so damn lost

my life recently is a mess
be a fracking lazy boy for too long
need to pull myself together soon

EEEPC 1101HA Install Windows XP

Recently, I got an EEEPC 1101HA from my friend to fix, he accidentally dropped the netbook when the hard drive was still spinning. So I think it’s a hard disk problem, I googled some disk tools to diagnose the disk to locate and repair the bad blocks. And several bad sectors are found and after all possible fix by the tool(s) I tried to install winXP into the disk again, but I get the error message saying that “system can’t be loaded due to disk I/O error” so I think okay, that may still be the broken disk. And I decide to replace the hard disk with my own (previously used as a portable HDD), and tried to install winXP again, but still problem “can’t find HAL.dll, disk I/O” stuff. At last I googled the problem again, and find this old post : http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/11/installing-windows-xp-from-usb-thumb.html, that obviously, I can’t create more than one partition on the disk to install winXP . So now I’m repeating the operations again to install winXP.

PS. my EEERead DR900 is broken, and currently returned to ASUS to fix, it’s still in warranty, but they told me that I still may need to pay for the repair. IT HASN’T BEEN MORE THAN ONE YEAR, AND I NEVER DROPPED IT OR SOMETHING.

Damn you ASUS!

Back in torino

finally back in torino, but again the Turkish airlines lost my baggage. and i got cold, not feeling well, and will give up the first two exams.
I’ve contact the Turkish Airlines by email, hopefully they can find my baggage, later today I’ll call their office here.

 

====

Finally get my baggage back. And the cold soon will be over.

Damn it. Feeling seriously homesick.

Turning to KDE

As I’m trying to finish my current project in VHDL recently, I found that kate is the most handy editor for me. Yes, I know vim is powerful and I did try to use vim, however, I’m not very familiar with it, and it requires some configuration to be done to enable VHDL folding function. So I’m turning to use KDE. The thing is that I always try to make things like email client and IM to work when I change OS or desktop enviroment, KDE is not so user friendly as gnome, so it takes some time to do the configuration.

I’m using KDE 4.7.x latest one

To get KMail to work:

kmail terminates during startup with “Failed to fetch the resource collection”

To use google calendar:

Accessing Google Calendar from KOrganizer – Occasional Thoughts (This I didn’t do, too troublesome)

alternative is to use davcal:

http://jpwhiting.blogspot.com/2011/04/kontact-with-google-calendar.html

 

 

Using SRAM as FrameBuffer on DE2 115

As I need to use NiosII processor in my project and to run a program on it, so QSys is to be used and SDRAM is used for program code and data. And image captured from the D5M should be displayed through a VGA monitor, so a frame buffer is required to store the image data, and the best choice is to use SDRAM.

It’s a 16bit SRAM on DE2 115 and it requires 24bit to store a 8-8-8 bit RGB pixel data, so solutions:

1. change to use 5-6-5 16bit RGB data, and reduce the time to access SRAM

2. change the custom logic in SRAM controller (in fact, I need to write the SRAM controller all by myself in VHDL), to allow 32bit access (in two cycles).

There’s a problem is that both D5M controller and VGA controller will try to access SRAM, and probably at the same time, so logic needs to be added to resolve conflict. again solutions:

1. implement only one read/write slave port in SRAM controller, and share it between the D5M controller and VGA controller’s master interface. And let the arbitration provided by QSys to resolve the conflict. This is not a good idea as QSys use fairness-based, round-robin to resolve the conflict. However in this case, read request from VGA controller has a limited response time, while write request from D5M controller can wait for a couple of clock cycles.

2. implement two (one read and one write) slave interface in SRAM conflict, and use FIFO to make write request wait for read request. FIFO can use the Megafunction implementation.

Tomorrow I’ll try to implement the second solution.

====

On Friday, I’ll have an oral test for "Specification and Simulation of Digital Systems", hopefully it will go well this time.

=====

Updates on this part of the project will be post in this post later on.

 

============================

2011/11/25

Today (or Yesterday) I rewrote the SRAM controller using separated Avalon MM read slave interface and write slave interface for D5M controller and VGA controller, However, now the thing is that the content written into the SRAM cell is not exactly what I intend to write, and it seems like a random error stuff.

I’ve already tried to use signal tap II to debug, but it’s not so suitable for this as some clock’s are involved and it requires to recompile the project every time (quiet slow). I’ll try another tool (Signal Probe) later.

Today I’ve got an oral test. Pray the professor not to be harsh.

=============================

2011/11/25

Oral test went very well. Though it’s just two simple questions, I didn’t know the answer of the very first question asked by the professor, I took a shot and guessed the right answer,

With another (this) course cleaned up, I’ve more time to do the DE2.115 project. But not today.

==============================

2011/11/26

Damn It. The timing for Avalon Memory Mapped Read Salve of the SRAM controller was wrong, the content wrote to SRAM is right now, but the result read by VGA controller is not correct as I was using process to implement the logic and synchronized to the CLK signal. Need to re-wrote the SRAM controller again.

==============================

2012/08/22

Finally the system is finished. SRAM is used in the system as a frame buffer, use one single read/write cycle to read/write a 16bit RGB data from/to SRAM. The problem is that SRAM will not work @100MHz, and either @80MHz. 50MHz is working, and is enough for our project. And SRAM is directly accessed through the custom IP instead of the Avalon Memory Mapped interface, as in this way the read requests from the VGA controller and write requests from D5M camera can be correctly arranged by time.

