some observations

[Gregory Nowak]

Hi all.

Well, I've just finished playing, and thought I'd share my impressions for those who are interested.

First, it's pretty neat. I was running the braille note through the serial port, and got to do some exploring.
The output from the kernel is identical to the output shown on the linux vr site. The system dumps you into a bash like shell, with a few commands available. The kernel does of course have a tcp stack and all that, but I saw no mention of pcmcia devices.
My guess is that pcmcia isn't built into the kernel on the web site, and I'm thinking of grabbing the cross development tools, and cooking up my own kernel. 

I also saw no way to mount drives such as the flash disk (I was told to specify the file system when trying to mount /dev/hda through /dev/hdc), although there is a mount command included in the ramdisk image. However, this may only be because the only file system supported by the kernel image from the web site is ext2, so maybe /dev/hdx would be mountable if there was fat32 support, or whatever win ce uses.

I was also disappointed by the lack of info in /proc. 

As for the hardware, the display stays frozen to whatever it was displaying when linux was loaded (not surprising). Also, the on/off switch seems to have no effect, and the only way to end things is by hitting the reset switch.

When you get back into keysoft, you will need to reset the time/date, and probably hit reset after some system files get copied. So it looks like the writable part of the system disk is being wiped, but the flash disk seems to be intact.

In addition to hacking the display, it's also occurred to me that we'll probably need to rewrite the keyboard driver, to use a braille keyboard, (not to even mention contracted braille input/output at this point).

Overall, it struck me that there is a staggering amount of work to be done, if we want to have linux on the bn/vn.
However, I certainly feel we're on our way, and that linux on the bn/vn will one day be a reality if we persevere, and those of us with the know-how are willing to devote time to this project.

Greg