RE: [jornada] Jornada 7xx Flashboard

Just FYI to all, I am really interested in seeing this progress on the 720.
Please keep us updated!

-----Original Message-----
From: jornada-bounces@handhelds.org [mailto:jornada-bounces@handhelds.org]
On Behalf Of Sebastian Hesselbarth
Sent: Wednesday, September 01, 2004 2:44 PM
To: jornada@handhelds.org
Subject: Re: [jornada] Jornada 7xx Flashboard

Mark Gollahon wrote:
> Hello, all!
> I am new to this board (as my Jornada 720 is still on its way), but I
> have every intention of running Linux on it. Since I am somewhat of a
> hardware tinkerer and I noticed some of you talking about the
> flashboard, I was wondering how many of you would like to have one? I
> might be able to kickstart the process and get some if there is enough of
a demand.

I got a board without any parts a while ago from HP and soldered
(nearly) all parts on it. I am missing two of the 56pF caps but had no time
to buy them because I am working on my diploma thesis.
Right after finishing the board the next problem will be the initial flash
procedure because the j720 does not have (or at least no one ever found one)
jtag interface.

> Also, I have some other questions for you in relation to the flashboard.
> For those of you that have "taken the cover off" your Jornada 7xx, is >
there enough room in there to put in a CF card? (Note: NOT in the CF
slot....)

Where do you want to interface the cf inside the jornada ? the sa1100's
companion chip provides two pcmcia "slots" where one is used for the real
pcmcia slot and the other one is connected to the cf slot (AFAIK!) I think
connecting the flash chips from CF cards _directly_ on the data bus is
impossible since those flash chips are _very_ different from e.g.
strata flashes!

> I could possibly ditch the Intel Strataflash chips on the original
> flashboard and substitute a CF card - but I don't know if there is enough
room....
> Doing this would make it MUCH easier to flash new bits into it....

As I said earlier: do not try to replace the strata flashes with flashes
from CF cards! I opened a CF card and it contained a 8bit flash and a
ide2flash interface chip to translate ide transfers from CF slot to flash
commands. Maybe I could have a look at my notes again because all I write
now is taken from my mind and may be vague.
I have some pictures of my opened joranda too but first have to search them
on my harddisk ;)

> Finally, what about memory? I noticed in the engineering docs that
> the StrongARM could possibly host up to 256Megs of SDRAM.
> Any out there wanting that much?? ;)

I guess that would be nice but first try to get some SRAMs that are pin
compatible ;) most newer chips are definitely _not_ pin compatible because
they have balls only (BGA!) No, really .. linux port for joranda720 is
missing _much_ parts .. at least for 2.6-series there is no framebuffer
support and surely other things too (pm, pcmcia?) .. there is a 2.4-series
kernel that should implement fb,pm and so on but i never tested it.
Before you (we!?) try to design new replacement boards we should port
framebuffer support to 2.6 (the patch was rejected by rmk, because of bad
coding style AFAIR .. whatever that means)

> Let me know!
> -Mark Gollahon

bye, Sebastian
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Received on Wed Sep 1 17:55:59 2004