I am currently uploading MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha1 to Yahoo.

IanIan,
Does this 1.4.4.5-alpha1 release have the previous version's graphics/palette, or the newest version by EmuMannen you described in the prior post as looking "pretty bad"? (unselected items are dark grey on light black)

Joe L.

Ian,
Does this 1.4.4.5-alpha1 release have the previous version's graphics/palette, or the newest version by EmuMannen you described in the prior post as looking "pretty bad"? (unselected items are dark grey on light black)

Joe L.

The previous version.

Ian

I'd like to keep the README as long as it's not too big. It's actually a good place for me to track what I'm doing with releases, but I guess my build script could remove this as it adds the VERSION file (which I might also have include build date/time)

VERSION file is a good idea, and it's also great to include the build date/time in it. I think the Readme file should be in the zip package, there is its normal place.

I guess I might have screwed up, but firmware built with this new palette and graphics looks pretty bad here.
No Ian it was me totally screwing up (swapped palette index 253 & 254 by misstake). :o

Just back from the garage and I have made a new set of gfx (with a new palette, right this time I hope) and uploaded to Yahoo Groups (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mg-35_firmware_mods/files/MG-35%20Graphics/).

When updating the firmware, you are asked for confirmation, the options are a crosmmark and a checkmark which change the color when selected. Near them you have a green dot (near the seleted item) and a bigger green square (near the unselected item), which is kind of counter-intuitive. They should probably have the same color as the background, to become invisible.

On the next screen, you have a message "Don't turn the power off" and the status of the upgrade. The background of this screen should be red instead of green, since it's a dangerous operation and should be left alone to complete.

When updating the firmware, you are asked for confirmation, the options are a crosmmark and a checkmark which change the color when selected. Near them you have a green dot (near the seleted item) and a bigger green square (near the unselected item), which is kind of counter-intuitive. They should probably have the same color as the background, to become invisible.

On the next screen, you have a message "Don't turn the power off" and the status of the upgrade. The background of this screen should be red instead of green, since it's a dangerous operation and should be left alone to complete.
That is because someone at AL Tech decided that they needed these additional dialogs but they did not develop them inline with the default design of the Sigma Designs dev kit. Default graphics uses palette 254 (magenta in the original palette) for transparency (any color in the graphics using palette index 254 will be rendered as transparent). I originally assumed that this was the case in the whole GUI but unfortunately not! Some dialogs (the ones using the pale yellow backdrop in the original firmware) is instead using palette index 234 (that is the palette index of the same pale yellow in the original firmware) to erase the previous position of the cursor (the green dot) in those dialogs. What makes things really difficult is that AL Tech made a really bad design move when adopting this solution. They never planned for a change in the hard coded palette. They just took some of the colors in original palette that suited them and introduced some customized hacks that forever will make it really hard to efficiently select proper colors for all graphical elements. Why is that, because palette index 234 is also used for info label text and highlighted browser text! Try coordinate a custom color scheme where info label text, highlighted browser text and the background of the “hacked dialogs” are the same, it’s not that easy. That is why I had to change the background of these dialogs to white but it is still far from perfect since I used pale blue as background text (index 255) originally black but I can’t use black since I picked a dark blue background but the same text is also used in the “hacked dialogs” etc. If only AL Tech would have done the right things or at least released their code (so that we could have fixed their flaws and make things right all free of charge)…

Back to the green anomalies you see, that is because I originally didn’t realize exactly what AL Tech had done (newer thought anyone could be that stupid). That’s why palette index 234 isn’t accounted for when I made my graphics and palette. It should be fixed in the latest set of graphics (even though it is hard to pick a set of colors that looks good everywhere in the GUI because of what I described above). Hope you get it… :(

On the next screen, you have a message "Don't turn the power off" and the status of the upgrade. The background of this screen should be red instead of green, since it's a dangerous operation and should be left alone to complete.
You can't alter one color in the palette without affecting the whole GUI (if not part of the graphical files). Any graphical element drawn in runtime (text and background rects.) will have to use any of the avalable indexed in the palette. Either change the palette in runtime (that is not what dvdplayer.bin etc. do) or byte patch the binaries to use any other index. What AL Tech should have done is to set aside some of the indexes in the palette and used them for runtime graphics making it safe to use the rest for your custom graphics (PNG-files)...

so which is the next firmware i can use when u guys done with the testing?...............alph1,pre0..................thx

u guys doyng a great job :)

so which is the next firmware i can use when u guys done with the testing?...............alph1,pre0..................thx

u guys doyng a great job :)

Generally speaking, unless you want to help development, you should avoid anything that's marked alpha or beta.

If you don't want pre-views of new releases to help testing (with perhaps minor problems) you should avoid anything marked "pre"

But 1.4.4.4-pre0 is looking solid.

Ian

No Ian it was me totally screwing up (swapped palette index 253 & 254 by misstake). :o

Just back from the garage and I have made a new set of gfx (with a new palette, right this time I hope) and uploaded to Yahoo Groups (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mg-35_firmware_mods/files/MG-35%20Graphics/).

Do I need to use just the new palette or drop in the new logon image and img folder as well?

Ian

Lovely weather in Leeds today, and what was I doing? Disassembling the Al Tek udhcpc to see why it works and mine doesn't.

I started marking the function of blocks, working through from the main state machines, through the scummy script.c stuff that directly invoked ifconfig/route and writes to smb.conf and then back out of the exit code.

Where I knew what something did, I documented it. The mystery bits had to be the "secret sauce" that tells dvdplayer.bin that the network is up.

I finally found it! I have currently not bothered working out the subnet mask size so I can write /24 /16 or whatever to smb.conf. The Al Tech code does this but the code looked convoluted and also used the IP, which didn't make sense.

I finally found (deep inside 70 pages of O2 optimised arm assembler) that the code writes the IP to address 0x1FFF208 and the subnet mask to 0x1FFF20C as part of the shifting swapping and twiddling. However, it does it by dereferencing a pointer stored in memory and adding offsets, so it really wasn't obvious.

I can now add this hideous nastyness to my udhcpc.

Ian

Do I need to use just the new palette or drop in the new logon image and img folder as well?

IanReplace everything just to be sure... Sorry for the inconvenience...

I can now add this hideous nastyness to my udhcpc.
:eek: Just for our illumination, how do you know this nastyness was the deliberate programming of an engineer, as opposed to the mysterious working of an optimizing compiler?

:eek: Just for our illumination, how do you know this nastyness was the deliberate programming of an engineer, as opposed to the mysterious working of an optimizing compiler?

The nastyness is on many levels.

udhcpc will invoke an external program that uses the information as it sees fit. This keeps the functions of udhcpc seperate from the mechanics of the system. It also means the mechanics can be reused in the fixed IP case.
But Al Tek just bodged the stuff into udhcpc. Yak!

There are many good ways for programs to communicate on Linux. Via files, pipes, signals, many ways.
But Al Tek just bodge the numbers into memory in udhcpc and read them out in dvdplayer.bin. Double yak!

It's just not good programming for many reasons.

Looking at the source Al Tek have provided, they don't check error codes, have loads of mutually exclusive IFs with no ELSEs and many other signs of inexperienced and/or sloppy software engineers.

I employ loads of software engineers. If any of them did anything like this they'd go straight onto a disciplinary track that might well culminate in the boot!

Anyway, I just dropped the bodge code in and it works.

Ian

No Ian it was me totally screwing up (swapped palette index 253 & 254 by misstake). :o

Just back from the garage and I have made a new set of gfx (with a new palette, right this time I hope) and uploaded to Yahoo Groups (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mg-35_firmware_mods/files/MG-35%20Graphics/).

OK, new firmware made, and nasty pink gone, but unselected items are still pretty much invisible. :(

Ian

OK, new firmware made, and nasty pink gone, but unselected items are still pretty much invisible. :(

Ian
What "unselected items", file names in browser or what? What color are the rendered in (don't know what might have gone wrong this time)?

Of course, the frustrating thing is that udhcpc was a third order problem.

I'm actually trying to provide a new nbtscan tat works faster when you specify a set machine as a NAS server.
The best case speed is when someone has functional DNS so we can get the address with nslookup rather than needing nbtscan.
For this we need /etc/resolv.conf
For this we need a new udhcpc because of the bodgy way that Al Tek handled this stuff.

Ian

What "unselected items", file names in browser or what? What color are the rendered in (don't know what might have gone wrong this time)?

The items are the names of machines/directories in the browser.
They are rendered a dark grey/black on the blue background.

Of course, it could just be my turn to screw up - modifying dvdplayer.bin, getting this and the img stuff into an image directory, making the IMG, then making the upgrade, involves lots of steps and copies (across Linux and Windows) and I could have got one wrong.

What we need is to get new firmware out of the loop. The 1.4.4.5-alpha release today does this. You can replace dvdplayer.bin and the img directory with copies on the HD from the phase scripts. Some file types might not play due to memory issues, but most of the GUI should be OK.

Ian

The items are the names of machines/directories in the browser.
They are rendered a dark grey/black on the blue background.
Strange, I thought we nailed that color as index number 168 (it should be light grey in the latest gfx-pack). but I have had my doubts about this one. It is #7A7A7A in the original firmware and that is a quite dark grey (and that is not the way I se it on screen)! We might have to hunt this one down again. Best way would be a screen dump with the item in mind and then read the index for sure... Any help appreciated...

[Many heinous Al Tech programming crimes snipped.] There are many good ways for programs to communicate on Linux. Via files, pipes, signals, many ways. But Al Tek just bodge the numbers into memory in udhcpc and read them out in dvdplayer.bin. OK, I get the picture! But, in Al Tech's defense, and ignoring the ugliness of it at the moment, isn't the fixed spot in memory actually the fastest and most economical way to communicate of all? No structures to figure out; no stacks to unwind... :rolleyes:

[Puts on flame suit]

Strange, I thought we nailed that color as index number 168 (it should be light grey in the latest gfx-pack). but I have had my doubts about this one. It is #7A7A7A in the original firmware and that is a quite dark grey (and that is not the way I se it on screen)! We might have to hunt this one down again. Best way would be a screen dump with the item in mind and then read the index for sure... Any help appreciated...

OK, but it will have to wait until tomorrow as I don't have any of the screen dump stuff downloader or installed.

If in the mean time anyone else wants to look this up, then I'd be delighted as I've got lots to do tomorrow as it is. I'd love to nail the new nbtscan and/or a portable .upgrade tool and/or lots of other stuff!

Oh, and I've also got this life thing to do. :)

Ian

OK, I get the picture! But, in Al Tech's defense, and ignoring the ugliness of it at the moment, isn't the fixed spot in memory actually the fastest and most economical way to communicate of all? No structures to figure out; no stacks to unwind... :rolleyes:

[Puts on flame suit]

There's no doubting its efficiency but it's just not required where it's used. As it is -
1) If new code comes out for udhcpc it will take ages to bodge in Al Tek's changes.
2) They need different udhcpc code for each product (as shown by them releasing the wrong version)
3) They are duplicating the smb.conf etc writing code all over the place.
4) If they change to an MMU platform, they need to tear it all up and start again.

Anyway, without lots of work we just need to join in the bodge fest!

Ian

Strange, I thought we nailed that color as index number 168 (it should be light grey in the latest gfx-pack). but I have had my doubts about this one. It is #7A7A7A in the original firmware and that is a quite dark grey (and that is not the way I se it on screen)! We might have to hunt this one down again. Best way would be a screen dump with the item in mind and then read the index for sure... Any help appreciated...
Anyone able to patch palette index 168 just to se if it changes the items in question?

is there anyway you guys can add some kind of shuffle commant in thr new firmware?................just curious having just ,,play all ,, kinda sucks..thx

is there anyway you guys can add some kind of shuffle commant in thr new firmware? It's already there. Try the "1" button to select all, and the "3" button to shuffle, followed by Play.

thx krell..............why do i get choppy image when i play iso from network i've used wireless no good than wired same thing i'm on the lynksys router is it better to use maybe gigabite network card instead ?..............thx

Unselected text is definitely palette index 153 - selected text is palette index 0...

A screendump indexed bitmap is attached..

why do i get choppy image when i play iso from network...
...is it better to use maybe gigabite network card instead? We have had sporadic reports of choppy network playback, but most of us do not observe any such problem. I have a good ol' Linksys BEFSR81 which works well, and the only choppy playback I have observed was due to some graphics-intensive (probably high priority) task running on my W2K box that was slowing down my PC. But I think I read somewhere in the 76 pages of this thread that some folks actually had to replace their routers to fix this problem.

I would not bother with GigE since (1) your Windows box won't feed data out any faster than fast Ethernet (100Mbps), and (2) the Mediagate doesn't have GigE.

I would not bother with GigE since (1) your Windows box won't feed data out any faster than fast Ethernet (100Mbps), and (2) the Mediagate doesn't have GigE.

Both are true, though I heard reports that using GigE (even in 100M mode) is still better under heavy traffic, simple because of the increased power of the router's processor.

Unselected text is definitely palette index 153 - selected text is palette index 0...

A screendump indexed bitmap is attached..
Andy, you are the man! Exactly what I need, I will fix a new gfx-pack during the day (153 is #073767 in current palette, must be almost unreadable). I wonder if that makes 168 "free". You dont happen to have a similar screendump with file names? Just want to verify that unselected file names are using index 175...

Lets se if there is any other anomalies during the day. I will then put together a new pack and upload it to Yahoo Groups...

Both are true, though I heard reports that using GigE (even in 100M mode) is still better under heavy traffic, simple because of the increased power of the router's processor.Not only that, it has way less latency than a 10/100 network...

Lets se if there is any other anomalies during the day. I will then put together a new pack and upload it to Yahoo Groups...

Do you want me to hunt around in that firmware for other bad colours?

It's also here temporarily if anyone else wants a play -
www.foxhill.co.uk/MG35-1.4.4.4-pre1.upgrade
I haven't uploaded it to Yahoo to avoid hassle/confusion.

Ian

OK, I now have a replacement nbtscan. But it needs a replacement udhcpc to work properly as it does a name lookup.

I'll build this into 1.4.4.5-alpha2 and maybe even do a release (unless I'm banging them out too quickly!)

The usage is dead easy. Just type
setnas <server>
via a telnet session. setnas is just a single line script that calls mgnv

When dvdplayer.bin then invokes nbtscan it calls my new version in /bin
This creates /hosts/hosts and the directory in .net directly and very quickly as long as it can get the IP of the nas machine. If you use setnas to enter an IP, then this is used blindly and the machine name is filled in as Media.

I'm really not sure whether this behaviour is OK. Do people have working DNS? Should I allow both name and IP to be entered?

Anyone want to source to see if they have any good ideas?

Ian

Do you want me to hunt around in that firmware for other bad colours?

It's also here temporarily if anyone else wants a play -
www.foxhill.co.uk/MG35-1.4.4.4-pre1.upgrade
I haven't uploaded it to Yahoo to avoid hassle/confusion.

Ian

Ian , bit confued here , Does this one have the VERY VERY latest GFX pack in it from Rob? , or is he still working on it?

Ian , bit confued here , Does this one have the VERY VERY latest GFX pack in it from Rob? , or is he still working on it?

It's got version E. All I noticed that was wrong colour wise was the invisible unselected text. I'll try and do some more checking, but I've got a busy afternoon and have had more/better ideas for how nbtscan can determine the name/IP of the server.

Ian

It's got version E. All I noticed that was wrong colour wise was the invisible unselected text. I'll try and do some more checking, but I've got a busy afternoon and have had more/better ideas for how nbtscan can determine the name/IP of the server.

Ian

Thanks Ian,

When I get more time later , I wil load it and give it a good check over..

I'm really not sure whether this behaviour is OK. Do people have working DNS? Should I allow both name and IP to be entered?


Now changed.

From the source -
/*
* Replacement nbtscan that replaces (and sometimes calls) the Al Tek version.
* It reads the NV at location 252 (stock "loader.bin") to get the name and
* optional IP of a NAS machine. If this is found, then /hosts/hosts and
* the directory in /net can be generated without a slow scan of the full subnet.
*
* If name and IP are given then they are used directly.
* If just name is given, a gethostbyname is tried to get the IP.
* If anything goes wrong, then /sbin/rbin/nbtscan is called.
*
* The NV string format is nasname<=nasip>
*
* Set using mgnv s:252="mynas=192.168.1.1"
* or if you have the setnas script use that, e.g.
* setnas SERVER
* or
* setnas SERVER=192.168.1.32
*/

I have built some new 1.4.4.5 firmware with this in (and the new udhcpc and setnas) and it seems to be working fine.

If anyone wants to try it out then let me know. The graphics in this version are as per the "New Gui" series and MG-1.4.4.4-pre0

Ian

Hello, new to the forum and about to put the new firmware on my mediagate.

