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Re: USB Hub with separate on off switches
Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2012 1:13 am
by Juggler
hawsey wrote:Totally over my head but following with interest.
There's a reason why the Joggler will only boot from certain hubs and ports for Windows, and maybe Linux too. Just have to dig and see what can be found. It would be good if the logging, that is built into the code, could be turned on. Or maybe it is on all the time and a log file is produced somewhere ?
Actually, having been in there a bit, it will be a great exercise to learn about EFI, XP booting and other internals, and get back into C/C++.
I need to find my old copies of MSDN from about 12 years ago that had Visual Studio 6 on them and that would be good to see if I can build it and to put some extra debugging in there, if needed. There actually doesn't seem to be a lot of code, but its low level stuff in places. One thing that really got me wondering what was going on is when I looked at the XOJ.efi file in a hex editor - there is a whole load of machine instruction mnemonics in there ( like xor, jmp and so on) in readable text,
I dread installing Visual Studio though - it gets everywhere. Maybe someone has made a nice portable version... Actually, thinking about it, the code will never really run properly on the build machine, because it is a completely different environment to the Joggler. So, logging is really the main way to find out what is happening, as stepping through the code on the build machine will be fairly pointless.
I'm beginning to wonder why MS C++ 6 has to be used ? Maybe it could be ported to GCC / MINGW. There will probably be a whole lot of broken code... Mmmmhh - think I'll leave that one alone.
Re: USB Hub with separate on off switches
Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 6:30 pm
by Juggler
Sorry Hawsey - I got a bit carried away on this one. It was good to hear you got your Joggler back up, as I did wonder if the multi switch hub had been the cause of your Joggler problem.
I've got a Visual Studio 6 now - but what I want to do is get a separate environment set-up to play with this.
What I'd really like to find out is how the Joggler booting process works. I've looked through the WiKi, and I'm not seeing anything on this there, but it may just be selective blindness. For example on a PC, if there are several devices that can be booted from it is possible to select the one you want from the PC's bios - even when there are several of the same type - ie bootable USB flash drives. When there is more than one bootable device on the Joggler's USB port, it must choose which one to boot from. This may contribute to the problems of booting Windows through USB hubs.
AFAIK there is no native way to get a list of devices that can be booted from on the Joggler. This may not be relevant, but could be useful to know... Closest thing I have seen is rEFIt, but didn't dig into that much.
When I booted Windows on a port it would not fully boot from, it seemed to start the boot process then hang at the same stage each time.
Re: USB Hub with separate on off switches
Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 10:37 pm
by hawsey
Some work was done on a multiboot for the joggler some code called refit was used if I remember correctly.
I would love to give it a try but I have USB sticks not a hdd that it requires. This might help you In your quest for joggler boot info.
My lil switchable hub is working great but still not sure if that is what bricked my joggler or not
It was good fun fixing it anyways and spurred me on to get another joggler at 41 pound total so a result in my book ....
Re: USB Hub with separate on off switches
Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 6:32 pm
by Juggler
hawsey wrote:Some work was done on a multiboot for the joggler some code called refit was used if I remember correctly.
I would love to give it a try but I have USB sticks not a hdd that it requires. This might help you In your quest for joggler boot info.
My lil switchable hub is working great but still not sure if that is what bricked my joggler or not
It was good fun fixing it anyways and spurred me on to get another joggler at 41 pound total so a result in my book ....
Its only when something goes wrong, that you actually try some "risky" things out, and learn a lot in the process...
As much as I'd like to have a go at re-flashing, I don't think I'd want to try it unless it was absolutely necessary.
I still haven't got my switchable hub out, but I was wondering if you've tried using the power brick on it when plugged into the Joggler. I seem to recall you weren't too keen on doing this - and if your just using usb flash drives and/or other low power usb devices, there is probably no need to.
Good price for the Joggler too. Seems the final price on ebay is falling slightly, then again I only get involved on weekends when there are quite a few for sale. One went on Monday for £32 ! When there is only 1 or 2 the final price can be well over £50.
Re: USB Hub with separate on off switches
Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 11:59 pm
by hawsey
Yes after I thought I had bricked my joggler I thought I would try the power supply on the hub and guess what, white screen issue, which I expected: I prob will never need it as I have had a USB keyboard, mouse and Bluetooth dongle together with my USB os plugged in together and all is good.
