How are people getting it done nowadays? I've been using 2.6.28 with the patch to dma to allow libata.force, and I see that 2.6.29 includes the patch already, so I'd love to move to using it (do have an issue with sparse irq's so networking stops working) so... is there any way to get it to work? I tried to find CRUXPPC's kernel sources but I can't seem to find a web browse-able version.

hi steev,

we are migrating all services to our new server.

Btw, here same issue with 2.6.29. We need to investigate but no free time at this moment. Maybe a reworked efika.forth could help.

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acrux _at_ linuxmail _dot_ org

Yeah - the git kernel from

git://git.secretlab.ca/git/linux-2.6-mpc52xx.git

works fine, but it seems to be a 2.6.29-rc7, so I am not sure what changed between the two.

And still wishing I could get audio working, the ac97 patch seemed to stop working around 2.6.28, and I've not been able to find anything lately. I know you and I had talked and you had mentioned that there needed to be some sort of an update somewhere, but that it was unlikely to happen... I am gonna guess that is still the case?

About serial port's (PSC1) irq it could be caused by but about fec issue i don't know. Btw it's not related to libata.force=udma2 .

About sound driver... that's a bad history. There is, today, only a driver for mpc5200 in i2s mode and Efika's psc (PSC2) works in ac97 mode.

Anyway updated _again_ soc child nodes names in efika.forth is a good thing.

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acrux _at_ linuxmail _dot_ org

Hmm, I'll have to check out that patch and see if removing it helps at all. Yeah about the sound driver, I thought Grant Likely works for a company that makes IP Speakers with Efika's powering them (I could be wrong :) ) - so audio is working *somewhere* - I guess the question at this point is, where does one start to get working on this? I know that once upon a time there was a patch for ac97 audio but the kernel has changed a great amount in that time. I'd love to get this working again because I absolutely adore my Efika. I didn't quite understand your last statement - are you saying that patch is correct, incorrect, needed, not needed? That patch shows the ac97 audio for the efika as well.

So I take it then that the in kernel driver for mpc5200-psc-i2s is for the 5200 and not the Efika. Good to know, will shave just a tad bit off my kernel compiles :)

Thanks for the responses. As little posts as I see here, it makes me somewhat sad, I wish more people have Efikas, they are such awesome little machines!

You're thinking of http://www.digispeaker.com/ but that's not Grant.
Digispeaker uses a much different method to do what it does.
Unfortunately there are very few people who know how to program and utilize BestComm competently and even less who will work for free to fix it. We got a quote for fixing the sound driver; it was too much given the late stage of development on the Efika.

If you can pick a distribution, kernel version, and are willing to put up with a few quirks, it may be possible for bplan to release an updated audio driver and ATA driver but this would probably cost too much, again at this late stage of development.

It would probably be cheaper to move everyone to the i.MX515 than to spend so much money on software development for a chip which is right now all but effectively abandoned by Freescale.

There are more people than Genesi that this affects - Digispeaker being one of them. They have a truly marvelous (and open source..) design, but the economic situation worldwide probably won't support continued development of the MPC5200B for products starting to be developed as of today. The Efika, Digispeaker, the development time went in already. Sales happens after that.

But we can't even guarantee the support we need as the department that developed the MPC5200B does not even exist anymore.

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Matt Sealey

Thanks for your response Neko, while I understand the move to i.MX515 it does make me sad, like I said, I love that little Efika - I'm thinking about possibly buying an OpenClient from Genesi just to have another one, regardless of working audio :)

And, I've applied for the i.MX515 project too, so hopefully I get approved (hint, hint - kidding of course) - but I do intend to keep looking towards the Efika regardless of if I get an i.MX515 because as I posted in the Gentoo forum, mine currently builds packages for the Gentoo PPC Efika tinderbox :)

There was a patch against 2.6.25 (S.Munaut 's old driver reworked by J.Beisert) but actually doesn't work anymore.

You're right about Digispeaker.com: i've just now saw on J.Smirl 's git there is a support for mpc5200 in ac97 mode totally targeted to EFIKA. That's sound good!

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acrux _at_ linuxmail _dot_ org

There's no DMA though, right? That was the last I checked on status.. it's a proper ALSA SoC driver, but not very useful (i.e. it won't sound very good if you have any disk access or heavy graphics happen :)

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Matt Sealey

@ Neko

at the moment i can only see in last commit it's supported but there isn't yet a driver... maybe in the next time.
http://github.com/jonsmirl/digispeaker/ ... e25a09fe92

Could you, perhaps, write him to know more about this Efika driver?

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acrux _at_ linuxmail _dot_ org

I already know all there is to know, Jon alerted me to it during a discussion. That's why we went out to get a quote on it from some other developers..

Sorry..

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Matt Sealey

An AC97 driver for the Efika is in the kernel queue for 2.6.31. It is easiest just to wait for 2.6.30 to close and then let the 2.6.31 merge window settle down. You can't pick up the patches directly since they are coming into 2.6.31 from three different trees. The driver is marked BROKEN and won't build until all of the code is in place. Once all three trees are merged the BROKEN flag will be removed.

You need to turn the driver on in Kconfig in the sound section.

This driver has some issues:
1) About 5% of the time the AC97 codec will not reset on boot. The problem appears to be timing related; someone with an oscilloscope needs to sort this out. Let's hope the hardware isn't broken. It is simple to change how reset works, I just need to know what to change it to.
2) The driver is only lightly tested and probably has bugs. Send me any patches you write and I can get them into the kernel.
3) You need to look at the mixer diagram in the STAC9766 datasheet. When you first power up the chip defaults to having everything muted. Use the datasheet and alsamixer to set things the way you want them. Then use 'alsactl store' to save them. The OS will restore these saved values at boot.
4) There are two audio interfaces. Interface 0 is the main interface. It will work with both analog and stereo SPDIF out. Note that you need to use the mixer to turn on the appropriate output.
5) Interface 1 is for sending AC3 compressed 5.1 audio out the SDPIF to a home theater amp. I didn't fully debug this interface but the bulk of the support needed should be there. You can't use interface 0 and 1 simultaneously.

Any chance of letting us know where the ML posts or Patchwork links or git commit tags are for the three different trees?

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Matt Sealey

My whole tree is at http://git.digispeaker.com or http://github.com/jonsmirl/digispeaker

It also has SPI and IR support.

that's good. Thank You.

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acrux _at_ linuxmail _dot_ org