Dreamplug - First look inside the next evolution in plug computing

[newitjames]

Hi Abra,

Unfortunately the Dreamplug has been pried away from my clutches to be reviewed. I did try my hardest to overheat it, When it got warm the heat seemed to be concentrated in the centre of the case and the ethernet ports were not noticeably heated. As soon as I get it back I will try your test and report the results.

newitjames

[newitjames]

Now I have had the DreamPlug over a week I will share the issues that I have had with it. 

1. uboot prevents booting a kernel from the SD card. You can load the kernel from MicroSD or Usb. The rootfs can be loaded from an SD without any problems.

2. Sound channels seem to be working in opposite phase and canceling each other out. If you select Left or Right balance on the sound mixer each channel on its own sounds normal. I think this is a driver issue perhaps someone else could comment on that.

3. Sheeva.with-linux kernels beyond 2.6.35.10 do not boot. Something changed at 2.6.36 and is still present at 2.6.37
 The boot process halts at this line:

Code:

loop: module loaded

Could it be to do with it having no Nand? on a succesful boot the next line reports;

Code:

No NAND device found.

Would be nice if this was indentified and fixed.


newitjames

[Abra]

about the (presumably) NAND problem, you could (if you get the dreamplug back soon) edit /usr/src/linux/arch/arm/mach-kirkwood/sheevaplug-setup.c and comment the line kirkwood_nand_init(ARRAY_AND_SIZE(sheevaplug_nand_parts), 25);
(the good way would be to add an if statement before to differentiate the models with arcnumbers, like for sheeva/esatasheeva).

[Seano]

2. Sound channels seem to be working in opposite phase and canceling each other out. If you select Left or Right balance on the sound mixer each channel on its own sounds normal. I think this is a driver issue perhaps someone else could comment on that.

Sounds like the same issue that Atom netbooks running Ubuntu are having. For them using the pulseaudio volume control to pull one of the input device faders to zero works around it as does setting the pulse server to localhost before launching an application. Applications that use alsa directly don't seem to have a problem and if you can live without it dumping pulseaudio completely fixes it.

Try /bin/sh -c "PULSE_SERVER=127.0.0.1 <app>" where <app> is the application you know suffers the phase cancellation.

For a while having the default server set to 127.0.0.1 in client.conf fixed it but that fix seems to have stopped working too and I haven't bothered investigating further.

If it is the same issue there are bug reports posted.

--sean

[Fletch]

Which rootfs, kernel and uboot does it ship with?  Any idea when the plugcomputer.org remository (or wherever) will have official images to reflash?  The pdf says both Ubuntu and Debian are supported, but it would be nice to have factory supplied images.

[marcus]

Which rootfs, kernel and uboot does it ship with?  Any idea when the plugcomputer.org remository (or wherever) will have official images to reflash?  The pdf says both Ubuntu and Debian are supported, but it would be nice to have factory supplied images.

Here you go:

http://code.google.com/p/dreamplug/downloads/list

[Fletch]

Which rootfs, kernel and uboot does it ship with?  Any idea when the plugcomputer.org remository (or wherever) will have official images to reflash?  The pdf says both Ubuntu and Debian are supported, but it would be nice to have factory supplied images.

Here you go:

http://code.google.com/p/dreamplug/downloads/list

Cool, thanks.  Is there a Dreamplug memory map documented somewhere so I know where to write these?

[NewIT]

DreamPlugs Now in stock!