EP9307 Thin Client with DirectVNC

One of my reader had issues running Thin-clients ENTC Encore-1000 based on EP9307 and wanted to update the firmware in his systems. So I’ll explain how to access Linux, Windows XP or any other operating systems using a thin client based on Cirrus Logic EP9307 hardware. This is for reference only, and the performance may not be suitable for your environment/setup. One PC (server) is needed to run VNC (Virtual Network Computing) server for each remote desktop (i.e. each thin client), then the thin client can run the software without hard disk by just using the network connection. This can be used for checking emails, browsing internet, office applications, etc.. All resource heavy tasks are done on the server side whose specifications may be chosen to match the applications requirements. I’ll explain how to use Linux, but Windows XP (or any other operating systems for that matter) could also be […]

Software profiling in embedded systems with O-profile

What is o-profile? See the description below extracted from http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/, o-profile official website OProfile is a system-wide profiler for Linux systems, capable of profiling all running code at low overhead. OProfile is released under the GNU GPL. It consists of a kernel driver and a daemon for collecting sample data, and several post-profiling tools for turning data into information. OProfile leverages the hardware performance counters of the CPU to enable profiling of a wide variety of interesting statistics, which can also be used for basic time-spent profiling. All code is profiled: hardware and software interrupt handlers, kernel modules, the kernel, shared libraries, and applications. OProfile is currently in alpha status; however it has proven stable over a large number of differing configurations; it is being used on machines ranging from laptops to 16-way NUMA-Q boxes. As always, there is no warranty. Why don’t we use gprof? For embedded system , […]

Resources for Cirrus Logic EP93XX – EP9301, EP9302, EP9307, EP9312 & EP9315

A few years ago, we used EP9307 in combination with a MPEG Video Decoder chip (ES6425 – now phased out) for the development of a Karaoke system for the Chinese Market. The advantage with Cirrus Logic (and many American companies) is that documentation and support can very easily be found online including datasheets, software development kit and support forum. This was so good that we really had to get the involvement of the FAE once or twice. That’s a sharp contrast with some other companies where is there a dearth of support and FAE are seldom able to help you resolve issues you may have with their products, especially if you work for a smaller company. Basically to develop for EP9307 and other EP93xx platform most of the software and hardware resources are available at http://arm.cirrus.com/ including: Linux 2.6 Documentation & Linux 2.6 Source for EP93xx Linux 2.4 Documentation & […]

EmbeddedTS embedded systems design