Ah this is interesting to know

Is this information in the wiki!? i wonder which one i flashed 

Right - So, as i need jtag and we need to make this a bigger topic in this forum.

@Schufti,
There are some other diagrams for that JTAGger

http://www.sigma-shop.com/information/JTAG/cable_pinouts.jpg
http://www.sigma-shop.com/information/JTAG/UK_modification.jpg

if you would like i could ask the seller how much to make these units?
have you made the one in the wiki? (im gessing you have as you wrote it)

Well i bought one anyway - at this price its worth it!
The seller looked at both diagrams and said there is one extra pin on his DP25 to pin 6 = which is ground from my observation.

Seems like it maybe a perfect match - and someone who is willing to build them for us! (I bet if we asked he's build us the exact JTAGer for us)

Has any development been done lately - im keen to know!?

I bricked my device the other day - not that i mind - it was a risk and i was willing to learn jtag anyway.
Point to note tho, if we are to make this easy for others to do further information is needed. Flashing the redboot image simply isn't enough to get redboot on the device as this is what i did then the device failed - or did it? it was flashing then stopped.

Anyway i'm going to try JTAG soon

The diagram for this programmer is

http://www.sigma-shop.com/information/JTAG/jtag_sch.jpg

I think that it matches. Schufti can you confirm? - The seller is willing to produce more of these if there is a demand.

@pagano Lily's response to the kernel mod.


Not quite sure what Lily is on about modding the Setup.S file but this feels like its part of the init process?

@pagano I've asked but I'm betting the answer is no - or why do you want to do this! 
Lily isn't THAT helpful, unless I give ideas to advance the amit firmware.

@macsat Thanks for the tip for contacting OpenWRT - so far no response

Lily seems very keen to develop the firmware, but seems only on an application front. I.E. what can this device do - Media server / FTP server / BT downloader.

Im tring to get into jtag - life would be easier if cables came pre-fabricated and fairly cheeply.
As soon as I have one I can start tinkering bit in the meantime....

Schufti, when you are developing are you aiming to keep stock firmware compatability or rewrite?
I've found patches that enable RDC changes in the kernel if anyone is interested?

So far it sounds like redboot is pretty much done for this platform, i guess a working kernel and initrd are needed next?

What else is needed to get a minimal system that isnt stock compatible? other than redboot
I dont care about any of the amit binaries - or reading and writing from the flash.

Cheers
p.s. These boards seem extremely quiet lately! Have people gotten bored?

Latest from lily on the Wireless drivers and the MAC.

Has any one tried to rebuild the wireless driver? from sources found outside of the GPL packet?

Schufti,

I didn't mean to offend you, I dont know the full extent of you knowledge.

Lily informs me
This seems to be true as httpd seems to be one of the main control binaries, and we are unable to kill it as init just reloads it at the next opportunity.

She will not tell me about how to read and write the config from flash.

Schufti,

The MGB111 is the same as the WMU-6500FS and the GPL code can be downloaded from AirLive
http://www.airlive.com/support/gpl_code/GPL_WMU-6500.zip

I attempted to ask about how led and the amit_* binaries work, but hit a very (overly) protective wall.

I too was hoping that we could re build the firmware from scratch, and have been collecting information. Have you tied the two c files i posted when in the topic about when i recovered my mgb100 last? They build split and make binary code. The splitbin one seems to split the bin in to the parts as shown in a memory map of the binary, ie the initrd is in part 3 if i remeber correctly, and that was a simple gzipped archive. Maybe the other gui fs is too, but on a different part of the split bin?

When you load up redboot do we loose compatablility with the original firmware? This is fine as long as i can still get in via ethernet and not serial - my soldering skills arnt that great!

 Cheers, look forward to more info soon.

Hey all,

Dont know how many of you have done this, but I've opened communications with one of the firmware's developers - Lily.

So please if there are any questions to ask on the development of this firmware, post and i will ask Lily.

So far Lily told me that all the modifications to the kernel were to enable the drivers the device needs.
However i have diff'd the modded kernel against a clean kernel and notice there are a few added machine code functions that include halt the device and flash the leds.

Hopefully with a developer on our side we progress.
PS. Tried Schufti's firmware last night - loads of new stuff in there, so would apreciate if you could explain what you did (removing rc.bridge and using the standard rcS is a good idea)

Cheers guys.

Cheers.
I just asumed that a compiled kernel and filesystem might boot on a pc - as the included txt file suggests in the conceptronic GPL code.
Oh well best get to grips with JTAG in case the inevitable happens.

Was planning on forgetting original firmware compatability and rebuilding all aspects of the firmware into a distro like OpenWRT. Guess that will be much harder now.
 

@Schufti, i've been trying to get the fs.img and bzImage created by the GPL code to boot on my pc for testing - but after the bootloader loads both parts nothing else happens - no kernel panic or anything.

Wondering if anyone knows how to get this working?
This way i can test images before flashing them. Is there something that the firmware bootloader does that grub or lilo dont do?

Is anyone working on incorporating redboot into a stock firmware?

All this is to avoid the need for jtag, although im only planning on moding the kernel and filesystem, you cant be too careful.

Cheers guys.

I tend to be looking for new firmware and firmware development stategies.

Which this seems to be the BEST resource for, the guys in the forum are usually quite helpful.