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Usage Information

Mini2440 Orbiter setup and FAQ

FAQ for beginners on embeded technology and the mini2440 $99 single-board computer

What is LinuxMCE, and what embedded operating system runs it?

linuxmce is an home automation and multi media appliance solution based on top of ubuntu, and supports tons of input devices, from mobiles over PDAs to flat screens

How do I turn my mini2440 into an Orbiter?

Glad you asked :-) The porting for this is taking place right now. When instructions become available, we'll post them here. Follow the action via IRC or the links later in this page if you can't wait.

What is JTAG? Do I need it for anything?

JTAG is a common low level debug interface. you can operate cpus in single step mode and flash nand/nor that way and do low level debugging.

It is generally what developers use when developing low-level drivers, or as a recovery tool if you somehow destroyed your NOR flash (that's the code your embedded computer runs when you 1st turn it on)

What is vivi and u-boot?

vivi is the old bootloader.

uBoot is the new one - and can boot from SD cards.

These are kindoflike grub - code which runs at startup and helps with loading or booting the operating system - but can do other exciting stuff like flash new bootloaders into the NAND memory etc.

You hook your mini2440 serial cable (striaght-through - not a crossover) up to a terminal emulator on your desktop PC to access vivi or u-boot.

What is QT?

qt is a windowing toolkit developed into an embedded toolkit and such lately by trolltech, which was was acquired by nokia recently. If your device is running QT, it probably doesn't have X.

What is X or X11 ?

it's a graphical display environment that runs on Linux - the same as the original Microsoft version called "Windows" runs on MS-DOS

What's GPE ?

GPE is a desktop environment, and includes at least a lightweight web browser

What's OPIE ?

opie is another different desktop environment

What's cairo?

A display programming component allowing apps to write directly on diretfb without needing X11 or QT etc (works on mini2440). It's the graphical backend in most modern apps (Firefox etc). see http://www.cairographics.org/

What's SDL?

Another low-level screen/keyboard/mouse/etc library (works on mini2440). http://www.libsdl.org/

What's QEMU ?

qemu is a hardware emulator - you can experiment with running things on this, without needing to use the actual hardware device.

What is Android?

A new linux operating system sponsored by google, predominently java-based, designed for mobile phones and portable gadgets.

Does Android run on the Mini2440?

There are no working ports to this platform yet - rumours exist of a mostly-working port having been achieved to a similar platform recently, so it's probably not far off.

What is emdebian-grip-090306-armel-lenny-installed.tar.bz2 for ?

thats a fantastic linux distribution and content base you can run with your kernel

How do I see my mini2440 boot screen?

Hook up the serial port to a PC using 115200 baud (no flow control) - this is how you access vivi and u-boot.

What compiler switches do I need to build working code on a mini2440?

If you're staring at "illegal instruction error" problems, and using arm-none-linux-gnueabi-gcc (Sourcery G++ Lite 2008q3-72) 4.3.2, you need this:

-msoft-float -D__GCC_FLOAT_NOT_NEEDED -march=armv4 -mtune=arm920t

Where do I get a mini2440?

As of March '09 - there's 1 distributer in each of the USA, Japan, and Europe. The mini2440 is made in China, and many sellers on eBay provide (unsupported) units, with Chinese instructions. I know of only 2 distributer with English tools ( http://www.developmentboard.net, http://www.andahammer.com/ ) - please update this list if you can.

How easy is it to "brick" a mini2440?

basically you cannot really brick (kill) the unit - there is a NOR switch where you can boot from NOR in emergencies. The rest of the time, you store new bootloaders etc in the NAND flash, and set the switch to boot from that. If you kill your NOR too - you use the JTAG to fix that.