I have a spare slim combo (cdrw/dvd) drive staring me in the face right now with the mg35 attached to my notebook and notice that the mediagate shell would probably hold both a slim dvdrive AND notebook hd (or even 3.5" drive if the shell cover is modified). A slot in the top of the shell would allow a dvd to be inserted.

If, indeed, the board supports a master and slave ide AND if the hardware can actually fit - I suggest the following be added to the wishlist:


play directly off of dvd media
very rudimentary dvdbackup ui
audio cd ripping/encoding

I'm currently uploading this to Yahoo. I had to delete alpha1 to make room - it's all getting a bit full over there!

As usual, I have tested playing different kinds of media and doing downgrades to older firmware. It all seems very solid.

See the various README and text files for information, but briefly -

Edit: September 10th 2006 - MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha2
New udhcpc that generates /hosts/resolv.conf (linked to from /etc/resolv.conf)
nbtscan.new that's linked to from /bin. Front-end for nbtscan that provides "nas server" functionality.
VERSION file now added to root containing version of firmware and build date/time

Edit: September 2nd 2006 - MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha1
Moved all binaries to /sbin/rbin and made everything in / and /bin into links.
New busybox with nslookup

I'd love feedback on this version, particularly regards how it helps development and how well the NAS stuff works for you.

The graphics in this version are as in 1.4.4.4-pre0 (as per New Gui) As soon as the new graphics are released and tested, I'll make 1.4.4.4-pre3 and 1.4.4.5-alpha3

Ian

play directly off of dvd media
very rudimentary dvdbackup ui
audio cd ripping/encoding

Well, the wishlist is on the wiki so you can add it yourself! Just ask if you want the password.

But bear in mind that there's a lot of work to do before we can start to tackle stuff like this.

However, more people are joining the development effort, and some interesting stuff has emerged over the last few days.

Ian

Hello, new to the forum and about to put the new firmware on my mediagate.

I have a spare slim combo (cdrw/dvd) drive staring me in the face right now with the mg35 attached to my notebook and notice that the mediagate shell would probably hold both a slim dvdrive AND notebook hd (or even 3.5" drive if the shell cover is modified). A slot in the top of the shell would allow a dvd to be inserted.

If, indeed, the board supports a master and slave ide AND if the hardware can actually fit - I suggest the following be added to the wishlist:


play directly off of dvd media
very rudimentary dvdbackup ui
audio cd ripping/encodingsodhelmut,
You might be in a perfect position to plug your DVD drive into the MG-35 in place of hard-disk and see if it is recognized. (There is a possibility that the MG-35 chipset and firmware might still retain enough of its DVD-player roots and be able to play a DVD directly from the drive.)

Let us know if you are successful.

Joe L.

sodhelmut,
You might be in a perfect position to plug your DVD drive into the MG-35 in place of hard-disk and see if it is recognized. (There is a possibility that the MG-35 chipset and firmware might still retain enough of its DVD-player roots and be able to play a DVD directly from the drive.)

Let us know if you are successful.

Joe L.

I'm guessing that at the moment playing a DVD from disc would work much like playing a ripped DVD from HDD (ie, manually select VIDEO_TS.IFO).

Would I be correct in thinking that CSS protected discs would be out of the question with the current software though?

I'm guessing that at the moment playing a DVD from disc would work much like playing a ripped DVD from HDD (ie, manually select VIDEO_TS.IFO).

Would I be correct in thinking that CSS protected discs would be out of the question with the current software though?

The main application is called dvdplayer.bin and it contains strings that suggest that libdvdread and libdecss are alive in there, so it might work better than you think!

Ian

I don't currently have a slim dvd to ide cable; but if nobody else does either - I wouldn't mind being the guy to springing for one for doing optical drive related tests like this.

Attached is a small util. (sorry Win32 but that is what I do best and fastest) that will read a screen dump (the same format as videoram.bin posted by gadgetmind). It will read and decode the overlay including the attached palette (YUV->RGB). It is posible to point-and-click on a loaded image to get palette index, position and RGB-value. It also got the option to save a loaded image as a PNG8-file.

Have fun!

Ps. I will post a new set of gfx-files before I get to bed (within a couple of hours).

Ps. I will post a new set of gfx-files before I get to bed (within a couple of hours).

OK, but I won't have time to do anything with them until tomorrow at the earliest. Of course, someone else could always step up to the bar regards making upgrade files ...

Ian

Any new "strange" colors before I start generating new gfx (to alter the host/directory text color to index 153)?

Couldn't wait... New set of gfx-files is uploaded to Yahoo Groups... (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mg-35_firmware_mods/files/MG-35%20Graphics/)

Any new "strange" colors before I start generating new gfx (to alter the host/directory text color to index 153)?

Ok , here is my "report" of Graphics in MG35-1.4.4.4-pre1.zip (Graphics Rev E,so I am told by Ian..)

1)As already reported - in the file Browser - UNSELECTED DIRECTORIES appear very dark and not very readable.
UNSELECTED FILES are a different colour (a Blue) - these are more readable,but think white for both loked best of all , but thats just my prefrence.

2)Continue box is almost fixed , the "square box" is still present after you have moved the cursor to the left or right , but still appears - the Background of the main dialogue box is white , and the square that is left when you move the cursor is a light gray - Not really a big deal to me..


3)The Big Red X is still present on the main mode page - would love to see the V1.0 "back" button there - again only a prefrence

4)The Firmware Upgrade Dialogue is a alot betetter.. - Now Blue txt on a Gray and white background - the the green as before , but the background is not Full , ie has a bit of gray at the top..

Rob,if you need any screen shots of the above , please let me know and I wil do and post tomorrow..

Most other issued have been fixed , ie "Loading" strip and now dvd Subtitles appear in white..

Wil post more if I find anything ...

Couldn't wait... New set of gfx-files is uploaded to Yahoo Groups... (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/mg-35_firmware_mods/files/MG-35%20Graphics/)

He he , looks like you did it before I could type out my post..

Whats fixed in this release?

Ok , here is my "report" of Graphics in MG35-1.4.4.4-pre1.zip (Graphics Rev E,so I am told by Ian..)
Extremly valuable feedback (any feedback will help a lot). Sorry I was a bit too quick building a new set (but I have to go to bed)... I will try building a new set tomorrow night after I have been to work and been in the garage (I am off to Paris on Tuesday morning)...

1. Unselected directories should be light grey in rev. F (I can make them white if you want). Regular files in blue? Should be white (guess I'm not got the right index after all).

2. Grey box still around, I don't get it but again, maybe I got the wrong index (thought I figured it out but maybe have to look further)...

3. My misstake, I already made the new JPEG but I only copied new PNG into new releases. Should be fixed after rev. F.

4. Have newer seen this dialog, guess it's time to upgrade myself... :o

The only difference between rev. E and F is palette entry 153 switched with 168 and PNG images rebuilt using that new palette.

What I would need to get it all right is screen dumps (the same format as videoram.bin posted by gadgetmind) for all screens (or atleast the ones that doesen't look right). My new util. MG35OverlayViewer makes it easy to verify palette indexes used for the dumped screen. One such screen dump of the regular "file browsing menu" with directories and files would be great. Another one with the dialog with the fauling "square box" would also be valuable (including the grey square). Such screen dumps is now the fastest and most secure way of finding out palette indexes used...

4. Have newer seen this dialog, guess it's time to upgrade myself... :o



its ok , Will do some screen grabs later on tonight of all the bits that are not quite right,inc the firmware update dialogue bit,so you can see exactly what it looks like - Have to admit you are now getting close to a "final" Gui release (for this theme anyway) - such a difference from the original - makes the box such a pleasure to use compared how it used to look..

Ian , might be worth Waiting for Rev. G (If Rob has the time) , before making any new firmware..



Will post a Rapidshare link to the Screen shots as soon as I have them..

Regards

Teddy

Will post a Rapidshare link to the Screen shots as soon as I have them..


Are you going to do these using dumptop so that you get videomem.bin files an the index snooping software can be used?

Ian

Hi guys...

im new to this but i'm wondering if any of this infomation is of any use to you...

I use to own a sharp zaurus SL-C3100 which is based on UCLinux , there is a build of samba with the full samba demon etc...

im unsure but has anyone actually tried looking into that one to see if it can be recompiled for the MG-35?

4. Have newer seen this dialog, guess it's time to upgrade myself... :o


Yes, yes, and thrice yes! If you upgrade such that you can dump video memory yourself and see what's what it will help greatly.

I'm happy to make any tweaks to the video memory dumper (which is currently *very* crude) and/or the firmware and/or advise in any way.

Ian

Yes, yes, and thrice yes! If you upgrade such that you can dump video memory yourself and see what's what it will help greatly.

I'm happy to make any tweaks to the video memory dumper (which is currently *very* crude) and/or the firmware and/or advise in any way.

Ian
I know, I'm a bad boy... I don't know why but I seems to newer get around to upgrade my box... I spend all my time (that is "all" as in "all" that is left after the wife and kids has claimed their shares) hacking on my PC instead. I try to use any time I get to actually work on the GUI but I will try to get to it when I get back from Paris.

Ps. Really would like to finish this theme so I can start on a new one (simplistic black or something...)...

Are you going to do these using dumptop so that you get videomem.bin files an the index snooping software can be used?

Ian

Thats a bit beyond me Ian , unless you really "spell it out for me" - you know me I am a "semi" "Man in the Street" :-)

I am going to use my trusty old Ati Capture card - agreeded the colours are not as quite correct as the "developer" methos you mentioned..

Ok , as promised "problem" screen grabs from MG35-1.4.4.4-pre1-Graphics Rev E.

http://rapidshare.de/files/32668484/MG35-1.4.4.4-pre1_-Graphics_Rev_E_Screens.rar.html

1)Rob,you are correct UNSELECTED DIRS used to be blue in V 3.0 of the GUI , with UNSELECTED FILES in White , you are correct , I am sure this will indeed look better than my "all White" suggestion - Think you have already fixed this in Rev F though anyway..

2)You can see the Play continue "Box" problem - although on looking back of the Colour (Blue) of the "old" Dialogue box (Blue background,white txt) , this did look better than the current all white Dialogue with blue txt - but then again I dont know how easy this is to change and also fix the "box" problem - I have enclosed the old Gui v 3.0 shot , so you can compare..

3)As you can see the Firmware upgrade dialogue is not that bad really , maybe just needs a bright red header txt as suggested ,and the box filing in soldid blue, I dunno really...

4)Included a File info screen shot , this is much much better now , colour of my shot is a little off from what it really looks like now - think you should be happy with it..

Thats about all for now...

I recently asked you for opinions about moving to sourceforge. Nobody objected and only gadgetmind seemed to agree, and I'm stubborn :). Given that the work progresses fast, and there is even someone working on the kernel (yupeee!), I think now it's the time!

Why I think it's a good idea:
- we can have a source control system (CVS/SVN)
- we can have more space for hosting, and I think the speed is a lot better that Yahoo groups (didn't actually test this last one, though...)
- we can have a forum and mailing list, so we can have more topics instead of the current 77-page thread on avsforum.

So I intend to create a new project (of course, if somebody has some experience on this, and it's willing, it's OK with me...). But here is what we have to agree:

1. the name of the project. I thought about mg35tools, hoping that "mg35" name is not copyrighted. Can we check this somehow? Any ideas for a better name?

2. the license. Sourceforge asks the project to be licensed under an OSI-approved licence as detailed on http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php. Since some of you are the copyright owners of some tools, it's normal to first ask you about this issue. Do you agree to have the project GPL-licensed? The MG kernel provided by ALTech is also GPLed, probably, so it's logical for us to follow their licensing.

Any thoughts or opinions?

@teddystacker

Thanks for the images, I would really need "dumptop" images corresponding to your:

capture_17_28_32_625.jpg (files and directories in browser)
capture_17_30_10_593.jpg (fauling grey square)
capture_17_32_31_515.jpg (strange background shade)


@Vasile

Sourceforge and GPL is ok with me, yes CVS would be nice...

Thats a bit beyond me Ian , unless you really "spell it out for me" - you know me I am a "semi" "Man in the Street" :-)

I am going to use my trusty old Ati Capture card - agreeded the colours are not as quite correct as the "developer" methos you mentioned..

You will ideally need to get either the HD or a samba share mounted as read/write. Let me know which you use and I'll give you step by step directions. You then run dumptop and it creates videomem.bin in the current directory.

It's worth getting this working as it will help with other activities, but ...

The other alternative is to use ftp to download dumptop into a ramfs (hosts, net, or a new one you create) and put all the videomem files there (and suck them back with ftp as you work)

So you could try -
1) Fire up FTP and download dumptop to /hosts
2) Use telnet to do "cd /hosts"
3) then "dumptop"
4) Via ftp, upload videomem.bin and rename it to something that reflects the screen you were on.
5) Repeat from step 3 as you use the GUI to go to different screens.

dumptop reattached. Will try and upload it to yahoo.

Ian

im unsure but has anyone actually tried looking into that one to see if it can be recompiled for the MG-35?

It's on my list to try. But I'm worried about the size of samba.

Ian

So I intend to create a new project (of course, if somebody has some experience on this, and it's willing, it's OK with me...). But here is what we have to agree:


A sourceforge project sounds great - I'd love to have somewhere to put the source I've been generating/hacking. Of course, I'll have to learn how to drive cvs, but this could be useful anyway as we use it a lot at work.


1. the name of the project. I thought about mg35tools, hoping that "mg35" name is not copyrighted. Can we check this somehow? Any ideas for a better name?


You can't copyright a name. You can trademark it, but this gives limited protection and is per territory. I think we could claim fair use.


2. the license. Sourceforge asks the project to be licensed under an OSI-approved licence as detailed on http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php. Since some of you are the copyright owners of some tools, it's normal to first ask you about this issue. Do you agree to have the project GPL-licensed? The MG kernel provided by ALTech is also GPLed, probably, so it's logical for us to follow their licensing.


I'm happy to GPL licence everything I've done and will do. I already put GPL headers on mgnv.

Might I play devil's advocate regards one aspect? If the new graphics are GPL licenced, then Al Tek can just go ahead and use them. Is there a "no commercial use" licence we can use?

If Al Tek want shiny new graphics, there might be things we want in return!

Ian

@teddystacker

Thanks for the images, I would really need "dumptop" images corresponding to your:

capture_17_28_32_625.jpg (files and directories in browser)
capture_17_30_10_593.jpg (fauling grey square)
capture_17_32_31_515.jpg (strange background shade)



I can try and do these tonight if no-one else beats me to it.

Any others you think might be useful, just gimme a shout. Each one should only take a minute or so once I've got it flashed back to 1.4.4.4-pre1 and everything set up.

Ian

i wouldn't try going the samba route, my experience with windows vista so far shows that samba is not going to be compatible with vista :(

i wouldn't try going the samba route, my experience with windows vista so far shows that samba is not going to be compatible with vista :(

MS do seem to struggle with SMB/CIFS. At home, my XP notebook can't see shares on my home XP machines but can connect to my Linux machines. XP and 98 have never liked accessing each others shares.

I'm sure any Vista/samba issues will get fettled. A lot of big companies, ourselves included, use samba on servers and XP on desktops. We won't need much of a push to move the desktops to Ubuntu ...

Our issue is that we have a memory budget. Somewhere between 1.5MB and 2MB seems to be the most ram we can snaffle before video playing starts to suffer. This is currently looking pretty generous, but once we get telnet, ftp, www, samba, and a few other things, we could be getting close. If we look like we're heading in this direction, we can add NV flags for which services to start.

Ian

Attached is a small util. (sorry Win32 but that is what I do best and fastest) that will read a screen dump (the same format as videoram.bin posted by gadgetmind). It will read and decode the overlay including the attached palette (YUV->RGB). It is posible to point-and-click on a loaded image to get palette index, position and RGB-value. It also got the option to save a loaded image as a PNG8-file.


This works a treat!

I'll probably get all over-excited and download a dozen or so dumps of video memory for you tonight. Unless you bite the bullet and install something telnet and ftp capable first ...

Ian

3) then "dumptop"


To save you minutes of fun, note that to run something in the current directory, you need "./dumptop"

You should be able to use the ftp in windows explorer. ftp://a.b.c.d where a.b.c.d is the IP of your MG-35 should do it. (I've got my DHCP/DNS to assign names to my MG-35s) and you'll then need to give anonymous as user name and a null password. Note that I use filezilla and haven't tried this from explorer.

You should then be able to navigate into hosts, drag in dumptop, execute it via telnet, and drag out the videoram dumps.

Ian

I had a PC crisis on Friday night so haven't got a lot done this weekend.

I haven't had a chance to look at Emumannen's utility yet, but from the sound of it it does pretty much the same as the VB thingy I've been working on. (probably better though!)

