[Nook Color Android Development] dalingrin:
ENCORE 2.6.32 BETA QUICK FAQ

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WHAT'S THIS?

Tonight, we can report to the American people and to the world, the CM7 team has conducted an operation that killed the "Sleep of Death" responsible for the senseless battery consumption of thousands of encore devices.

Or put another way, the CM7 for encore team is proud to release a beta .32 kernel to play with. Try at your own risk.​

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?

Verygreen, FatTire, and Dalingrin did most of the work on this update. Verygreen worked tirelessly on 2.6.32 and 2.6.35 ports of the kernel. An extra special thanks should go to him.

We hope to use his work to eventually get newer 2.6.35+ kernels for the Nook Color.​

WHY DO I CARE ABOUT THE .32 KERNEL? HOW'S IT BETTER THAN THE .29 KERNEL?

It's .03 better, obviously.

Beyond the sleep improvements, most benefits are "behind the scenes" technical fixes.

Still, you may notice that the On/Off animation now works and that you experience subtle performance benefits that come from a new kernel. For a generic writeup of .32 features (much of which doesn't apply to the encore), see:

http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_32​

SO WHAT WORKS?

* basic CM7

* sound

* accelerometer

* backlight

* wifi

* EXPERIMENTAL bluetooth (uses new uim/kim method and .bts files)

* video w/overlay

* Screenshots

* usb mounting to your computer

* sdcard support

WHAT DOESN'T WORK?

* Sleep while while charging or connected to USB

Workaround: Settings->Applications->Development->Stay Awake

Maybe more, you tell us. Is it stable? Can you make it crash/reboot?

Probably. This is a beta for a reason.​

CAN I DROP THE UIMAGE KERNEL FILE INTO A 2.6.29 CM7 SYSTEM?

No.​

WHY NOT?

There are several changes to the installation which make .32 incompatable with previous CM7 installations. Among them are:

* The kernel's orientation is now native to the encore's screen. No android rotation is needed

* The WIFI module is different

* The method of installing BT is different.

* The GFX (2D acceleration) drivers are different​

IS THIS .32 KERNEL OVERCLOCKED?

Not by default. The clock options are the same as the .29 kernel... for now.​

WHAT ARE THE CHANGES TO BLUETOOTH?

Bluetooth now uses the wilink driver with a "shared-transport" system that allows both bluetooth and the FM radio to work. Right now, the FM radio isn't enabled at all, as reports say the hardware support (antenna) is not connected. However, this new system makes it at least conceivably possible to use.

Also, the new system utilizes Texas Instrument's .bts (bluetooth script) method for installing the bt firmware.​

SO DOES THIS FIX THE BT RANGE ISSUE?

This is all brand new-- Bluetooth range has not been extensively tested. That is for you to test.

There are several versions of TI's bluetooth initialization script, called the "bts" script. You can get them here:

https://gforge.ti.com/gf/project/wilink_drivers/

The .bts files (such as TIInit_7.2.31.bts) may be placed in:

/system/etc/firmware

and will automatically be loaded when needed. Try different versions and experiment to see if some work better others. (Watch the log and dmesg to verify that the bts script is running properly)​

CAN I MAKE THE FM RADIO WORK?

The encore device is reported to not have a physical antenna connection to allow the FM radio to function.

However, this is unexplored territory. If you are a developer and would like to experiment, you may notice that TI makes the following additional firmware files available:

fm_rx_init_1273.2.bts

fm_tx_init_1273.2.bts

fmc_init_1273.2.bts

These scripts are now potentially loadable into the wifi chip. To make CM7 believe that there is a working FM radio, add to the board file:

https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_device_bn_encore/blob/gingerbread/BoardConfig.mk

the following line:

BOARD_HAVE_FM_RADIO := true

And recompile. Good luck!​

IS THE BRAINFUCK SCHEDULER (BFS) INCLUDED?

Not yet. We're investigating whether this would be worthwhile.​

WHERE CAN I GET SOME OF THE KERNEL SOURCE FOR THIS BETA TEST?

The kernel - https://github.com/dalingrin/nook_kernel (32 branch)

The modified liboverlay - https://github.com/dalingrin/android_hardware_ti_omap3​

WHAT HAPPENED TO VERYGREEN'S 32 PORT?

When BN released their .32 kernel, portions were migrated to Verygreen's in-progress .32 kernel source, which in turn was a modification of the .32 kernel from omapzoom.com. At the same time, fixes that were in verygreen's repository were migrated over to the BN source.

Thus, the CM7 team ended up with *TWO* working versions of the .32 kernel.

After some discussion, it was decided (for now) to use the source that originated from BN. This will hopefully free us to move to 2.6.35+ quicker.​