Un-Bricking Linux Plug Computers

An anonymous reader writes "Accidentally 'bricking' a little Linux plug computer doesn't have to be forever. This is a good howto on repairing a non-booting Linux plug computer. For example if it uses the uBoot environment then it already has some good built-in recovery tools. The article also mentions ESIA, the Sheevaplug installer, openocd, and GuruPlug."

Re:Oblig. pedantry

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

In principle, you are correct. In practice, an increasing number of devices(especially space or cost constrained ones) implement "RS-232" that behaves pretty much exactly the same way as would be expected by anything post-20mA loop, with the exception of voltage. For cost and board space reasons(and because they are not intending to address the "terminal across the electrically noisy building from the minicomputer" use case), they omit any voltage conversion or protection circuitry and simply depend on the attached hardware to do either 5v/0v or 3.3v/0v, or whatever their logic-level happens to be.

Even an increasing number of supposedly-genuine RS-232 devices(especially laptops) don't generate anything near the +-12 swing of the old days. 12v/0v is more likely, or even 5v/0v, though such devices tend to, at least, have better tolerance for over-voltage than the little guys do.

Because it is so close to RS-232(all you need is a dumb level converter, no logic/protocol translation required), I tend to fall into calling it "RS-232" colloquially, even though it technically isn't.