Back to DE2.115

I need to finish the project on DE2.115 for the course “Electronics for Embedded System” of the very first semester before I go back to China for holidays. So recently, I’ll work on that project for most my free time.

Things are not so easy. Current problem is that the R/G1/G2/B channel for D5M seems to be wrong, as the image shown on VGA monitor is not right in terms of colors. And except for a sample code in verilog from the CD with D5M, I couldn’t find much documents about this. The hardware specification is not so clear either. And I’m working on the part to write grey scale data to SDRAM.

I’ll keep updating my progress in this post. .

New Games, Yeppi

Need For Speed 16:The Run released, and seems to be in the same style with NFS9 and NFS10, which is a good news for me, I’m not a professor race gamer, so, NFS 13 is a total mess for me (I can’t even complete one single race in that one without going "Totaled" )

The RUN launch trailer

Also Assassin Creed:Revelations released.

AC3:Revelations, totally awesome, the music !

 

PS. the bloody <Prototype 2> will be released in April, 2012, check out the trailer first, also bloody awesome

Prototype II

Not a Gamer

看了看使命召唤8现代战争3(Call of Duty 8)的宣传片，感觉很不错的样子，于是前两天装了一个玩玩试试了，结果首先是不能使用Xbox360的手柄，只能用键盘和鼠标，结果没有几分钟就开始晕乎犯恶心了，囧rz，果断删除了，唉

这个还不像之前玩的子弹风暴(Bullet Storm)一样，那个刚开始也是有些晕，但是习惯一下之后就好多了

看样子在PC上我只能玩玩刺客信条类的RPG动作类游戏了，FPS基本上是绝缘了～～

还是欣赏下那些awesome video吧只是

真人？广告？

Multiplayer！

SystemC setup on F16 x86_64

SystemC is required by one of the courses I attend this semester. Though I’ve already setup SystemC on my Laptop and Desktop’s Linux, SystemC under windows is not so easy to use, and BTW, I’d like to practice the usage of make and some other Linux development tools, so I decide to setup SystemC(2.2.0) in the virtual machine, newly released F16 x86_64, again.

1. Download the latest SystemC package on the website http://www.systemc.org

2. Unzip the package just downloaded

tar -xvf systemc-2.2.0.tgz

3. follow the file “INSTALL” to do configuration

mkdir objdir

cd objdir

../configure –prefix=/eda/systemc/2.2.0

4. in case of using gcc 4.6.x, there’s something need to be changed in the source code to avoid errors

* open src/sysc/datatypes/bit/sc_bit_proxies.h and search for “mutable” keyword, remove all the “mutable” keyword before a reference member.

* open src/sysc/utils/sc_utils_ids.cpp and following lines after the first include line.

    #include <cstdlib>

    using std::getenv;

    #include <cstring>

    using std::strcmp;

* now, run `gmake`

5. run `gmake install`

6. go to the examples folder, run `gmake check` to compile and run the examples, if everything is okay, output will be like this

7. Now ready to go with SystemC, headers files are in the include folder, library files are in lib-linux64 folder. Better to set an Environment Variable SYSTEMC point to the systemc root folder, so that $(SYSTEMC)/include and $(SYSTEMC)/lib-linux64 are valid systemc folders mentioned above.

=================================================

SCV setup (Tricky one)

1. download&unzip the package

2. follow the INSTALL file to do configuration, as using x86_64 version, configure will fail as x86_64 is not recognized by the configure script.

* open the config.sub, and around line 883, add

   x86_64*)

      ;;

before

   *)

      echo  …..

* and when using systemc, the configure script doesn’t understand the library files in a folder named lib-linux 64, so open configure script and change as

   line 3501

       i[3456]86*|x86_64)

   line 5532

       i[3456]86*|x86_64)

   line 5642

       #include <sstream>

   line 5654

       std::ostringstream outString;

   line 5872(3)

       SYSC_TARGET=”linux64″;;

   some other changes due to test C++ code legacy problem. see attached patch file for detailed. for the sake of simplicity, if it’s certain the c++ compile is working properly, replace all the c++ test code in the configure script with  < int main(void) {return 0;} > 

../configure –with-systemc=/eda/systemc/2.2.0

3. change the config.h as in INSTALL

4. run `gmake`

   * to solve compile like “ambiguous operation<< overload in file scv_constraint_range.cpp”, just comment the line 46 in config.h as //#define _USE_UNIT64_WRITE as _GLIBCXX_USE_LONG_LONG in file ostream line 200 is defined as default when compiling which will make the definition of operator<<(unsigned long long __n) available

   * to solve relocation error like “relocation R_X86_64)32 against `a local symbol’ can’t be used when making a shared object” run `gmake –eval=”CXXFLAGS=$CXXFLAGS -fPIC”` instead of `gmake`. This is weird as change in Makefile can’t solve this problem. Need to check this later.

5. Finally `gmake install`

================================

TLM setup

just unzip the package.

=================================

Add the RC script to set Environment Variables

something like this.

==============================

Okay, everything’s done.

Next step will be coding using SystemC.

PS.

patch link 1 : scv configuration files : http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6935052/scv.configure.F16x86_64.patch

patch link 2 : systemc :  http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6935052/systemc-2.2.0_F16x86_64.patch 

=====================================================

2011.11.13

if make opt version of the packages (scv), need to change the Makefile mannually to add -fPIC option in the target opt’s make rule.

Restart, again!

I deleted eveything here, and planning to restart again!
每次回头望，总是发现该完成的没有完成，却又没有再继续下去的欲望
天生没有文艺范，老老实实做技术吧o(╯□╰)o