Steve Watkins 
This is my 3rd day with the mini2440, i have not had much time to tinker
with it- maybe 2-3 hours total, reading,tinkering, etc. The target audience
of this how to are those who are new to embedded and linux.
First of all plug the power cable in and wait for QT to load. Play around
for while to get it out of your system.
Now plug in a usb keyboard and open the terminal program under
applications.
At the command prompt type the following
to get the kernel info
#uname -a
Linux FriendlyARM 2.6.32.2-FriendlyARM #1 Fri Jan 8 12:53:23 CST 2010
armv4tl unknown
to get the cpu info
#cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor : ARM920T rev 0 (v4l)
BogoMIPS : 201.93
Features : swp half
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 4T
CPU variant : 0x1
CPU part : 0x920
CPU revision : 0
Hardware : FriendlyARM Mini2440 development board
Revision : 0000
Serial : 0000000000000000
to get the memory info
#cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 59788 kB
MemFree: 35104 kB
Buffers: 0 kB
Cached: 13716 kB
SwapCached: 0 kB
Active: 9356 kB
Inactive: 11044 kB
Active(anon): 7076 kB
Inactive(anon): 0 kB
Active(file): 2280 kB
Inactive(file): 11044 kB
Unevictable: 0 kB
Mlocked: 0 kB
SwapTotal: 0 kB
SwapFree: 0 kB
Dirty: 0 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 6712 kB
Mapped: 7748 kB
Shmem: 392 kB
Slab: 2420 kB
SReclaimable: 928 kB
SUnreclaim: 1492 kB
KernelStack: 272 kB
PageTables: 304 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 29892 kB
Committed_AS: 12636 kB
VmallocTotal: 450560 kB
VmallocUsed: 5216 kB
VmallocChunk: 439292 kB
Now i know that the 2.6.x version of the kernel supports UVC webcams, video
devices, etc. I plugged in a powered usb hub, added a mouse and a 300x USB
microscope.
checking the kernel for device detection
#dmesg | grep video
Linux video capture interface: v2.00
usbcore: registered new interface driver uvcvideo
uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Vimicro USB Camera (Altair) (0ac8:3450)
to get info on usb
#cat /proc/bus/usb/devices
this is a long list which will change depending on how many devices you
have. But my USB video was listed as
T: Bus=01 Lev=02 Prnt=07 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#= 8 Spd=12 MxCh= 0
D: Ver= 2.00 Cls=ef(misc ) Sub=02 Prot=01 MxPS=64 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=0ac8 ProdID=3450 Rev= 5.00
S: Manufacturer=Vimicro
S: Product=Vimicro USB Camera (Altair)
Now that everything looks fine exit the terminal.
#exit
under friendly arm / USB camera.
After goofing around with the camera and other applications you probably
want to tinker a bit.
Connect the LAN cable to your computer. The mini2440 uses address
192.168.1.230. So make sure it's not in use on your network.
Open your web browser to 192.168.1.230
You should see a picture of the mini2440 friendly arm board with a hybrid
of english-chinese writing. So yeah, it has a webserver built in out of the
box.
How about throing files on the mini2440?
Though you could use the SD card, or an external USB hard disk to move
files around, it's more fun to use the LAN and ftp.
open up an ftp program and use the following
connect to 192.168.1.230 port 21
user name = plg
pass = plg
Add some files, maybe an mp3 or some lower res phots. Tinker a bit, it is a
new toy...
So far it has been fun but we have no done anything beyond the typical
user. Lets change that.
Power down the mini2440. Connect the rs232 cable to the DB9 and to your
PC(you better have a serial port!)
Open a terminal emulator at the serial port you connected the serial cable
to and use the following settings.
115200 baud
8 data
No parity
1 stop bit
no flow control
Now power on the mini2440. You should see:
load Image of Linux...Uncompressing
Linux...........................................................
Linux version 2.6.32.2-FriendlyARM (root@tom) (gcc version 4.3.2 (Sourcery
G++ Lite 2008q3-72) ) #1 Fri Jan 8 12:53:23 CST 2010
CPU: ARM920T [41129200] revision 0 (ARMv4T), cr=c0007177
CPU: VIVT data cache, VIVT instruction cache
Machine: FriendlyARM Mini2440 development board
ATAG_INITRD is deprecated; please update your bootloader.
