I finally got an N800, only to discover almost everything I wanted to do with it more or less requires something newer than OS2008 Naturally, the first step towards getting something running is the kernel, and that's where it gets cloudy.

Basically, I have two options: 1 - Use the old 2.6.21 kernel with a whole bunch of userspace hackery; or 2 - Fix the mainline kernel, clean up the required patches, and submit them to Linus when I'm done.

Option 1 is obviously extremely difficult with Debian Sid and Gentoo, where you can't just downgrade udev to version 141 without breaking Xorg and a whole bunch of other stuff. Also, I really don't like the idea of installing dsme, bme, cal-*, et al from broken/old repositories - the only .debs I could find of those important packages (i.e., the ones required by b-man's Ubuntu port) are from the now-nonexistent Mer repository.

Option 2 is much more attractive. (No... really? :P) I've started work on gathering various patches and applying them on my mainline tree. Among the patches I applied are Stskeeps' N8x0 MeeGo patches (note to Stskeeps... you should have called them what they are - N810 patches. They don't work on my N800.), TSC2301 support (keypad and touchscreen - unfortunately I haven't tried to tackle converting the TSC2301 audio driver to ASoC yet, but I think the driver still works in its current form), and a few other random fixes.

I compiled a 2.6.35 kernel with everything I think is necessary for the N800, but what do you know - it doesn't boot :P It's pretty random in how it decides to not work - sometimes it will go into a reboot loop, sometimes it just shuts off. One thing is consistent with this kernel, though - the backlight is definitely on for about 30 seconds (the screen is black, but clearly still on) before it shuts down/reboots/crashes. I can't debug it without a framebuffer console or a way to save the kernel log somewhere so I can read it on my desktop, but I did notice the USB Ethernet gadget driver is recognized on my desktop a few seconds before the N800 shuts down.

If anyone here could give any hints on booting this kernel (or should I say, if anyone here cares anymore :P), I would greatly appreciate it. If I can get just one person to show interest in my work so far, I'll have no choice but to set up a GitHub for my patchy kernel tree...

Wow, this seems ambitious. I only have a N810, so I fail to be your inspiration. But if you finish this, I believe that would allow for one of the more advanced (feature full) linux setups on a NIT yet. There are some ubuntu work being done, but that seems to be more along the hack and slash down to size route.

Do you imagine this is something you will see through? What are you planning to put on the N800?

I have TSC2301 drivers and people have succesfully booted MeeGo on N800 as well. Right now my patches conflict with my N810 touchscreen though..

Best place to follow would be in the N8x0 hardware adaptation thread I guess. Audio driver is a different mess. tmh/tmr(?) had DSP forward ported which is what you need.

Does his work consist of kernel patches I could download, or is it all in userspace? Either way, I'm having trouble finding his code...

If you're talking in terms of the OS, most likely Debian unstable/sid. In terms of software, everything I run on my laptop :P Some things I'd like to be able to use: ZynAddSubFX, VLC, Mplayer, Audacity, Julius speech recognition, and of course all the games I usually port but don't actually see myself playing...

I still haven't figured out why my N800 won't boot. Stskeeps, is there something NIT-specific preventing the framebuffer console from displaying boot messages? I have fbcon compiled in and I added "console=tty0" to the kernel command line, but I don't get any text displayed on the screen...

After reading http://trac.tspre.org/merlogs/2010-04-20.html I still don't know what I should be doing - AFAIK dspgateway is deprecated, tidspbridge (in staging) doesn't support OMAP2, and I have no clue where dsp-link fits in. You said something along the lines of "the kernel side for the N810 should work on the N800", and that further confused me. I don't care whether tmr's code is clean or it's messier than a pigsty - being able to see it is a requirement for fixing it! (Oh wait, that makes me a hypocrite :P) I can clean it up if he's not working on it anymore - just thought I'd put that out there...

Well, I figured out the display issue, and now I feel stupid - I somehow removed an essential part of the MIPID LCD code from Stskeeps' patch :P That solved practically every problem I had - I'm going to have to try the old N800 audio code now! If it works, I'm going to attempt to rewrite it to conform to ASoC...

gTan64: any possibility to get you to hang out in #meego-arm?

That is awesome. I tried doing that myself last year too, but I ended giving up. I have an N800 too, and I found the same difficulties in using things intended for the N810. I decided to way until other people push the work on stuff like cbus, where I don't feel I can contribute much...

It seems a lot happened during this year, and now I wanted to give it another try. What is the latest kernel version you have used? Did you advance the work on the ASoC?