F-200 Usb Networking


chronoboy

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Nov 17, 2007
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Browsing through the NAND using enexfi on the GP2X, I found many things which will interest any developer. A lot of devs are saying that the F-200 is not developer friendly as it lacks the networking tools, wrong!

Sure, the F-200 does not "graphically" display the networking functions, as normal users do not need this in their settings, but rather a nice clean settings page. Why confuse a new GP2X user with tons of garbage they would never use in the settings.

The F-200 firmware contains everything that the F-100 has in it's Linux root file system, even all the networking kernel modules are left for people to work with. The samba server, the web server, and even the telnet server are all left in tact on the F-200's root file system. I have yet to test it out, however I will see if I can generate some nice scripts for people interested on using these functions on their new F-200 device. I'd sure like to get the telnet working again. :)

Does anyone know what parameters the ethernet usb gadget requires? As all I need to do on my Palm TX Linux, is load g_ether and use ifconfig to set-up the interface, I would imagine it is the same on the GP2X. However, due to hardware configurations, it may need some extra parameters.

I am going to see if I am able to directly copy gp2xmenu from a v3.0.0 firmware onto my SD card of my F-200 and run it, I want to see if it will let me run it, and even configure the interface and daemons from there. If it does, then we are in business for easy development on the F-200. I sure of h*ll want to copy over mplayer from an v3.0.0 firmware to my F-200. Has anyone tried copying mplayer from a v3.0.0 firmware onto their F-200 yet?

Does firmware v3.0.0 use Linux kernel 2.4.25 as firmware v4.0.0 on the F-200 uses? If so, then we can move over kernel modules easily, in case we are missing some additional networking modules.

Stay tuned to this thread for more finding and some shell scripts.
 
The problem wasn't the lack of USB network settings from the firware, it's that the chip (netchip 2272) that allowed networking through the USB client connection has gone.
 
I did receive the error message when attempting to load the g_ether kernel module:

insmod: unresolved symbol usb_gadget_register

However, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the g_file_storage usb gadget require the usb_gadget_register API from the kernel?

Regarding netchip 2272, there is a kernel module for that chip on the F-200, I will try loading that and see what happens.

Can we use a kernel module to emulate the chip? My Palm TX doesn't have this chip(at least I don't think it does), and the g_ether USB gadget works correctly. Hmm, I'll keep looking into this.

Thanks for your comments so far.
 
Well, after reading about the Chip inside the F-200, I guess the last post explains a lot. I guess they used this new chip for cost and software reduction.

Basically, this new chip is nothing more than a USB Mass storage controller. It is the only way they could get USB 2.0 to work with the GP2X with as little effort on their part as possible. Remember the issues with the GP2X and USB 2.0 in the past? Doesn't the F-200 fix this problem?

However, depending what kind of chip is in the unit, it may be possible to do something interesting with it.

This part about the chip interested me the most:

l Integrated USB building blocks
- USB2.0 transceiver macro (UTM), Serial Interface Engine (SIE), Build-in power-on reset (POR) and
low-voltage detector (LVD)
l Embedded 8051 micro-controller
- Operate @ 60 MHz clock, 12 clocks per instruction cycle
- Embedded 48K Byte mask ROM and internal 256 byte SRAM
- Embedded 4K Byte external SRAM
- Support up to external 48K code ROM

It does appear that it supports a serial interface, perhaps this could be used for a USB ethernet gadget. If all else fails, we do have the upcoming Pandora, and a USB Host we can work with on the GP2X.

I can barely wait for the Pandora. One of the main reasons I got the F-200 was the D-Pad, and partially the touchscreen.
 
Already discussed in great detail before. The software still exists in the F200 firmware, but the hardware doesn't. The USB socket doesn't physically reach the processor any more, it just connects to a SD reader ic on the pcb.

As for the Serial Interface Engine, well, that's kinda required for USB - Universal Serial Bus :)

Please search next time before posting.
 
chronoboy said:
I can barely wait for the Pandora. One of the main reasons I got the F-200 was the D-Pad, and partially the touchscreen.

Hehe...same here. :D

Well, nice try at least. If it only connects to the SD card reader, then you'd have to hack that too, which may or may not even be possible. Routing network traffic through an SD card reader to a USB port?...going to need some real skills. :lol:
 
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