Friday, December 16, 2022

The $8 Linux computer (part 2.)

Caveat Emptor! At the time of writing, ethernet, wifi and SD-Card are not working. It's good to realize this before jumping into this.

Things have improved a little, since writing PART 1 of my experience. Instead of a patched bflb-mcu-tool to flash, it is now possible to use a modified picoprobe [DOWNLOAD HERE] with the Dev Cube flashing tool.

Also, there is a patch for the PIN definitions so that we can capture the UART of the D1 core (which is a T-HEAD C906) on pins GPIO17/GPIO16.

With the fixed pin definitions we can hook up a USB to UART dongle, like the CH340G, to the second UART as shown below.

In this picture, the red dongle is to capture the output from the linux console running on the T-HEAD C906 core. The pink dongle is to program the Ox64. Both of these need to be connected to your PC. The Ox64 itself needs no connection to the PC, other than a power feed into the Micro-USB.

So, once we wired this all up, flashed to binaries, what do we get?

We get root!

And that's after booting in a blistering 0.22 seconds!

Full boot log.

I love Linux on a diet. So mean and lean.

Next up: Can we get networking?

3 comments:

  1. Can this.... give video output sometimes down the line or would it be strictly UART only?

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    Replies
    1. CPU has an LCD controller. Not sure if the Pine board exposes it.

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  2. I look forward to seeing working RF. Is there a specific place where development take place?

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