I was lucky enough to see a buy it now joggler for 35 quid on fleabay so I snaffled it up pretty quick unable to bear the thought of days without my precious .
And then whilst I waited for the new one my trixie joggler was resuscitated thanks to Roobarbs instructions / flashing tool.
Re: USB Hub with separate on off switches
Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 8:19 am
by eric_huang
Juggler wrote:
mem[96] : 0009E780, base=FEE00000, size=00100000, type=11
mem[97] : 0009E794, base=FF000000, size=01000000, type=11
BiosMap : 0x0009E000, 0x0009E7A8
The code is very low level in places. I guess in essence it is providing a layer between what windows expects to be there and the USB hardware, image and EFI stuff that is there. I cant easily see anything related to USB or hubs, but I'm not sure what I'm looking for, haven't got a build environment, etc. But sometimes these are luxuries and you just have to work with whatever you can get.
boot "refit" shell, then use 'map' command to list all blk devices. (refit:
http://www.mporting.com/2011/05/refit/)
add your boot devices to xom.c (line 565):
Code: Select all
if (StrEndsWith(devPathStr, L"Pci(1D|7)/Usb(6, 0)")
|| StrEndsWith(devPathStr, L"Pci(1D|7)/Usb(5, 0)")
|| StrEndsWith(devPathStr, L"Pci(1D|7)/Usb(4, 0)")
|| StrEndsWith(devPathStr, L"Pci(1D|7)/Usb(3, 0)")
|| StrEndsWith(devPathStr, L"Pci(1D|7)/Usb(2, 0)")
|| StrEndsWith(devPathStr, L"Pci(1D|7)/Usb(1, 0)")
|| StrEndsWith(devPathStr, L"Pci(1D|7)/Usb(0, 0)") )
{
Re: USB Hub with separate on off switches
Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 8:26 am
by danfoshizzle
Hello eric, thanks for all the work you have done with the joggler,
Hawsey, sorry for thread jacking, but the dude is a legend lol
Re: USB Hub with separate on off switches
Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2012 9:56 pm
by hawsey
No problem Dan
I had a look at the mporting link above and it had totally passed me by ,
is this the same REFIT that has been used for multiboot on another thread ?
I have a feeling this is all beyond me but it would be amazing if i could just leave all my os sticks plugged in to this new switchable hub and then refit would see them ;
i realise a keyboard would also have to be plugged in at the same time.
Is this possible ?/ is this what we are talking about above ?
Re: USB Hub with separate on off switches
Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2012 11:27 am
by bluesign2k
hawsey wrote:No problem Dan
I had a look at the mporting link above and it had totally passed me by ,
is this the same REFIT that has been used for multiboot on another thread ?
I have a feeling this is all beyond me but it would be amazing if i could just leave all my os sticks plugged in to this new switchable hub and then refit would see them ;
i realise a keyboard would also have to be plugged in at the same time.
Is this possible ?/ is this what we are talking about above ?
Sorry for continuing to drag this offtopic but since there seems to be interest in rEFIt here...
I managed to get rEFIt installed on my Joggler a month or two ago using info from
here,
here and
here. It's really not that difficult. It took me a while to get it going but that was primarily because I wasn't initially seeing the screens I was being told to expect. This turned out to be because my Joggler is one of those that shows a corrupted screen on boot until it's been on for a little while and warmed up. The rEFIt menu screen also won't show on mine until it's been on a while, behind the scenes it's fully functioning though.
My experience with it is pretty positive, it seems to work with both USB sticks and hard drives, with or without USB hubs. My biggest gripe with it though (and it's a big one) is that the instructions I read suggested that if there was no other bootable device or keyboard plugged in that it would just boot the standard O2 OS (which I do occasionally use), however, I have found this not to be the case. If I want to boot the O2 OS then I've found that I *must* have a keyboard plugged in on powerup otherwise I get no "boot in 5... 4... 3... etc" - if I plug it in after power up then it won't autoboot but I can press enter and it'll continue. If however I have my HD plugged in with no keyboard then it *will* auto boot into xubuntu.
Re: USB Hub with separate on off switches
Posted: Fri May 04, 2012 12:14 pm
by lamb.chop