At 10:00 AM 03/13/2000 -0800, Jason R Thorpe wrote:
>On Mon, Mar 13, 2000 at 06:41:34AM -0500, Andrew Gillham wrote:
>
>  > The steps involved are: (using a normal keyboard BTW)
>  >      1.  Get to a root shell, via 'ESC 4' and fast typing. :)
>  >      2.  Bring up PPP to a NetBSD machine.  Having a PBX helps.
>  >      3.  Backup the 16MB of flash, with the following:
>  >          # cat /dev/hd0 | gzip -9 > hd0.gz
>  >          # ftp <your server>
>  >          ftp> put hd0.gz
>  >      4. Replace flash with NetBSD image, by ftping compressed file.
>  >         # gzip -d -c file_name.gz | cat > /dev/hd0
>  >      5. Wait a few seconds, yank power to prevent QNX updating flash.
>  >      6. Reboot under NetBSD, enjoy.
>
>Cool!
>
>So, maybe what we should do is start producing a 16M flash image suitable
>for use as an iOpener root fs with the normal distribution :-)  Alternatively,
>one could use sysinst to rewrite the flash with a suitable root FS.  Sadly,
>sysinst doesn't really have a good way to deal with "just root on here, 
>please,
>I'll put usr on NFS..."
>
>  > Obviously I've boiled it down too far. :-)  If anyone out there wants
>  > more specifics, let me know.  Currently the USB Ethernet is not ideal as
>  > the attach is deferred until *after* the root filesystem mount.  So I
>
>I really wanted to fix this with the config_pending stuff, but while it
>more or less works for e.g. CardBus and PCMCIA, it doesn't work for USB
>because the USB code is constructed such that it decrements its pending
>configuration as soon as the first device is discovered on the USB.
>
>This loses, since once a hub is discovered, it then asynchrously does
>discovery on all the hub ports.
>
>Maybe when a hub is discovered, it should increment config_pending for
>each port that it has... that might be enough to defer mounting of the
>root FS until e.g. the USB Ethernet is found.

Er, add me to this list of fanatics who ran out and purchased one ;-)

Sound like we should start a HOWTO page :-) I would be glad to test it as I am
expecting my two Iopeners to be delivered within two weeks (so they say...) For
instance, recommended hardware, requirements, etc. What about X, what was
required to get this going? BTW, I've tried looking at the website that was 
prev-
iously mentioned, but it did not work.


>  > and making sure the audio works.  Yup, a $99 MP3 station. :)
>  >
>  > So, for $99 you can get a cool LCD panel computer, add a $40 USB Ethernet
>  > and make a diskless X terminal, etc.

I've purchased two, plan on installing one in my car as an MP3 player, if 
the sound
quality is good enough.

>Yah, I gotta head down to CC soon :-)


Hehe, better hurry. My local CC ran out already, as I've said, I am on a 
"backorder"
list.

-mike



Michael C. Ibarra
ibarra@hawk.com

Hawk Technologies, Inc
100 Park Avenue, Suite 1600
New York, NY 10017

http://www.hawk.com