[hamasho]

Funny how those three posts are in hacker news top 5 now. I guess today is the low level appreciation day.

  * The Linux Boot Process: From Power Button to Kernel
  * The Journey Before main()
  * How programs get run: ELF binaries (2015) (lwn.net)

edit: format

[rramadass]

Very much overdue, i would say! Lately HN was turning into just adware for AI news.

Does anybody have pointers to similar low-level details specific to iOS/Android systems? Given that most of us by now have a few of these lying around the house gathering dust, they can make a nice DUT to hack/study/learn a few technical things. I would be quite interested in knowing more about how the RF subsystem works and maybe repurposed as an SDR for example.

[whitehexagon]

Agreed, a very refreshing change.

I cant reccomend anything apple or android based, but the PinePhone has some reasonable low-level documentation on itś SoC (Allwinner A64). And there are a great series of tutorials of how Apache Nuttx was ported to the PP. Here's one of the earlier ones: https://lupyuen.org/articles/uboot

I've been working through them myself but still dont understand the boot process, and a long way from radio chip functionality. But I suspect you'll find radio chips quite locked down, since they are licensed for connection to mobile networks. Often there is just a unknown binary blob running the show.

[rramadass]

Nice, thank you.

My introduction to this subject was through Harald Welte's work on OpenMoko (i still have an old one lying around somewhere) but after the explosion of iPhones/Android phones have not kept apace. Here is Harald's old but still informative presentation Anatomy of smartphone hardware: Dissecting contemporary cellphone hardware - https://media.ccc.de/v/25c3-3008-en-anatomy_of_smartphone_ha...

Also you might find Roger Ye's old book Embedded Programming with Android: Bringing Up an Android System from Scratch pretty useful.

[kuekacang]

Oh hey, a fellow noticing person!

[nightshift1]

yes, and the bar is not at all at the same level.

[adtac]

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