PC card software released under GPL

By Chris Williams. Published: 3rd Nov 2005, 10:56:27 | Permalink | Printable

A good time to learn x86 assembly language? [Updated]

The sources to Aleph1's PC card software are now available online. The package includes versions 3.07 and 2.35 of the PC card software, Windows and DOS drivers to control Acorn-architecture hardware, and various scripts and ROM images. The source code is released under the GPL.

The software drives Aleph1's range of hardware upgrades that use sub-200Mhz Intel compatible processors, allowing users to run programs and operating systems built for the x86 platform. This usually involves Microsoft Windows 95 and 98.

The move to open source the package was announced in August, earlier this year.

Update at 20:19 7/11/2005
The source code and pre-built software have been split up into individual zipfiles and a mirror of the Aleph1 support site is also now available. See the link below for details.

Links

PC card source code

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Discussion

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When unpacking the TAR McAfee AV complains about presence of BAT/RB1 trojan. Is it a false positive?

bernie on 3/11/05 11:58AM
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If I'm wrong, reply to me and not just mod me down. If I need to learn, this way I'm gonna to be wrong forever :-(

bernie on 3/11/05 12:14PM
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SparkFS 1.39 which I believe is the latest, won't decompress it. When downloading, it was automatically saved with a filetype of tar, and tar is ticked in SparkFSs module list under choices. Double clicking on it gives 'Unidentified header type found', dropping it on the iconbar gives 12 seconds of disc access and then nothing! Also does it contain a compiled copy of the software, I suspect there are many people who don't have a copy of the compilers who would like a copy of the program. Thanks to wookey, lawrie and peter for his work in getting this released.

CJE on 3/11/05 1:03PM
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correction: thanks.. for *their* work

CJE on 3/11/05 1:06PM
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It's a tar file which has been compressed with bzip2. You'll need a bzip2 decompressor - a command line version is in the Unix Porting Project.

It unpacks to about 90MB. There is indeed a Releases directory which contains various versions as shipped, including network links.

There is a /lot/ of source in there, including x86 assembler for the various PC-side drivers. Quite a bit of interesting documentation too - including full schematics of the Elvis (PC on podule) cards.

caliston2 on 3/11/05 1:14PM
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CJE: it is bz2 compressed. SparkFS does not support this. You can download a command line based compressor/decompressor from Peter's Unix Porting Project.

hubersn on 3/11/05 1:18PM
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If anyone wants to poke around without downloading the whole thing I've put up the directory structure at: [link]

Note that it uses ,xxx filetype extensions and MIME types are broken, so everything will download as text - use 'Save link as' or whatever.

This structure may disappear without notice (though unlikely in the next few days) and will do so when Peter puts up a catalogued version.

caliston2 on 3/11/05 1:35PM
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Ooh, that's interesting.

Is the Elvis card the one like I've got on eBay (oh yes, subtle...) , item 8230031632 that no-one's bid on yet, or is the Elvis specifically the other podule type that has the 486SLC, IDE and a SIMM socket?

wm on 3/11/05 2:08PM
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Yet another drobe article which doesn't properly credit the source of the announcement. If drobe wishes to operate in a professional manner, it ought to mention that the news was noted first here:

[link]

As for the original announcement, this is it:

[link]

mrchocky on 3/11/05 2:44PM
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I know that the bzip2 format isn't terribly handy for RISC OS users, but it was given to me that way, and I didn't want to mess with repacking it under Linux at the moment - doing so under RISC OS impratical right now due to being at the wrong end of dial up. Poke through Theo's tree if bzip2 is a problem for you.

mrchocky on 3/11/05 3:27PM
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I've been modded down, but I insist. If I attempt to decompress the bz2 file, McAfee AV complains about presence of BAT/RB1 trojan on the TAR file. Even given that's RISC OS related, so PC trojans aren't of interest, nobody can guarantee about platform that was used to collect/compress the software. So I keep asking: IS IT A FALSE POSITIVE? Answer this in a polite manner and just DO NOT mod me down! Really, I don't understand why (and who) mod me down only for asking some advice.

bernie on 3/11/05 3:39PM
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wm: The Elvis schematics have a 486SLC, SIMM, IDE etc. I don't think the source to Elvis versions is included (it's just evolved so compatibility might have been broken). A binary can be found at: [link]

caliston2 on 3/11/05 3:43PM
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bernie: I have no idea. Googling for bat/rb1 produces no information on what this trojan is. Says it dates from 2004 but all the files in the archive date from 2000 or earlier. I suspect it's a false positive.

caliston2 on 3/11/05 3:48PM
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It was compressed under Linux. Of course, the archive _does_ contain some x86 code as well as of course RISC OS code. I suspect further investigation is needed before we get too worked up. It would help to know what files it's complaining about.

mrchocky on 3/11/05 3:53PM
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AV complains about file 'CPYFILES.BAT' in archive arm216.zip,ddc. Can't verify as AV intercept and quarantine the file.

bernie on 3/11/05 5:44PM
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Hah! Given the contents of that file are only: copy *.a* good copy armdrv.* good copy *.bat good I think your virus checker is mistaken :-)

caliston2 on 3/11/05 8:07PM
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Anyone managed to install it yet? I am asked for a registration code when I try to install it using PCs.Releases.Rel307.Release.!InstallPC

francis on 3/11/05 8:17PM
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francis: Surely since you've got the source code in that archive, you can take the registration code stuff out

andypoole on 3/11/05 9:08PM
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Or, you could just run the !DivaCode application, which generates the registration numbers

andypoole on 3/11/05 9:30PM
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Caliston2: Thank for your help. AV Is Mcafee Enterprise 8.0, updated. So much for trusting a Win app.... Oh well, apologies for false alert, but 'better safe than sorry' I think.

bernie on 4/11/05 10:29AM
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By way of a reply to Bernie's question about a false positive virus alert;

I've just downoaded the file, on my WinXP box with Norton Anti-virus and unpacked the archive with 7-zip. No virus warnings at all.

Hope this helps.

Alex.

alex on 5/11/05 9:08AM
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Has anyone tried the UPP bunzip2 / bzip2 -d on it? They try to create a directory called PCs/tar/ba2.out which obviously doesn't work on RISC OS.

druck on 6/11/05 12:25AM
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Well, I don't agree that it's obvious that it won't work, since the output filename is subject to translation to a RISC OS filename, as per normal UnixLib translation rules.

But having not tried such a thing myself, I can't comment on the specifics.

mrchocky on 6/11/05 5:48AM
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If it was the expected translation of PCs/tar/ba2/out it would be ok, but its using a dot so you need to have both the downloaded file called PCs/tar/ba2 and a directory with the same name, containing another directory call out, which can't happen. But anyway I'll raise this on the UPP mailing list.

druck on 6/11/05 12:50PM
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In replay to Druck

I found this an issue and I had a answer from acorn.misc via Theo Markettos.

Assuming files are in the root directory of your harfdrive

*dir ADFS::yourdiscname.$ bzip2 -d PCs.tar.bz2

or put bzip in Library and it should work by just typing

PCs.tar.bz2

Hope this helps.

bluenose on 6/11/05 3:43PM
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Correction

If in library should work by just typing

bzip2 -d PCs.tar.bz2

bluenose on 6/11/05 3:45PM
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