One thing I'm in the process of adding to mine is the ability to grab the screenshot directly from the mg35 onto a PC. (using the VB winsock control to telnet / ftp in - copy the screendump utility into /phase2 if it isn't there - execute it, then copy the resulting file back to the PC - this will be easier once we get a working web server in a release version)

One thing I'm in the process of adding to mine is the ability to grab the screenshot directly from the mg35 onto a PC. (using the VB winsock control to telnet / ftp in - copy the screendump utility into /phase2 if it isn't there - execute it, then copy the resulting file back to the PC - this will be easier once we get a working web server in a release version)

Can you two join forces? One great utility is better then two less great IMO.

BTW, use /hosts rather than /phase2 - this way it will work for people who don't have a HD and don't use phase scripts.

Regards web server in a release version, I've held off on that as a web server without content/cgi is no use. And if the content/cgi is downloaded seperately, then so can the binary of the web server. But I have changed /etc/passwd in anticipation.

Ian

I had a PC crisis on Friday night so haven't got a lot done this weekend.
Sounds bad! Hope you manage to recover gracefully without to much effort…


I haven't had a chance to look at Emumannen's utility yet, but from the sound of it it does pretty much the same as the VB thingy I've been working on. (probably better though!)
Probably more or less the same functionality. What I got that you might lack is everything statically linked so there is no runtime libraries dependencies (but I think it can be done in VB these days).

I also took some time to decode the YUV palette (no need for a grey ramp palette) so that the image show up more or less the same way it shows on the video screen. I had to spend some time to figure out how to map a Windows hPalette to a PNG8 palette. But I thought it might be worth it since saving an image as a PNG in my utility now should preserve indexes of the screen dump into the PNG file (could be handy if someone send you the PNG instead of the screen dump).


One thing I'm in the process of adding to mine is the ability to grab the screenshot directly from the mg35 onto a PC. (using the VB winsock control to telnet / ftp in - copy the screendump utility into /phase2 if it isn't there - execute it, then copy the resulting file back to the PC - this will be easier once we get a working web server in a release version)
I don’t se why we would need to use Telnet/FTP or anything like that. Why not let a http-server execute a CGI-script running dumptop or any other executable dumping required memory and also let the http-server send the content as a reply to the CGI-request?

It would make it easy to implement on the server side (on the MG-35, we already got a working httpd and dumptop) and also to integrate on the client side (a program like my MG35OverlayViewer could easily request dumped data via the CGI-scripts URL and read the server response the same way I am reading a file now). We could also use a proper MIME-type on the server side (e.g. “x-mg35-screendump” or whatever) enabling us to associate any client reading that MIME-type (e.g. start and run MG35OverlayViewer.exe from web-browser if server respond with MIME-type “x-mg35-screendump”).

Just let me know if anyone is implementing the server side (CGI-script). I will in that case implement the client side (reading data from an URL) in MG35OverlayViewer.

Ps. Many thanks to andy666 anyway for your hard work. It was your map-out of the video memory that got me going. Thanks for that!

Just let me know if anyone is implementing the server side (CGI-script). I will in that case implement the client side (reading data from an URL) in MG35OverlayViewer.

If you let me know what such a CGI proggy has to do (what to parse off the command line, what to output) then this should only take a few minutes.

If it works, then I can pop this (along with mathopd, dumptop, and the required html and setup files) into some new firmware. But it might be better if someone else does the mathopd setup.

Ian

But it might be better if someone else does the mathopd setup.


BTW, I say this as the config looked complex and I took it no further than getting it going.

How about -
1) I'll handle building mathopd (once the config switches to the new CGI user, I can remove some hacks) and include the executable in future 1.4.4.5 builds.
2) I'll create a www subdirectory in the root of the image. For now, we can mount a ramfs over this.
3) I'll make some simple CGI programs, but the more the merriers on this one.
4) If someone gives me a drop of stuff to include (html and cgi in /www, config in /etc. Then I can also drop this into new firmware and we can look at starting the web server from sashrc.

Thoughts?

Ian

If you let me know what such a CGI proggy has to do (what to parse off the command line, what to output) then this should only take a few minutes.

If it works, then I can pop this (along with mathopd, dumptop, and the required html and setup files) into some new firmware. But it might be better if someone else does the mathopd setup.

Ian
Ian CGI (Common Gateway Interface) (http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/primer.html) is really easy. A CGI script can be made as a shell script or as a simple C-program (reading input from stdin and writing output to stdout).

A small C-program only needs to call dumptop and redirect the http-server to reply with the generated file.

E.g. simple CGI script in C code (have to be compiled):

#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

main()
{
time_t now;
time(&now);
printf("Content-type: text/html\n\n");
printf("<html><head><title>CGI C Example #1</title></head>\n");
printf("<body><h1>CGI C Example #1</h1><table border=2>");
printf("<tr><td>%s</table></body></html>\n",ctime(&now));
}


I guess that something as simple as this could work:

#include <stdio.h>

main()
{
/*
* Do whatever needed to dump video memory as a file on server,
* maybe delete existing old dump file to save memory on server,
* avoid use of exec() or system() calls for security reasons...
*/

// Print out content type
printf("Content-type: application/x-mg35-screen-dump\n");
// Print out location of the generated video dump (local file path)
printf("Location: /some_dir_on_server/videomem.bin\n\n");
}


Or even a simple redirect could work:

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
/*
* Do whatever needed to dump video memory as a file on server...
*/
printf("HTTP/1.0 302 Redirect\n");
printf("Location: %s\n\n", "path_to_videomem.bin");
return 0;
}

// Print out content type
printf("Content-type: application/x-mg35-screen-dump\n");
// Print out location of the generated video dump (local file path)
printf("Location: /some_dir_on_server/videomem.bin\n\n");


Can I just return the bytes of memory directly rather than redirecting off to another file? mathopd always chroots to the web directory, so it's probably easier just to inline the code to read memory, do something with the data, and chuck it out of stdout.

Ian

I was going to do something as lame as this -


int main (int argc, char * argv[])
{
printf("Content-type: application/x-mg35-screen-dump\n\n");
write(stdout, (void *) 0x1F80000, 0x80000);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);

} // end of main


(edit - OK, so maybe not that lame, but I now have a five line version that seems to work (when redirected into a file))

I might have time to try the server/cgi tonight but I want to do the graphics grabs the hard way first.

Ian

Cooo, it even works when run by mathopd, and I get nice screen dumps just by doing a wget!

Lots to neaten up regards how to delivery the web server, but I'll try and get it into new firmware soon. Meanwhile, I'll prepare a ZIP file and instructions on how to fire this stuff up from phase2.

Any contributions regards index.html and simple graphics for same will be gratefully received! A link to the screen dump would be good. (screendump.cgi)

Ian

I can try and do these tonight if no-one else beats me to it.

Any others you think might be useful, just gimme a shout. Each one should only take a minute or so once I've got it flashed back to 1.4.4.4-pre1 and everything set up.


OK, done and attached.

Notes -
1) I guess i don't need the 1.4.4.4-pre1 firmware as you just want the indexes?
2) You don't display the background and some colours aren't right. Deliberate?
3) The dialog in the firmware upgrade shot looks different on screen - what shows as solid white in your application is actually two different indexes and two different colours.

Let me know if you want any more.

Ian

We have a firmware build with a working web server!

Currently it serves up a sad index page from /www, which also contains one silly test CGI and also the screen dumping CGI.

You need -
http://a.b.c.d/index.html
I guess there is something in the config to setup default index files.

However, you can put additional content into /phase2/webextras and access using http://a.b.c.d/webextras/whatever

We seem fine for memory - I've been cautious with buffers in mathopd.cfg and here is what the various stuff is taking.

init Mem: 104448 Slack: 1623 Shared: 0
dvdplayer.bin Mem: 3476768 Slack: 2844 Shared: 0
telnetd Mem: 133248 Slack: 756 Shared: 0
pure-ftpd Mem: 575488 Slack: 3735 Shared: 0
mathopd Mem: 281280 Slack: 109 Shared: 0
sh Mem: 116864 Slack: 3409 Shared: 0
cat Mem: 235648 Slack: 3186 Shared: 0
Total Mem: 4923744 Slack: 15662 Shared: 0

Videos/ISOs play just fine.

Anyone want to play with this alpha3? I feel like I've been throwing the last few into a blackhole - very little feedback and I'm not even sure anyone is using them.

Ian

Anyone want to play with this alpha3? I feel like I've been throwing the last few into a blackhole - very little feedback and I'm not even sure anyone is using them.

Hi!
I'm running alpha1, but I only tested it for music files. I'll try alpha3 tonight.

hello,

is it possible to flash a new firmware in the mg-35 WITHOUT a Harddisk ?
or is it possible to flash firmware into a corrupt device ? and what is the procedure ?

Hi!
I'm running alpha1, but I only tested it for music files. I'll try alpha3 tonight.

Good luck with that, as I haven't uploaded it, because I'm sulking. :) Anyway, good to know someone is using the 1.4.4.5-alphas

Here is the meat from the alpha3 readme.

Edit: September 11th 2006 - MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha3
Created /www so we can mount a ramfs over it for mathopd development.
Created /var as a ramfs
Added mathopd to /sbin/rbin and link to it in /bin
Added httpd-start script to /bin
Moved ll script from /sbin/rbin to /bin (small!)
Added lame content to /www

Yahoo is too full. Dunno what to delete!

Upgrade and README are in this zip -
http://www.foxhill.co.uk/MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha3.zip

Ian

hello,

is it possible to flash a new firmware in the mg-35 WITHOUT a Harddisk ?


Yes, just go to your network share as if you were going to play a movie but select the .upgrade file. I have done this close on 100 times over the network without problems.


or is it possible to flash firmware into a corrupt device ? and what is the procedure ?

See here - http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/MG35Faq
Section 5

Oh, and welcome!

Ian

Cooo, it even works when run by mathopd, and I get nice screen dumps just by doing a wget!
Great Ian, I can se that you figured things out your self, it's fun isn't it?

I am back from the garage, car is fixed but I am dead tired. Haven't started packed for Paris or had any dinner yet...

Oups found a bug in my utility (it doesent refresh the image when loading a new dump), I'll fix that in next release a work around for now is to exit and reexecute the app.

I probably need some more time to reshuffle the colors in the gfx-pack. It doesent look good and I have to figure out a way to tackle the dialogs in a better way...

I might not be able to do all the changes I want to before I get back from Paris (on friday)...

OK, done and attached.

Notes -
1) I guess i don't need the 1.4.4.4-pre1 firmware as you just want the indexes?
2) You don't display the background and some colours aren't right. Deliberate?
3) The dialog in the firmware upgrade shot looks different on screen - what shows as solid white in your application is actually two different indexes and two different colours.

Let me know if you want any more.

Ian
1. Thats ok (really easy now to verify the indexes and regardless of what color they are).

2. Colors might be a bit off since I convert them from the attached YUV palette so they might not translate to the exact same RGB value as in the PNG files. What is shown is just the overlay. The overlay will be blitted over the video (haven't figured out how to read that data yet) and all the magenta (index 254) is supposed to be transparent...

3. This is odd becuase the overlay looks good but I have seen the "shadow" in teddystackers screen grabs. I wonder what is going on? I diden't se the "grey fauling box" that is supposed to stay when the cursor (green dot) is moved between "yes" and "no". Was it on screen when you made the dump (ecapture_17_30_10_593.bin)?

Great Ian, I can se that you figured things out your self, it's fun isn't it?


I just don't know enough about web servers/clients to be able to do a good job. Now that everything is in the cramFS, odd things are happening when reading the index file using just http://a.b.c.d/

"304 not modified" as an error when using wget.
Other odd issues with other clients. Probably something cache related.

I suspect it's the date that mathopd is reading from the cramFS is wierd (looks odd when you do an ls-l)

I'm sure it's an easy fix to mathopd but TBH I'm not really sure what's failing. mathopd seems totally happy but the client says things aren't right.

Content in a ramfs (such as on /phase2/webextras so accessed from http://a.b.c.d/webextras) is fine.

Ian

Yes, just go to your network share as if you were going to play a movie but select the .upgrade file. I have done this close on 100 times over the network without problems.




Section 5

Oh, and welcome!

Ian

thnx !!! but can someone in holland help me to do this ?
(flasing a rom in to a broken MG-35 with a serial (with max 232 ic) cable ?
i get the point to the connection with the mediagate to the PC and de max 232 cable

but how and where tot select a file to transmit to the mg-35 ??

What can AL Tech do for you?

Hey there gents - I spend a lot of time with ALTech and Mr. JY Kim... I'm not yanking your chain. Some weeks its almost nightly. And I think I've got a strong handle on all the HDD based players and those running Sigma ever - and I can tell you I think which companies did their own stack and which took Sigma straight.

Let me ask what would be the perfect relationship within the bounds of all things legal, helpful, ethical and not to time consuming on ALTech's part?

What would you like to see the MG-35 do? surf the web? stream from the web? And then the next one coming? Hell go for it - might as well ask - toss your ideas in... be as aggressive here as on the working use of the code, etc.

Also, the MG-350 rocks - wifi's nice, but the extra ram makes GUI 3x prettier - time search is "I swear" instant - thats 8621 - and there's a 8622L thats right out there around the corner.

Please write it all here - unless it absolutely requires a private email - it's hard to dig thru junk file use a subject like MG-35.

Hope I can be helpful - JY's a great guy - I swear the issue isn't so much cultural - it's that Asia has a different Interweb thing than us - he was startled when I showed him a smaller forum. This one woul knock him over.

Be Safe,

Morgan Warstler

thnx !!! but can someone in holland help me to do this ?
(flasing a rom in to a broken MG-35 with a serial (with max 232 ic) cable ?
i get the point to the connection with the mediagate to the PC and de max 232 cable

but how and where tot select a file to transmit to the mg-35 ??

I didn't understand your message until I quoted it to answer, and even now I'm not sure what you want to do...

Do you have a bricked MG35, i.e. one which doesn't boot? If so, the serial link can be your only chance. See http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/Debricking

But if the device boots OK, you don't need the serial cable to upgrade the firmware. You can do it over the network/hdd, using the MG35 TV interface as described at http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/Reflashing in the "Flashing using the GUI" chapter.

Wow, Morgan, that's great. You might want to show Mr Kim his N. American distributor's website (http://mediagateusa.s10.forumsplace.com/index.php) which is not too extensive. There are wishlists there, and all sorts of moaning about the state of the current firmware.

My own priorities:

bug fixes!
complete GPL software release
MythTV client
Skinnable GUI
All of your ideas, too.


Oh, and what's an "Interweb thing?"

Let me ask what would be the perfect relationship within the bounds of all things legal, helpful, ethical and not to time consuming on ALTech's part?

The simplest, legal, ethical and helpful thing would be to release the correct GPL-ed part of the source code. This should take almost no time and no resources from AL Tech's part and will also have the advantage of putting them in conformance with the GPL license.

What would you like to see the MG-35 do? surf the web? stream from the web? And then the next one coming?

There's a starting list at http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/wishlist, but I'm sure there are many other things to add on it. My dream is playing streamed internet media.

I didn't understand your message until I quoted it to answer, and even now I'm not sure what you want to do...

Do you have a bricked MG35, i.e. one which doesn't boot? If so, the serial link can be your only chance. See ***** link removed ****
But if the device boots OK, you don't need the serial cable to upgrade the firmware. You can do it over the network/hdd, using the MG35 TV interface as described at ***** link removed **** in the "Flashing using the GUI" chapter.

at first sorry for my bad english !!!
at second my device boots NOT ok .... the blue led is flasing (bricked)

my question is, the only way to fix it is the first link you give me ??
(by flasing with a serial cable with a max232 device for the power issue )
or is it posible with tftp ??


if so .... who in holland (netherlands) can help me with this ?

thnx !!! but can someone in holland help me to do this ?
(flasing a rom in to a broken MG-35 with a serial (with max 232 ic) cable ?
i get the point to the connection with the mediagate to the PC and de max 232 cable

but how and where tot select a file to transmit to the mg-35 ??

I assume you have connected and have got into the serial console using the password "MediaGate."

On the MG-35 type
download serial romfs

On the PC (hyperterminal?) select send file via ymodem and then choose the romfs.m35 file (download from mediagate wiki)

After the file is downloaded, type
flash romfs


Ian

at first sorry for my bad english !!!
at second my device boots NOT ok .... the blue led is flasing (bricked)

my question is, the only way to fix it is the first link you give me ??
(by flasing with a serial cable with a max232 device for the power issue )
or is it posible with tftp ??


if so .... who in holland (netherlands) can help me with this ?

Ah, sorry, my message crossed yours.

By far the cheapest and easiest approach is to buy yourself a serial cable.

Failing that, and if you don't find anyone in the Netherlands, you can send the box to me and I'll debrick it. But a serial cable is cheaper than the carriage!

