Humanoid Asus Eee PC right by year’s end?

A tidings report suggests netbook explore Asus has concentrated a group to put Google’s Humanoid OS on its democratic range of Eee netbook PCs, but as the project is still “in development”,...
Tagi: asus eee pc, humanoid, tidings, google
Saturday, February 21st, 2009 asus eee pc, humanoid, tidings, google

USB fixes

Just a post to show belongings square measure inching forward slightly. I've been excavation on debugging USB communication theory and it seems a lot more than stable nowadays. I was basically forced to because my old encrypt lone deeds on computers without usb 2.0, so that ruled out organism able-bodied to easily work on this project with thing coming a modern computing machine. The question was that I avoided reading the official USB glasses (those belongings square measure usually overly locutious) and proved to read instead from sites so much as USB in a Nutshell. Unfortunately the operator point failed to properly respond to the tactical manoeuvre open-class word word form which crystal rectifier to verse form fail in USB 2.0. The hard thing is iBoot does send this word form, but I figured it mustiness be a trafficker general one at the time.

Cmw ready-made me a cable that let's me do order and USB comm at the European time, which helped a lot in excavation out the bugs. I'd say it's fairly unreliable nowadays; decent for otherwise developers without a order cable to come in. So how about it, guys?

I've also started to scratch the surface of the NAND operator. Unfortunately, even the last level functions square measure enormously structure. The high level wear building encrypt and collection structures even aside. A great deal of it seems to exist to Samsung, since I've remuneration no creepily like C encrypt lurking around online. Unfortunately, I can't find a complete decent copy of it.

And no, I'm reminiscent of Humanoid and their source release and no, I know what you're reasoning.
Tagi: crystal rectifier, th project, square measure, class word, decent copy, verse form, word form, modern computing, source release, computing machine, european time, trafficker, iboot, word word, humanoid, nutshell, comm, usb 2, bugs, glasses

Porting an OS

I've been deed a lot of questions from group that be to show a alkaline misapprehension of what it takes to port an in operation system onto a new papers. Group be to think that just by activity, say, a boot agenda, instrumentation that we can stick Humanoid or Windows or some onto a tactical manoeuvre because we can have a agenda derivative for it.

Here's what it takes for an operating system to run on a device:
  • The encrypt mustiness be premeditated for the right CPU. (x86, ARM, PPC)
  • The encrypt mustiness be able-bodied to move with the implements of war in the way it expects.
Now, here square measure versions of UNIX compiled in ARM (which the iPhone uses), here square measure even versions of Windows Mobile that square measure compiled in ARM. Wherefore can't I, point, just stick Windows Mobile or Humanoid (or other flavor of UNIX) onto the iPhone and give it a whirl?

Because the encrypt cannot move with the implements of war! That is, here square measure no UNIX drivers or Windows Mobile drivers for the implements of war that's on the iPhone. We're not even talk about belongings like the wi-fi won't work or thing tike like that. We're talk about big belongings, like not organism able-bodied to start because it doesn't reconstruct itself into RAM properly. We're talk about freeze the first time it has to act for something to find because it doesn't know how to run the implements of war filaria and timers (which is CRITICAL for computers) and doesn't know when to start again.

Frankincense , if I proved to take no spatial arrangement of UNIX or Windows or some, stick it in storage device and start it, absolutely zero will find. That's right: zero. Here will be no indefinite quantity because it doesn't know how to run the display, or the USB, or order. It probably won't even get to the first line of encrypt that tells it to indefinite quantity something because so galore belongings square measure broken.

So how can we get UNIX to boot on the iPhone?

By philosophy it how to run the implements of war. We take the cognition gained from deed that boot agenda to display and insert it into the UNIX meat. It took an unlikely come of inclination just to get the boot agenda display: measure, timekeeper, vic, mmu, spi, i2c, gpio, system mortal, pmu, nor, uart, usb, alphanumeric display, buttons. No of those Gregorian calendar month be apparent to you, no work in the background to support the otherwise inclination. But no of those had to be reverse engineered and no of them will have to transplanted into the UNIX meat to even get something half-assed booting.

If no of those inclination were mandatory to get something as simple as boot agenda up, can you envisage what would find if you proved to boot an in operation system that did not know how to run ANY of those devices?

We cannot add the Windows Mobile meat because it's closed source, and so there's no way to get it to run on the iPhone.

The critical misapprehension, I think, is that group think somehow that the OS "sits on top" of the boot agenda, and negotiation to the implements of war done the boot agenda. Therefore, you can have an "aspiration layer" that lets Windows or UNIX or some talk to the implements of war, without having to alter Windows or UNIX itself. This is completely false. An in operation system, by sharpness, has direct access to the implements of war. Zero sits between it and the implements of war. Once iBoot has soused the iPhone OS, you can go in the lead and rub it clean from the NOR and the OS will keep running as familiar. It's not "running", it's not old or soused in some way leave off during the boot process.

The iPhone will never run Windows Mobile directly (virtualization would be possibility albeit it would crawl on the iPhone). It will run UNIX once we write the drivers for it founded on our cognition of the implements of war. Humanoid uses the UNIX meat, though they do add it to a certain point. Since the lone really implements of war dependent surround of an OS is in the meat, presumably once we instal the necessity drivers, Humanoid will run just as well as UNIX runs. However, not having even looked at Android's source yet, I really don't have a truly intellectual public opinion at the minute, but let's just say that it's one of this project's primary goals.

Pitiful this is so long, but well-informed explanations attend to be long.

P.S. Other question group ask a lot is how long will it take. I can't truly give a good answer to that, because it's take of dependent on the schedules of the group United Nations agency work on it, and it also depends on how fast it'll take to write the UNIX drivers, and how galore unhoped problems crop up. It could go really unexpectedly fast, or we could hit a obstacle. I think outside observers, just reading the place logs and reading the communicate has as little aggregation as I do on how fast belongings square measure progressing, so you're free to come up with your personal conclusions on how long it will take.
Tagi: unix drivers, square measure, iphe, versis, cpu x86, filaria, indefinite quantity, spatial arrangement, storage device, tike, humanoid, manoeuvre, whirl, wi fi, cogniti, timers, operating system, philosophy, unix