So I picked up four of the transcend sd wifi thingamabobs at the local electronics store, hoping to make something fun out of them.
loaded dmitry's firmware on one, that failed spectacularly.
built an image, followed the instructions from the kcard_buildroot github repo, put the image.. yeah the whole flashing procedure.
similar effect, tried the same on the other two, all turn very hot but, no wifi ap pops up.

I've also tried the autorun.sh trick to get the logs onto the sd, no dice.

so i'm at a loss, and not far from hooking up a serial cable to check this out.

has anyone else had these issues stemming from / coming from 1.8 or rather 1.9?

turns out transcend redesigned the boards and added a gazillion leads.
Front

Back

ahem.
firmware is up to 2.3

relevant links:

http://www.transcend-info.com/files/software/ini.xml
http://www.transcend-info.com/Firmware/ … image3.bin
http://www.transcend-info.com/Firmware/ … tramfs3.gz
http://www.transcend-info.com/Firmware/ … _jffs2.bin
http://www.transcend-info.com/Firmware/ … rogram.bin

and relevant for my version of the board:
http://www.transcend-info.com/Firmware/ … image3.bin
http://www.transcend-info.com/Firmware/ … tramfs3.gz
http://www.transcend-info.com/Firmware/ … _jffs2.bin
http://www.transcend-info.com/Firmware/ … rogram.bin

I'm using Dmitry's kernel on a PQI, but I'm a bit bothered by the fact that it reports 50 BogoMIPS instead of >400 like with the old kernel, and the whole thing does feel quite slow (I'm trying to use Debian on it).
I've tried building my own kernel with CONFIG_PLL_CPU_HCLK_192_192_96 set instead of CONFIG_PLL_CPU_HCLK_192_96_96 (which is what Dmitry's config file comes with), since I got hints from this threads that the latter corresponded to a slower clock speed... but no change.
So, do you know how to bring the card to the full 196MHz? Can I use CPUFreq (on 2.6.32)?
Also, am I confused or Dmitry's provided kernel config doesn't actually enable all the features (swap, sysfs...) that his binary build enables? Do we have a "best" config lying around?

(Last edited by LjLies on 2 Nov 2015, 19:24)

I am a big fan of the PQI Air Card, and I'm so pleased that I can modify the firmware.

This is my setup:

I have an iPod. I replaced the hard drive with a CF to iPod adaptor. I then have an SD to CF adaptor. Inside there, I have the PQI Air Card. I then have an SD female to microSD male ribbon cable. Then I have a Trio Card (microSD to USB and SD), and finally a microSD card.

- The PQI Air Card will not boot with the iPod-formatted memory card (Apple's bootloader partition confuses it, even though the main partition is FAT32). However, the Air Card passes through the SD, and the iPod boots just fine.
- Swapping in an SD card from a camera means that the iPod will not boot to music, only Disk Mode. But the PQI Air Card does boot, and it draws power from the iPod battery.

This lets me have an SD to WiFi media server in my pocket, and it is also an iPod.

Other iPod mods (Rockbox) work just fine.

Yesterday I tested the PQI Air Card with a SanDisk 512GB SDXC card, through the SD to microSD ribbon cable. I'm pleased to say that it works great!

Now I just wish that the firmware could be updated to support other filesystem formats and partitioning schemes (FAT16, HFS, iPod).

I also wrote a CGI-based chat app for the PQI Air Card that I can use to exchange text messages and share photos. But I wish the PQI Card supported PHP, because then I could use a lot of other web apps of mine.

Please let me know what you think about my setup! And if you have ideas about FAT16, HFS, or PHP, then please reply and point me in the right direction.

Peter

Peter, it's relatively easy to update the firmware to support more filesystems (not sure about the iPod one, though).
You need to build a kernel with support for the filesystems you want enabled, using sources that you can find - for example - on Transcend's website (not sure if PQI also offers them, per license they should!), and then you can just flash the normal PQI firmware after replacing its Image3 file with the copy you built.

Good to see others are still working on this. I have been working on my own project, which is to use the transcend in a psion 5mx. The aim is to use it as (1) storage for the psion (in a CF->SD adapter) (2) A network connection for the psion, using ppp over serial (the psion only has serial, IR and CF) and (3) a built in 300MHz arm system.

So far I have got a custom kernel (2.6.32.28) with the serial console disabled, and ppp modules built. I discovered that the binaries from the AT91 packages for openwrt work fine in the factory initrd. You can get those here: https://downloads.openwrt.org/attitude_ … /packages/

I've used the initrd from Dmitry Grinberg and added pppd (and libgcc which is needed to use the openwrt packages). I've configured it to start pppd at boot and use inetd to to start telnetd (bound to the ppp interface so you can't telnet in over wifi). So now the Psion can connect via ppp and telnet into the card - my psion has wifi!

I have two issues at the moment:

(1) The serial port on the transcend refuses to work at anything other than 38400. This is really slow for ppp (the psion can go up to 230400). I suspect a kernel bug. uboot seems to configure the serial port and nothing that happens later will change it (even setting console=ttyS0 115200n8 line
as the default console setting has no effect, you still get 38400 which is why I think there is a bug). I am thinking of looking at the uboot source and seeing if I can change it there.

(2) Unfortunately the psion doesn't provide enough power for the card. I am planning to put a 3.3V boost regulator in the psion with a FET that turns it on only when needed, which should fix this issue.

I also still haven't tested actual routing using the card.

If anyone wants any of my files, let me know and I'll put them up somewhere.

static-void: Yes, please upload your files to github or somewhere!