Ian

My own priorities:

bug fixes!
complete GPL software release
MythTV client
Skinnable GUI
All of your ideas, too.


Sounds like a perfect start, but what I would like to se the most (right now) is enough source to make us a new kernel! That's the only thing (right now) that would prove to me that "JY's a great guy"...

I assume you have connected and have got into the serial console using the password "MediaGate."

On the MG-35 type
download serial romfs

On the PC (hyperterminal?) select send file via ymodem and then choose the romfs.m35 file (download from mediagate wiki)

After the file is downloaded, type
flash romfs


Ian

tnx again, but i have no cable, i have to make or buy a cable first !! :-(

tnx again, but i have no cable, i have to make or buy a cable first !! :-(I'm curious, how did your MG-35 get bricked?

Did an upgrade fail? If so, was it an "official" firmware release upgrade that failed to complete?, or one of the "unofficial" upgrade releases from this group?

Joe L.

What can AL Tech do for you?


Morgan Warstler

@Morgan,

Many thanks for your post , if you check you pm here,I have sent you a nice long message entitled:-

What *WE* can do for Mr Kim At Al Tech...

Look forward to your answer and really hoping we can work with Mr Kim (Whoever he is,and if he is indeeed involved directly with Al Tech)...

Regards

Teddy

What can AL Tech do for you?

Hey there gents - I spend a lot of time with ALTech and Mr. JY Kim... I'm not yanking your chain. Some weeks its almost nightly. And I think I've got a strong handle on all the HDD based players and those running Sigma ever - and I can tell you I think which companies did their own stack and which took Sigma straight.

Let me ask what would be the perfect relationship within the bounds of all things legal, helpful, ethical and not to time consuming on ALTech's part?

What would you like to see the MG-35 do? surf the web? stream from the web? And then the next one coming? Hell go for it - might as well ask - toss your ideas in... be as aggressive here as on the working use of the code, etc.

Also, the MG-350 rocks - wifi's nice, but the extra ram makes GUI 3x prettier - time search is "I swear" instant - thats 8621 - and there's a 8622L thats right out there around the corner.

Please write it all here - unless it absolutely requires a private email - it's hard to dig thru junk file use a subject like MG-35.

Hope I can be helpful - JY's a great guy - I swear the issue isn't so much cultural - it's that Asia has a different Interweb thing than us - he was startled when I showed him a smaller forum. This one woul knock him over.

Be Safe,

Morgan WarstlerMorgan,

Speaking for myself, (and probably many others) we would love for AlTech to properly comply with the terms of the GPL. From what we now know, the source code provided to us thus far is woefully incomplete. Major parts of it are missing and it does not compile. We can see that GPL copyright strings in nearly everything we check in the compiled objects in the MG-35. These include dvdplayer.bin, the boot loader, the upgrader, and even the loadable modules used to access the sigma hardware. Complete source for these should have been included in order to comply with the GPL.

We are not asking for much of AlTech's time, at least no more time than to create a complete and valid GPL compliant distribution of the source code for the MG-35.

From browsing this thread you can see there are a great number of people who will volunteer their time to make the product better and more user friendly. Yes, we are struggling to understand the hardware and software at times, but we are making very steady and impressive progress.

Our goal is to make the MG-35 even better and more user friendly than it is today and to fix all the annoying bugs and flaws. We are, as a group, the best partners you could ask for in the software development world. Not only will we beta-test and provide nearly immediate feedback, we have the collective skills to suggest and develop corrections. (Oh yes... we're free)

If we are able to start with the correct and complete source code for the MG-35 Altech will be able to easily incorporate any features and fixes developed by this volunteer team. As it is today, without correct source, if we make our own tools and fixes, using alternate source code as a starting point, Altech would need much more time to leverage any improvements. It will not be as simple for them as applying a patch file and typing "make".

Now, all of this volunteer effort can also occur on the MG-350, and it will, if correct and complete GPL source for it is supplied as mandated by the GPL copyright. Many of us will purchase the MG-350, or the MG-450 (or whatever the successor is named) if we think it is the best in class of the media players available.

You ask how the media player can be improved... that is easy, but the answer depends on the audience. For my family, an easy to use interface. If they've navigated to a folder on my media server do NOT force them to follow the full path to the media files again just because they decide to play an MP3 instead of a video. I can't tell you how many times I've navigated to a folder only to find it empty because I'm in 'Movie" mode instead of "Music" mode. Showing a "cover-art" JPG when browsing a similarly named ISO file would be a major improvement. It is done for pictures, it is high on my wishlist.

SDTV's make terrible web-browsers, not sure if HDTVs would be any better. I'd put that low on the priority list. Playing web-cast broadcasts would be high on the list, so would MP3 style playlists for music. A WiFi interface is nice, but unless major improvements are made, it is far too slow for many types of media. (I've tried a 802.11G adaptor on my MG-35... it barely works on a few ISO images, and only on those with low bit-rates)

There are many small items to fix, but they would make the unit so much easier to use. There is no need to re-scan the LAN network every time we change modes to learn of shared folders... once is enough when the unit is powered on. There is no real need for "modes" for that matter. The file "suffix" is sufficient to know how to play it, or render it. That's how ms-windows does it.

Will most of us purchase an MG-350 or its successor?... well, perhaps... if we feel it is best in class when we go shopping as we upgrade our equipment to handle high-definition media. As it is today, I have two MG-35's, both on standard definition TVs. The MG-350 would be overkill.

I will eventually purchase a MG-350/successor for my home-theater if AlTech complies with the GPL as my theater has a HDTV projector. Currently I use a home-theater PC, but if the MG-350/successor could be made friendly enough, it would be really great. Imagine, all the TVs in my house would then have a similar user-friendly media-player interface. My wife would be very happy as she would be able to play almost anything in our media collection anywhere in our home and not have to do it differently on different media players.

I understand the new sigma chipset will be able to handle more media types, and be able to seek faster, and display a fancier 3D user-interface, but those chipset features don't fix a poorly designed user interface. Look at what has been done so far on the MG-35.

Take a few minutes to view the sample screen shots of the unofficial "upgrade" developed by people contributing to this thread. Take a few minutes to see how the MG-35/350/successor could easily be the best in class and leave the competition far behind. Hell, get your hands on an MG-35 and install one of the "unofficial upgrades" and then show it to JY. If he is impressed with a small user-forum, imagine how impressed he might be with seeing how much his current product might be over his competitors given a chance. With correct and complete GPL source, the competition will be left far behind.

Eventually, all of us will upgrade our media players. If an AlTech's competitors' product is better when we upgrade our equipment, or more friendly, or correctly complies with the GPL so that "unofficially" ,with the improvements contributed by the user community their product ends up best in class, then AlTech's market share will shrink. We'll buy the competing product and end up helping the competitor make their product better. Alternatively, if AlTech's products have the features we want and need, and they make it easy for us to help keep them the best in class by supplying the complete and correct GPL source for the product, they will be the ones everyone will buy when they upgrade.

Joe L.

What can AL Tech do for you?

Morgan Warstler

@Morgan,

Are you the Person named here , ie were you the Co-founder of LoadTV??

http://www.christophernoxon.com/lamag_sub_highanxiety.html

Just interested - or am I barking up the wrong tree here?

@Morgan,

Many thanks for your post , if you check you pm here,I have sent you a nice long message entitled:-

What *WE* can do for Mr Kim At Al Tech...

Look forward to your answer and really hoping we can work with Mr Kim (Whoever he is,and if he is indeeed involved directly with Al Tech)...

Regards

TeddyTeddy,
A quick search of using the terms "JY Kim" altech on google will show that Mr JY Kim is the president of AlTech. He might be "directly" involved ;) , and probably somebody we would love to work with.

Joe L.

Teddy,
A quick search of using the terms "JY Kim" altech on google will show that Mr JY Kim is the president of AlTech. He might be "directly" involved ;) , and probably somebody we would love to work with.

Joe L.

Yep,you just beat me to it - aint Google just the best/worst tool out there :-)

And if Morgan is the LoadTV guy , it explains his interest in the MG-35 line ie "tieing up" any streaming media content that the MG-35 may one day be capable of doing..

All interesting stuff that each of us knew nothing about 2 months ago :-)

Hi All,

I'm looking at ths MG-35 and have been reading as much of this (very long) thread as possible. I'm trying to find out if the MG-35 will follow windows shortcuts when navigating network shares.

I would use the MG-35 as a jukebox server for all my DVDs, which I've ripped to VIDEO_TS folders on a file server. Thing is, I can't fit them all on one hard disk so the library is randomly distributed across multiple drives and top-level folders. I would want the GUI to present me with one long list of DVD folders to choose from. The only way I can think of to do this is to set up a top-level folder that contains folder shortcuts to all the DVD folders in the library.

But, will the GUI follow the shortcut or just display a .lnk folder on the nav screens?

Hopefully this is a quick yes/no answer - anyone tried this / know if it works?

If not, I'd like to add it to the wish list :)

Obviously, a better solution would be support for amalgamating many target folders into a single logical library that's configured on the media player...that would be a good addition to the wish list too, I reckon.

Thanks,

Simon

morgan, we have all went through this before, a promising interest from al tec. Nothing is gonna happen, they are not gonna help us now if they didn't care before. I also find it highly unlikely that the president of al tech was unaware of the numerous american complaints from mg-35 buyers. If you are the president of a company, and you are trying to market your product into the usa, I am pretty sure you would pay attention too the user feedback to understand how well your product is being recieved, and what to do to help it be succesful. Honestly in my opinion, I am not gonna fall for your false expectations that al tech will help us out now. So i will be straight to the point, release a complete GPL!, we obviously don't need any help from you guys as we have gotten this far already (and it has taken us to do this, before al tech even cares enough to try and adress our complaints) why is that? Scared we might find something illegal in your source? Well i for one will not be scared to tell you that after we get the proper GPL from you guys, you can go tell Mr. kim to go **** himself!

I'm curious, how did your MG-35 get bricked?

Did an upgrade fail? If so, was it an "official" firmware release upgrade that failed to complete?, or one of the "unofficial" upgrade releases from this group?

Joe L.

this is what happend, i was watching foto's (over the network) on the mg-35.
afther that, i want to go to a other map ,the the MG-35 freeze at the "browser screen.

the device stops working on the remote control, even for the power button.
then i try to turn it off by pushing the power button on the device, no go.

then i power donw the mg-35 by disconnecting the power connector, the device
turned off. afterwards i put the power cord back to the mg-35, and pushed the power button on the device.

the first seconds was looks like a normal boot, but the last step was not ok.
the blue led keeps flasings al the time and there is no welcome screen at the tv.

then i look the internet and this forum what could be wrong with my device.
so i thought the firmware is on a stange way lost.

a last, it was a official firmware but i have as brand "Freecom" with a "Mediagate"
firmware in it.

this is what happend, i was watching foto's (over the network) on the mg-35.
afther that, i want to go to a other map ,the the MG-35 freeze at the "browser screen.

the device stops working on the remote control, even for the power button.
then i try to turn it off by pushing the power button on the device, no go.


Interesting. First report I've seen of an MG-35 being bricked during normal use rather than during firmware upgrade.

They only routine flash writing is for the NV data, and this also does a very, very occasional erase of the config area. Any unexpected flash access duing the write/erase could cause things to fail. uClinux makes things easier in this regard but it is still a concern particularly as we add more "background" things such as telnet, ftp and web.

The flash write/erase should really be in a driver rather than a userland process.

Ian

Let me ask what would be the perfect relationship within the bounds of all things legal, helpful, ethical and not to time consuming on ALTech's part?

What would you like to see the MG-35 do? surf the web? stream from the web? And then the next one coming? Hell go for it - might as well ask - toss your ideas in... be as aggressive here as on the working use of the code, etc.


Many thanks just for asking the question. My answer is pretty easy -

1) Honour GPL obligations in FULL. This involves a release of all code that's covered by the GPL for the 1.4.4 and 1.4.5 and all subsequent firmware. Note that *many* parts of the firmware are covered by the GPL - I keep meaning to do a full audit, but Al Tek *really* should know this already. The code released should exactly match the binaries supplied.

2) Improve the codecs. I think we can do the rest ourselves when the GPL release is made. But there are many problems when playing pretty ordinary divx/xvid/mpeg2 files that should work just fine. Jerky playback despite good bandwidth, bad lip sync, and problems that crop up if you pause playback and restart (but which are fixed if you rewind and play again) These are all software issues and using up-to-date code from Sigma should help greatly.


Also, the MG-350 rocks - wifi's nice, but the extra ram makes GUI 3x prettier - time search is "I swear" instant - thats 8621 - and there's a 8622L thats right out there around the corner.


There is no way I'm going to spend my money on an MG-350 until Al Tek show that they are prepared to get their existing products up-to-scratch.

If you buy a car that has many faults that the manufacturer/dealer fail to address, and the manufacturer won't even supply a workshop manual. would you buy that make of car again?

Oh, and the graphics on the MG-35 are now 3x as good as with the stock firmware without using any extra RAM. :)

Ian

"304 not modified" as an error when using wget.
Other odd issues with other clients. Probably something cache related.

I suspect it's the date that mathopd is reading from the cramFS is wierd (looks odd when you do an ls-l)


mathopd sets the request date to zero if it wants to ensure it always gets new content. But files in a cramFS also have a time of zero, and the check is <= !!

I did the one line fix last night and it seems to work.

I'll remove alpha3 from my web site and put alpha4 up tonight so people can have webby fun.

Ian

Today we haven't even a proper shell so it is a stretch...

To me any scripting support in MG-35 would be an improvement...


News regards scripting.

Rob Landley is now the BusyBox maintainter and he's working towards version 1.3 He hates the current shell collection and it looking at replacing lash with something that can config that small but also be extended to be a shell that is pleasant to use from the command line, has terminal/job control, and can also be used for complex scripts.

He's keen that it works on uClinux from scratch and I've volunteered to test it for him.

I reckon it'll be 6-8 weeks before we have something that can handle what our current lash/hush combination can do, and after that life will just get better.

Ian

There is no way I'm going to spend my money on an MG-350 until Al Tek show that they are prepared to get their existing products up-to-scratch.

I second that!


Oh, and the graphics on the MG-35 are now 3x as good as with the stock firmware without using any extra RAM. :)

With room for improvement (better look and smaller size)!

I probably need some more time to reshuffle the colors in the gfx-pack. It doesent look good and I have to figure out a way to tackle the dialogs in a better way...

I might not be able to do all the changes I want to before I get back from Paris (on friday)...

That's fine - I can get stuck in at the weekend. Be good to think that 1.4.4.4-pre2 could be the one that we use as final!

But 1.4.4.5 is solid and working well. But it still needs someone with web skills to give us a web GUI even though all we can do for now is screen dumps and maybe set the NAS server name.

Ian

Interesting. First report I've seen of an MG-35 being bricked during normal use rather than during firmware upgrade.

They only routine flash writing is for the NV data, and this also does a very, very occasional erase of the config area. Any unexpected flash access duing the write/erase could cause things to fail. uClinux makes things easier in this regard but it is still a concern particularly as we add more "background" things such as telnet, ftp and web.

The flash write/erase should really be in a driver rather than a userland process.

Ian
Nope, my Freecom deviced killed itself the exact same way (while watching fotos). I've returned it to Freecom and they replaced the mainboard (had 2 wait almost 2 months though :( )

Nope, my Freecom deviced killed itself the exact same way (while watching fotos). I've returned it to Freecom and they replaced the mainboard (had 2 wait almost 2 months though :( )

Hmmm, does the MG-35 "remember" anything about the photo you were last viewing? I'll have to do some before/after config dumping, unless someone else wants to try using mgnv, which is in 1.4.4.4 and 1.4.4.5

But in the stock firmware, I'm not sure what other flash access could be happening at the same time.

I'm starting to worry more and more about the flash being accessed via telnet, ftp or http while dvdplayer.bin is changing the NV data. :(

Ian

Nope, my Freecom deviced killed itself the exact same way (while watching fotos). I've returned it to Freecom and they replaced the mainboard (had 2 wait almost 2 months though :( )

Strange coincidence that these two are Freecom devices, or not? They have their own version of the firmware, were it is possible to play a mp3 and browse the file list at the same time. Something I never managed with the mediagate firmware.

Strange coincidence that these two are Freecom devices, or not? They have their own version of the firmware, were it is possible to play a mp3 and browse the file list at the same time. Something I never managed with the mediagate firmware.

I have a Freecom and I must admit that it's had MG-35 firmware almost since I got it. I guess I ought to poke around some Freecom firmware but TBH there just aren't enough hours for everything I want to do.

Ian

Hmmm, does the MG-35 "remember" anything about the photo you were last viewing?

