**** BEGIN LOGGING AT Wed Apr 16 02:59:56 2008
Apr 16 12:35:13 <Matty__H> yuv422; have you got a ht8000 yet?
Apr 16 12:35:30 <Yuv422> Hey Matt
Apr 16 12:35:41 <Yuv422> no I haven't got one yet.
Apr 16 12:35:56 <Yuv422> focusing on my WizMac application at the moment
Apr 16 12:36:03 <Matty__H> how's that going?
Apr 16 12:36:08 <Yuv422> good
Apr 16 12:36:20 <Yuv422> I'm just about to add a queue manager
Apr 16 12:36:31 <Yuv422> so you can select multiple files to download at one
Apr 16 12:36:33 <Yuv422> once
Apr 16 12:36:48 <Yuv422> then leave it unattended as it downloads them one by one
Apr 16 12:37:11 <Yuv422> I have been looking into MIPS dissasembly though
Apr 16 12:37:29 <Yuv422> and looking into the firmware format used by the HT8000
Apr 16 12:37:49 <Matty__H> I had a quick look with a hex editor
Apr 16 12:38:12 <Yuv422> it looks like a self unpacking application to me
Apr 16 12:38:49 <Matty__H> saw what you were talking about with the zlib
Apr 16 12:39:07 <Yuv422> because the data seems to be compressed with a zlib inflate implementation at the front
Apr 16 12:39:35 <Matty__H> that (and a few other little bits) are the only parts I can read
Apr 16 12:39:46 <Matty__H> at the beginning
Apr 16 12:40:16 <Yuv422> it might be as easy as finding the start of the zlib compressed data and unpacking it
Apr 16 12:40:28 <Matty__H> there's the bootvector, which I've read tells it where to find the bootstrap (is that right?)
Apr 16 12:40:49 <Yuv422> yeah I think so
Apr 16 12:41:04 <Yuv422> I need to get a working disassembler
Apr 16 12:41:07 <Matty__H> it's something like 16 bits after or something like that
Apr 16 12:41:12 <Yuv422> I was thinking of writing one
Apr 16 12:41:18 <Matty__H> wow
Apr 16 12:41:20 <Yuv422> it would be a nice little side project
Apr 16 12:41:28 <Yuv422> mips is fairly basic
Apr 16 12:41:33 <Yuv422> being risc ;-)
Apr 16 12:41:59 <Yuv422> you can fit the mips instructions on an a4 sheet of paper
Apr 16 12:42:03 <Yuv422> double sided
Apr 16 12:42:28 <Matty__H> does that make it more efficient?
Apr 16 12:42:48 <Yuv422> that's a topic of much debate
Apr 16 12:42:59 <Yuv422> risc vs cisc
Apr 16 12:43:58 <Matty__H> the DEC Alpha was RISC wasn't it?
Apr 16 12:44:16 <Matty__H> I remember working on a few of those quite a few years ago
Apr 16 12:44:17 <Yuv422> I think so
Apr 16 12:44:35 <Yuv422> we had alpha's at uni
Apr 16 12:45:22 <Matty__H> they were popular for 3D CAD type work
Apr 16 12:45:36 <Yuv422> we used to play xpilot
Apr 16 12:45:44 <Matty__H> :)
Apr 16 12:46:18 <Matty__H> so your WizMac will be Mac only (no chance it will port to linux?)
Apr 16 12:46:54 <Yuv422> It might be portable to gnustep
Apr 16 12:47:06 <Yuv422> but I wouldn't imagine it would be easy
Apr 16 12:47:20 <Yuv422> it was mainly a refresher course on cocoa programming for me
Apr 16 12:47:37 <Yuv422> otherwise I would have written it in a more portable toolkit
Apr 16 12:47:53 <Yuv422> but I wanted to muck around with objc and cocoa again
Apr 16 12:48:24 <Matty__H> I don't know much about that
Apr 16 12:48:50 <Yuv422> objc is a fully objectified superset of C
Apr 16 12:49:07 <Yuv422> It's quite nice to program in
Apr 16 12:49:48 <Matty__H> I haven't had much of a chance to work on any side projects
Apr 16 12:50:16 <Yuv422> finding the time can be hard
Apr 16 12:51:01 <Matty__H> I did manage to replace my terrible wireless AP with a WRT54GL with OpenWRT - which was rewarding
Apr 16 12:52:24 <Yuv422> nice
Apr 16 12:52:50 <Yuv422> does it all work under openwrt?
Apr 16 12:53:14 <Matty__H> the AP - yes
Apr 16 12:53:32 <Yuv422> the WRT54GL
Apr 16 12:54:01 <Matty__H> yes, you replace the firmware with an OpenWRT version - like the slug
Apr 16 12:54:33 <Matty__H> it has a package manager to install packages ie ipkg install blah
Apr 16 12:54:35 <Yuv422> If only it had an adsl 2+ modem inbuilt
Apr 16 12:54:47 <Yuv422> then I'd replace my billion
Apr 16 12:55:11 <Matty__H> I wonder if the billion can be ported to OpenWRT?
Apr 16 12:55:20 <Matty__H> visa versa
Apr 16 12:55:56 <Yuv422> probably not :(
Apr 16 12:56:07 <Matty__H> I don't use the built in router part - only use it as an AP - I have a sokeris wrap and ADSL2+ modem
Apr 16 12:56:11 <peteru_> Netcomm NB5Plus4W has a GPL notice, so presumably there's scope for hacking that. ADSL2+, 4 port switch and 802.11g with WPA2
Apr 16 12:56:45 <Yuv422> hi peteru_
Apr 16 12:56:50 <peteru_> Bought one today for $99 for the inlaws - seems like a nice piece of engineering
Apr 16 12:56:50 <Matty__H> there is a long list on the wiki, along with reports on the status
Apr 16 12:57:07 <peteru_> allo, allo
Apr 16 12:57:28 <peteru_> What chipset is the homecast using? Sounds like a Broadcom based box
Apr 16 12:57:35 <Matty__H> hi peteru_
Apr 16 12:57:59 <Matty__H> xilleon chipset?
Apr 16 12:58:08 <Yuv422> from ATI
Apr 16 12:58:41 <Matty__H> AMD owned now are they?
Apr 16 12:58:51 <Yuv422> I think so
Apr 16 12:59:03 <peteru> Hmmm, they had some major issues getting interest from prospective customers.
Apr 16 12:59:43 <Matty__H> is that because of cost or features (or lack of)
Apr 16 13:04:05 <Matty__H> they use a file system called HC-FAT
Apr 16 13:05:15 <Matty__H> I've not heard of that before
Apr 16 13:16:03 <Yuv422> I'm off to bed now
Apr 16 13:16:04 <Yuv422> cya
Apr 16 13:22:28 <Matty__H> I'll catch you guys later - ciao
**** ENDING LOGGING AT Thu Apr 17 02:59:57 2008