November 2006 Meeting Actions
The following Actions are taken from the November 06 User Group Meeting Minutes
Please update your actions with a Status Line to record progress or difficulties.
Hardware
Action: David B to investigate costs and get a suitable development board made for testing (NOR Only Build).
Balloon License
Action: David B to update the License with respect to the comments made and re-issue it for broad approval.
Action: Stephen A to communicate the next version of the BOHL to a US based lawyer colleague for comment.
Building Distributions
Action: Jim, Nick, Wookey to investigate feasibility of Open Embedded building etc. and of snapshot and freezing distributions.
Action: David B to investigate where a machine could be put carry out daily builds.
Action: Wookey, Nick and Jonathan to interact to merge the kernels (so that there is a single tree for everyone).
Action: Wookey and Jonathan M to come up with a process for modifying and recording Kernel changes that covers the use of SVN and Quilt.
Kernel Development
Action: Jonathan M agreed to investigate making NOR accessible from Linux. This will have implications for the creation of a Linux based Boot loader and for the supporting of a NOR only machine.
Action: Nick B to try an EABI build and see what happens.
Action: Paul to try current SUN Java in a Balloon context.
Action: David B and Chris J to investigate and fix (The half speed memory interface on Balloon 3).
Add-on Boards
Action: David B to produce a blank schematic as a starter for producing backplane boards.
Action: David B to produce an FFC breakout card to allow connections from FFC’s to be connected to solderable connectors compatible with Balloon 2.
Boot Loader
Action: Colin to, once again, try and bring bootldr up to gcc 3 or even gcc 4.
Action: Jim / Nick to examine a Linux boot loader solution.
JTAG Chain
Action: David B to get bflash working for Balloon 2.
The Following are a record of actions from the June 2006 User Group Meeting.
June 2006 Meeting Actions
This page is derived from http://balloonboard.org/docs/Developers_Meeting_20060606.pdf . See that for details pertinent to the actions below.
Kernel
ACTION: Wookey/Nick/Laurence/James will arrange to merge 2.6 kernel trees. STATUS: UNderway (2006-06-26). Nick has most stuff merged in 2.6.16.5 on husaberg. lwithers will add guralp extras.
ACTION: Paul Fidler to post CUED RT patches so we can put them on the site in case anyone wants to refer to them. (Low priority)
STATUS: One of two patches (plus a brief explanation) up at BalloonRealtime with
- another patch still to do.
ACTION: Lennert/Wookey/Nick/Laurence/Noodles - After merging trees kernel team will ask Lennert Buytenhek to help prepare, review and submit patches to mainline.
STATUS: Review started, 2.3MB diff in 2.6.12! 800K in 2.6.16.5. quilt recommended for organising patches. Some code reviewed during 2.6.18 kernel merge window. Jonathan McDowell (Noodles) has joined team and is merging code forward into 2.6.18. This is going well but only tested on balloon2/512b so far.
Toolchain
ACTION: Wookey/Colin: Detail toolchain choices (debian/other) in docs and put toolchain packages/tarballs on the site.
Bootloader
ACTION: James/Laurence - put their bootloader on balloonbaord.org and add info to wiki.
ACTION: James to provide Colin with software/links to linux Xilinx tools STATUS: Readme provided - awaiting tarball
ACTION: Colin to test and incorporate to bbl
ACTION: Dave/Nick/Wookey/Colin - merge bootldr versions and get one that does everything into balloonboard.org SVN
- STATUS: Done. SVN now contains bootldr 3.0.0 which supports balloon 2 and 3, and both NAND flash sizes and builds with gcc 3.3. But reported not to work on B3.
- branch version being maintined that works on all board flavours. Needs forward merge to gcc 3.3 version.
JTAG
ACTION: Dave - upload bflash stuff.
- STATUS: Done - now in SVN
ACTION: Colin - integrate with bbl
ACTION: Wookey - put DaveB in touch with OpenJTAG people.
- STATUS: Done
ACTION: DaveB/James - Work out if co-operation is appropriate and what to do next if so. report back.
FPGA/CPLD tools
ACTION: Dave - supply VHDL for balloon3 logic.
- Done: now in SVN
Builds and Variants
ACTION: Dave/Steve - publish schematic and Netlist (This will happen at the next main build)
ACTION: Dave - propose a couple of default build options.
Add-on boards
ACTION: Everyone - tell Chris what you want in terms of add-ons.
ACTION: SteveW - supply protel design/schematics for backplane and board base design, so people have a starting point for special-purpose add-on boards.
Infrastructure
ACTION: Chris/Dave write a hardware developers page for the Wiki/Web
ACTION : Wookey - Move irc server to somewhere more reliable than Aleph One.
- STATUS : DONE. {It is now irc.oftc.net#balloon (decided there was nothing to be gained from running our own server on balloonbaord.org, and it has overhead implications for avoiding irc spammers). Website updated accordingly, announced to list.}
ACTION: Wookey - Give everyone at this meeting who doesn't have one a login:
- STATUS: DONE. Set up: daveb, peter, stevew, james, lwithers, nickb, jimr, lennert. Umask set, passwords sent out.
Userspace
ACTION: Wookey/Nick - put up an nfs-root tarball suitable for development.
- Status done.
ACTION: Wookey/Colin/Jim - Examine alternatives and choose/configure something to be a default.
- STATUS: Jim has done an OE config which seems to basically work. Being put in SVN (2006-10-11)