I remember someone writing here that MG35 keeps track of the last movie position. Never tried myself, but if it's true it could be the same with photos...

Hmmm, does the MG-35 "remember" anything about the photo you were last viewing? I'll have to do some before/after config dumping, unless someone else wants to try using mgnv, which is in 1.4.4.4 and 1.4.4.5

But in the stock firmware, I'm not sure what other flash access could be happening at the same time.

I'm starting to worry more and more about the flash being accessed via telnet, ftp or http while dvdplayer.bin is changing the NV data. :(

Ian

can i with this info "normaly" flash a new firmware in my device by using a serial cable connected to de MG-35 ? or is my "mainbaord" broken ??

can i with this info "normaly" flash a new firmware in my device by using a serial cable connected to de MG-35 ? or is my "mainbaord" broken ??

Hard to be 100% certain, but there's a strong chance that you can recover it.

Worst case, you have a serial cable that you don't need, but I'm looking to buy more anyway and would happily buy it from you.

Ian

I remember someone writing here that MG35 keeps track of the last movie position. Never tried myself, but if it's true it could be the same with photos...

Maybe, but what would it store? Anyway, it's a very quick job to check this when in front of a unit.

Ian

Hard to be 100% certain, but there's a strong chance that you can recover it.

Worst case, you have a serial cable that you don't need, but I'm looking to buy more anyway and would happily buy it from you.

Ian


ok, we have a deal, i go to order the cable NOW....
if it is useless for me you can buy it from me ( where do you live ? )

Anyone fancy joining forces to do a full GPL audit of the MG-35 firmware?

1st job is the list the elements and what we know - how about this?
1) loader - GPL as contains source from drivers/mtd/chips/cfi_probe.c (c) Red Hat
2) kernel - GPL with unreleased modifications
3) busybox - GPL
4) udhcpc - GPL with unreleased modifications
5) sash/init - GPL
6) graphics - proprietary
7) dvdplayer.bin - GPL as contains code from libdvdread (more?)
8) fileplayer.bin - ?
9) mpegplayer.bin - ?
10) mp4play - ?
11) minimod - GPL
12) hdparm - GPL
13) mp3play - ?
14) nbtscan - GPL with unreleased modifications
15) upgrader - ?
16) fipmodule.o ?
17) dm9000x_32.0 - GPL
18) khwl.o - ?
19) lpx.o - ?
20) ndemu.o - ?

Anything I missed? Should I just stick this on the wiki and people can report GPL code in various bits as they find it? Ideally we need to reference the exact products and ideally the source files.

(edit - page started. See here - http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/GPLViolations Please contribute!)

Ian

ok, we have a deal, i go to order the cable NOW....
if it is useless for me you can buy it from me ( where do you live ? )

I live in the UK.

Ian

Maybe, but what would it store? Anyway, it's a very quick job to check this when in front of a unit.

Tried with a DVD and if you press Stop while playing it will keep track of the position. But if you reboot the MG35, the same movie will start from the beginning. So I presume the position is kept in RAM.

If you try to fix your box, I suggest that you use the stock firmware, and if you are able to fix it with the stock, if you want you can try to upgrade back to our firmware. You can, if you want, use our firmware to fix your box, but if you had problem with it, better trying to fix your box with the stock one.

The serial reflash needs a slightly different file to the .upgrade - no headers, just the dword before the kernel and then kernel+cramfs. I uploaded a suitable file (romfs.m35) to the wiki and it's linked from the debricking page.

This file gets you to a stage where you can then reflash via HD/net.

Ian

The serial reflash needs a slightly different file to the .upgrade - no headers, just the dword before the kernel and then kernel+cramfs. I uploaded a suitable file (romfs.m35) to the wiki and it's linked from the debricking page.

This file gets you to a stage where you can then reflash via HD/net.

Ian

Yeah I remember now you guys found that a while ago. My mistake. So gans, look at http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/Debricking if you want to fix your box

I remember someone writing here that MG35 keeps track of the last movie position. Never tried myself, but if it's true it could be the same with photos... It's true. But that info is not stored in NV memory so it's hard to see how this feature could "brick" a Freecom directly. I suppose buggy software could corrupt some part of RAM and this corruption in turn could mangle NV memory. Seems like the advisable thing to do is reflash Freecom with Mediagate firmware, just to be on the safe side.

Apologies, Vasile. I see you already figured this out; I posted before reading page 80!

Ian, I made the above claim because when cycling power, the Mediagate loses it's stored position.

It's true. But that info is not stored in NV memory so it's hard to see how this feature could "brick" a Freecom directly.

I might be going mad, but I'm pretty such it *is* stored. Will play tonight. I might even document how it's stored! (or come back to apologise :) )

Ian

I live in the UK.

Ian


ok , i am from Holland

ok, we have a deal, i go to order the cable NOW. You guys should start up a Freecom "debricking" service. :D I wonder how many "defective" mainboards Freecom has in their possession right now?

Yeah I remember now you guys found that a while ago. My mistake. So gans, look at http://mediagate.pbwiki.com/Debricking if you want to fix your box


i wish i could fix it NOW i must first order the cable !

Tnx everybody for helping me ..... ( sorry again for my mickey mouse english :-) )

But it still needs someone with web skills to give us a web GUI even though all we can do for now is screen dumps and maybe set the NAS server name.
Ian, I could do it if no one else steps up (but my top prio. is still the GUI).

Ian, I could do it if no one else steps up (but my top prio. is still the GUI).

I'm good with web programming, but no good in graphic, I wish I was.

Ian, I could do it if no one else steps up (but my top prio. is still the GUI).

Yes, one thing at a time.

Which is a lesson that I have never learnt. :)

Ian

I'm good with web programming, but no good in graphic, I wish I was.

Well, if we get something that works, adding the polish later is easy enough.

It's really down to what people want from the web interface.

Ian

K so I will start to do something very simple (black and white, with menu) Do we want to add a way to logon with a username/password to open the web utilities ?

K so I will start to do something very simple (black and white, with menu) Do you want me to add a way to logon with a username/password to open the web utilities ?Not sure the username/password adds value at this time since telnet is wide open.
The addition of a link to display the README file located at the root directory of the MG-35 would be a nice addition to the index.html page.

Joe L.

Not sure the username/password adds value at this time since telnet is wide open.
The addition of a link to display the README file located at the root directory of the MG-35 would be a nice addition to the index.html page.

Joe L.


Perfect, I will start something this afternoon

K so I will start to do something very simple (black and white, with menu) Do we want to add a way to logon with a username/password to open the web utilities ?

Maybe you can reuse some graphics from /img? Or the logon img?

K so I will start to do something very simple (black and white, with menu) Do we want to add a way to logon with a username/password to open the web utilities ?

I guess it's probably better to have a password of some kind. We can store this and maybe user name in the NV ram.

Function of the web front end (making it up as I got along!)
- Change name of NAS machine
- Change web interface password.
- Change smbmount name/password (needs smbmount wrapper)
- Get screen dump.
- Remote control (wrapper to fipmodule!)
- Play a video (launch player and blank screen)
- Control whether ftp and web are launched at startup (use telnet to reenable)
- Close telnet, ftp and web (safer upgrades)
- Get software VERSION and view README.

Ian

Perfect, I will start something this afternoon

You should just be able to stuff content into /phase2/webextras

CGI can be done with simple scripts or some C - let me know if I can help.
NV read/write is by calling mgnv - I reused the loader.bin string at 252 for the NAS server name but we can find other areas for other stuff.

BTW, if you go for a password, I'll need to change mathopd.cfg to add username and password stuff. But you can always kill the existing mathopd and launch a new one with a new cfg of your own.

I'll release Alpha4 tonight.

Ian

I guess it's probably better to have a password of some kind. We can store this and maybe user name in the NV ram.

Function of the web front end (making it up as I got along!)
- Change name of NAS machine
- Change web interface password.
- Change smbmount name/password (needs smbmount wrapper)
- Get screen dump.
- Remote control (wrapper to fipmodule!)
- Play a video (launch player and blank screen)
- Control whether ftp and web are launched at startup (use telnet to reenable)
- Close telnet, ftp and web (safer upgrades)
- Get software VERSION and view README.

IanOK, you convinced me. Once you start performing configuration via the web-interface a password is warranted.

I think that for normal user operations, playing a file, listening to MP3s, watching a DVD, etc... and simulating a remote-control (once we get there) that a password should not be needed. Basically, browse to the web-page, and you can control the MG-35 media player.

I do think we would want the password on any page used to administer the MG-35 from the web interface. (keeps family members from accidentally changing config as they play with the web-interface)

Joe L.

Function of the web front end (making it up as I got along!)
- Change name of NAS machine
- Change web interface password.
......



Updated the wiki Wishlist, it's easier to keep track

I do think we would want the password on any page used to administer the MG-35 from the web interface. (keeps family members from accidentally changing config as they play with the web-interface)


mathopd has the "realm" config keyword allowing just certain parts of the "site" to be protected.

Ian

Ian,

I'm running MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha3 in one of my MG-35s. (your new web-page is working!)
I've noticed something odd about the new network scan routines and thought you might be interested.

I've not done anything to customize it in phase1/2 and have not defined a specific media server. If I understand correctly, it will default to the old behaviour of scanning the network for shared drives.

What I've seen (quite a few times) is that one of the machines on my LAN is not included in the list of available SERVERS and only two names are listed. (I have three servers on my LAN with shared drives. )

In fact, almost half of the time the MG-35 will only list two of the machines on the first scan. If I go back to the main menu of the MG-35 and have it re-scan it will then see the missing server and list all three machines. It is not always the same machine missing in the list.

There may be some timing delay when waiting for a response on the LAN that is involved.

Joe L.

Maybe you can reuse some graphics from /img? Or the logon img?

I though about that, but I'm not sure the web server will be able to show something from the /img folder unless we copy it to the www folder, let me try that.

Maybe you can reuse some graphics from /img? Or the logon img?

I though about that, but I'm not sure the web server will be able to show something from the /img folder unless we copy it to the www folder, I'm going to try showing something from the /img.

What I've seen (quite a few times) is that one of the machines on my LAN is not included in the list of available SERVERS and only two names are listed. (I have three servers on my LAN with shared drives. )

There may be some timing delay when waiting for a response on the LAN that is involved.


If the name lookup doesn't work (or gives loader.bin, which is the stock contents), then my nbtscan replacement does an execv of the existing nbtscan (renamed /sbin/rbin/nbtscan)

I have no idea why this might fail to list all servers. I guess I'll do some testing of calling the old versus the new.

Maybe you can also test from the telnet console?

Try -
rm /hosts/hosts /net/*
nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.1.5/24
And see how many machines end up in /hosts/hosts (you'll need to add your IP!)

then try it again but with -
/sbin/rbin/nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.1.5/24

Maybe try five times with each and report the results. During my testing, I was seeing all three machines here, but maybe I wasn't rigourous enough?

I just tried 10 times in a row using my replacement nbtscan and got all three servers here all 10 times.

Ian

I though about that, but I'm not sure the web server will be able to show something from the /img folder unless we copy it to the www folder, I'm going to try showing something from the /img.

I didn't configure mathopd to chroot so you should be able to use soft links. Try sticking some in /phase2/webextras and see what happens.

edit:
I just did this on the MG-35
ln -s /img/mute.png /phase2/webextras/mute.png

and then this on my Linux box
wget 192.168.1.60/webextra/mute.png

and it worked a treat!

Ian

(I have three servers on my LAN with shared drives. )


Nothing to do with current bug hunting, but do you actually want all three in the list?

Ian

If the name lookup doesn't work (or gives loader.bin, which is the stock contents), then my nbtscan replacement does an execv of the existing nbtscan (renamed /sbin/rbin/nbtscan)

I have no idea why this might fail to list all servers. I guess I'll do some testing of calling the old versus the new.

Maybe you can also test from the telnet console?

Try -
rm /hosts/hosts /net/*
nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.1.5/24
And see how many machines end up in /hosts/hosts (you'll need to add your IP!)

then try it again but with -
/sbin/rbin/nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.1.5/24

Maybe try five times with each and report the results. During my testing, I was seeing all three machines here, but maybe I wasn't rigourous enough?

I just tried 10 times in a row using my replacement nbtscan and got all three servers here all 10 times.

Ian

OK, I power cycled the MG-35, logged via telnet prior to doing anything at all. The TV showed the main menu where I could choose local-media or network-media.

This time, the only consistent fact was when it returned only two servers they were always the same two. I know I have seen "TOWER" missing from the list though... I'm not hallucinating... honest...

Joe L.

Telnet session capture Follows:

BusyBox v1.2.0 (2006.08.28-07:47+0000) Built-in shell (lash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

/ # nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.2.251/24
No nasname found - using nbtscan for full subnet.
/ # cat /hosts/hosts
192.168.2.2 TOWER
192.168.2.5 JALP3
Only two server names returned... Let's try again...
/ # rm /hosts/hosts
/ # nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.2.251/24
No nasname found - using nbtscan for full subnet.
/ # cat /hosts/hosts
192.168.2.2 TOWER
192.168.2.4 DELLCPX
192.168.2.5 JALP3
This time, all three servers were found
/ # rm /hosts/hosts
/ # nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.2.251/24
No nasname found - using nbtscan for full subnet.
/ # cat /hosts/hosts
192.168.2.2 TOWER
192.168.2.4 DELLCPX
192.168.2.5 JALP3
OK, so it is not half of the time... again all three servers were found
/ # rm /hosts/hosts
/ # nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.2.251/24
No nasname found - using nbtscan for full subnet.
/ # cat /hosts/hosts
192.168.2.2 TOWER
192.168.2.4 DELLCPX
192.168.2.5 JALP3
OK, it is making me look like a liar... again all three servers were found, perhaps I need to also remove the directories it is creating for the sharepoints
/ # rmdir /net/*
/ # rm /hosts/hosts
/ # nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.2.251/24
No nasname found - using nbtscan for full subnet.
/ # cat /hosts/hosts
192.168.2.2 TOWER
192.168.2.5 JALP3
Back to only two servers being listed
/ # rmdir /net/*
/ # rm /hosts/hosts
/ # nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.2.251/24
No nasname found - using nbtscan for full subnet.
/ # cat /hosts/hosts
192.168.2.2 TOWER
192.168.2.4 DELLCPX
192.168.2.5 JALP3
Guess the deletion of the folders did not make much difference after all. Let's try the old version of nbtscan...
/ # rmdir /net/*
/ # rm /hosts/hosts
/ # /sbin/rbin/nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.2.251/24
/ # cat /hosts/hosts
192.168.2.2 TOWER
192.168.2.5 JALP3
Oops... back to only listing two servers... Guess it is nothing you did in your version of nbtscan
/ # rmdir /net/*
/ # rm /hosts/hosts
/ # /sbin/rbin/nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.2.251/24
/ # cat /hosts/hosts
192.168.2.2 TOWER
192.168.2.5 JALP3
One more try with the original version... and all three servers show up
/ # rmdir /net/*
/ # rm /hosts/hosts
/ # /sbin/rbin/nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.2.251/24
/ # cat /hosts/hosts
192.168.2.2 TOWER
192.168.2.4 DELLCPX
192.168.2.5 JALP3
/ #

I didn't configure mathopd to chroot so you should be able to use soft links. Try sticking some in /phase2/webextras and see what happens.

edit:
I just did this on the MG-35
ln -s /img/mute.png /phase2/webextras/mute.png

and then this on my Linux box
wget 192.168.1.60/webextra/mute.png

and it worked a treat!

Ian


Thats what I tried,

<html><body><img src="mute.png"/></body></html>
(this is index.html)

so I load mathopd, I set all the chmod like it should, and I went to the index.html, but the image didnt show, so I righclick on the X (when an image doesnt want to load, I saw a X) and I choose show Image, but the image returning the path of the image and not the image. After I tried to copy the mute.png to that folder, and it work, so maybe the ln doesnt work, maybe there's something wrong with the config, gadget can you upload your config so I could take a look at it and compare it with mine ? So I tried the wget like you said with a ln on mute.phg, yeah it download the mute.png, but when I tried to open mute.png to see the image, there is nothing, and my graphic client give me an error saying that there is something wrong with the png.

Nothing to do with current bug hunting, but do you actually want all three in the list?

IanIan,

Glad you asked...

Currently I do have media on two of the three machines. One is a true unRaid headless server in the basement. It has 12 drive slots, but currently only has a few slots populated, so I only have a little over 1 Terabyte of disk storage in it. I do want it to show up, BUT would love to only see some of its samba shared drives. (Others I use for backups, etc)

The other machines on my LAN each have a MEDIA folder with some local MEDIA. They also have a "downloads" shared folder and other general purpose shared folders.

