Download nec900 eng
From JLiMe.com
(edit as necessary, plenty of room for improvement) MobilePro 900/900c - The Caddies of the HPC world
Nice features:
- 64mb RAM
- PCMCIA (16bit only)
- Compact Flash (capable of holding a microdrive - ie good for swap files)
- USB .... HOST!!! Yes if we get it running you can hook your USB anything to it...camera, wifi adapter, network adapter, scanner, keyboard, mouse... (linux drivers needed of course)
- VGA out 800x600 they say
It'd be perfect...except...DSTN. LCD's come in TFT and (D)STN. STN's mean slow refresh. Looks great except for movies and games...
The 900 and 900c are supposedly the same hardware with the ROM versions being the only difference. Since jLime doesn't use the ROM consider them identical.
What works with jLime on the MobilePro 900's
| Feature | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| USB | No | Should be easy |
| Sound | No | Should be easy |
| True suspend | No | Low power mode lasts 20 hours |
| VGA Out | Unknown | Expect tough |
| Wake on alarm | No | True suspend would need |
| Wake on interrupt | No | True suspend would need |
| Suspend with CF power | No | Nice for CF modem |
So what does work? Well lots! It's functional as a hand held PC. (Browsers, PIMs, ssh, word processing, reading, ...)
What do I want?
- Installation instructions
- Instructions for setting up onboard development
- Instructions for setting up distributed compiling with onboard development
- Instructions for compiling a new kernel
- Instructions for testing a new kernel using kexec
- Using FVWMthemes with apwal as an alternative environment
Notes about Boot process
- Windows CE runs programs directly from ROM, does not need to load them into ram
- Linux must load them into RAM (newer kernels can support run from ROM but it's not supproted yet)
- On power off - Windows CE basically stores the current CPU contents and powers everything off except the RAM. Power on is check for CPU contents, reload and continue running...all of this is taken care of by boot loader
- jLime does not have a boot loader for MP900's
- jLime can only "fake suspend" ie turn off LCD backlight, slow processor down, spin down drives
Boot process
- Copy haret.exe (Windows CE program that can load linux), link kernel, and a boot parameters file to the internal disk of the MP900
- Boot Windows CE, calibrate touchscreen, set date, ... (do NOT format internal disk)
- Open internal disk
- Run haret, wait till linux finishes booting
- Never reboot :) (easier done than said since the battery lasts 20+ hours, just plug it in occasionally)
- (please note: Linux rarely locks up...Never reboot is easy)
Installation Instructions
Installation works best if you have another linux system capable of formatting your CF card. In this example, I want jLime to run from the CF card with 64mb of RAM available. Since I have a microdrive (true hard disk not flash memory), I can setup a swap file that won't destroy my CF card. (flash memory has limited write cycles, after 250,000 writes that piece of memory is dead. flash does some magic to distribute the writes to different cells but swap is evil on flash. 4GB microdrives can be had for less than $30.)
- get all jLime pieces (haret, kernel, boot params file, userland)
(userland is a tarball of an already installed image, untared onto an ext2/3 partition provides a complete install. Then the feed access is setup and any extra software can be loaded from the feed.)
- Main files
- Feed
- format your CF (microdrive hopefully) like this (fdisk and mkfs.ext3)
(FAT,ext2,swap)
- Copy haret, kernel, boot params file to the FAT of the CF (or in my case the internal flash drive of the mp900. It has a section of writeable flash built in)
- Copy the userland tarball to the ext2/3 partition on the CF and untar it
- Run haret
- login as root
- passwd to change the root password
- startx to launch X
