Android image and some instructions

Sean McNeil sean at mcneil.com
Thu Nov 6 15:44:06 CET 2008


andrzej zaborowski wrote:
> 2008/11/6 Sean McNeil <sean at mcneil.com>:
>   
>> andrzej zaborowski wrote:
>>     
>>> 2008/11/5 Álvaro Lopes <alvieboy at alvie.com>:
>>>
>>>       
>>>>> This will take time to get down right, but hopefully now you will all be
>>>>> able to begin playing with Android.
>>>>>
>>>>>           
>>>> Hi Sean, hi all,
>>>>
>>>> I has finally able to boot it and have something on the screen in my
>>>> GTA02. Pretty much impressive. :) Thanks a lot for your work there. Took
>>>> quite a few boots
>>>> for me to be able to see anything on the screen, don't know exactly why.
>>>>
>>>> I do have some notes about it:
>>>>
>>>>       * Took me quite a while to figure out that in "ADBHOST=neo", "neo"
>>>> was indeed the IP address of the freerunner :) Should have been smarter.
>>>> Anyway, I think you
>>>> can easily clarify that on your page.
>>>>       * Do you have those needed kernel patches around ? Although I don't
>>>> have a debug board I think I might have some spare time to try "fixing" the
>>>> resume issue,
>>>> even if it means merging other people (Andy,...) patches.
>>>>       * There seems to be no display acceleration. Can the community help
>>>> in anything here ?
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> Yes, the acceleration features done in Xglamo can be added to whatever
>>> manages the screen in Android or better yet to the framebuffer driver
>>> in the kernel.  This would allow both Android and Xfbdev and even
>>> mplayer to use the same driver code.
>>>
>>> I don't know what graphics accel features the T-mobile G1 has, but if
>>> we're lucky they're implemented on the framebuffer side so the
>>> interface is transparent to Andorid itself.
>>>
>>> I wonder if anyone has tried to install a standard X server on the G1
>>> yet?  Or a whole openmoko or qtopia distro?
>>>
>>>       
>> Android doesn't use an X server at all.
>>     
>
> Yup, that's why it would be interesting :)
>
>   
>> It uses its own Java window manager
>> that sits on top of the frame buffer. The G1 has accelerated openGL support
>> and video/audio codecs used through the Packet Video OpenCore technology.
>>     
>
> Do you know if the userspace accesses the hw directly or rather makes
> an ioctl() on the framebuffer, when it wants to make an opengl call or
> blit part of the screen?

I never got the chance to really dig into this area, but it was of 
interest to me. It uses a HW accelerated library that I think on the G1 
uses an ioctl interface to talk to the hardware in the kernel. The 
processor for the G1 is the TI OMAP, so you might get some clues by 
looking at the omapzoom.org site. The GTA02 uses a Glamo video device 
which has OpenGL hw acceleration support. We should be able to come up 
with our own hwgl library to enhance graphics.




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