Releases for 22nd December 2009 - U-Boot, Kernel .31, Installer

Announcing doing final prep on the releases of the following updates for the Efika MX:

• Linux 2.6.31 release which should fix some instability problems. If you downloaded the source already please modify arch/arm/mach-mx51/mx51_efikamx.c and edit line 1132 and 1133 so that cpu_wp_auto[1] and cpu_wp_auto[2] are set. The net effect of this change is the CPU will be running at the correct voltage which solves some audio glitching and some performance problems. The source will be updated in place (no patch) so new users will get the new code. You can find this on Power Developer under Efika MX Kernel

• U-Boot 2009.01 release 1.1.7 which should improve RAM performance and a few other things. Auto-boot timeout has been increased to 10 seconds (to work around the "reboot hangs and shutdown just reboots" kernel bug, to give people time to remove the power cord) and the power LED is blue during U-Boot operation.

• Auto-flash tool which will create an SD card with rootfs, kernel and U-Boot flasher (as above). This tool and the above source code (the flasher includes binaries) are at Efika MX Firmware.

• Installer SD card image which is the result of the auto-flash tool plus the archives and installation script used to prep each machine. This has been put under Efika MX Linux along with the Karmic Root Filesystem released last week. You will need a 2GB SD card or larger (the one we shipped to everyone who ordered before 1st December will do perfectly) to use this image. Alternatively you can use a much smaller card (512MB) as the extracted rootfs is barely 300MB and the tools on top JUST about fit in 512MB, using the Auto-flash tool.

They should be up in the next few hours, instructions will be on this blog.

To install the new U-Boot you will need to do some quirky switch setting. You will need:

• Adequate Lighting (I really mean this)
• A small screwdriver (unless you already connected your serial board, in which case, you are already in there)
• A sewing needle, sturdy paperclip, or professional DIP-switch-flicking tool

If you open up your Efika MX (small panel on the bottom) you will see next to the serial cable port, 4 small DIP switches. Simply switch these to 0001 (off off off on) and the system will boot from the SD card slot. You can flash the installer image directly to an SD card, or use the Flasher tool to create this SD card yourself. You really need to grab nearly all the files seperately and put them in the right places (this is obvious if you read the "flasher" script). Please note, once it's flashed, switch them back! Or it will continue to flash the NOR Flash on every boot, and this is some wear and tear on the chip.

To switch the system back to boot from SPI, the switch settings are 1110 (on on on off) which is the exact opposite. If you have an Efika MX you've opened all the way you may notice that there is a MicroSD card slot - don't rely on this as it will be gone in a future revision, but you can boot from this (as if it were SPI flash) using switch setting 0000 (off off off off). I'll grab some photos and schematics to make this easier later :)