DIDJ Hacking

the Development board had a (USB ??) Ethernet adapter on board

Are you certain of that?
http://www.linux-usb.org/gadget/
http://www.armadeus.com/wiki/index.php?title=USB_Gadget

there is notes in the source that was released that points to this board being used for development
http://translate.googleusercontent.com/ ... BdA#text_2

then there is some details of a later board called "Lightning" that had a MP2530F often refereed to as the MP2530 board

final board was called the "LF1000 Form Factor Board" what you see in the Didj now

so... after some info clean up and sorting

Magic Eyes ME2530 Board "Navi"
had 3.5" LCD

Leapfrog MP2530F Development Board with LF_MP2530F (blue and brown colored) (blue was given only to the "Lightning Development Team"?)
Development 1.1 ?

LF1000 Development Board with ME_LF1000 (green colored)
Development 1.2 ?

LF1000 Form Factor Board withLF_LF1000

The Board ID can be inspected at any time by reading the following file:
/sys/devices/platform/lf1000-gpio/board_id
This four-bit (one hex digit) ID is hard-wired on the boards.
The ID is 0 for Development and Form Factor boards and 3 for the "upcoming EP1
board." It is expected that this file is read and the Board ID is used in
generating the device serial number during the manufacturing process.

Caution!

mkbase.sh can brick your DIdj!

I was testing it out to see if i could make a bare boot cart and now my didj wont power up at all, tried to do a uart boot and still nothing

Caution!

mkbase.sh can brick your DIdj!

I was testing it out to see if i could make a bare boot cart and now my didj wont power up at all, tried to do a uart boot and still nothing

That sucks, is there anyway to program the processor or flash? Or does that require something special beyond something like a PICKIT? I've only worked with PICMicro's myself, so I don't know much about this ARM stuff, programming it wise. I'm stuck in the middle of trying to set up the toolchain so I can compile stuff for it. I was reading your site last night, documenting the files you found, thanks btw. I've never done anything like this before, any information at all is helpful for me at least, so maybe I can trade some of my boat anchor of inexperience in on some moral support

tried booting from the uart again some success

************************************************
* lightning-boot 1.0 *
* Modified with xmodem download support *
* 31.05.09 Claude Schwarz *
************************************************
warning: failed to find rootfs flags!
warning: booting alternative kernel!
PANIC: unable to load alt summary
die()

tried booting from the uart again some success

************************************************
* lightning-boot 1.0 *
* Modified with xmodem download support *
* 31.05.09 Claude Schwarz *
************************************************
warning: failed to find rootfs flags!
warning: booting alternative kernel!
PANIC: unable to load alt summary
die()

I looked inside lightning-boot_winarm.zip from claude's site and those warning messages are in main.c, hopefully its something that could be configured when compiling the lightning-boot. I'm not real strong with C, but I'll dig around a bit, just installed Slackware 13 to refresh myself on linux, and want to learn this stuff, so I'll see if I find anything helpful.

ok I got it to load lightning boot, the jumpers had to be installed on d5 and d6
then magically it booted normally!

file system is still intact!!! woot!

looking back at the mkbase.sh it was this that messed up my didj

# Reprogram boot sector

if [ -e $BOOTLDR ] ; then
if [ "$MAKE_MFG_CART" = "0" -a "$LDR_SUM" = "`nanddump -m -l $bootsize $bootpart 2> /dev/null`" ] ; then
echo "Boot sector already correctly programmed"
else
flash_eraseall $bootpart > /dev/null
nandwrite -p $bootpart $BOOTLDR > /dev/null
if [ "$LDR_SUM" = "`nanddump -m -l $bootsize $bootpart 2> /dev/null`" ] ; then
echo "Boot sector programmed successfully"
else
echo "Boot sector checksum mismatch"
exit 1
fi
fi
else
echo "Boot sector image file not found"
exit 1
fi

i had the message Boot sector checksum mismatch after i ran the script so i have a feeling i have a blank boot sector?

I am working on hacking the diji. I have gotten into it with serial and through the usb device. I have modified some of the images in the usb device to change the different screens. The only problem is that when I change a picture most of the time it wont actually change the image in the diji. Is there a command I need to run or am I just doing something wrong?

I am also working on reorganizing the Diji wiki on http://www.elinux.org/Didj. I think this would be a great place to write tutorials on how to do all this stuff. So feel free to make a account and add your own tutorials. I did get a cartridge breakout board that locks in when pushed in and releases when pushed again just like the real cartridge. I will soon be writing a wiki page on how to make this simple breakout board that can perform all the actions that Claude's board can do made easily at home.

I've been trying to learn how to compile the kernel and bootloaders, I have no idea what I'm doing, but so far have managed to install scratchbox and make a lightning-boot.bin file that doesn't work, when I compile it with DEBUG=1 it says "undefined reference to `db_puts'" which doesn't make sense because it links to the debug.h file. while attempting to run the make_rootfs.sh script I made it like 2/3rds of the way thru the packages changing things that went wrong, mostly broken links to downloads, and that sudo and svn doesn't work in scratchbox. I can post them if anyone wants them, but like I said, a couple days ago, I had no clue what any of this was, and as of the moment, I kind of do. If anyone has a link to a tutorial on cross compiling with something similar to the didj would be great, so far I've built a target, use sb terminal to navigate to the Didj source, and then start running the ./install scripts and try and fix anything it tells me is wrong, which I've yet to really figure out, which files are what and going where, but am getting there.

I am working on hacking the diji. I have gotten into it with serial and through the usb device. I have modified some of the images in the usb device to change the different screens. The only problem is that when I change a picture most of the time it wont actually change the image in the diji. Is there a command I need to run or am I just doing something wrong?

Were you using TheMoogle's commands?

To display a raw rbg image on the lcd

layer-control /dev/layer0 s enable on
layer-control /dev/layer0 s format B8G8R8
layer-control /dev/layer0 s hstride 3
layer-control /dev/layer0 s vstride 960
layer-control /dev/layer0 s position 0 0 320 240
layer-control /dev/layer0 s dirty
imager /dev/layer0 /yourimage.rgb

Am also wondering if it makes a difference if you are using UART or mounted as USB drive, the USB drive method doesn't expose all the files, where as the UART method gets you a file structure that looks more like Linux /. It could be there are two places where the image is, causing unexpected results when replacing one.

Am also wondering if it makes a difference if you are using UART or mounted as USB drive, the USB drive method doesn't expose all the files, where as the UART method gets you a file structure that looks more like Linux /. It could be there are two places where the image is, causing unexpected results when replacing one.

I use a combo of both uart and the usb. Both are really needed to make any real fun changes.
The usb is best used for transferring files to the didj.

My question is how far is it fron the inside of the cartridge slot till I can put items like header pins on the board? I think that makes sense.
Also what methods/products do you use to make your prototype boards? (The homemade ones)
Thanks

35mm from the inside.
I usually made prototypes with photoresist PCBs.

im trying to make a lib for eagle
I cant get the dimensions correct? what did you use for pad width and distance between them?