Well, I did it! It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would. As a matter of fact, here is the Kernel for anyone that would like to load any operating system you want on the ASIAIR Plus with working USB ports. Basically, you need the changes I made to the deconfig https://github.com/open-astro/linux/commit/a40a0d1e5e233d55344f9c97da0ce4a391906c27 and also the renesas_usb_fw.mem file https://github.com/open-astro/linux/commit/da5c9f1f2cb1e805b9236a0af5b8cbcf1459cb1e. The last thing you need to do is add the following line into the config.txt on the /boot partition
otg_mode=1So how did I figure this all out? Well simply really I backed up the full ASAIR Plus through my Raspberry Pi Compute Module
And I ran the following commands once it was connected with rpiboot and then ripped the ZWO image
sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=/some/location/asiairplus.img status=progressOnce it was ripped I used the Raspberry Pi Imager to reload the image onto my dev Raspberry Pi Compute 4 board
https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/
Once that was done I edited the /etc/passwd file like I did for the ASIAIR Pro and removed the password for root and then booted the operating system with the HDMI cable and keyboard. I then used the following commands so I could rip the deconfig from ZWO’s Kernel
sudo modprobe configsThat gnarly little command rips the kernel config and creates a file in /proc/config.gz. Once it is created you need to copy it off so I copied it to the /boot partition so I could poke the bear
sudo cp /proc/config.gz /bootThe next thing I did was forked the stock Rasbain Kernel to my Github and downloaded it to my local system and used Meld to compare the stock kernel config and the ZWO Kernel Config and found the changes that I needed to make
https://github.com/open-astro/linux/commit/a40a0d1e5e233d55344f9c97da0ce4a391906c27
Once I made them I installed the Kernel onto my Open Astro build with the changes to the config.txt
otg_mode=1Once I booted up I then used ssh to log into the Open Astro system and then ran the following command to list all the USB devices
lsusbSadly all the ZWO devices (EAF, EFW, ASI2600, ASI290) were not listed so I ran the following command to check the driver initialization on boot with the kernel
dmesgBoom!! There was an error loading /lib/firmware/renesas_usb_fw.mem so I copied that file over from the ASIAIR Plus /rootd partition and like magic, all the USB ports started working and the rest is history. I have since added Astroberry Server and INDIGO Sky images for the ASAIR Plus in the download section of Open Astro https://www.openastro.net/downloads/ which are using the new Kernel I set up.
Also if you are interested here is a nice little YouTube video on how to flash the images on the ASIAIR Plus using the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 I/O board.
Till next time…