BT4 on ARM processors

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05-22-2009, 12:51 AM
ossumguywil

BT4 on ARM processors

With a wide array of netbooks coming out, many are using ARM processors over the intel atom. I am specifically talking about the touch book from always innovating. I think that this would be a great hack machine for many reasons. But BT has not yet been ported to ARM, and I lack the skill and know-how to do so. Debian is supported on ARMs, so I wouldn't think it should be so hard for someone more skilled than me to do so. If I knew how to do this this would be what I was doing in spanish class (as opposed to actual spanish work.) for all of you guys. Not to mention that this would pave the way to BT on ipod/iphones, cell phones, and PDAs. That way we could finally have an ipod like the guy did in national treasure, and steal all sorts of valuables from large museums.
If I am being completely unreasonable, please correct me.
06-09-2009, 12:36 PM
Re@lity

Quote:

Originally Posted by ossumguywil

...........If I am being completely unreasonable, please correct me.

Please stand corrected ;)
06-09-2009, 12:56 PM
imported_wyze

Quote:

Originally Posted by ossumguywil

.If I knew how to do this this would be what I was doing in spanish class (as opposed to actual spanish work.) for all of you guys. Not to mention that this would pave the way to BT on ipod/iphones, cell phones, and PDAs.

It's already been done, in a non-BT related distro.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ossumguywil

...But BT has not yet been ported to ARM, and I lack the skill and know-how to do so. Debian is supported on ARMs, so I wouldn't think it should be so hard for someone more skilled than me to do so.

Not completely 'hard', but I spent ~900 hours doing it (not including a couple thousand prior hours with ARM Linux). There is a lot of work involved to say the least.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ossumguywil

.That way we could finally have an ipod like the guy did in national treasure, and steal all sorts of valuables from large museums.

Say what? 0o

Quote:

Originally Posted by ossumguywil

If I am being completely unreasonable, please correct me.

Looks like Re@lity already did
06-13-2009, 03:17 PM
Virchanza

Hmm... I wonder would it be as simple as recompiling everything with an ARM compiler? The only trouble I can forsee you running into is:

1) If you have C code that depends on x86 CPU's (which really would only be a problem for compiling something low-level like a kernel, but who knows maybe even the kernel doesn't do anything specific with x86)
2) If you have assembly code specific to x86's.

The second problem could be solved simply by having an x86-to-ARM assembly converter, which wouldn't be complicated at all.

For the first problem, you'd just have to look for the bits of code that do stuff like use special CPU instructions (but hopefully all of these instances are documented).
06-16-2009, 11:10 AM
imported_wyze

Quote:

Originally Posted by Virchanza

Hmm... I wonder would it be as simple as recompiling everything with an ARM compiler? The only trouble I can forsee you running into is:

1) If you have C code that depends on x86 CPU's (which really would only be a problem for compiling something low-level like a kernel, but who knows maybe even the kernel doesn't do anything specific with x86)
2) If you have assembly code specific to x86's.

The second problem could be solved simply by having an x86-to-ARM assembly converter, which wouldn't be complicated at all.

For the first problem, you'd just have to look for the bits of code that do stuff like use special CPU instructions (but hopefully all of these instances are documented).

In most cases it comes down to either compiling natively on the machine / device or setting up a cross compiling toolchain on another (beefier) machine.. and using dpkg-cross, etc to build packages (not fun).

There are many packages for ARM in various Debian distro repos, but not everything is there no up to date.