16:39 <mace> Afternoon

16:40 <mace> can i be an annoying newb and pick someone(s) brains about getting some kind of basic linux environment up and running on a couple of dev boards i picked up?

16:40 <mace> i have some (admittedly years back) experience with cross compiling and suchforth

16:47 <plntyk> mace, buildroot project https://buildroot.org/ generates complete customizable OS images, or something like Armbian compiling minimal/desktop images to flash on targets

17:12 <mace> hi plntyk, ta for the pointers

17:13 <mace> i'm guessing i will have to do some level of kernel tweaking to get these working, they're not common dev boards, one is an a311d based board and the other s905d3

17:56 <chewitt> lots of prior art in the mainline kernel .. it shouldn't be too hard

18:15 <mace> yeah i'm hoping not; haven't done much kernel stuff before

18:16 <mace> buildroot the best place to start on that then?

18:17 <mace> if i'm reading the linux-meson website correctly, the nand flash isn't supported, is that right?

19:56 <xdarklight> mace: which SoC does your board come with? GXL and newer need changes to the MMC controller driver but I think nobody is working on that. for older-than-GXL I can provide patches for testing ;-)

20:07 <mace> Hi xdarklight, one board has S905D3, the other has A311D

20:07 <mace> my ideal goal is to get android on them, but obviously kernel has to be right first

20:12 <xdarklight> mace: as far as I know these would require the same MMC controller driver changes as GXL

20:19 <mace> nod

20:19 <mace> they both have 'MBOX' running on them just now, I've managed to find the serial port so have started nosing around

20:20 <mace> any particular reason noone is working on MMC for those? lack of interest?

21:14 <xdarklight> mace: personally I'm lacking time and hardware for testing. also most of these boards use MLC flash, which will only be usable with Linux 5.8 (and even there only partially, 50% of the storage capacity will be missing)