billyargh/billys_chips.md

## billys_chips.md

      
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              billys_chips.md
            
          
    Resurrecting NTC C.H.I.P. computers

Introduction

I bought four of the Next Thing Co. (defunct since 2018) C.H.I.P. (CHIP hereafter) computers shortly after their successful
Kickstarter campaign of 2015.  The CHIP computer is an interesting beast.  It was positioned as a competitor the
orginal Raspberry Pi and only cost US$8.00 before shipping.  The Raspberry Pi cost US$25 at the time.  The CHIP had some
features that the Pi did not at the time including built-in wi-fi and battery charging.  It was also considerably smaller
the original Pi.
The CHIP was shipped with Debian 8 (Jessie) and was a capable Linux computer.  I had big plans for all of them, but the
using one of them as an ad-blocking Pi-Hole was as far as I got.  It worked well for that.
The other have been sitting idle for a few years and I thought it would be fun to put them back to use.  I've started thinking
about doing more IoT stuff, and these little guys are going to help me do it.
One of the four CHIPs is in a PocketCHIP shell/chassis/case which makes it a pretty cool handheld computer
if you can get used to its
keyboard.  I think that this will be nice for remote control and monitoring of IoT gadgets.
I have an HDMI "dip" that
will allow me to connect one of them to a monitor as a desktop computer.
The other two will be put to
some sort of
IoT "stuff".
Because it's been so long since I used them, I decided to flash them to their initial states and start again.
The goal
for the PocketCHIP is to bring it up to the latest version of Jessie, because I didn't want to break the Pocket Home
interface, the goal for the HDMI CHIP is the same because I don't want to break the desktop (at least for now),
and the goal
for the other to machines is to make them headless servers running Debian 11 (bullseye).  I will also be adding software that
I frequently use to all of them.
Please note that the procedures documented here are time consuming, and that it is a PITA
to start again from the flashing step.
Flashing

Unlike the Raspberry Pi which uses an SD Card to carry its operating system, the CHIP carries its operating system
on onboard NAND memory, which requires the OS to be flashed.  Of course nothing is available officially from NTC, but
fortunately JF Possiblities created mirrors of the the information (including
flashable system images) from NTC's
long dead web site.  Thank you to the person/people at JF Possibilities for doing this.
There are a number of web pages that try to explain how to flash the CHIP with a fresh system.  I believe I tried
all of the options and failed, until I installed Ubuntu 18.04 on an old laptop.  Once I did this, the script on
Thore Krug's github worked flawlessly (almost). I needed to install the
pocketCHIP image to one of the CHIPs, the desktop image to another, and the headless server image to the two
remaining CHIPs. I say "flawlessly (almost)" because I discovered one needs patience and perserverance to succeed.
Sometimes flashing would fail, and I would diconnect the CHIP from USB, make sure that the connection between FEL and
GND was correct, and try again.  For one of the CHIPs, it took six attempts to

Before you do any of the below, make sure that the computer you are flashing
from is running Ubuntu 18.04 natively.
Lorenz74 says in a comment below that they were able
to do this on Ubuntu 22.10 by 'removing from the CHIP-tools scripts files the two strings “-i 0x1f3a” “-u”' in 'the files chip-fel-flash.sh, chip-flash, common.sh.' I haven't tried this.

To save the readers a click, the instructions from Thore Krug are duplicated here.

Remove the CHIP from its case (in case you have a PocketCHIP).
Connect the FEL and a GROUND pin of the CHIP (for example, with a paperclip).
Connect the CHIP's micro USB port to a USB port of your Linux machine.
In the Linux machine:

run  git clone https://github.com/thore-krug/Flash-CHIP.git to clone this repository.
cd into the location where you stored this repository.
run sudo chmod +x Flash.sh
run ./Flash.sh
Select the version you want to install.
Wait until the installation finishes.
Enjoy!


At the end of all of this, the CHIP is a bootable Debian 8 (jessie) machine.  The next step is to update to Debian
jessie and set up
the CHIPs as ssh servers.
Update to latest release of Debian 8 (jessie)

The instructions below are for headless server and desktop CHIPs. See below for PocketCHIP.

Remove the FEL-GND jumper and unplug the CHIP to shut it down.  Reconnect the CHIP to the
Ubuntu 18.04 machine (a real one, not virtual!) through USB.

Your CHIP should reboot, and should be ready after a minute or two.

If the LEDs are not flashing, the CHIP is not yet ready for the next step.

If they are flashing, wait another minute :).
It takes a fairly long time for the CHIP to boot.
Open a terminal on the Ubuntu machine and type screen /dev/ttyACM0 at the prompt.  This
creates a serial connection between the terminal and CHIP.
If you see a login prompt, great.  Login with user chip and password chip.  Remember to change the
password later.  If you don't get a password prompt right away, try pressing some keys a few times.  I suspect there
are keys that should be pressed.  I tried Ctl-A, Ctl-B, return,  I didn't notice which of them worked :)
If this fails, unplug the CHIP, plug it back in, and retry.
Connect the CHIP to wi-fi.  I did this using sudo nmtui and selecting the appropriate access point using
the correct password.  After you've connected to wi-fi and exited nmtui, you can sudo nmtui again to change the
hostname of your CHIP from chip, if you want.  It's a really good idea to do this if you're working with
multiple CHIPs.  Exit nmtui.
Note the IP address for your CHIP with ip addr.  We will use this to log in the to CHIP with ssh later.
Mine was 10.0.0.128.  Yours will probably be different and will likely start with 192.168.
Update your apt sources with sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.
It should like this after your edits.

