2010 January » Zac's Pad

GW620 Serial Console

Jan 242010

CyrilLD over at XDA found the serial console header on the GW620! It’s the 5 contacts in a row underneath the SIM card. The center one is the TX pin. This is a 3.3v serial port, so you’ll need a level converter of some sort to connect it directly to a PC’s serial port, but most USB-Serial adapters already operate at 3.3v so they should work fine.

I’m now trying to build a kernel (based on the default LG sources) that will output to that port during boot. If I can get boot messages on that serial port, then I should be able to duplicate the settings on the 2.6.29 kernel and hopefully get enough info to figure out where it’s crashing. Finger’s crossed!

Full of Fail

Blog, GW620 No Responses »

Jan 122010

*cry*

Ok. So, I finished bringing the LG mods in to the 2.6.29 kernel and the beasty still won’t boot. it just sits there taunting me with a “Booting linux” prompt.

No error message, no console activity, no nothing. Just nothing.

Nothing.

Arg.

Worse, another hacker on XDA tried the same thing with the CodeAura tree (the one it looks like the orig LG code is based on) and he’s getting the same result.

Baffling. I gotta step away from this for a day or two or I may go nutty.

Ok – nuttier.

Gonna play some Torchlight.

Trying to merge LGs changes to Kernel 2.6.27 in to 2.6.29

Blog, GW620 No Responses »

Jan 092010

To quote King Crimson: “Frustration will be my epitaph.”

<vent>

Sooo I’m trying to port the changes that LG made to the kernel (that let it run on the GW620 hardware) and it is being a serious pain in the arse.

We need kernel 2.6.29 in order to fully run Android 2.0. So, a porting I will go! Gah! I started by trying to use diff to merge the changes automatically in to the newer kernel. I tried a few different approaches, and they all failed badly. Either there were 100s of merge errors, or the code was uncompilable spaghetti at the end of the merge, or a combination of the two.

I’m now trying to bring just the required hardware drivers in to a stock 2.6.29 source tree, and even that is giving me an insane amount of grief. Arg!

Arg Arg Arg Arg.

</vent>

Edit: I have the video driver folded in to the new kernel now. Kernel still won’t boot though. There’s a few more Eve specific drivers I need to incorporate.