Necromancer's notes

Blog

  • xEMACS: A bunch of useful tricks.

    Vi is somewhat cool, kate looks even better in places, but none of them had anything nearly as useful, as verilog-mode in emacs. Therefore, I decided to make the switch.
    However, making yourself somewhat confortable in emacs requires a bit of effort, so here go my adjustments.
    First, let’s get out emacs instances at different places in sync. Git is a very good tool for that. Therefore, I put my custom el scripts in ~/.emacs.d and made that a git repo with origin at my github account. Next step is to tune ~/.emacs to automagically load ~/.emacs.d/autoexec.el via adding

    (load-file "~/emacs.d/autoexec.el")

    Rest – under the cut.
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  • Allwinner A10 @ Ampe A90: Enabling hidden usb host

    Okay, recently I got myself such a tablet. So here goes the trick. It has a hidded USB host inside. You’d like to enable it in case you want to pop in some internal goodies like an usb jump drive, gps, 3g whatsoever.

    However, you have to enable the host. This is done in the following steps:
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  • Accelerating eeschema symbol generation (code inside)

    If you have ever used kicad, you’ve had a moment where there isn’t a ready-made symbol for your IC. It’s quick to make one with that  web tool but what what if the chip is over 100 pins?

    I used to use a very dirty hack with bash and xdotool, but the amount of hackery here was a bit too big, so I decided to make a better solution. Lots of thanks fly out to the guys, who made xil2kc, a tool that creates eeschema symbols out of .pkg files that ISE can create. Unfortunately for me they picke python, my least favourite programming language. Anyway, the code was there, so I made a different util based on their library. I thought all the things over and came with a format that can be easily used.
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  • XC3S100E, STM32F103ZET6, clocking and such stuff.

    Okay, lately I’ve been quite busy routing another killerboard with a friend of mine. With STM32 and Xilinx FPGA on the memory bus. These babies are intended for use in some robots, will post some details later. If I get a chance.
    Anyway, the boards arrived, I quickly ported my Xilinx-sscu driver to bare metal and… pooh, it didn’t work.
    It took me quite a while poking with an osclilloscope: I adjusted delays, added caps to CLK & DIN lines to remove spikes – same shit. Then I accidentally disabled the oscillator for the FPGA… And guess what – it worked. I enabled the oscillator after config was done – the FPGA started blinking happily. WTF?
    Looks like I’ll have to add another wire for toggling oscillator from uC.
    No sources or kicad circuitry YET. Just a pic of the board for now, it’s in REALLY early testing stage.

  • Flytouch II: adding internal bluetooth & a usb hub.

    Well, just pics under the cut. Still need to get android stuff working. Modules get loaded already, I just need to compile bluez-utils and Bluetooth part of android.
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  • Flytouch II: First bunch of hacks.

    It’s been more than a year since this tablet pc. I didn’t have much use for it until… Well, I decided that it would go nicely into the car to serve as a GPS navigator and a voicebox using my NetTTS software. And I decided to get a better tablet for everyday usage instead.
    So, there go the first bunch of hacks, that solve the issues I’ve encountered.
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  • WM8650 tablet guts

    As asked by NiTr0

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  • pktcdvd and backups

    Some time ago an HDD I had quite a while died. The worst part is, that it contained the backups. It worked for about two years in a fashion where it gets powered once in a while via a mosfet, receives a payload of backups and then goes offline again. Analyzing the corpse it looks like it was the spindel motor. Well done, WD!
    This made me thing of another way to store critical backups. Consider me paranoid, but I do not trust cloud services.  Then I saw an old cdrw disk wasting its remaining life as a stand for the coffee cup.

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  • Use a POST card from userspace

    Okay. This time my small server got screwed up. Totally. segfaults at no apparent reason, lags, and finally the PC not starting at all. Since ssh was down, I had to debug using a UART and a POST card (No monitor in the closet where it stands usually). In the end I had to take the small thing out of its place to the table. A detailed analysis showed up that it was the RAM. Luckily I had a spare 2 GiB chip around and popped it in. However, while troubleshooting it, I hooked the POST card…
    The last thing gave me an idea. Not sure if that was done before.
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  • A cradle for F602

    Some time ago I got myself an MT6116 based mobile, called F602. (Yep, I love chineese crap!)
    The only thing it lacked was a good cradle, so I took OpenSCAD and… Well, thanks to Dmitry for the 3d printing stuff.
    You’ll have to sacrifice your sync cable though. Remove the plug casing, pop in the phone, secure with 2-component glue or thermal glue and you are done.
    Obligatory pics:

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