I know your current nvram stuff will allow storage of a single media server. I would love to be able to define a list of specific machine/share names(within the space available, of course) Perhaps comma delimited... something like this...

setnas SERVER=TOWER/Movies,TOWER/MP3,TOWER/Pictures,JALP3/Pictures

Two servers (JALP3 and TOWER), one with three folders, the other with one folder.

I do not need, or want any other shared folders on those two servers visible to the MG-35 user. There's nothing there to play and they only confuse family members. (They do not need to see the "backup" or "downloads" shared folders on TOWER or JALP3.) Nor do I want other machines on the LAN visible. (I have other PC's on my LAN, they do have shared folders, but no media for the mG-35 to play)

Yes, I know I should consolidate my media in one spot, but that is an entirely different issue. Eventually most of my media will end up on the unRaid server "TOWER" but even then I'll still have other machines on my LAN with shared drives... these do not need to be visible on the MG-35 at all.

Joe L.

Oops... back to only listing two servers... Guess it is nothing you did in your version of nbtscan


No, but it could be my udhcpc (can't see how!) or something else. Let me know how it goes.

Ian

I know your current nvram stuff will allow storage of a single media server. I would love to be able to define a list of specific machine/share names(within the space available, of course) Perhaps comma delimited... something like this...

setnas SERVER=TOWER/Movies,TOWER/MP3,TOWER/Pictures,JALP3/Pictures


Sadly, I am only "wrapping" nbtscan at the moment.
We'd also have the wrap smbmount if we wanted to achieve what you're after.
And we'd also need to carve out more room in the NV ram as we currently only have 64 chars.

Ian

but the image didnt show


Hmm, same here. But it doesn't show for me even if I drag the image to the PC.


After I tried to copy the mute.png to that folder, and it work


Not for me!


maybe there's something wrong with the config, gadget can you upload your config so I could take a look at it and compare it with mine ?


It's in /www - or are you using older firmware?


my graphic client give me an error saying that there is something wrong with the png.

Try this -
ln -s /logontsc.jpg /phase2/webextras/logon.jpg

I just did this and can see logon.jpg in Opera.

Ian

i wish i could fix it NOW i must first order the cable !

Tnx everybody for helping me ..... ( sorry again for my mickey mouse english :-) )

i decide to make the cable by myself, so i went to the electrtonic store
to buy the parts that i need, but when i come home i saw that see give me
the wrong parts !!! ( the capitors are not the one i needed )

so iu have to wait til tommorow to make the cable :-(

Sadly, I am only "wrapping" nbtscan at the moment.
We'd also have the wrap smbmount if we wanted to achieve what you're after.
And we'd also need to carve out more room in the NV ram as we currently only have 64 chars.

IanI understand... I can dream of it someday though...

"TOWER/Movies,TOWER/MP3,TOWER/Pictures,JALP3/Pictures" = 52 characters...
so there is some hope... :D

Back to slaying dragons...

Could be potential for another passworded feature. Only allowing some folders (and movies) to be selected by grownups, and not by kids too young for PG, PG-13 & R rated movies...

Joe L.

http://www.foxhill.co.uk/MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha4.zip

Minor update.

---------------------------
Edit: September 12th 2006 - MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha4
Fixed the time compare bug in mathopd - it couldn't cope with all cramFS files having an update time of zero!
Added version.cgi to /www - no idea if it works!
New nbtscan fixing trivial bug if nasname is null
---------------------------

I tested this by playing an AVI file and also downgrading via the network to alpha3.

Note that when I upgraded back to Alpha4, and played the same AVI file, it continued where I'd left off, so this stuff is definitely in the NV config!

Ian

Hmm, same here. But it doesn't show for me even if I drag the image to the PC.



Not for me!



It's in /www - or are you using older firmware?



Try this -
ln -s /logontsc.jpg /phase2/webextras/logon.jpg

I just did this and can see logon.jpg in Opera.

Ian


Yeah I'm still using an old firmware and I'm still using /hosts/www for my web stuff. I think I will upgrade it to make sure I have the same thing than you.

I tried the jpg and I'm still see a path instead of the image with Firefox, so Now I really think I will need to upgrade my firmware

I understand... I can dream of it someday though...


It's not actually too hard to do. I just need to make sure that it's generic capability that will work for everyone.


"TOWER/Movies,TOWER/MP3,TOWER/Pictures,JALP3/Pictures" = 52 characters...
so there is some hope... :D


Yes, but if people don't have working DNS, we also need IP addresses.

Ian

Yeah I'm still using an old firmware and I'm still using /hosts/www for my web stuff. I think I will upgrade it to make sure I have the same thing than you.

I tried the jpg and I'm still see a path instead of the image with Firefox, so Now I really think I will need to upgrade my firmware

Let me know how you get on. I changed the mathopd.cfg a whole load. But you can just copy mine and do your own thing. Run with another config but my /www, overlay /www with a ramfs, whatever you want. But it's maybe easier if you keep new content in /phase2/webextras and when it's done, me/you/we can test it with a ramfs overlay and then stick it into new firmware.

Note that the new .cfg uses www as the web user and cgi to run scripts. Permissions on cgi scripts will need to allow anyone to run them (see the files in /www in Alpha4)

Ian

Added version.cgi to /www - no idea if it works!


It works just fine -

try http://a.b.c.d/version.cgi

Ian

It's not actually too hard to do. I just need to make sure that it's generic capability that will work for everyone.



Yes, but if people don't have working DNS, we also need IP addresses.

IanAnd more space.... I see...... (embarrassed I did not figure that out myself)
Maybe you could use a smaller font when you write to the NV ram ;)

Joe L.

Hello Ian,

Been fooling around with the SETNAS option, don't seem to be getting it to work.

If i read back mgnv "%s"s:252 it still display loader.bin instead of nas name.
And when i run nbtscan -q -b /net -e 192.168.2.251/24
It displays error : No nasname found - using nbtscan for full subnet.

And also when i select network medi on MG it still scann all network drive.
What am i doing wrong, or am i mis understanding the option.

Running alpha4 with no phase scripts.
Booting system normally then opening telnet and try the setnas function.

Keep up the good work your all doing, eventually the unit will do what we (the customers) would like it to do.

Best regards,
Jelte

Note that when I upgraded back to Alpha4, and played the same AVI file, it continued where I'd left off, so this stuff is definitely in the NV config! Unbelievable! :eek: :eek: :eek: One of us must be losing his mind, or... Are you sure you allowed adequate time between power down/up for the capacitors in the power supply to discharge?

Been fooling around with the SETNAS option, don't seem to be getting it to work.

If i read back mgnv "%s"s:252 it still display loader.bin instead of nas name.


So if you type -
setnas myserver
mgnv "%s" s:252

What do you get? I get -
/ # setnas myserver
/ # mgnv "%s" s:252
myserver/ #


Instead of setnas, can you try -
mgnv s:252="myserver"
and see if you get an error message?

There are two issues -
1) mgnv can't erase the config area if it fills up.
2) I suspect dvdplayer.bin might be caching some config data. If you do something in the GUI that changes the config, then dvdoplayer.bin splats your changes. I only noticed this tonight, and haven't had time to totally pin it down. Might be bogus.

If (2) is for real, then I need to find a way to get dvdplayer.bin to re-read the data. I suspect it does this as it returns to the start screen, but this really is a new issue that I haven't explored.

Worst case, you'll need to power cycle after setting the server name. But I've played with this stuff a whole load and have only had it go wrong once.

I really am starting to question how might time we/I spend on wrapping stuff that dvdplayer calls versus what's involved in throwing dvdplayer away and rewriting it from scratch.

Of course, if Al Tek would release the source, what with dvdplayer.bin being a GPL work ...

Ian

Unbelievable! :eek: :eek: :eek: One of us must be losing his mind, or... Are you sure you allowed adequate time between power down/up for the capacitors in the power supply to discharge?

I was playing an AVI file off the network. Maybe other cases don't work?

Ian

Unbelievable! :eek: :eek: :eek: One of us must be losing his mind, or... Are you sure you allowed adequate time between power down/up for the capacitors in the power supply to discharge?

I'm sure he did :). My test was with a ripped DVD, played over the network from my PC. Started the .IFO file, left it run for a few minutes, stopped it, went to Media select, selected the same file, and it continued playing where it was before. But when I restarted the MG35, it started from the beginning.

OTOH, Ian tried with an AVI file. Maybe MG35 just calls different players for AVIs and IFOs ...

Hello Ian,

Been fooling around with the SETNAS option, don't seem to be getting it to work.

Running alpha4 with no phase scripts.
Booting system normally then opening telnet and try the setnas function.

....

I know I got caught on the syntax because I wasn't reading carefully. I got alpha 2's setnas to run correctly when I telnet'ed in and used this syntax:

setnas "NAS server name ALL IN CAPS"="NAS server IP address"
i.e.
setnas MY_NAS=192.168.25.101

Hopefully, your situation was as simple as mine.

IG

Been fooling around with the SETNAS option, don't seem to be getting it to work.


Ah, there is another option. I was *very* worried about writing to a flash chip that I didn't recognise. I was also new to writing C, and kind of thought that mgnv was going to be called from other stuff that would check return code, so it doesn't really print enough in the way of error messages.

If you still can't get it to work, then we need to -
1) Get you a new mgnv that prints more errors. I assume you can run this from HD or a network share?
2) Take a look at your flash chips and see what's written on them.

My current flash code is stuff I wrote myself. Maybe we need to nick bit parts of MTD?

(edit - new mgnv attached - it prints the manufacturer ID and part code for anything that it doesn't recognise.)

Ian

I know I got caught on the syntax because I wasn't reading carefully. I got alpha 2's setnas to run correctly when I telnet'ed in and used this syntax:

setnas "NAS server name ALL IN CAPS"="NAS server IP address"
i.e.
setnas MY_NAS=192.168.25.101



Glad someone else is using the NAS stuff!

The server name shouldn't need to be in caps. I convert before I use it - I enter mine in lower care.

Ian

Unbelievable! :eek: :eek: :eek: One of us must be losing his mind, or... Are you sure you allowed adequate time between power down/up for the capacitors in the power supply to discharge?


I'm always playing with that, but I saw that if I press stop, and I shutdown the mediagate, and I boot it back on, and I tried to play back that file, it start from the beginning, but if I watch a movie, and I power off the mediagate (without pressing stop) , the day after I'm able to play back that movie, from where I was (and my mg35 was off for the night)

PS: playing from internal HD, didnt tried the network.

Ian,

I LOVE the NAS stuff you added. I always hated having to wait considering all the machines I have running on my network (not your standard home environment). My frustration always doubled when the MG-35 "timed out" back to the intro screen.

Anyway, I could have sworn I could not get the MG-35 to execute on the setnas variable until I entered in my server name using all caps. Again, I am using alpha2. Does entering setnas without any parms clear the variable? I would be happy to try this again.

Thanks!

IG

Also, I would like to echo everyone's wishes here. BRILLIANT work on getting into the MG-35 this far.

I LOVE the NAS stuff you added. I always hated having to wait considering all the machines I have running on my network (not your standard home environment). My frustration always doubled when the MG-35 "timed out" back to the intro screen.


Oh yes, tell me about the frustration of it deciding you needed to spend a minute drilling back down. Glad you like it. It makes the work worthwhile.


Does entering setnas without any parms clear the variable? I would be happy to try this again.


Yes, setnas will invoke mgnv with
mgnv s:252=""
and this will set the entry to null.
Or to get back to stock use
setnas loader.bin

I'm pretty sure I added the code to uppercase the server name before my first release. But I have been wrong before ...

Try setting the name using lower case, check with -
mgnv "%s" s:252
and then try typing just "nbtscan"

As long as the server name is set, nbtscan doesn't need any arguments. You should then find uppercase server names in /hosts/hosts and in /net

Ian

so if you type - setnas myserver mgnv "%s" s:252
I get loader.bin

Just like all the other different ways i could try to get it working.
Running the script, using mgnv, Even playing a audio file and then using mgnv.
Tried it with ip and without. Stil the same.

Just to let you know this bit didn't work for me with alpa 2 also.
I have a Freecom version maybe this has something to do with it?

Did test the mgnv.zip you gave me, it comes with the following message:

Not happy writing to this flash!
ID = 0001
Dev code = 22c4

Maybe this helps finding out what it could be?

Jelte

new mgnv attached - it prints the manufacturer ID and part code for anything that it doesn't recognise.

You should probably also add this as a "-check" option to mgnv.

Not happy writing to this flash!
ID = 0001
Dev code = 22c4

Maybe this helps finding out what it could be?


Yes, but -

1) It'll be work to add support for another flash.
2) It'll be very hard to add without the hardware in front of me.
3) I wonder how many other flash types they use?

Ian

Yes, but -

1) It'll be work to add support for another flash.
2) It'll be very hard to add without the hardware in front of me.
3) I wonder how many other flash types they use?

Ian

What can i do to help ? Or is it not so simple what you need to know.

What can i do to help ? Or is it not so simple what you need to know.Perhaps take a high-res picture of the chips on the board. It might give Ian a clue of who made them so he could track down a data-sheet.

Joe L.

What can i do to help ? Or is it not so simple what you need to know.

I just need to decide how to proceed. I can incrementally add flash chips, with a little flying in the dark to get things going, or I can include the guts of the mtd flash stuff.

As it happens, I have from the web a file called flash.c, which is a modified version of various bits of the Linux mtd/cfi code all dragged into one file. It's marked as being Sigma Designs proprietary/copyright, and has Ho Lee's name in it, which is pretty low given how *obviously* it's all been copied from Linux kernel code.

Scumbags.

I'd feel little guilt if I used this in mgnv rather than my current flash_write function.

Ian

Perhaps take a high-res picture of the chips on the board. It might give Ian a clue of who made them so he could track down a data-sheet.


Just let me know manufacturer and part code. If the datasheet then shows that it's *very* close to the Samsung parts, then I can just make the changes and we can give it a go. The good news is that getting things wrong just means the write doesn't happen.

If Al Tek have used 2-3 different parts, this approach is fine. More than this and I need a rethink.

Ian

You should probably also add this as a "-check" option to mgnv.

Yes, probably. Or it's maybe easier to spit out another little proggy that just reports on which flash chips are fitted. But ISTR that this is in the dmesg output in /proc.

Hey, I could make it into a CGI script! :)

Ian

I've been playing around with some web stuff on the mg35 and I think I must be doing something stupid. I've written a modified version of my small prog to create a bitmap file of the mg35 screen overlay. This version reads the palette from dvdplayer.bin and writes that to the resulting bitmap file.

It also contains a small piece of logic that checks to see if the executable has a .cgi extension, and if it does all output goes to stdout instead of a file prefixed by "Content-type: image/bmp\r\n"

The non-cgi executable works fine...

So I tried - ln -s /phase2/screendump /phase2/webextras/sd.cgi

As expected, executing sd.cgi writes garbage to the screen...

./sd.cgi >screendump.bin works fine - with the contents of the .bin file exactly as they should be...

However, browsing to http://192.168.2.224/webextras/sd.cgi seems to reboot the mg35!

Is there a limit on the output size of a cgi prog or am I doing something stupid?

The source is attached if there's anyone who doesn't mind my sparsely commented code...

Try setting the name using lower case, check with -
mgnv "%s" s:252
and then try typing just "nbtscan"

As long as the server name is set, nbtscan doesn't need any arguments. You should then find uppercase server names in /hosts/hosts and in /net

Must have been just my setup! Did some testing and found that the hosts file under the /hosts directory was not there and also no entry in the /net directory. However, the variable was set as confirmed by the mgnv "%s" s:252 command.

Decided to just upgrade to alpha4. setnas now works as expected for me. Tried it with all lower case, all upper case, mixed case, and with and without IP address with no unexpected results. Yea!

IG

I'm always playing with that, but I saw that if I press stop, and I shutdown the mediagate, and I boot it back on, and I tried to play back that file, it start from the beginning, but if I watch a movie, and I power off the mediagate (without pressing stop) , the day after I'm able to play back that movie, from where I was (and my mg35 was off for the night) I am not able to reproduce this behavior. In other words, it is as Ian said. :eek: Stop or no stop during play, followed by power off and on, and voila you can resume an mpg. I even reflashed with 1.4.5 from 1.4.4 beta something, and I could resume my movie. I would have sworn it lost it's position when I experimented with this before.

Please tell me I'm not losing my mind!

Yes, but -

1) It'll be work to add support for another flash.
2) It'll be very hard to add without the hardware in front of me.
3) I wonder how many other flash types they use?


Ian, hats off again for your work on mgnv! It is certainly useful to change the configuration via the web interface, probably with a prior check if the flash is one of the supported types. I surely saw a list of supported chips, probably in the bootloader or upgrader.

But seems to me that the idea of adding ALL our configuration items between the native vars is not feasible, since:
- you have to adjust to all the flash types they may throw in the MG35
- you have limited space
- you may overwrite by mistake a system variable which is now unused
- there is a chance of conflicts with dvdplayer or other native apps.

