Oh, I love it.
ChromeOS is Gentoo based, and as such it’s a GNU/Linux and as such in turn
it needs standard GNU/Linux kernel interfaces and as such I can use it
in combination with a full fletched Gentoo.
And because it’s a child of Google it gets support by the big bloat ware companies.
So ChromeOS forces the producers of hardware to provide usable driver code.

I don’t believe it how bitchy this hardware has been…
Now I can show you some stuff.
First of all ( among other things because after this evening of work I just need this ego push ) I can do this 🙂

~ # whoami 
root

But I can also show you the CPU info:

~ # cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor       : ARMv7 Processor rev 9 (v7l)
processor       : 0
BogoMIPS        : 1993.93

processor       : 1
BogoMIPS        : 1993.93

processor       : 2
BogoMIPS        : 1993.93

processor       : 3
BogoMIPS        : 1993.93

Features        : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant     : 0x2
CPU part        : 0xc09
CPU revision    : 9

Hardware        : cardhu
Revision        : 0000
Serial          : 0245000000994000

Next will be to compile for these features and do some “suit”-hunt one day…
Come on! System! Break down, then there are finally no laws anymore forbidding me to hunt suits with a shot gun >_>

Apropos Asus Transformer Prime and bootloaders…
I just wanna quote Linus Torvalds because he receives my full consent… -.-

Is “I hope you all die a painful death” too strong?

• Linus to the hardware manufacturers that refuse to release the specifications of their hardware so they could operate with the Linux kernel.
• Torvalds, Linus (2007-08-22). Linus Torvalds talks future of Linux. Retrieved on 2007-08-22.

[1] http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds

Well then.
I’ve now tinkered together my own debugging interface for the GT-9100G:

Output on UART is the following:

Texas Instruments X-Loader 1.41 (Jan 11 2012 - 23:25:41) <-- FBL
Uboot-loading from Emmc <-- SBL == U-Boot
Starting OS Bootloader from EMMC ...

I’ve sent an email to Samsung, requesting the relevant patches to X-Loader in order for it to successfully initialize the I9100G-board.
If they refuse to send me the informations in which way they have modified the sources in order to run them on their board, it’s a GPL violation.
But I’m still confident that they will cooperate.

Obviously they have an analog switch (FSA9480) between the µUSB port and the OMAP UART.
Good to know how the internals work.
Now we can port the U-Boot onto it.

Folks, I’m giving up.
This hardware is just unusable.
This tablet is only usable, when you’re using it in a cold storage house under GNU/Linux.
Because of the hardware bugs every system using multi threading only boots once, when the tablet has been lying around for some days at a cold place (like let’s say in the wine cellar)
After having been warmed up a bit, it randomly freezes somewhere in the boot process which leads to funny things like a half built up login screen…
Can’t these people read the design guide lines and data sheets before they start wildly connecting some wires and give a PCB into production?
Also this TEGRA2 chip is already a unusable piece of crap.
And people buy this crap…
Can’t we just get rid of all companies producing SoCs except Texas Instruments and can’t TI do their smart phones them self by the way?
Would make the hardware market grow rapidly in quality… >.>

Texas Instruments is obviously the only company producing usable SoCs ATM

• Good documentation
• Works as expected
• Nearly NO ASIC-errors (There are some like the battery bug in OMAP35xx)

Samsung Galaxy S2 and Asus Transformer Prime, both with Android market…
I don’t pay for software, I’m FOSS user…

WTF? Money for installing packages?
My solution for such an issue is easy.

If it costs, don’t use it 🙂

And again, increasing recursive Googling…

(3) ...however, if you have a stock eglibc
and a kernel with the erratum workaround disabled/removed,
then things seem in practice to work OK.
Speculation is that perhaps the erratum is only
a problem in marginal situations (eg if the core is very hot).

Ok, wtf. “marginal situations”?
Does that mean, the hardware has the freedom to not execute the code in cases where it hates the user, like in my case? >_>

Seriously, the core hasn’t reached high temperatures yet, but still shows sign of this bug.
Ok, cancel sign: a system where already /sbin/init segfaults is not a sign, it’s more like “no discussion”

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/eglibc/+bug/739374

Anyway. I’ve now made a portage overlay for eglibc and am cross-compiling eglibc-2.15 in this very moment.
Let’s see if switching Gentoo to eglibc solves my problems…

BTW: The overlay can be found under:
https://gitorious.org/o2s-gentoo/eglibc-overlay/trees/master

Didn’t everyone already dream of that?
Ok… Not everyone, just the hardcore nerds and hackers like me, who aren’t only using bleeding edge software but more or less blood dropping flesh wound software (yes, sometimes even -9999- ebuilds in Gentoo >_< )

I guess BenBee asked me some time ago, if this would be possible…

Yes it is
./kdetect.sh
and
./autokernconf.sh

Should do the trick.
Go to the following source: http://cateee.net/autokernconf/

Howdy
A friend of mine owns a “Samsung Galaxy S2”
CPU-info tells us there is a SMDKV310 SoC in it:

# cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor       : ARMv7 Processor rev 1 (v7l)
processor       : 0
BogoMIPS: 1592.52

Features: swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: 7
CPU variant     : 0x2
CPU part: 0xc09
CPU revision    : 1

Hardware: SMDKV310
 Revision: 000e
 Serial  : 304d19f743777c9e

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git;a=blob;f=arch/arm/mach-exynos/mach-smdkv310.c;h=83b91fa777c1aeb4ca5ee95ff81f244a1641e904;hb=HEAD

Looks as there would be support for it in upstream.
Let’s see if it boots as well. ( e.g. upstream support for tegra2 is just formalism, the code in master doesn’t do anything useful)