GP2X The F200 Telnet Problem

[naomaru]

Thanks! I'll denitely try the cradle.

Thanks, Orkie. I wasn't aware of the cradle.

But my laptop doesn't have a serial connector. If I buy a USB-to-serial adapter (e.g. http://sewelldirect.com/usbtoserial.asp), will it let me get the debug output through USB?



Simple answer. Yes .

The most common USB<>Serial leads have a Prolific chip and that works well if you want to be 100% sure but any USB>Serial IC should work great.

 

[SunSpire]

I'm getting somewhat irritated now. I really really need the official gph linux source to be able to build this module :-((

GPH has released the source code for FW 4, not sure if this is of any help or if you've seen it already, but thought I'd mention it anyway

FW4 source @ gp2x.com

I'm really disappointed about what GPH did to the F200, makes me wish I didn't order one and my old MK1 was still working, sigh.

Good Luck everyone tho trying to find a solution, I'll follow this thread with interest!

"SunSpire"

 

[Sphinxter]

To determine a modules dependencies and load them in order on a minimal system with little more than the basic utilities and no room for modprobe I wrote this scrap of shell, KVER would be uname -r and MODULESTGZ would be /lib/modules tarred and gzipped, I would extract, insert and delete them one a time like so. Unrelated trivia yes but those first three lines may help you in your quest;

loadamod()
{
todo=`grep /${1}.ko: /lib/modules/$KVER/modules.dep | sed sQ:QQ`
set $todo
echo "$9
$8
$7
$6
$5
$4
$3
$2
$1" | sort | uniq | while read driver
do
if [ ! -z ${driver} ]; then
cd /lib/modules/${KVER}
zcat $MODULESTGZ | tar x .${driver#/lib/modules/$KVER}
insmod ${driver}
sleep 1
rm ${driver}
fi
done
}

part of gnnix

 

[Typhoon22]

Hi guys, girls (there must be some somewhere )

Would this be of any use?

http://prodig.org/2007/10/31/wireless-sd-card/

I know that it has its own issues, ie it can only transfer jpg's apparently, but I'm not sure if this is software limited or not. (I haven't researched it and I don't have $99 lying around)

surely if we could reverse engineer the driver a solution might be possible without even worrying about a wireless usb interface?
I suppose it will have to be able to maintain a connection for a long period of time and there aren't any tech specs on this or power usage...

Any help at all?

 

[yodaofborg]

Thats not an SD Wifi card, its an SD card with wireless capability for sending files. And no driver can change this, that is what it does.

 

[Squidge]

http://prodig.org/2007/10/31/wireless-sd-card/

I know that it has its own issues, ie it can only transfer jpg's apparently, but I'm not sure if this is software limited or not. (I haven't researched it and I don't have $99 lying around)



That's meant for a camera, so you can take shots and it automatically uploads them to your pc so you don't need a usb cable or sd card reader. Whilst you may be able to hack it to transfer other files, thats all it will ever do. The device its plugged into has no knowledge of its wireless abilities.

 

[Lint]

I'm quite confused: why didn't anyone ever tried pppd?
You can just log in a shell over serial, run "pppd" and then suspend/exit-without-hangingup and run other pppd /dev/ttySX on the other side and you're set with a network interface over a serial link that will drop any corrupted packet and retransmit it with no extra worries
Then you can run samba, ssh, telnet or whatever.... But I have no clue of how much data is sent over serial line as "junk", I hope is at least not enough to corrupt every packet
I know that's linux-only, but if that's possible, probably it can also be done with dial-up networking and some DUN logon script

 

[DJWillis]

I'm quite confused: why didn't anyone ever tried pppd?
You can just log in a shell over serial, run "pppd" and then suspend/exit-without-hangingup and run other pppd /dev/ttySX on the other side and you're set with a network interface over a serial link that will drop any corrupted packet and retransmit it with no extra worries
Then you can run samba, ssh, telnet or whatever.... But I have no clue of how much data is sent over serial line as "junk", I hope is at least not enough to corrupt every packet
I know that's linux-only, but if that's possible, probably it can also be done with dial-up networking and some DUN logon script

Try it, then get back to us with the comments on the awesome performance .

You also do realise that your talking about the console port. If you kill the console (or rather smother it) in favour of PPPD then you would have to then telnet to the GP2X to get back in over IP whist keeping your Samba session open over the same link. Not the nicest of dev environments .

As I think I mentioned in this post months ago, perfectly possible but so painful to use it would be an almighty waste of time . Not to mention a fag to setup as you obviously can't be running console commands on the GP2X while you smother the console.

 

[kevcal]

Yeah I mentioned it a few months ago and your comments made reasinable sense - but how many console messages are there once the gp2x is up and running (I'm definite you know more about this than me).

Are you limited to 115200 baud?

