CHIP Stuff

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This page is a changing document. I’ll probably add more notes to it in the
future.

These are just some notes that I’ve put together in the past about flashing and
upgrading the CHIP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP_(computer)) (and Pocket
CHIP) computer.

This device doesn’t have any first party support any more, and it’s not as
powerful as Raspberry Pi, but it’s quite fun and the Pocket CHIP form-factor is
great. If you can get hold of one, you should!

Erasing and re-flashing the CHIP

You can erase and factory flash a CHIP from your computer using this repo
(https://github.com/Thore-Krug/Flash-CHIP). It will completely erase the CHIP,
so make sure you have anything important backed up.

First you need to jumper the CHIP in FEL mode. You can do this by connecting the
FEL pin to any GND pin:

[IMAGE: https://blog.omgmog.net/images/felmode.jpg]

Next you can clone the repo and run the Flash.sh:

git clone https://github.com/Thore-Krug/Flash-CHIP.git
cd Flash-CHIP
sudo chmod +x Flash.sh
./Flash.sh

Making APT work with a mirror of the NTC APT repository

This will replace the now defunct nextthing.co APT repositories with a mirror
provided by chip.jfpossibilities.com

1. Open /etc/apt/sources.list in your editor
 sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
2. replace all instances of opensource.nextthing.co with
chip.jfpossibilities.com
3. remove jessie-updates repositories
4. change jessie-backports to:
 deb http://deb.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main contrib non-free
 deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main contrib non-free
5. Disable apt valid check:
echo 'Acquire::Check-Valid-Until "0";' | sudo tee
/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10-no-check-valid
6. In /etc/apt/preferences replace opensource.nextthing.co with
chip.jfpossibilities.com
7. Lastly, make sure everything is up to date
 sudo apt update
 sudo apt upgrade

Making APT work with a mainline Debian APT repository

This will replace all of the APT repositories with mainline Debian mirrors. This
is best done on a fresh install.

1. Open /etc/apt/sources.list in your editor
 sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Replace all lines of sources.list with the following
(you can use a more local mirror rather than the ftp.uk.debian.org if you prefer):
 deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
 deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free

 deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib non-free
 deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib non-free

 deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free
 deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free
3. Make sure everything is up to date and install apt-transport-https as it will
likely be missing
 sudo apt update
 sudo apt upgrade
 sudo apt install apt-transport-https
4. Generate missing locales:
 sudo apt install locales
 sudo locale-gen en_US en_US.UTF-8
 sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
 sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

Don’t bother trying to dist-upgrade to a newer Debian version as it tends to
break stuff. 🤷

Installing a newer (> 3.7) version of Cmake on the CHIP

1. Remove any version of cmake installed from apt
 sudo apt remove --purge --auto-remove cmake
2. Download the “Unix/Linux Source” tar.gz from https://cmake.org/download/
(I’ve used the 3.15.0-rc1 — so long as it’s newer than 3.7 you should be fine)
3. Decompress the tar.gz somewhere and cd to it.
4. Start the initial bootstrap
 ./bootstrap
5. Set up a swapfile so that we can run make with our limited resources on the
CHIP
 sudo su -
 dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/swapfile bs=1024 count=1048576 # 1gb swap file
 mkswap /tmp/swapfile
 chmod 600 /tmp/swapfile
 losetup /dev/loop0 /tmp/swapfile # create a loopback so we can use it
 swapon /dev/loop0

 #double check that it is mounted
 cat /proc/swaps
6. Start the build
 make -j2 # j4 caused the CHIP to hang
 # will take a couple of hours...
 sudo make install
7. After that, check that the new version of cmake is installed and working
 cmake --version

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Published February 03, 2021

Generated from the original post:
https://blog.omgmog.net/post/chip-stuff/


Max Glenister is an interface designer and senior full-stack developer from
Oxfordshire. He writes mostly about front-end development and technology.

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