Great idea about using ppp-serial. I was thinking about something similar to add WiFi to the Raspberry Pi, but I hadn't thought through the details (I was just going to use telnet to the PQI Air Card and then again to the RPi to control it, but without real network access).

It's a pity that the Psion doesn't provide enough power. My old iPod does, when booted in Disk Mode. Check that it's not a formatting issue (an iPod-formatted card has multiple partitions, and the PQI Air Card demands a single FAT32 card to boot).

I'm glad that you're still working on this too! I hope that this kind of device (based on the KeyAsic processor) could be the future of mobile computing, led by DIY hackers instead of large companies.

I'm actually a bit surprised that people have said the card doesn't like partitioning... I've had mine partitioned and it doesn't seem to mind at all. I think as long as the first partition is FAT32 it should be ok.

The psion actually sees the SD card fine (as long as it is partitioned as 4 2GB partitions, as it doesn't like partitions over 2GB), but the keyasic doesn't start up. Or rather it begins to start, I see uboot start on the serial line and then it trails off into garbage, then nothing. So I'm fairly sure it's a power issue.

I've ordered a 3.3V boost converter and a FET, so I'll disconnect the traces that normally power the CF in the psion and connect them to the FET to turn on the 3.3V regulator using power from the batteries, and connect the output of the regulator to the CF socket power pins.

I'll upload my stuff somewhere (really it's just a kernel image and initrd) soon.

Your wireless ipod project also sounds cool

The only issue with using the wifisd for wireless on the raspberry pi is that you're limited to the speed of a serial port, which is not generally particularly great. On the psion I have no real choice, as the only thing it's got which is faster is the compact flash, and I need that to store data (also EPOC, the psion OS, doesn't support compact flash network cards). I'd also suggest partitioning and booting the rpi off of the second partition if possible, to avoid contention with the ka2000.

I think the misconception is that multiple partitions don't mount by default, and non-FAT32 file systems give trouble.

"If the first partition is FAT32" - fine, but that's not appropriate for my use cases.

I want to support 128MB SD cards, which only support FAT16 formatting. Yes it's a small card, it's intended to hold a mixtape for a special girl. The PQI Air Card is needed to copy the files to her iPhone (if she used a different phone, no problem).

I also want to back up my laptop to an HFS+ formatted card using Time Machine, and automatically loop-mount it. As far as I know, there aren't HFS drivers for the PQI Air Card. So I have to use Carbon Copy Cloner instead of Time Machine.

The iPod has a custom partition with the boatloader that comes before the main FAT32 storage. So the card doesn't boot.

The Raspberry Pi also wants to boot of the first partition.

It sounds like you've got serial lines soldered onto your card already: would you mind checking where the problem happens with cards formatted as described above? I hope there's something we can do with uboot to fix it.

I don't suppose it would be feasible to find a way to transfer information back and forth between the Psion/iPad/whatever and the KA2000 card by means of files on the SD? That would allow a much faster speed than the serial port, if there was some way of notifying each party of new incoming data...

I guess you could mod the ka2000 to boot from the second partition... this might solve a lot of these problems.

Yeah, I will give this a try. I think changing uboot and/or a custom kernel should probably be able to fix it.

I have thought about this a few times... in an ideal world you could set up a pipe between the two OSs. However I don't think this is actually possible without major software changes, and we don't know how the SD switch works. The problem is that the software on both devices assumes it is the only thing with access to the disk. Syncing is the issue, in the stock linux you run a program to refresh the sd card, and it takes a while. So although this might kind of work, it would be slower than a serial port I think, unless you wanted to transfer a lot of data without any syncing needed (like a big file) and then fetch it on the other end.

Also, I don't know what speed the serial port on the keyasic can manage, it might be faster than 230400bps though, so for more modern devices you might be able to do faster connections.

Hi,

Anyone know where RX/TX/GND pins are located on this new hw revision?

Thank you!

TP11=VDD
TP12=GND
TP2=TX
TP3=RX

So is there any tested WifiSD card which supports SPI mode and has linux inside (Eye-fi, Flashair, ...)?

Unfortunately new Transcend is not working with SPI devices.

Flashair looks nice (GPIO ports) but no confirmation on SPI mode (accessing internal SD memory, not driving attached peripherals like LCD).

Thanks!

Does anyone have any information about new transcend design with fw v2.3? I cannot get access to the root directory by /../.. trick. Somebody has succees with this issue? It could be possible?

Thanks for the support

Hi, tested latest Transcend FW, can be rooted (http://haxit.blogspot.cz/search/label/sd):

(Update) Thanks for the hacker-friendly backdoor

One of the scripts (rcS.p rcS) which is run on startup automatically executes autorun_fu.sh autorun.sh if it is placed in the root of the SD card. This will ease development and further hacking. Thanks, Transcend!

I have the following script (named autorun.sh), along with busybox-armv5l, in the root of my SD card, so I can simply telnet into the system:

cp /mnt/sd/busybox-armv5l /sbin/busybox
chmod a+x /sbin/busybox
/sbin/busybox telnetd -l /bin/bash &

So now you can just login right after the card is powered up and has finished booting:

Have fun hacking! ;-)

Just for the record, they moved the GPL bundle over here:

http://www.transcend-info.com/Software/872/

Not much seems to have changed from the original blob though :-/

This thread is quite long and a lot of old info. Has anyone used one of these cards recently and gotten rsync to work running from the card? For me it seems the most useful way to get one of these cards to work is configure it to connect to my Wifi network, and once the connection works, to run rsync to synchronize the files from the card to a remote machine.