I'm all for trying stuff out just to make sure.
My personal opinion, if I had an F200 would be to give it a go and then we'd know for sure whether it's feasible or not; but no, I'm not volunteering

 

[DJWillis]

Yeah I mentioned it a few months ago and your comments made reasinable sense - but how many console messages are there once the gp2x is up and running (I'm definite you know more about this than me).

Are you limited to 115200 baud?

Yes you are limited to 115200 baud.

I must not have mentioned, I tried this with an F100 in the past and it can work, it is just so slow and unreliable as to be a waste of time. It was also a total sod to get working (the only reason I did it was that I have to do just this with another Linux box with only serial out and the GP2X was easier to test on at the time).

To all intents the output on a F200's console would be exactly the same. Anything that writes to STDOUT goes to the console and that is a lot of stuff from simple debugs in apps to 'proper' Linux apps outputting there. The volume is directly related to what your doing .

 

[kevcal]

Fair enough - Hadn't realised you'd tried it. I stand corrected

 

[Lint]

I'm quite confident that gp2x can go further than 115k2bps, the problem is to get a hi-speed serial on the pc side, wich is limited to 115k2 just for backward compatibility and perhaps find out if the serial driver is limiting the speeds up to 115k or if it will satisfy a 460kbps serial request

But anyway, that's a rs-232 serial, we can't expect much of bandwidth, still is better than what we've got(nothing), no?

 

[Squidge]

Yes, the gp2x can, but you need to get linux to listen, thats the problem.

 

[twojame]

I've been reading through this thread with great interest. I've developed my game using the old F100 with usb networking setup. It was bloody ideal as I could double click my bat file and my new build would be on the nand of the f100 via the network samba. I think that's what you call it.

I'm no way near as good as the Linux guru's here, but what I’ve picked up is that the usb network functionality is not there with the f200. This means I’d be back to unplugging/plugging in the SD card?

Hmm...I must say it's put me off buying the f200. Maybe go for a f100 via ebay route? Development is important for me so i'm working out what my options are...

Thanks

J

edit: sorry for the post chaps. I've just found the wiki which answers my question. It seems weird to remove such a feature that is a sale feature at least for me it is.

http://wiki.gp2x.org/wiki/F-200

{
F200 doesn't have a telnet/samba connections via USB, makes it for developers harder to test their software. No easy fix yet. More info: [5]
}

 

[Squidge]

I'm no way near as good as the Linux guru's here, but what I’ve picked up is that the usb network functionality is not there with the f200. This means I’d be back to unplugging/plugging in the SD card?

Well, the F200 can act as a sd card reader via the usb socket, so it's theoretically possible to switch the unit into sd card reader mode, copy your files to the sd card and then exit that mode back to normal running. I don't have a f200 though, so I don't know how you would do either (I'm assuming there's some menu option to select sd card reader mode, but I don't know how you would go back to normal mode).

 

[twojame]

I'm no way near as good as the Linux guru's here, but what I’ve picked up is that the usb network functionality is not there with the f200. This means I’d be back to unplugging/plugging in the SD card?

Well, the F200 can act as a sd card reader via the usb socket, so it's theoretically possible to switch the unit into sd card reader mode, copy your files to the sd card and then exit that mode back to normal running. I don't have a f200 though, so I don't know how you would do either (I'm assuming there's some menu option to select sd card reader mode, but I don't know how you would go back to normal mode).


Ahh right thanks... I can sort of see how the build on pc and deploy + test process might work now on the f200.

The way I used to work Squidge is that I would build on pc, then copy it onto the nand memory via usb network. Not the SD as sometimes that would lock up, but this method worked for me everytime.

Is anyone here able to confirm that the SD Card Reader method is workable for development? Stable and quick etc...

thanks

j

edit:

to be fair I guess I still get the f200 anyway. As long as you can zap stuff easily onto the sd via usb...

 

[simonb]

Is anyone here able to confirm that the SD Card Reader method is workable for development? Stable and quick etc...

Yes. No. Sometimes ;-)

Under XP, when you eject & unplug the cable the F200 very often "sticks" displaying a "USB Connected" message. Works fine under OSX, NetBSD and Linux for me.

 

[twojame]

Is anyone here able to confirm that the SD Card Reader method is workable for development? Stable and quick etc...

Yes. No. Sometimes ;-)

Under XP, when you eject & unplug the cable the F200 very often "sticks" displaying a "USB Connected" message. Works fine under OSX, NetBSD and Linux for me.


Hmm, ok cool thank you. So the issue is if you was eject/unplug the cable you may have to power cycle the gp2x...

Under XP then if you were to leave the gp2x on and connected via usb you could easily fire off 30 minutes or so of quick testing without a network issue? Quickly firing over new builds from pc to sd card... Then run and exit the build, wash repeat etc?....

edit: i've decided to go with the f200. Once I get more up-to speed with it i'll assist with this telnet issue.

edit2: I get my F200 in the morning so i'll see if i'm able to do my build on pc, deploy and test on gp2x process with any ease...