After several weeks my dad finally received his Gumstix + daughterboards. Although the Gumstix is the size of chewing gum, it needs a massive daughterboard to do anything eg: power up. In the photo is the Gumstix (not visible) + Ethernet/CF and Serial/USB daughterboards:And here's my notes:
### Power
Has a very small power connector... smaller than the standard usb-hub power connector.
Requires a daughterboard eg: Ethernet/CF
### Serial/USB Daughterboard
Physically prevents MMC card.
Serial goes fast... 115200 8N1.
USB is v1 not v2.
Requires db9 to MiniDIN-8 cable (and usb<->serial for any modern computer).
Root password defaults to 'gumstix'.
Requires a gender bender to use usb devices.
Can power a single usb device, but requires a usb hub to be powered.
Stock firmware (non-bluetooth model) has:
- bluetooth driver, hcid but no hcitool.
- usb_storage driver, ext3 driver and fdisk but no mkfs.ext3.
### Ethernet/CF Daughterboard
Ethernet not enabled with stock firmware. Requires serial connection to configure.
Enabling ethernet is simple: modprobe smc91x ; ifconfig eth0 inet 192.168.3.1 up
Permanently enabling the ethernet by adding smc91x to /etc/modules has issues with negotiation on boot. Fix is to disable smc911x in /etc/modules.
Network configuration is /etc/network/interfaces and is similar to Debian. eth0 is auto and dhcp.
Stock firmware has:
- Dropbear the ssh daemon.
- Netcat (nc).
- ide-cs and relevant scsi drivers.
### Toolchain/Buildroot
Documented at http://docwiki.gumstix.org/Buildroot
Trunk doesn't seem to compile on OSX 10.5.
Compiles on Debian 4.0.
