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PSION'S OWN SOURCE MATERIAL
The preservation half of this release
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The images in 1-IMAGES are a reconstruction and can always be rebuilt.
This folder cannot. Several of these files exist in only one or two
places in the world, and the sites that held them are dead.
If you mirror only one part of this release, mirror this one.
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netbook-linux-sources.tgz 106,074,940 bytes
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PSION'S SOURCE DROP. 31,531 files.
Posted to HPC:Factor in November 2007 as "the original PsionLX sources
the Teklogix developer used to build the PsionLX Linux OS". It was
hosted at auditeon.com, which is now a domain placeholder. Exactly one
Internet Archive capture of it exists, so this copy is close to unique.
Contents:
oe-netbook/ Psion's OpenEmbedded build tree (also unpacked
beside this file, see below)
linux-2.6.9/ Psion's complete patched kernel
kdegames-3.3.1/ 4,785 files
gnome-games-2.6.2/ 1,513 files, the source of Solitaire
linneighborhood-0.6.5/ plus three built .ipk packages
rdesktop-cvs/
nBkProOs.img a Psion-built kernel image
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oe-netbook/
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PSION'S OPENEMBEDDED BUILD TREE, unpacked for convenience. 2,163 files,
263 recipes. Checked out by [email protected], dated 26 April 2006.
The CVS metadata is intact throughout.
This is the authoritative statement of what PsionLX actually was. If you
want to know whether something is genuinely Psion's, this tree is the
answer.
The two files worth opening first:
meta/soho-image.oe The image recipe. It names the finished
artefact -- "soho-image" -- and lists exactly
what went into it, including the tweak that
creates the lx user with uid 1000.
meta/meta-psion.oe The application manifest: psion-apps,
psion-net, psion-media, psion-games,
psion-debug. Every application PsionLX shipped
is named here.
Also inside: Psion's own artwork (the theme, the application icons, the
boot splash, the matchbox decorations), their session scripts, their
dock layout, their netBook-specific pcmcia and power configuration, and
82 patches against upstream applications.
Five packages it references cannot be fetched by anyone any more:
gpe-appmgr the launcher and the right-hand TODAY/PROGRAMS/
TASKS strip
gpe-buttonbox the dock
gpe-helpviewer
infoprint
psion-kernel
They came from cvs.psiondev.com, Psion's private CVS server, which no
longer exists and was never archived. This is why the launcher and dock
in the rebuilt image are reconstructions rather than Psion's code, and
why the icons Psion drew for them are lost.
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extracted-source-trees/
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linux-2.6.9/
PSION'S COMPLETE PATCHED KERNEL. 19,424 files, 231 MB.
EXTRAVERSION = -rc1-bk18-nb1, which is exactly what the machine
runs. 4,471 lines of Psion's own driver code. The CVS metadata is
intact and still names their server:
:ext:[email protected]:/var/lib/cvs
This is the single most valuable thing in the release after
oe-netbook. It is a complete, buildable kernel for this hardware,
from Psion, with their drivers.
kdegames-3.3.1/, gnome-games-2.6.2/, linneighborhood-0.6.5/,
rdesktop-cvs/
Unpacked from the source drop, as Psion shipped them.
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original-images/
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THE THREE BOOT IMAGES. These are not copies of one another. Each is a
256-byte BooSt header wrapping a zlib-deflated ARM kernel, and
decompressing them gives three different kernels:
nBkProOs.img.psion-autobuild-nexus-20050104 3,613,045 bytes
Linux 2.6.9-rc1-bk18-nb1 (autobuild@nexus) (gcc 3.4.0)
#1 Tue Jan 4 02:27:32 GMT 2005
*** Built on Psion's own build server. ***
"nexus" is nexus.psiondev.com, the host named throughout
oe-netbook. This is the only genuinely Psion-built binary in the
entire release.
It was produced at 02:27 GMT on 4 January 2005. The lost soho
image was built at 07:42 GMT the same morning. They are the
matching pair from a single build run -- this is the kernel that
went with the filesystem nobody can find.
nBkProOs.img.fuchs-gibson-20050308 3,403,850 bytes
Linux 2.6.9-rc1-bk18-nb1 (fuchs@gibson) (gcc-Version 3.3.4)
#1 Tue Mar 8 01:15:53 CET 2005
nBkProOs.img_cf.fuchs-gibson-20050325 3,659,808 bytes
Linux 2.6.9-rc1-bk18-nb1 (fuchs@gibson) (gcc-Version 3.3.4)
#1 Fri Mar 25 18:13:14 CET 2005
The CF-boot variant. THIS IS THE ONE THE RELEASED IMAGES USE.
