FYI: BeagleBoard IRC channel

The entire IRC logs are questions and answers. Most of the questions are troubleshooting. Occasionally, nobody is able to help the person or answer the question. Rarely is the case when a troubleshooting problem is not solved. Most unanswered questions are request for information (ex. Has such-and-such been made?) or a request for experience-oriented help (ex. Has anybody worked with the angstrom demo and tried such –and-such). There are still a lot of unanswered questions, but most of these questions are left unresponsive. Sometimes, when a person’s question has no response they ask again later, and get an answer, which leads me to believe that nobody on the channel saw the question when it was first posted. This is where the bulk of the unanswered questions come from.

10/17/08 - 10/18/08

[18:15:39] BThompson pointed out that the difference between a mini-A USB and a mini-B USB, is that the mini-A has angled edges on the bottom, whereas the mini-B has a square edge on the bottom. Also, mini-B is able to work in "client mode". Mini-A would cause the client mode to fail.

[02:52:17] Nathanm mentioned that some monitors are picky about frequencies, and may be responsible for an error message "mode not supported". [15:25:53] According to mru, X-loader is responsible for loading U-boot and the "ROM loader loads X-loader into sram. X-loader can then set up dram and load U-boot there." [15:28:23] Contrary to what the IRC log says, IVA stands for Interaction Value Analysis. It is a mathmatical model of orginizational behavior. For more information see http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/BeagleRelatedTerminology?ts=1224532762&updated=BeagleRelatedTerminology. Additionally, IVA can also stand for the imaging and video accelerator block that includes the C64x+ DSP in the OMAP35x applications processors.

10/15/08 - 10/17/08

[17:35:10] A Segmentation Fault (SegFault) is an error that can occur durring the operation of computer software. It occurs when a program attempts to access a memory location in a non-permissible way, or when it is not allowed to be accessed. [07:40:53] Kulve explained on October 16th, that ES3.0 is an engineering sample usually of the CPU. It is basically a version number of the chip.

[14:14:30] Duke Nukem is the name of a game series. This series includes Duke Nukem, Duke Nukem II, and Duke Nukem 3D. The first two Duke Nukem's were platform-games. The first Duke Nukem was a sidescroller for the GameBoy Color. Duke Nukem 3D, is a first person shooter computer game and is the third game of the series.

10/14/08

[16:55:28] VLC is a portable multimedia player, encoder, & streamer that supports a audio/video codecs and file formats. It was the first player to support playback of encrypted DVD's on Linux. VLC includes a large number of free encoding/decoding libraries.
[16:58:04] MMC is a type of removable flash storage device. MMC can also be Microsoft Management Console, a component of Windows 2000 and Windows NT that allows system administrators to configure and monitor the system.


[16:58:04]MLC (stands for Multi-Level Cell) is a memory element capable of storing more than one bit of information. MLC NAND flash uses multiple levels per cell, allowing more bits to be stored. This differs from SLC NAND (Single-Level Cell), which uses only one level per cell. Most MLC NAND stores four states per cell (the four states yield 2 bits of information per cell).

10/13/08

On Monday, I created a Wiki page for terminology commonly used and found within the IRC channel and BeagleBoard set-up. Here is the link: http://code.google.com/p/beagleboard/wiki/BeagleRelatedTerminology

[14:14:38] Until recently, most people on the IRC channel were copying and pasting the user name of whom they were trying to reply to. They found out on October 13th that if type in the first letter of the user name and press tab, it does the job for you. [21:26:05] gcohler provided that TWL4030 was an original part, which was recently upgraded to TWL5030. Therefore most things still have TWL4030. A compatible device to the TWL5030, called the TPS65950, will be offered to customers at all volume levels.

10/12/08

[06:46:48] An Enhanced Host Controller Interface (EHCI) is a high-speed controller standard that only provides USB 2.0 functions. It needs a "companion controller" (OHCI or UHCI) to use USB 1.1 devices. [10:36:49] Kulve recommends the 2007q3 compiler for beginners. [12:08:06] HW is short for "hardware".



SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) is a technique used in achieving data level parallelism, as in a vector processor. [12:34:01] SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions) is a SIMD instruction set extension to the x86 architecture. The x86 archetecture was introduced in Intel's Pentium III series processors in the year 1999. SSE contains 70 new instructions.