Memory policy: ECC disabled, Data cache writeback
CPU S3C2440A (id 0x32440001)
S3C24XX Clocks, (c) 2004 Simtec Electronics
S3C244X: core 405.000 MHz, memory 101.250 MHz, peripheral 50.625 MHz
CLOCK: Slow mode (1.500 MHz), fast, MPLL on, UPLL on
etc,etc,etc (very long verbose output not included here)
yaffs_read_super: isCheckpointed 0
VFS: Mounted root (yaffs filesystem) on device 31:3.
Freeing init memory: 160K
[19/Jun/2005:13:58:15 +0000] boa: server version Boa/0.94.13
[19/Jun/2005:13:58:15 +0000] boa: server built Mar 26 2009 at 15:28:42.
[19/Jun/2005:13:58:15 +0000] boa: starting server pid=698, port 80
Try to bring eth0 interface up......eth0: link down
Done
Please press Enter to activate this console. eth0: link up, 100Mbps,
full-duplex, lpa 0x45E1
Press enter here to enable the terminal.
At this point you don't need the USB keyboard anymore. Since you have a PC
screen with the terminal output check out the kernel messages.
[root@FriendlyARM /]# dmesg | less
to exit the less listing, press q
Now you have a fairly easy enough way to tinker around at the linux command
prompt. And with the ftp connect you can throw some files around. This
still feels an awful lot like a typical linux PC though. So lets tinker
with the embedded side a bit.
Power down the mini2440, connect the usb cable to the mini2440 usb device
port and to the PC. Find the boot flash selector switch and select NOR.
Power up the mini2440.
You will notice some major changes here. The screen will flicker but
nothing will happen and you will see a BIOS menu on your terminal emulator.
##### FriendlyARM BIOS 2.0 for 2440 #####
[x] format NAND FLASH for Linuxstem) on device 31:3.
[v] Download vivi y: 160K
[k] Download linux kernel
[y] Download root_yaffs image uplex, lpa 0x45E1
[a] Absolute User Application
[n] Download Nboot for WinCE less
[l] Download WinCE boot-logo
[w] Download WinCE NK.bin
[d] Download & Run
[z] Download zImage into RAM
[g] Boot linux from RAM
[f] Format the nand flash
[b] Boot the system
[s] Set the boot parameters
[u] Backup NAND Flash to HOST through USB(upload)
[r] Restore NAND Flash from HOST through USB
[q] Goto shell of vivi
[i] Version: 0945-2K
Enter your selection:
Becareful here, unless you want to brick your mini2440. Though you can
de-brick the device via Jtag and the supplied wiggler. It's not fun. It is
painfully slow(10,15,20+ mins. depending on your hardware and know how)
Here is where the howto is going to get flakey. I don't use window so i
can't tell you anything about dnw.exe, how it works, or how to use it.
I use the usbpush utility by Harald Welte
http://www.friendlyarm.net/dl.php?file=usbpush.tar.gz
You can load the test binaries from the no os folder directly to ram and
execute.
For example, at the menu type d
Enter your selection: d
Clear the free memory
USB host is connected. Waiting a download
on the PC use usbpush to throw a test file into ram for execution
# ./usbpush 2440test_T35.bin
csum = 0xef74
send_file: addr = 0x30000000, len = 0x00095ab0
the PC serial terminal will indicate the progress
Now, Downloading [ADDRESS:30000000h,TOTAL:613050]
RECEIVED FILE SIZE: 613050 (59KB/S, 10S)
áownloaded file at 0x30000000, size = 613040 bytes
<***********************************************>
SBC2440 Test Program VER1.0
www.arm9.net
Build time is: Jul 17 2009 23:30:50
Image$$RO$$Base = 0x30000000
Image$$RO$$Limit = 0x300344c8
Image$$RW$$Base = 0x300344c8
Image$$RW$$Limit = 0x300e2280
Image$$ZI$$Base = 0x30095ab0
Image$$ZI$$Limit = 0x300e2280
<***********************************************>
Please select function :
0 : Please input 1-16 to select test
1 : Test PWM
2 : RTC time display
3 : Test ADC
4 : Test interrupt and key scan
5 : Test Touchpanel
6 : Test TFT-LCD or VGA1024x768 module
7 : Test IIC EEPROM, if use QQ2440, please remove the LCD
8 : UDA1341 play music
9 : Test SD Card
10 : Test CMOS Camera
There should be a picture of a sunflower on the mini2440's screen at this
point. Tinker with the vcarious tests loaded.
That's it for now. I'm looking into a method to backup the mini2440's NOR
and NAND flash memory (using linux, not windowds) before i attempt to flash
anything into the device.
I'm sure i made a few typos and what not. Use some common sense :)