So I suggest writing a small utility (getconfig?), which should be called in .sashrc, after mounting /phase2. The purpose of this app is to get a text config file (mg35.cfg?) from an external location and copy it to /phase2. The rest of the applications (including the new nbtscan) should use this config file.

This is what it should do:
1. try to find the config file from /phase2 (not sure if we really need this step). If found, exit.
2. try to load the config file from /cdrom/zz_devel. If found, copy to /phase2 and exit
3. initialize the eth and try to get the cfg_server name via DHCP. If found, go to 6.
4. if cfg_server not specified in DHCP, try to load the config file via tftp. If found, copy it to /phase2 and exit
5. check NVRAM for the cfg_server name, as it does now. If not found, exit with error.
6. try to locate a predefined share (mg35?) on the cfg_server and copy the file to /phase2

Advantage: we minimize touching the flash, with all its side-effects, and keep our config items completely separate. This solves the problem for people with or without hdd.

The only ones left in the cold are those who don't want an internal hdd AND have a flash chip which is not supported AND cannot configure a dhcp server AND cannot configure a tftp server (which is trivial). But even they can add a small CF+IDE adaptor (on ebay an adapter is 2-3$, and a 32 MB is also a few bucks).

The way they play files is a mess :(.

MP3 files are played by fileplayer, but when you load a JPG, dvdplayer will call mp3play to play the MP3 files in /cdrom/music.

DVDs are played by dvdplayer when started by the IFO file, and by mpegplayer if started using VOB files or by pressing Play on the directory containing the ripped files.

Can anybody confirm that I'm right? Just start a file and then run "ps" from the console. I updated the wiki page with my findings.

However, browsing to http://192.168.2.224/webextras/sd.cgi seems to reboot the mg35!

Is there a limit on the output size of a cgi prog or am I doing something stupid?

The source is attached if there's anyone who doesn't mind my sparsely commented code...

I'll look at your source later. Can you test my screendump.cgi program? It worked when I called it with wget, but something might have changed since.

I've pulled the buffer sizes down very low in mathopd.cfg Too low? We might need a large enough buffer to return any possible child output.

Ian

I'll look at your source later. Can you test my screendump.cgi program? It worked when I called it with wget, but something might have changed since.


I just retested a wget of screendump.cgi with alpha4 firmware seems to work, the file looks right with a hex editor, and the MG-35 still seems happy.

I guess it is buffer sizes. As we have only vfork, the child needs to stop running before the parent can run again. This means that the buffers need to be big enough for all the output. My screendump is probably overwriting stuff but getting away with it.

If you read config.txt, it explains the rules about buffer sizes. Some have to be larger than others, etc., and there are multiple copies of some. If you increase the buffer sizes, we might want to pull the number of simultaneous connections down, maybe to one!

Note that the buffers are permanantly allocated even if the web interface isn't being used. The default sizes give mathopd a footprint of 2MB, which is far too large!

Perhaps we need to use some cgi parameters to fetch large objects in chunks?

BTW, thanks for the source. You're massively more experienced with C than I am, and I hope you don't mind me "borrowing" a few chunks.

BTW2, to retest with a different config, just kill mathopd and restart exactly the same binary using the same content but a different config. You can also throw on the debug flag, if you want. See /bin/httpd-start

Ian

So I suggest writing a small utility (getconfig?), which should be called in .sashrc, after mounting /phase2. The purpose of this app is to get a text config file (mg35.cfg?) from an external location and copy it to /phase2. The rest of the applications (including the new nbtscan) should use this config file.

This is what it should do:
1. try to find the config file from /phase2 (not sure if we really need this step). If found, exit.
2. try to load the config file from /cdrom/zz_devel. If found, copy to /phase2 and exit
3. initialize the eth and try to get the cfg_server name via DHCP. If found, go to 6.
4. if cfg_server not specified in DHCP, try to load the config file via tftp. If found, copy it to /phase2 and exit
5. check NVRAM for the cfg_server name, as it does now. If not found, exit with error.
6. try to locate a predefined share (mg35?) on the cfg_server and copy the file to /phase2

Advantage: we minimize touching the flash, with all its side-effects, and keep our config items completely separate. This solves the problem for people with or without hdd.

The only ones left in the cold are those who don't want an internal hdd AND have a flash chip which is not supported AND cannot configure a dhcp server AND cannot configure a tftp server (which is trivial). But even they can add a small CF+IDE adaptor (on ebay an adapter is 2-3$, and a 32 MB is also a few bucks).

Makes sense. I just worry about how long it will take to fire up the network and mount shares before the GUI gets going. I guess it'll be OK as long as we don't need to use nbtscan!

I guess we can also save time by using mgnv to specify the startup behaviour, with the default being to do nothing.

Another observation I'll make is that there is *loads* of unused flash. We could easily run the same config system but in a different area to get as much as we are likely to need. However, we will have to be prepared to erase this if it fills.

The first step is probably to boot the machine but not run dvdplayer.bin. This means setup won't be run (will have to use serial terminal!) and I can see what's required to get the network running. Might be as easy as insmod the driver and carry on from there!

Or we can kick off another application that lurks until the network is up and then leaps into life.

Of course, what we really need to do is replace dvdplayer.bin!!!

Ian

Not happy writing to this flash!
ID = 0001
Dev code = 22c4


I have located an MG-35 with this flash chip. To save my blushes, please could no-one read my message 1186 on page 40 of this thread!

Thanks

Ian

I have attached flashid.cgi. It can also be run as a normal program.

Known combinations of manu/dev are

Man: 1
Dev: 22c4

Man: EC
Dev: 2275

Man: EC
Dev: 2277

The last two are already supported. The good news is that I have the datasheet for the Spansion device (1st one) and the codes look the same - it's probably just a case of relaxing the checks.

If people haven't managed to use mgnv yet, please can they run flashid.cgi and let me know if it gives anything other than one of the above.

I'll include this proggy in future 1.4.4.5 alphas so people can get the ID via the web interface.

Ian

when my cable for pc <> mediagate is ready, where must it located the
firmware file ? on the the root of the hardrive inside the mg-35 ?
or in a folder ?

when my cable for pc <> mediagate is ready, where must it located the
firmware file ? on the the root of the hardrive inside the mg-35 ?
or in a folder ?

The file is on the PC.
You use the serial console to tell the MG-35 to download the file via serial.
You send the file using hyperterminal
You tell the MG-35 to write the file to flash.
Job done!

Ian

Here is some info i found on a French website for the Sigmatek X100

The file fipmodule.o:
It is a module of the core which makes it possible to manage the remote control and bill-poster LCD. It was written by people of Sigma Designs: Vincent Trinh and Fabrice Gautier. This driver is not a driver OpenSource, it is owner.
The file khwl.o:
It is still a module core but this one makes it possible to manage the EM85xx chips. It was also written by people of Sigma Designs: Emmanuel Michon and Fabrice Gautier. This driver is not a driver OpenSource, it is owner.

EDIT: Since reading this I have found this site http://user.it.uu.se/~alse7905/EM85xxDVD/ that has some code for the khwl.o and the fipmodule.o for the KISS DP-500. In the code it states they the files are under the GPL licence.

Nick

I've been playing around with some web stuff on the mg35 and I think I must be doing something stupid. I've written a modified version of my small prog to create a bitmap file of the mg35 screen overlay. This version reads the palette from dvdplayer.bin and writes that to the resulting bitmap file.

It also contains a small piece of logic that checks to see if the executable has a .cgi extension, and if it does all output goes to stdout instead of a file prefixed by "Content-type: image/bmp\r\n"

The non-cgi executable works fine...

So I tried - ln -s /phase2/screendump /phase2/webextras/sd.cgi

As expected, executing sd.cgi writes garbage to the screen...

./sd.cgi >screendump.bin works fine - with the contents of the .bin file exactly as they should be...

However, browsing to http://192.168.2.224/webextras/sd.cgi seems to reboot the mg35!

Is there a limit on the output size of a cgi prog or am I doing something stupid?

The source is attached if there's anyone who doesn't mind my sparsely commented code...

Hey Andy, Try to put \n\n in the string of the content file, instead of only 1 \n, I know if you try to output an html with the content type, you need that 2 \n otherwise it doesnt work.

Hey Andy, Try to put \n\n in the string of the content file, instead of only 1 \n, I know if you try to output an html with the content type, you need that 2 \n otherwise it doesnt work.

Yup, the CGI header needs a blank line after it to flag the start of content.

But from memory the code used \r\n (CR and then LF) - does it really need \r\n\r\n ??

And given that stdout is cooked, won't a windows platform expand \n to CRLF anyway? (not that it affects us)

Ian

The source is attached if there's anyone who doesn't mind my sparsely commented code...

Um, the code -
if (fpout != stdout)
fclose(fp);

Doesn't actually compile due to fp not existing.

Ian

Is there a limit on the output size of a cgi prog or am I doing something stupid?

The source is attached if there's anyone who doesn't mind my sparsely commented code...

OK, let's put this bug down to team work. :)

dvdplayer.bin in /sbin/rbin is only readable by root. I'll change this on the next alpha.

So I made three changes to the code -
1) Changed fp to fpout as per last message.
2) Changed \r\n to \n\n when printing the cgi header (required?)
3) Got it to open /cdrom/dvdplayer.bin instead (and I copied this binary across)

It now seems to sort of work - the box didn't die and I got a 298680 byte output file. However, nothing will open the file.

But nothing will open the file if I get it to write it to stdout, so this is maybe something simple elsewhere.

Ian

EDIT: Since reading this I have found this site http://user.it.uu.se/~alse7905/EM85xxDVD/ that has some code for the khwl.o and the fipmodule.o for the KISS DP-500. In the code it states they the files are under the GPL licence.


We are listening. :)

This just isn't an area that I've sniffed around yet. Do we need to until we replace dvdplayer.bin?

Ian

The file is on the PC.
You use the serial console to tell the MG-35 to download the file via serial.
You send the file using hyperterminal
You tell the MG-35 to write the file to flash.
Job done!

Ian

Tnx !! , the cable is ready now ..... now i go try to flash it !!

Yup, the CGI header needs a blank line after it to flag the start of content.

But from memory the code used \r\n (CR and then LF) - does it really need \r\n\r\n ??

And given that stdout is cooked, won't a windows platform expand \n to CRLF anyway? (not that it affects us)

Ian


Its an header for the web server (to tell the web server what kind of file you are trying to open), so you dont need to do a carage return and line feet, only the line feet will be good (cause when you do a html, you dont put \r\n\r\n right ?) .

The (selfmade) cable works fine !!! :-)

but ......


this is what is see on the terminal program ......

**************** Start **************

Jasper Bootloader v1.0.0 (Nov 4 2005 12:23:28)
Supports BootMenu Flash Network
This version of fips use micom with power control, version[3]
0031.0033 mfr 0001 id 22c4 Bottom bootsector
Flash 0 at address 0x00000000
ID : AMD/Fujitsu Standard
Size : 4096 KB
Regions : 4
0 : 0x00000000 - 0x00008000 * 1
1 : 0x00008000 - 0x00004000 * 2
2 : 0x00010000 - 0x00010000 * 1
3 : 0x00020000 - 0x00020000 * 31


*** MAIN MEMORY TEST START ***
From =00800000, Size =00010000
*** MAIN MEMORY TEST OK ***

*** QUASAR SDRAM TEST (QDT) ***
Test with sz=00008000 (maxoffset =00800000)
This size OK
*** QUASAR SDRAM TEST OK ***

*** INSERT MAC ADDRESS ***

Base MAC Address : (ff:fe:ff:ff:ff:ff)
Enter Offset (1-1000) :

******* STOP ***********

i powered up the mg-35, with the power button pressed !! (en hold)
where is the part to enter the password ???
please help me ( the anwser is olmost there !!)
:) :) :)

**************** Start **************

Jasper Bootloader v1.0.0 (Nov 4 2005 12:23:28)
Supports BootMenu Flash Network
This version of fips use micom with power control, version[3]
The bootloader is supposed to stop right here if you hold down a key. :confused: If the power button doesn't work, try any of the others.

The bootloader is supposed to stop right here if you hold down a key. :confused: If the power button doesn't work, try any of the others.

Am I wrong, or you are supposed to press a key on the PC keyboard?

The bootloader is supposed to stop right here if you hold down a key. :confused: If the power button doesn't work, try any of the others.


i have now the same output as on the wiki page .... but nothing happening
:( :(

@gans

The way I thought it worked (not tried it myself yet , even though I have a serial lead ).

1)Hold in the Power on the MG-35 till the serial boots and starts to display

2)Then hit any key on the PC keyboard

3)Then the cursor will just flash..

4)At this point enter the Password - nothing will be displayed (as you type it in) , if you enter it correct the full consol where you enter the commands will then appear..

i have now the same output as on the wiki page .... but nothing happening
:( :(

Start terminal at 38400
Hold down a key on the ** PC ** keyboard as you power up the MG-35
Then type "MediaGate." into your terminal package.
You should now get a prompt on the MG-35

At what stage does it look to go wrong? Can you post more hyperterminal output?

Maybe you just have a hardware fault?

Ian

The way I thought it worked (not tried it myself yet , even though I have a serial lead I.

1)Hold in the Power on the MG-35 till the serial boots and starts to display

2)Then hit any key on the PC keyboard


You need to press and hold a key on the PC as the window is very short. I normally just lean on space as I power up the MG-35. I get a sign on message, and then it just echos what I type. This is when you enter the passphrase.

Ian

What to do while eating your lunchtime sandwhich.

Please bear in mind that this wasn't on the test box as I can already handle the flash on that one!

1) Modify some flash write test code to accept the Spansion flash as writeable.
2) Test a simple write - works.
3) Add the mods to mgnv.
4) Get error messages and aborted writes that screw part of your config area.
5) Bash mgnv code a bit.
6) Repeat of 4 which messes up even more config.
7) Repeat 4, 5 and 6 until you suss the extra step needed to detect a correct write to Spansion flash. (Don't do confirmation read until back in read mode)
8) Confirm that your config area is indeed now totally full of FFs
9) Modify mgnv to write in an old copy of the config you have lying around in a file.
10) Smile as it correctly writes all 1000 bytes.

Note that (7) wasn't the only problem. My detect end of write code had a schoolboy error, but in *huge* amounts of playing with mgnv it doesn't seem to have been an issue.

Will do lots of intensive mgnv testing tonight and release a new version.

Ian

The way I thought it worked (not tried it myself yet , even though I have a serial lead ).

1)Hold in the Power on the MG-35 till the serial boots and starts to display


I think the one who displays the logo on the TV is dvdplayer, and that's waaaay after the bootloader finished its job.

I just loaded your firmware (MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha4.upgrade) and all i can say is wow.
It is a million times better looking, faster to move between folders and how it should of looked from day one.
Thank you for all your time and efforts.

faster to move between folders and how it should of looked from day one.


I can't think of any reason why it should be faster (unless using the NAS stuff) but it feels faster to me too!

Ian

I just loaded your firmware (MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha4.upgrade) and all i can say is wow.
It is a million times better looking, faster to move between folders and how it should of looked from day one.

Hmmmm... faster to browse folders? Could nbtscan be involved? Do you use internal hdd or just have your files on the network?

You need to press and hold a key on the PC as the window is very short. Aha! Apologies to gans for my dubious recommendations. I should have added the caveat that I hadn't tried it (yet) either. But we already know that I'm losing my mind (regarding NV memory and mpg/avi file position). :eek:

Ian, you probably have auto repeat enabled on your PC, or leaning on the space bar wouldn't do much. This is not a given on all PCs, so the "press and hold" directions on the wiki led me astray as well. I am glad that somebody already updated the wiki to clarify where you are holding down a key.

where I can find the release alpha4 ? on the yahoo group there is only the alpha3.

Ian, you probably have auto repeat enabled on your PC, or leaning on the space bar wouldn't do much. This is not a given on all PCs, so the "press and hold" directions on the wiki led me astray as well.

Ooops! Are you sure? Never saw a wintel PC without autorepeat... I know there are some settings in BIOS about that, but never bothered to change or even look at them :)

ok the status for my flashing problem


i was trying to tranfer the file to the mg-35, but no sucses.
i have problems with the giving in the password and uploading the file.

but when i was trying i noticed that the blue led was not flasing anymore !!
so i connect it to the T.v. ..... it starts up !!! :) :) :)

but ....... the content of the harddisk is playing fine
but from the network NOT ,i have a mac adress of :

ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff .... :mad: :mad: :mad: so i have to problems

1) how do i change the mac adress in to a normal adress ?
2) what went wrong with the flashing stuff

the thing is, i don't no exact WHEN to enter the password en the command
en WHEN to start the filetransfer ....

