Subject: A name for the NetBSD port to the Psion Series 5 mx
To: Peter Seebach , David Brownlee <abs@netbsd.org>
From: John Fremlin <chief@bandits.org>
List: tech-ports
Date: 04/24/2001 01:19:04
Hi!

I'm porting NetBSD to the Psion 5 mx PDA. Currently I can enter the
kernel (from Arlo) and print humorous messages on the fb - that is,
printf is working. The MMU is not yet enabled and no other hardware is
supported, so multiuser is quite far off ;-)

The people who generously offered CF cards: they won't be much use to
me for a while (until I start wanting to boot the same kernel twice),
so hang on to them ;-)

Anybody interested is welcome to the bits and pieces of the port.

NetBSD folks: there is a big question of what to call it. Background
follows:

Hardware details

   The [1]Series 5 mx is a small palmtop computer produced by [2]Psion
   Plc. It is built around an [3]ARM 710 T with a ARM7TDMI (Thumb) ARM
   processor running at 36 MHz. Although the [4]Series 5 palmtops from
   Psion and the Geofox 1 have the same native operating system (EPOC),
   they are based on different hardware to the Series 5 mx: in fact, both
   are built around a [5]Cirrus Logic CLPS7110, for which documentation
   is available. There is [6]hardware information for the Geofox 1 (some
   of it reverse engineered). The [7]Series 7 is based around a StrongArm
   processor.

  Serial port

   The Series 5 mx has the same serial port interface as the Series 7.

   1. http://www.series5mx.com/
   2. http://www.psion.com/
   3. http://www.arm.com/
   4. http://www.series5.com/
   5. http://www.cirrus.com/
   6. ftp://ftp.linuxhacker.org/pub/geofox/
   7. http://www.psion.com/series7/

I'm not sure it really fits in the hpcarm subarch (which is rather
StrongArm orientated), though it does have similar classes of devices
(e.g. the touchscreen) and is used in the same way as HPC
devices. OTOH the Series 7 is more like a HPC and that does share a
serial port with the Series 5 mx. As can be seen from the hardware
differences above, a "psionarm" subarch would be fairly meaningless. I
thought of having a "handarm" subarch (which would possibly later
include ports to mobile phones currently running EPOC). Any
suggestions? I don't want to have to change all the names if it
finally gets landed in the NetBSD CVS tree.

-- 

	http://www.penguinpowered.com/~vii