Questions about OSDng

[pfft2001]

 1) Is it possible to install it if you have a "new" OSD - that is, one without a CF slot?  There seem to be mixed messages on this on the "osdren" site.  It seems to me that it should work, if you have a new enough firmware already installed.  But the site warns that you could "deadlock" if you try it.  So, the real question is, can you do any harm (i.e., does "deadlock" mean "brick") ?

2) Once installed, do you need the external media present (to run)?  Again, there seem to be mixed messages on the site.  The site says that you can get back to "normal" Arizona by just booting without the card in the slot - this seems to imply that you do need the card present.  Is this true?

   

[bmc]

Yes, you can install OSDng onto a newer OSD that doesn't have the CF slot.  I did that back in late June, see the previous thread at:

http://forums.neurostechnology.com/index.php?topic=10201.msg54068#msg54068

The firmware upgrade went fine, and you're then running the 99.9% Arizona firmware that just has the "OSDng menu" that helps you install onto an external USB.  When you boot with that USB plugged in, you're running OSDng.  When you boot without that USB plugged in, you'll be running Arizona.

The "deadlock" refers to using an SD card as the OSDng root device, instead of USB. (Or a 1.0 OSD, you can choose between CF and USB, but even there you can't use SD.  On the later rev, there is no CF, so you're stuck with USB). Ideally, you should be able to use any of SD, CF, USB, or the larger internal flash on the later revision, as the root device for OSDng.

In reality, CF and USB are fully supported.  The SD slot suffers from a kernel driver deadlock problem, so I've disabled installing OSDng onto SD cards (if curious, you could copy the OSDng directory onto an SD card and the boot logic will try to boot from it  -from experience you have about a 30% chance of getting to the menu without triggering a deadlock.  Fixing the SD kernel driver isn't on my short list).

You won't do any damage with this deadlock - just boot again without the card, and you're back in Arizona (or plug in the USB OSDng stick and you're in OSDng).  Deadlock here means "the software kernel spinning its wheels waiting for something that will never happen" - just a software thing due to a buggy SD driver, and it is harmless after rebooting.

And lastly, running from the internal flash is certainly possible.  I didn't have the second-rev OSD when I did OSDng, and what is there now works for both revisions, provided you leave a CF or USB plugged in.

If I were to support installing to internal flash, I'd have to abandon "automatically fall-back to Arizona by removing the card".

If folks are pretty happy committing to OSDng, and are tolerant of having to reflash a upk to get back to Arizona if they had to, I might consider this.  Your thoughts?

It'd also be possible to repackage Arizona (and maybe even Torfu) so that they could boot from an external root the way OSDng now does.  If anyone is interested in that, let me know and I'll point you in the right direction.

[yanvrno]

Id be happy to see the video editing feature working, not sure what happened to it in Torfu. It just needed some refinements.

[pfft2001]

Yes, you can install OSDng onto a newer OSD that doesn't have the CF slot.  I did that back in late June, see the previous thread at:

http://forums.neurostechnology.com/index.php?topic=10201.msg54068#msg54068

The firmware upgrade went fine, and you're then running the 99.9% Arizona firmware that just has the "OSDng menu" that helps you install onto an external USB.  When you boot with that USB plugged in, you're running OSDng.  When you boot without that USB plugged in, you'll be running Arizona.

Well, I've made some progress, but then I hit a wall.  I was able to install the OSDng 2.52 by putting it on an SD card, and putting the card in the slot on the OSD, and "Play/Browse"ing the UPK file.  It ran the pong screen a few times, rebooting along the way, and eventually came up in the new version, with the "OSDng" menu available.  Under that menu, there were two options: Status and Setup.  Status works - giving the usual collection of helpful information.    However, I was not able to get through Setup successfully.

Here are my results:

1) The first time, I put a Sandisk 256M USB thumb drive (newly formatted with FAT32 on a Windows box) in the USB port, and did the Setup, telling it to use 100M of storage.  It started formatting the drive (I'm assuming that's what it is doing) - gets to about 7M, then stops (the dots stop flashing across the screen).  After a bit, it craps out, and starts displaying typical Unix-y error messages.

After fiddling with this a bit, I decide this is not working (see below for specifically how I tested [YouTube])

2) So then, I decide to try a different USB device.  I take a 2Gb SD card (not the same one used above to load the UPK file), and load it into a small "SD to USB" converted (one of those tiny card reader things, that have a USB plug on one end and a slot for a memory card on the other end), and try that.  About the same thing happens - this time, it gets to about 12M before crapping out.  However, this time, after the reboot, the OSD get hung - displaying the "O ring" on the TV and flashing the red/green light [which looks like it is upgrading the firmware again]).  I let this run for about 10 minutes, then eventually pull the plug.  Now
the unit reboots (more or less) normally.

And in both cases above, the "Status" display shows "no storage mounted".

Finally, these are the two things I noticed that indicated that things weren't working (i.e., that OSDng wasn't installed right):

1) YouTube.  When I try to do "Search", the box hangs - and the plug has to be pulled.  Also, at various other places, it seems to just hang for no reason.

2) I couldn't find the "Packages" menu, as show in the "pix" at osdren.com

I have gone back to the Arizona firmware, but any advice or help is appreciated.  I'm willing to give this another shot.