Hi all

It has been a while for me since I've had time to do much on this project, to say that 2006 was a busy year for me would be an understatement!

Anyway, it's now 2007 and I've got a PegasosII as well as an Efika! Yaaay!

I haven't had huge success with the PPC Linux side of things to date, I feel almost like I'm the only one out there who can't seem to get X started on his Peg :-( But MOS is running fine there.

Now to the Efika-since that's the end goal for this project's software to live and work, it needs a good case to protect it. I've got a great design in mind, made of burl maple hardwood, with metal where appropriate for holding the board and for safety :-) I even have an excellent place to work in, thanks to a friend who builds custom guitars in his own, fully equipped shop.

So, it's on to the case building, then on to getting Megatunix on MorphOS. Hmmm, 230 megs of custom libraries to fire up X and have it be useful, or.. sub-20 megs for the whole shebang!

This is a big step for me, I got a Debian Linux x86 box put together, installed, and it is running fine-a mighty slot A Athlon 500 with 385 megs RAM and the old Voodoo3 from my Pegasos. Total cost: $12. :-) It has taught me most of what I needed it to though, and I miss the Peg running MorphOS so that will be coming back to my desk real soon. MorphOS is so much easier to use!

Once that was done, I got Megatunix and compiled it. It needs a package called 'Pango' which I don't know if it is pre-compiled for Linux on the PPC side. So, my next step would be to get PPC Linux running, albiet on my Pegasos I, and see if I can then build Megatunix on the PPC Linux side. The slow migration to MorphOS continues..

While doing that, I think I've found a way to get the actual Megasquirt computer-one of my buddies wants to EFI convert his Toyota truck and this works out for both of us-he gets a modern fuel system, I get 'funded research' in that I don't have to buy the Megasquirt, which is good, because I don't have any money atm for anything not mortgage or daycare related :-/ It won't be that way too much longer though, if things go my way this summer.

Greetings~ The first thing I wonder when thinking about this is.. Did I bite off more than I can chew? ;-) Naah, you just have to eat that elephant one bite at a time!

So I put this project up, got it approved, then got the stomach flu :-( Now that's over with, its time to look into the Megasquirt system itself. It looks like I can get a complete V2.2 Megasquirt kit for $140 and put it together. I found a Digifant EFI intake setup for $20 from a co-worker, so I'm going to do a CIS-ectomy on my trusty '88 VW Cabriolet first. It is a simple little four cylinder, and its been done before so the learning curve won't be as steep for me.

First I have to get the Megasquirt and put it together. That should remind me a thing or two about all that electronics I took in high school ;-) It comes like a Heathkit radio-a bare board and bunch of parts which you then solder together. First you assemble the serial connector on the board, then plug that into the serial port on your computer with the appropriate send/receive lines connected. Then you connect the two on the board and echo some characters through your terminal program, to verify that you did it right so far. This is the easy part-you can use any terminal prog you want, even on an old Amiga (the OS doesn't matter here.) I'll post more when I get this far..