26Aug/0923
NES emulator running fullspeed in fluxbox on the Zipit Z2
Oh and Java is working now too. Lots of packages compiling now. Don't try installing GDM, can get you into a nasty crash loop.
Oh and Java is working now too. Lots of packages compiling now. Don't try installing GDM, can get you into a nasty crash loop.
August 27th, 2009 - 12:05
Great!
Did you need to tweak or patch packages before building, or was it rather straightforward in your bitbake environment?
I can not find it back, but did you say that it took tens of gigabytes to setup the bitbake environment?
The rootfs image you provided a few days ago runs on my Z2, including wifi support and a good keyboard driver (much better than the crappy reeeppppeeeeeaaating characters driver that was around before
) , but I cannot install packages using ipkg. It results in a segmentation fault, even when I download the ipg manually.
Therefore I also will try to setup the bitbake environment myself.
Keep up the good work!
August 27th, 2009 - 15:27
Hey sodb,
It was rather straightforward, no code modifications necessary. It turns out I had actually bitbaked and installed it a week or so ago, but didn’t realize the fceu command was prefaced by arm-angstrom-blah- so couldn’t find the executable and didn’t spend any time looking. Ended up tree/grep finding it from root while looking for something else. I’ve also got snes9x installed and it appears to start emulation, but never gets anywhere (no gl libraries installed, not enough memory, no 32-bit integer types? I haven’t debugged into it so I’m not sure what’s up with that). I am curious what could be happening with your ipkg. I am guessing that you are running out of memory and need to setup a swapfile.
As for the 10gb, it actually ended up being more like 100gb, that was when I attempted to “bitbake world”, which tried to bake the whole 18k package repo repo. Nowadays I just bitbake the packages I need and my zipit2-tmp dir doesn’t get too full (gig or two)
September 4th, 2009 - 08:17
Howdy there, I’m extremely interested in running Java on one of the ZipIt2s. After trying to absorb as much information as I could from the SF.net site and your blog posts, I still have a couple questions:
1. Do I need to activate the ZipIt in order to get to a point where I can flash it? Does activation affect my ability to extract the wifi firmware?
2. Have you played with the wifi firmware at all? Does it support WEP? How about WEP index 2?
3. How hard was it to get Java going? I assume you compiled jamvm into your OE install? Does Swing or AWT work with the windowing environment you’re using?
September 4th, 2009 - 08:18
Thanks very much in advance!
(Hit tab-enter too early)
September 4th, 2009 - 08:37
Hey Ian,
1. Nope. Zipit activation is only for using the official zipit messaging/txt msg platform. No need to activate it if you’re going to install linux.
2. WiFi chipset is marvell, same as in the iphone. That means no promiscuous mode, but Wep should be supported, not sure about wpa or wep 2. Haven’t tried it myself, i tend to use mac filtering instead of passwords.
3. Java was not hard at all. Once I had bitbaked enough of the dependencies, I got the javavm to bitbake no troubles. I haven’t tried AWT, and I see no reason SWING wouldn’t work. My current Xorg packages are hosed though (must be missing some pango dependency when I compiled em) so I don’t have any X11 fonts for GTK apps. We’ll be posting a new image from Todd shortly that’s got proper X11 and GTK fonts, so once that hits I’ll work on getting my java packags installed and posted for ya.
Good luck!
/H
September 6th, 2009 - 23:33
what options did you use to get it to work?
I have arm-angstrom-linux-fceu installed, I just can’t get it to display video.
September 7th, 2009 - 08:23
Did you set the output scaler? I set to to 1x (244×200 or something similar)
September 7th, 2009 - 09:23
Thanks Hunter, now if I could just get the dpad and sound to work.
September 7th, 2009 - 09:52
Sound is coming soon. Are you using a fceu config file? I think the default keys are wasd.
September 7th, 2009 - 10:12
I am not, how would one, the only config file I know of is binary.
I found wasd but I can’t find the A and B buttons.
I hope sound is very soon, can’t wait.
September 7th, 2009 - 10:15
Hrm, I looked around and it’s kind of difficult mapping a config file for fceu apparently… I found this on the ubuntu forums though, may work for you ..
——–
You can remap the control keys for the player 1 controller in FCEUltra by starting it up with the command
fceu -inputcfg gamepad1 romfile.nes
where romfile.nes is some ROM you want to play. You are then prompted to enter keys for the A, B and directional buttons and rapid fire A and B. When you do this, the keys you choose become default for FCEUltra and you don’t have to repeat this every time you run it.
——–
September 7th, 2009 - 10:31
I should have said I did try:
fceu -inputcfg gamepad1 romfile.nes
It never takes the input I am not sure why.
I start it from an xterm so I can see the output, but I can never get it to take the first input.
September 7th, 2009 - 11:14
Ok, I figured it out. Do this from an ssh client which is ssh’d into the Z2, then input the buttons when it asks on the Z2 itself. The next time you start it should remember the keymapping.
fceu -input1 gamepad -inputcfg gamepad1 snes_rom.nesSeptember 7th, 2009 - 11:19
Yep it’s working, but it looks like the kernel patch which prevents the keyboard repeat problem is also slowing the input to fceu. Fine for games like FF or DQ, not so much for mario. You’ll probably want to disable it or maybe turn on frameskip on fceu.
September 7th, 2009 - 11:35
awesome, thanks a lot.
The Z2 is the best $50 on a computer I ever spent. Thanks to you and the other openzipit2 devels.
Any idea when sound will be available? or how I could get it working on my own. I am getting along so far ok with openembedded.
September 7th, 2009 - 11:36
Sure, just use the modules that are in the SVN repo, and use Todd’s init script he posted on my comments earlier this week
September 7th, 2009 - 11:50
I might just have to try that.
September 7th, 2009 - 11:56
Uh the arrow keys only move the character one space at a time, anyway to get it to repeat input like it normally would?
September 7th, 2009 - 16:19
There’s a keyboard module loaded at startup I believe….Not sure….
September 7th, 2009 - 19:17
Loaded at the startup of fceu?
because the keys work fine outside of it, or is this some X thing?
September 7th, 2009 - 19:55
I recall there was a kernel module being loaded at system startup that limited the repeat rate of the keys, as they tend to stick and would repeat themselves greatly.
September 8th, 2009 - 10:17
The repeat rate that I get at the console would be fine, but I get no repeat at all in fceu.
February 21st, 2010 - 04:58
You have really great taste on catch article titles, even when you are not interested in this topic you push to read it