE to remain only for  
> backwards-compatibility with old binaries.

In the last kernel RPM available in the updates directory, dated  
01/2004, FastFPE is compiled as a module while NWFPE is compiled into  
the kernel. Boot messages show that NWFPE is in effect with double  
precision. How are they irrelevant to binaries that may also be used on  
non-NetWinder ARM hardware with hard-float support? I think using  
soft-float on those machines is rather dumb, unless libfloat can detect  
hard-float support at run time and use it.

>> What is the status of porting the WaveArtist  driver to ALSA?
>
> Not to my knowledge within the netwinder community.  I don't know  
> which other devices contain the waveartist though, perhaps there is  
> work elsewhere.

Googling makes it appear that the most recent mentions of this were in  
this thread:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/linux/kernel/610127

>> Current Debian kernel packages don't appear to include  any CyberPro  
>> drivers. What is the significance of this?
>
> Not sure, you would have to check on the debian-arm list.  I know that  
> the cyberpro framebuffer in 2.6 works.  It is probably compiled-in, as  
> the VGA mode stopped working early in the 2.4 series, and nobody ever  
> fixed it to my knowledge.

That would explain why I couldn't get VGA mode to work with the 01/2004  
kernel RPM. I would expect VGA mode to be faster. Should I expect it to  
ever be fixed?

>> Has there ever  been any kind of Linux support anywhere for the  
>> WinBond 9660? I can't  even find a mention of such a chip anywhere.  
>> Perhaps it was originally  a typo that should have said 9960, and  
>> everybody's been repeating it  ever since? I should take a look at  
>> the chip itself to be sure, but  until then, I'll assume it's this  
>> one:
>> http://web.archive.org/web/20010619032254/www.winbond.com.tw/PDF/ 
>> sheet/W9960cf.pdf
>
> The DM disk images include a few demo applications for doing video  
> capture.  There are both console (fbvideo) and X applications for  
> capturing video.  Performance is poor and limited by flaky DMA.

I was under the impression that those apps used the Philips and/or  
CyberPro chips, ignoring the Winbond. Am I wrong? I would expect the  
Winbond to improve performance over the Philips/CyberPro alone.

> These apps were not ported to the NW9 image, though it should be  
> possible to do so.

Since NW9 and beyond (e.g. Debian) are the established future of the  
NetWinder, I believe that it would be worthwhile to preserve its past  
in that manner.

>> Is the secondary IDE channel accessible in any way?
>
> Not to my knowledge.  You can however put two drives on the primary  
> IDE (master and slave), as long as you have a good power supply.

I may obtain an IDE flash drive, which I was considering for the  
NetWinder, but I can't figure out a way to have it physically inside  
the case along with a hard disk. Any ideas?

>> Has anyone looked  into the possibility of a banana-board for the RAM  
>> socket? I'll  probably think of more questions, but these are  
>> probably enough for  starters.
>
> As 256MB is the limit from the footbridge, there doesn't seem much  
> point.

Even today, 64-bit 256MB SODIMMs are not all that cheap. I figure very  
few NetWinders ever had 256MB in them, even though they could really  
use the boost. I think some type of banana-board would certainly be no  
less feasible than some of the other RAM upgrade options that have been  
proposed. I'd bet that some units are still stuck with only 32MB. Some  
type of light at the end of the NetWinder RAM non-availability tunnel  
would greatly expand the possibilities of NetWinder use. While the  
prospect of every remaining unit getting upped to 256MB may only serve  
to increase software bloat, their potential as internet appliances may  
offset that if concurrent processes to run are carefully chosen.