Two Bits

Well, I've finally done it. I've been working for a few months now on porting Linux to a new device. Do you know what it came down to in the end?

Two bits in a 32-bit number.

That's it. There were times when I became quite a hermit working on this device. People would look at me like I was crazy sometimes. I had to open it the case and solder a few connections on. At the very beginning I was probing pcb pads to find the right traces. I hooked it up to a scope, put together a few voltage-level shifter circuits. I designed and fabricated a breakout board for easier access to some really small traces.

Just when I thought that I was destined to lose my grip on reality, I was greeted by what seemed to be some ascii characters on the oscilloscope. Then, with a bit more tinkering, at a point in time that seemed to be more precious than diamonds, as my eyes started to well up a little bit, I saw the following message on my console:

Linux version 2.6.29 (cfriedt@localhost) (gcc version 4.1.2 (Gentoo 4.1.2 p1.1)) #5 Fri Apr 10 18:16:27 CEST 2009
CPU: XScale-PXA270 [69054117] revision 7 (ARMv5TE), cr=0000397f
...

The device itself will remain unnamed .... for now ...