Welcome to the TahomaSoft Blog!
Here we hope to document some adventures and misadventures in computer and microelectronic hardware and software, hopefully helping others with their similar work.
About
Using hugo to build this site.
Buildroot, Linkstar, and Alpine
Progress has also been made to get the Hinlink/Linkstar H68K to compile and run under other distributions. Notably: We’ve been able to formulate a build recipe for the Linkstar under buildroot; The resulting kernel and supporting files will run as-is on the Linkstar, but with limited functionality, as buildroot is a bare-bones “distro” only; Those bones though can be combined with some flesh from Alpine Linux to make a “frankenDistro”; namely, the boot code, kernel, and supporting files can be combined, carefully, with Alpine Linux to have a more fully-featured system.
Misadventures in Microprocessor Cloning
I recently purchased an electronics kit to build a component tester (capacitors, resistors, diodes, transistors and inductors). While putting it together, I experienced issues installing the ATMEGA 328p chip into its socket, breaking off one of the 28 leads. Half-luckily, that broken lead (pin 28) didn’t seem to impact the main function of the board, although it may be responsible in part for giving bogus low-battery warnings. I bought the board on clearance sale; it has been discontinued by the manufacturer for some time. And the manufacturer’s support site wasn’t great; I had to contact them to remove an IP-Geo block to North America so I could download the assembly and usage manuals. So figuring getting a replacement part was unlikely, and with the source code not available, I came up with the bright idea to try cloning the programming to a new 328p; they are still reasonably easy to get at about $2.50 each.
Update on OpenWRT for Hinlink/Linkstar
Jan 2026 Update # Recently, the mainline Linux kernel (v6.18) has included the needed support for the HinLink/LinkStar H66 and H68 boards. As downstream sites start integrating this new kernel into their projects and distributions, these small travel routers should gain more support. Alpine Linux recently included v6.18 in most of their products (not including Raspberry Pi currently). Trying out the Alpine distribution for the LinkStar H68K is on my to-do list; higher up though is getting it included into the mainline OpenWRT distribution.
OpenWRT Development
Working on supporting the LinkStar H68K-1432v1 travel router in OpenWRT and Linux.