"fuchs@gibson" is a German-locale toolchain -- note "gcc-Version"
and CET -- rebuilding netBook Pro kernels in March 2005, two and a
half years before the images were ever uploaded publicly. Whoever
fuchs is, they had a working PsionLX system. Nobody has ever
identified them. If that name means anything to you, please get in
touch with the HPC:Factor community.
gpe-image-3.5.4.1-netbook-pro.rootfs.jffs2 15,450,112 bytes
gpe-image.jffs2 22,822,912 bytes
The community GPE root filesystem for the netBook Pro. These two
hold byte-identical content with different padding. This is the
filesystem the reconstruction is built on top of -- it is known to
boot on this hardware.
It is NOT PsionLX. The giveaway is that it contains 43 gpe-*
binaries but neither gpe-appmgr nor gpe-buttonbox: whoever built it
could not reach Psion's CVS, so exactly those failed and dropped
out.
gpe-fs-cf.tar.bz2 14,227,676 bytes
A CF-card root filesystem, March 2005. A genuinely different build
from the JFFS2 above, not a repack -- it carries 277 files the JFFS2
does not, including the Industrial theme engine, the Merlin
handwriting recogniser, a barcode scanner (bcscan -- this was a
Teklogix machine), telnet terminal emulation, and Psion's setuid apm
binary.
mk-nBkProOsImg.c
The source of the tool that builds a bootable nBkProOs.img: the
256-byte header format, the platform ID "nBk2", the load address
0x00408000, and the POSIX cksum BooSt validates. If you want to
build your own boot image for this machine, start here.
netbook-booting.txt, NOTES.txt
The community documentation for booting Linux on the netBook Pro.
READ WITH CARE. netbook-booting.txt describes the 64 MB LX
PROTOTYPE, not a standard machine, and its NAND partitioning values
are wrong for 32 MB hardware. Following it as written erases
Windows CE and leaves a partition too small to reinstall it. See
2-WINDOWS-CE-RESTORE/.
nBkPro.img.LX-PROTOTYPE-NAND-SCRIPT-DO-NOT-BOOT
*** The script that causes the damage described above. ***
It is included because it is part of the historical record and
because people should be able to recognise it. It has been RENAMED
so that BooSt will not run it: BooSt automatically executes a file
called exactly "nbkpro.img" from the root of a CF card, and this is
not called that.
DO NOT rename it back and DO NOT put it on a card you intend to
boot, unless you have a 64 MB LX prototype and know precisely what
you are doing.
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upstream-tarballs/
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The upstream source tarballs at the exact versions Psion pinned, so the
applications can be rebuilt with Psion's patches. Most were recovered
from the Internet Archive's copy of gpe.linuxtogo.org and several are no
longer available from their original homes -- AbiWord 2.0.11 and balsa
2.2.2 in particular are gone from the projects' own archives.
abiword-2.0.11.tar.gz Word
gnumeric-1.3.93.tar.bz2 Sheet
balsa-2.2.2.tar.bz2 Email
firefox-1.0-source.tar.bz2 Web
samba-3.0.7-git.tar.gz for My Network
aspell-0.50.5, aspell-0.60.3, aspell-en, aspell6-en
linneighborhood .ipk packages, as Psion built them
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recovered/
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Material found during the search, from sources other than the main drop.
netbook-pro-kernel/ Psion's kernel patches as separate files,
plus their defconfig and netbookpro.c.
The defconfig is how you can tell which
drivers are built in and which are
modules -- PPP and the whole Bluetooth
stack are modules, which matters.
netbook-pro-kernel-2.6.9/ linux-2.6.9-pre1-bk18-nbp1.patch
oe-classic/ The netBook Pro machine configuration as
it survived into OpenEmbedded proper
psion-installer/NBLXLoad.sh PSION'S OWN NAND INSTALLER for PsionLX,
including their "nandwrite
--blockalign=2" invocation
gpe-releases/ Upstream GPE tarballs for the components
Psion's CVS versions of which are lost
netbook-pro-cd/ (see 5-REFERENCE)
FINDING-2.txt, FINDING-3.txt The search record: what was looked for,
where, and what came back
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IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR THE REAL THING
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Everything above is source. The finished PsionLX filesystem is:
soho-image-netbook-pro-20050104074212.rootfs.tar.bz2
and it is not here, because it is not anywhere public. It was uploaded
to RapidShare in November 2007 and to uploaded.to in January 2010, and
both hosts died without either copy being crawled by any archive. That
has been verified rather than assumed, across every queryable web
archive and in around eighteen languages.
It survives privately, and on prototype machines. If you have one,
please image it.