[15:16:09] An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application designed to maximize programmer productivity by providing tightly-knit components with similar user interfaces. [21:16:14] Felipec stated that"One advantage of c++ is that the templating system pretty much act as macros, and in that sense the resulting code can be more optimal than C code... but c++ projects usually get insanely abstract".

10/09/08

[05:48:04] "ISDN" is an acroynym for Integrated Services Digital Network or Isolated Digital Network. It is a circuit-switched telephone network system network that, unlike the classic telephone system, integrates speech and data on the same lines.

10/08/08

Well, today was a very busy day! I did not get hardly any time to review the logs, but this is what I was able to accomplish today...

[00:12:20] IVA (Interaction Value Analysis) is used to model organizations using 1-on-1 interactions between the members as a proxy for all value-adding activities in the organization. The IVA approach can be combined with Game Theory. Game Theory is a branch of applied mathematics (commonly used in social sciences, biology, engineering, etc.) that attempts to capture behavior in strategic situations where an individuals success in making choices is dependent on the choices of others.

IVA would typically mean the imaging and video accelerator in the OMAP35x on this channel.

[00:20:14] OS stands for Operating System. An operating system (software component of a computer) is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the computer resources.

10/07/08

[05:21:12] A BeagleBoard is "bricked" when it no longer boots in its routine way. Nathanm placed a link to a page that explains how to recover ("unbrick") a broken BeagleBoard. This is a great advantage of the BeagleBoard, since most closed systems and some open systems cannot be easily recovered once they are "bricked". [06:32:06] Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) was originally designed for printed circuit boards, though it is now primarily used for accessing sub-blocks of integrated circuits and debugging embedded systems. The JTAG interface also allows device programmer hardware to transfer data into internal non-volatile device memory.

[09:58:16] "memcpy" is one of many C functions. [10:02:06] xv is a shareware program responsible for displaying and modifying digital images under the X Window System. xv can be run from either a command line or a graphical interface. [11:52:04] wxPython (a free software) is a cross-platform wrapper for the Python programming language.

[12:11:39] GNU Radio, now an official GNU project, is a free software toolkit for learning about, building, and deploying software-defined radio systems. The GNU radio is a signal processing package intended to give ordinary software people the ability to utilize the electromagnetic spectrum. [12:53:13] The Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) is a high-speed USB-based board used to make software radios. It is intended to be a relatively inexpensive hardware device with an open design and free software to be integrated with the GNU Radio. It's design provides the flexibility for developers to make their own daughterboards for specific needs.

09/19/08

[11:10:42] glibc (a common free and open-source software component) is the C standard library released by the GNU Project. [11:11:30] The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is a set of compilers produced for various programming languages by the GNU project. The GCC is a key component of the GNU toolchain and is the official compiler of the GNU system. It is the standard compiler for most modern Unix-like computer operating systems. GCC is also available for most embedded platforms including the Playstation and Sega Dreamcast.

[11:26:24] VMware Player is a free virtualization software package that allows the user to run guest virtual machines(VMs). Freeware tools and websites are used for creating VMs and mounting, manipulating, and converting VMware disks & floppies, allowing the user to create, run, & maintain virtual machines. VMware also sells (non-free) tools for manipulating and hosting (running and maintaining) virtual machines.

09/16/08 - 09/18/08

[03:30:14] FFmpeg is a computer program that can record, convert, and stream digital audio and video in different formats. It is a command line tool that is made up of open source libraries.
[03:35:30] I also learned that LPC is a programming language. It is object-oriented and originated from C, placing it in the family of C-like programming languages. It has also evolved into the Pike programming language, which is used for various internet services, multimedia apps., and system admin task. The abbreviation LPC stands for "Lars Pensjo C", derived from the original developer, Lars Pensjo. LPC is also the Linux Plumber's Conference and several of the BeagleBoard.org community people were there at the event in Portland, OR (PDX) this year.

[19:07:22] As embarrassing as it is to admit, up until today, I believed that "git" was one of those mean name-callings. I saw it quite a bit in the IRC logs. [14:54:03] However, git is actually a software source code management project. It is known for it's speediness and was created for Linux kernel development. Many high-profile software projects (Linux kernel, X.org server, etc.) use Git for revision control. I feel so smart right now...

[21:50:17] PLD stands for Programmable Logic Device. It is an electronic component used to build reconfigurable digital circuits. A PLD differs from a logic gate as it has an undefined function at the time of manufacture, whereas the logic gate has a fixed function. Before the PLD can be used in a circuit it has to be programmed.