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{ Author Archives }

Broadcom CrystalHD Decoder support for FFmpeg and MPlayer

At the end of last year, Broadcom released open-source drivers and a library for their CrystalHD hardware video decoder; You can read the details about that at Jarod Wilson’s blog if you’re interested. The hardware is particularly attractive because it’s low cost and can be added to any system, regardless of the GPU it uses. […]

Hacking the Promise NS4600

A couple of weeks ago, I bought myself a Promise NS4600 to replace my old Promise NS4300n NAS. These Promise devices are not particularly special but are cost effective and the new one performs well. As you might expect, both the old and news ones run Linux, but Promise do not allow direct access. Some […]

Tethering Monitor (or an exploration of python and dbus)

The Bluetooth DUN package has been well received, but was hardly a profound programming endeavour. So, I’ve been trying to find suitable inspiration for a more substantial project. This morning, someone made a comment on the Bluetooth DUN page that there’s no way to tell if the phone has a tethered data connection or not […]

N900 Bluetooth DUN package now in extras repository

Just in time for the new year, I’m pleased to be able to say that the Bluetooth DUN package is now in the Maemo Extras repository. This is the primary location for community packages that have been through a community QA process that tries to ensure the packages are safe for ‘normal’ users. If you […]

Bluetooth DUN in packaged form for N900

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working on packaging up my bluetooth dun script for easy consumption. It’s been through a few iterations and is now in the ‘extras-testing’ repository and should be ready to go into the main ‘extras’ repository once it has enough testing feedback. The extras-testing repository is not intended […]

Controlling Bluetooth DUN with upstart on the n900: Part 2

As I mentioned in a quick update to my old post; I got a report of DUN not auto starting reliably, if at all. I did some digging and the cause is that the /var/run/sdp socket created by bluetoothd and needed by sdptool is not present when bluetooth-dun runs. I’ve now updated the script to […]

Controlling Bluetooth DUN with upstart on the n900

Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted anything. But I’ve got something worth coming out of hibernation for. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, I got myself an n900 and it’s a great device; I’m using it as my primary phone and it really is impressive. One thing that doesn’t work out of the box is DUN […]

High Speed SD/MMC kernel for Diablo 5.2008.43

I’m rather behind the times, but I’ve now released a matching kernel for Diablo 5.2008.43 with the highspeed SD/MMC support. Make sure to update to 5.2008.43 before installing my kernel or the update will overwrite it. You can find my custom kernel, patches and instructions here.

High Speed SD/MMC kernel for Maemo 4.1 (Diablo)

I finally got some time to update my development tree to the new Diablo code and built a new kernel with my high-speed SD/MMC patch. Additionally, it will speed up access to the internal 2GB flash (eMMC) in the n810. For those with long memories, the Maemo bug which slows down card access when the […]

MMC Specification now available for free

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, but I figure this is a good enough reason to do so. The SD specification has been available for quite a while now, but up until now, the MMC specification has had a $5000 price tag stuck to it. This has kept it out of […]