Sunday 22 September 2013

Final Report

This will be my last report as Google Summer of Code is officially wrapping up at noon tomorrow. The report will give a rundown of everything I've done during the summer and list my future plans.

Code merged into mainline Minix:
Documentation:
Videos:
Blog Highlights:
Future (Post-GSoC) Plans:
  • Finish porting the frame buffer driver to AM335X.
  • pkgsrc for Minix/arm.
  • Helping test release candidates.
I really enjoyed my work this summer. The project wouldn't have been nearly as successful as it turned out to be if it weren't for the following people and organizations: BeagleBoard.org, Minix, Google, Jason Kridner, Kees Jongenburger, Frans Meulenbroeks, Ben Gras, David van Moolenbroek, and Lionel Sambuc.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Thomas! This is awesome stuff. I'm starting learning about MINIX and I'm fascinated with ARM.
    So I've got a BeagleBone Black with a 4D 4.3 LCD cape, and I'm interested in taking a stab at adding support for both that and the HDMI output. I've done some similar work for the Raspberry Pi (on the bare metal mind you). Do you have any pointers or notes on where you left off?

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    1. In case anyone is interested, here's the non-functional code....

      https://github.com/tcort/minix-i2c/tree/am335x-fb/drivers/fb/arch/earm

      I was first trying to get an LCD cape to work. I ran into issues debugging. I was unsure of some of the clock and pin settings and didn't have a clue about things like horizontal front porch. It was complicated by the fact that I had to modify the test program (I'm not sure my change was correct). I was able to get the display to turn on, but it was all black except for the corner pixel. There were so many places the problem could be and it would have been very time-consuming for me, as a graphics driver novice, to track everything down.

      FreeBSD has a working driver, so it may be useful to use that as a starting point.

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  2. Ah Indeed. And here is a (recent) patch for the BBB and the 4D cape. I'll give it a try.
    By the way: running the release script is painful. What's the fastest way to iterate on the fb device driver?

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