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian/ jessie 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

deb http://chip.jfpossibilities.com/chip/debian/repo jessie main
deb http://chip.jfpossibilities.com/chip/debian/pocketchip jessie main

Note that the references to opensource.nextthing.co have been replaced by chip.jfpossibilities.com.  Thanks
again to JF Possibilities.


Update your sources with sudo apt update.  This will take a while, and may seem to be stuck.  Be patient.


Install the openssh server and keyrings with


sudo apt install openssh-server debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring

This will allow us to connect to the
CHIP with ssh which I prefer to screen.

I prefer emacs to nano, so I also installed emacs at this stage using this command instead.
sudo apt install openssh-server debian-keyring debian-archive-keyring emacs-nox

This takes some time.


Shutdown the CHIP with sudo shutdown now, unplug it from USB, plug it back in, and wait patiently for in to
reboot.


Connect to CHIP from an Ubuntu terminal with ssh chip@10.0.0.128, using your own CHIP's IP address, of course.
Login with user chip and password chip.


Update CHIP to the latest version of Debian 8 (jessie) with sudo apt upgrade.  Note that we did
sudo apt update in a previous step.
It is possible that you do not need to do this step if you're upgrading to Debian 9 (stretch)
or later.


Something weird seems to happen to wi-fi with the upgrade.  If you edit /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf to the following, you should be OK
when you reboot the CHIP.


[main]
plugins=ifupdown,keyfile

[connection]
wifi.mac-address-randomization=1

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

[ifupdown]
managed=false

[keyfile]
unmanaged-devices=interface-name:wlan1


Wait a long time, for sudo shutdown now, unplug and replug CHIP, wait for it to boot, and
ssh chip@10.0.0.128 again.  You now have a CHIP running the latest Debian 8 (jessie).  I stopped at this
point for my pocketCHIP and HDMI CHIP.  I probably with never update the pocketCHIP to a newer version of Debian.
I may update the HDMI CHIP at some later time.

For PocketCHIP, do step 1 and then put the CHIP back into
its shell/chassis/case, and go to the terminal app.  Skip step 2. Steps 3
through 9 are done on the PocketCHIP itself, not
through screen /dev/ttyACM0.  When I tried using screen for the PocketCHIP, it would disconnect
before I could accomplish anything useful.
Perhaps screen will work for you.  I hope so, because typing on the PocketCHIP is a little awkward.
Updating to Debian 9 (stretch), 10 (buster), and 11 (bullseye)

I don't plan to use my headless CHIPs with any sort of GUI, so I decided to update them to the current
version of Debian.  I did this by updating jessie to stretch, then from stretch to buster, and then from buster
to bullseye.  From here I assume that you can ssh into your CHIP.
From jessie to stretch


Edit /etc/apt.sources.list to look like the following.

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ stretch/updates main contrib non-free

Note that all occurences of jessie were replaced with stretch and the lines referencing chip.jfpossilities.com
were deleted.


Do a full upgrade with sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade.  I responded 'yes' to prompts asking if I wanted to
restart services, and 'no' to prompts asking if I wanted to replace configuration files.


Shutdown and reboot.


From stretch to buster

Repeat the above  replacing stretch with buster.
From buster to bullseye

Repeat the above steps by replacing buster with bullseye.
PocketCHIP customization

I am now running a PocketCHIP with the most current version of Debian 8 (jessie).  That's really outdated, but will
work for me.  I found a blog post from Steve McGrath
describing how he set up his PocketCHIP in 2016.  There are some very good ideas there:

disabling the SSH server from starting automatically is better for security than leaving it on all the time
aliases are very helpful if you use a small keyboard like that on the pocketCHIP
dwm seems to be a suitable web browser for the pocketCHIP.  !!!TODO!!! write some more about how to get this running.
a reminder that Pocket Home settings can be set by editing /usr/share/pocket-home/config.json

The best reason to use PocketCHIP is the fantastic gaming platform PICO-8.  Version 0.2.5e of this software
can be downloaded from the developer, Lexaloffle.  You will need
to edit the Pocket Home settings to access this from the home screen.
Some of the CLI based games are a lot of fun.  You can install the ones I did with
sudo apt install bsdgames nethack-console pacman4console nsnake moon-buggy ninvaders greed

I particularly enjoy adventure, nethack, and greed. Have fun.
Credits

I borrowed heavily from luzhuomi when
doing this.  His instructions seem to indicate a successful upgrade of the PocketCHIP to Debian 10 (buster),
but when I tried it, I lost the Pocket Home interface.  Debian 11 seems to work fine on the PocketCHIP for me
when I followed the headless server instructions, but the interface was just a dumb terminal.  You might have better
luck.