(is there any output to the terminal schreen when you enter a command ? )

the thing is, i don't no exact WHEN to enter the password en the command
en WHEN to start the filetransfer ....

(is there any output to the terminal schreen when you enter a command ? )

Check again the wiki page, I hope it's clearer now.

Regarding your MAC, you can read the EEPROM using the serial console. The command should be "net eeprom dump". Let us know the output, and also the MAC that is written on the MG35 case sticker.

BTW, can you tell us what serial converter did you built?

1) how do i change the mac adress in to a normal adress ?


I must admit, I'm not totally sure where the mac is stored. Probably the eeprom connected to the ethernet chip, but it might also be in the flash config. TBH, I'm not even 100% sure that the board has an eeprom fitted!

If the mac is in the flash, then I'm pretty sure I can help you get it set again by using mgnv (download onto HD using USB)

There is also a chance that your whole config has been zapped - again mgnv can fix this.


2) what went wrong with the flashing stuff

the thing is, i don't no exact WHEN to enter the password en the command
en WHEN to start the filetransfer ....

(is there any output to the terminal schreen when you enter a command ? )

If you follow the order of events I posted earlier, you should be OK. After the loader gives the start message, it then just echos what you type.

You type "MediaGate." without the quotes but with the dot, and it then the loader will print up some more stuff and give you a prompt.

After you get the prompt you can type "help" and look around.

Then you use "download serial romfs" and then start sending via ymodem.

However, it now sounds like it was your config area that got zapped rather than your main flash. This actually makes a lot of sense.

I have attached a new version of mgnv (that can hope with Samsung and Spansion flash) and if you can confirm that you can run this in a telnet session, then I'll talk you through reading/writing what we suspect is the mac address in the config.

We can also look at some of the rest of your config and see how it looks.

Ian

where I can find the release alpha4 ? on the yahoo group there is only the alpha3.

http://www.foxhill.co.uk/MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha4.zip

Ian

*** MAIN MEMORY TEST START ***
From =00800000, Size =00010000
*** MAIN MEMORY TEST OK ***

*** QUASAR SDRAM TEST (QDT) ***
Test with sz=00008000 (maxoffset =00800000)
This size OK
*** QUASAR SDRAM TEST OK ***

*** INSERT MAC ADDRESS ***

Base MAC Address : (ff:fe:ff:ff:ff:ff)
Enter Offset (1-1000) :



Out of interest, I have seen these messages in the loader binary but have never before seen it print them. I guess that the loader detected that the config was blank and is doing a commissioning test etc.

BTW, there is a chance that your cable is only working one way. So you're seeing output but the MG-35 isn't seeing your typing.

Ian

The max address is at offset 200 in the config (someone suggested this before but it didn't match what my serial console printed so I was confused).

But this -
mgnv "%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x" b:200 b:201 b:202 b:203 b:204 b:205
prints the same mac as my dhcp logs report.
00:02:a8:11:d8:c9 for me.

To set it use -
mgnv b:200=0xaa b:201=0xbb b:202=0xcc b:203=0xdd b:204=0xee b:205=0xff

You might also need to use the GUI setup to set your ip etc and to enable dhcp. In fact, just doing this might be enough!

Ian

I must admit, I'm not totally sure where the mac is stored. Probably the eeprom connected to the ethernet chip, but it might also be in the flash config. TBH, I'm not even 100% sure that the board has an eeprom fitted!

If the mac is in the flash, then I'm pretty sure I can help you get it set again by using mgnv (download onto HD using USB)

There is also a chance that your whole config has been zapped - again mgnv can fix this.



If you follow the order of events I posted earlier, you should be OK. After the loader gives the start message, it then just echos what you type.

You type "MediaGate." without the quotes but with the dot, and it then the loader will print up some more stuff and give you a prompt.

After you get the prompt you can type "help" and look around.

Then you use "download serial romfs" and then start sending via ymodem.

However, it now sounds like it was your config area that got zapped rather than your main flash. This actually makes a lot of sense.

I have attached a new version of mgnv (that can hope with Samsung and Spansion flash) and if you can confirm that you can run this in a telnet session, then I'll talk you through reading/writing what we suspect is the mac address in the config.

We can also look at some of the rest of your config and see how it looks.


Ian


ok i am in the menu now !!!! pfffff
WHAT must i do with the file you attacted file ??
do you mean a telnet session (tcp/ip )
or a terminal session (rs 232 )



let me know please Thx

18:00 (netherlands)

the Mac adress issue is solved too !!!
i types net config the the MG-35 als me for

ip
netmask
gsatway
server
MAC adress

then he stored te config , i put it back to the tv and it works, it has a valid
IP config now !!!

18:11 (netherlands)

it looks like the stream over the network is to slow ?? i never seen bevore that
the movie is stutters (look likes it missing frames or something)
but mabay it is the just the movie i tested .....

**** OUTPUT ****


boot> config net
Protocol : (0) None (1) Static IP (2) BOOTP (3) DHCP : (0) 1
MAC Address : (ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff) 8f:
MAC Address : (ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff) 00:02:a8:11:d8:c9
IP Address : (192.168.1.50) 192.168.1.50
Netmask : (255.255.255.0) 255.255.255.0
Gateway : (0.0.0.0)
DNS : (0.0.0.0)
Server : (192.168.0.4) 192.168.1.73
Writing : 0x00020fe8
.
boot> net config
Current network configuration
Status : Up
IP Address : 192.168.1.50
Netmask : 255.255.255.0
Gateway : 0.0.0.0
Server : 192.168.1.73
DNS Server : 0.0.0.0
Domain : localdomain.com
boot> help
Jasper boot loader
Copyright (C) 2002 by Sigma Designs, Inc

**** OUTPUT ****

18:26

i must go now for some social stuf ... i'm back @ 21:00


Tnx a Lot all of you

Been "on the road" all day today so haven't had a chance to look at this thread until now.

Thanks for the pointers to what might be the problems with my source.

The one obvious bug was just me trying to make the source a bit more readable before uploading it by changing fp to fpout - I guess I missed one then didn't try to compile it again before posting :(

Also, the source "as is" won't work when compiled with arm-elf-gcc, it needs -fpack-struct (all one word) on the gcc command line to override the default dword alignment of structure elements. (I think there's a #pragma directive to do this to but never got round to looking it up) DWord alignment might be a great idea when defining your own structs, but is a pain in the butt when using a pre-defined structure such as a bitmap header!

Anyway, I'll try the extra blank line later, and if that doesn't work see if using setvbuf() will change the way stdout is buffered, or even fflush every screen line...

In most higher level web programming languages there are page directives to change the buffering mode - hopefully there's something analogous in C/cgi...

it needs -fpack-struct (all one word) on the gcc command line

With that change, (and the hacks as per my other message) your code runs fine. The bmp that's returned works a treat.

Ian

the Mac adress issue is solved too !!!
i types net config the the MG-35 als me for


Great stuff. Glad you got it going.

Maybe we need wiki debricking pages in other languages? (hint hint!)

Ian

So I made three changes to the code -
1) Changed fp to fpout as per last message.
2) Changed \r\n to \n\n when printing the cgi header (required?)
3) Got it to open /cdrom/dvdplayer.bin instead (and I copied this binary across)


I lied. I also added fflush(fpout); just before the close. I've seen odd reports of issues with lack of flushing on closing stuff built with uclibc.

Ian

New alpha available at -
http://www.foxhill.co.uk/MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha5.zip

Sorry about the rate of releases, but I thought having the new mgnv and flashid.cgi was worthwhile, and there are also some changes to make web development easier for Andy.

Edit: September 13th 2006 - MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha5
Added flashid.cgi to /www
Did a chmod 755 to everything in /sbin/rbin
New mgnv that can handle Spansion flash
/www now contains screenraw.cgi and screenbmp.cgi

If you use your web browser to view your MG-35 (a.b.c.d is its IP address!)
a.b.c.d/flashid.cgi - gets you the ID of your flash chips
a.b.c.d/version.cgi - version and date of firmware
a.b.c.d/screenbmp.cgi - screen grab using Andy's code with my trival tweaks
a.b.c.d/screenraw.cgi - raw screen dump that your browser won't like. :)

Enjoy!

I have tested the new mgnv on both of the MG-35s here (one Spansion and one Samsung) on 20-30 full config writes without errors.

I have also done the usual avi viewing and flash downgrade/upgrade with this firmware.

Ian

The problem was indeed the permissions on dvdplayer.bin...

That'll teach me to put proper error handling in my code rather than making assumptions :(

Maybe putting all this stuff in the public domain where people are free to point and laugh will help me practise what I preach to guys at work!

New alpha available at -
http://www.foxhill.co.uk/MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha5.zip

Sorry about the rate of releases, but I thought having the new mgnv and flashid.cgi was worthwhile, and there are also some changes to make web development easier for Andy.

Edit: September 13th 2006 - MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha5
Added flashid.cgi to /www
Did a chmod 755 to everything in /sbin/rbin
New mgnv that can handle Spansion flash
/www now contains screenraw.cgi and screenbmp.cgi

If you use your web browser to view your MG-35 (a.b.c.d is its IP address!)
a.b.c.d/flashid.cgi - gets you the ID of your flash chips
a.b.c.d/version.cgi - version and date of firmware
a.b.c.d/screenbmp.cgi - screen grab using Andy's code with my trival tweaks
a.b.c.d/screenraw.cgi - raw screen dump that your browser won't like. :)

Enjoy!

I have tested the new mgnv on both of the MG-35s here (one Spansion and one Samsung) on 20-30 full config writes without errors.

I have also done the usual avi viewing and flash downgrade/upgrade with this firmware.

IanIan,
Loaded the latest version. Noticed that the default page served by the httpd now has an invalid link to screendump.cgi. (Probably needs to point to screenbmp.cgi)

Joe L.

Find a bug...fix a bug...introduce new bug... repeat as needed...

Ian,
Loaded the latest version. Noticed that the default page served by the httpd now has an invalid link to screendump.cgi. (Probably needs to point to screenbmp.cgi)


Bum. Oh well, I'm not sure I can be bothered to fix this as this is really all just for testing anyway.

If anyone wants to contribute a new index.html, which can (maybe, dunno how it works!) inline version.cgi, flashid.cgi, etc. and link to screenbmp.cgi, then I'll accept it gratefully.

Ian

Bum. Oh well, I'm not sure I can be bothered to fix this as this is really all just for testing anyway.

If anyone wants to contribute a new index.html, which can (maybe, dunno how it works!) inline version.cgi, flashid.cgi, etc. and link to screenbmp.cgi, then I'll accept it gratefully.

IanI agree... not worth fixing in a seperate release.

Everything else works great. I get a great looking magenta bmp file in my browser if I invoke screenbmp while an ISO image of a DVD is playing and a nice looking representation of the overlay if anything else is on the screen.

Did I say GREAT WORK yet... Well GREAT WORK.

Still waiting on my serial cable. looks like trip from Canada takes a while. Been snooping around using telnet. Never knew how many unix utilities I took for granted till most are missing or partially implimented. :(

I need to grab an uncompressed kernel image and start disassembly in my idle moments.

Joe L.

Never knew how many unix utilities I took for granted till most are missing or partially implimented. :(


Well, if there's anything else you need in BusyBox then I can add it. Or try bigbox.


I need to grab an uncompressed kernel image and start disassembly in my idle moments.


Let me know if I can help. Getting the missing code, and from there our own kernel, would take us to the next level.

Ian

New alpha available

Sorry about the rate of releases, but I thought having the new mgnv and flashid.cgi was worthwhile, and there are also some changes to make web development easier for Andy.

Ian


Hello Ian,

Sorry for the late responds, been out in the country for the whole day,
would have send you the foto of the chip but just read all the postings since last night.

I've installad alpha5 and just to let you know, the setnas function now works.
mgnv shows that the string i used is in the flash rom.
And when starting the network Media, i instantly get the NAS in the window,
instead of all waiting for the normal scan to complete.

Thanks for the quick responds and fast programming.

Best regards
Jelte

Hmmmm... faster to browse folders? Could nbtscan be involved? Do you use internal hdd or just have your files on the network?

No HDD, just network.

And when starting the network Media, i instantly get the NAS in the window,
instead of all waiting for the normal scan to complete.


Thanks for the quick feedback. Yes, not having that long wait to browse to your server really does make a big difference.

Of course, I only responded so fast because my own MG-35 also has this flash chip. Others can forget about getting such service. :)

Ian

i have sucsesfully upgrade the firmware (by useing the tv gui) but only from mediagate and freecom when i tried this version MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha4.upgrade
the player said the file is not compatible ?? (or something like that) if have tried
in the root of the drive and in a folder both way no sucses

is the upgrading to a modified firmware an other process ?
or is it just bad luck.

or do i need this one MG35-1[1].4.4.4-pre1.upgrade

and about the translated page to dutch .... are you just kidding me
or do you thing i am a n00b, everybody makes mistakes and the first time doing something new is not always easy even for me ;-)

Bum. Oh well, I'm not sure I can be bothered to fix this as this is really all just for testing anyway.

If anyone wants to contribute a new index.html, which can (maybe, dunno how it works!) inline version.cgi, flashid.cgi, etc. and link to screenbmp.cgi, then I'll accept it gratefully.

Ian

index.html is static, but you know we can just use index.cgi and set in mathopd the default page to index.cgi, thats easy to do and I really thing thats the best way to go.

The other option is to create a .cgi we could call with some GET variable (I mean like when you call a website like http://a.b.c.d/run.cgi?command=ps) so that way we can just do a link to that cgi like <a href="http://a.b.c.d/run.cgi?command=ps>PS</a><a href="http://a.b.c.d/run.cgi?command=ls">LS</a>. And it could redirect back to index.html when the command as been run.

Any choice is good

I'm hoping to find time for a rummage around to see if there's any way we can identify which overlay is currently being displayed so we can merge the appropriate background jpeg into the image. I suspect though, that the best way to identify the overlay is by what the background is!

I wonder what that byte @ 0x1f80000 does?

It should be less time consuming to do this now we can use cgi programs though...

I think my next task is hexdump.cgi?start=0xxxxxxxxx&end=0xxxxxxxxx....

it looks like the stream over the network is to slow ?? i never seen bevore that
the movie is stutters (look likes it missing frames or something)
but mabay it is the just the movie i tested .....


I have no idea what is going wrong here. But we haven't mapped much of the config, and it looks like yours was very corrupted. You now have a corrupted config with some entries fixed.

I could produce a modified mgnv that restores the config to the factory default, or at the very least the 1st config in the config area.

Ian

New alpha available at -
http://www.foxhill.co.uk/MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha5.zip
Ian

I tried it on my mg35, via the tv gui, and it bricked my box, time to debrick it.

I tried it on my mg35, via the tv gui, and it bricked my box, time to debrick it.

Oops, sorry about that. I have no idea what went wrong there - alpha5 is running happily on my box here and serving web pages, playing videos, reflashing, etc.

Ian

Oops, sorry about that. I have no idea what went wrong there - alpha5 is running happily on my box here and serving web pages, playing videos, reflashing, etc.

Ian


Dont worry that why I bought a cable ;)

Has anyone else tried this release? I was about to but I'm a bit reticent now...

I have no idea what is going wrong here. But we haven't mapped much of the config, and it looks like yours was very corrupted. You now have a corrupted config with some entries fixed.

I could produce a modified mgnv that restores the config to the factory default, or at the very least the 1st config in the config area.

Ian

i would be nice if you do that for me.... , can you then also give me a hint
or a short explanation to do what with the file please ?


i am verry happy (with all of you that help me )
with my MG-35 problems !! it is just up and running now instead of
waiting 4 till 6 weeks from the repair centre of Freecom !!

iit is just up and running now instead of
waiting 4 till 6 weeks from the repair centre of Freecom !!

I don't think they could have De-Bricked it for you - Think they would have just replaced it.

I say this,because talking to the guys at the US Dist - Anywareus - non of the dealers know anything about the Mg-35's serial connection - Even if they did ,I am told that Al Tech dont give out the access pasword etc.

But then again , thanks to Ian and PB etc ,all they have todo now is read this forum or the Wiki :-)

As soon as I removed my HD, it debricked it, I put it back, it brick, I tried the hd on my computer, work perfect, I will try to put the old firmware and see if Im able to put back my HD in it

Yeah I'm able to put back my hd in it with the Non development release. So the bricked was fixed when I removed my hd, without having to try my cable :(

Has anyone else tried this release? I was about to but I'm a bit reticent now...Yes, I'm running alpha5.
I can even use the brand new web based version.cgi to confirm it!
It answers with "MG35-1.4.4.5-alpha5 Wed Sep 13 18:37:10 BST 2006"

Oh yes, it still plays MP3s, DVD ISOs, etc.

Joe L.