After having my PCH A110 for a few weeks I wanted to build some other applications to run on it.. Luckily this has been made rather easy.. Here are some quick and dirty instruction on how I got a build environment up and running to cross compile applications to run on the PCH.

This information is taken from this post on the www.networkedmediatank.com forum.

You'll need three main things. VmWare to run the host OS for the development environment which is available as a Debian Etch 4.0 VmWare image and the Syabas NMT (SMP8634) toolchain.

I've managed to get fuppes cross compiled for the PCH in the VM based toolchain setup by:

1. Using the tool chain building instructions given in this post
2. downloaded the source bundles for the dependent libraries (pcre, libxml2, sqlite3)
3. sourced the toolchain-path.env in my build window.

[update: a compiled binary is available here.]

For each of the dependent libraries I build them using:

This install the libs and header files into the /home/user/popcorn/smp86xx_toolchain.20080505/build_mipsel_nofpu/staging_dir/ folder under lib and include.. I think that is what I want (??) sounds fair.

Now this all feels good so far..

I've recently purchased a Denon 3808 AVR (very nice), but have had trouble serving flac files from mediatomb on my Popcorn Hour A110 (PCH). Everything looks good until I attempt to play a file then the 3808 gives me a "File Format Error".

Anyway, someone on a forum pointed out that it works on his Denon (not a 3808) if he adds the follow lines to his mediatomb's config.xml (I added them immediately after the opening <server> tag):

That first line looks very specific to the installation of mediatomb on the PCH, and I expect in most cases wont be needed or will need to be changed (note the lack of leading / on the path)...

The next thing is to ensure that transcoding is disabled for flac.. (again found in the config.xml file).

On my setup the config.xml file was found in /share/Apps/mediatomb/config/config.xml

This didn't make any difference until I killed mediatomb, deleted its mediatomb.db file (destroying its current database), re-starting it and re-importing my media files (flac)..

Now they all work just as I'd expect.

I find that I have issues with the nvidia driver making my screen flicker/flash and sometime causes my machine to crash. I have found that it can be fixed by modifying /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia and replacing:

with:

(note: that is one single line that may wrap in your browser)

Enabling USB support in VirtualBox on a Fedora host is rather easy, just follow these steps.

Create a group called usb

In F9 that is [System->Administration->Users and Groups] Click the groups tab and click the add group icon. Enter the group name usb and note the group id being assigned (usually something like 502).

Modify /etc/fstab (as root)

Modify /etc/fstab adding the line (this assumes the group id of 502, replace with the correct id):

Remount file systems

You can either reboot or run the following command to make the fstab changes take effect (as root):

Start VirtualBox

Start VirtualBox and you should now be able to activate USB devices using the USB icon in the lower right of the VM window.

Given that Fedora has made it so easy to put a live cd image onto a usb or other external drive to provide a bootable take anywhere OS.

First off, you'll need the Fedora Live CD or DVD iso image, they can be found on the Fedora home page http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora

You'll also need to install some other packages available in the standard repos.

Install livecd-tools with your package manager.

Console mode is great for some tasks, but why live with 80x25 when by adding vga=775 to your grub line will give you 160x160 mode (using 1280x1024)... Simple and sweet.

Fedora 9 (F9 Sulphur) has been released. Here I will record my personal setup. Note, this is a work in progress and will be updated as I (slowly) configure my system.

My setup: Dell Inspiron 9400 (E1705)

• Audio device: Intel 82801G High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
• IDE interface: Intel 82801GBM/GHM SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
• Video: nVidia Corporation GeForce Go 7900 GS (rev a1)
• Ethernet: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
• FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
• Network controller: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

Auto-scrolling a ListBox seems to be a common question asked and regardless of my googling I was unable to find a solution other than changing the ListBox selection.

After sometime I finally discovered a simple property ListBox.TopIndex which indicates what the topmost visible (shown) item should be. It appears that setting this to the highest numbered item will result in the ListBox scrolling to the bottom.

To create an AutoScroll ListBox simply set the TopIndex property each time an item is added, like:

I've been working with an Inherited User Control that extends the ListBox control and would like to add an AutoScroll option that will perform this each time an item is added, but I am unable to find anyway to fire an event on an item being added. Please leave a comment if you know how to do this.

Well we've heard about 3D printers before, but an open source, self replicating 3D printer sounds like just what we need.

The guys at http://reprap.org/ have done just that, created an open source 3D printer that can print a good portion of the parts required to make one.

To call it replicating is a bit of a stretch, but it's a start. Once it can build an entire machine, only then am I happy to give it replication status.