and the history ends...
well, the hell is over. I got out there a bit earlier than expected, but I had a good reason for that. it's nice to hear that all that work and pain at least resulted in a working product and some complements on our work. another end, another new and fresh beginning... probably with lots of pressure and massive learning, just like I seem to like it :)
pomus
it wasn't time for buying a new notebook, but I did it: got the last 12'' powerpc powered notebook from apple. just in time, I can't find another one in any of the local stores and information page also doesn't exists anymore. the hardware is great, comes with everything I would expect from a notebook, nice keyboard, blah blah. ah, and it comes with mac os X. don't hold your breath if you think this will become one of those "OMG ponnies! macos X rox, linux sux LOL !!!11" kind of posts. the system is fine, lots of eye candies and somewhat perfect for home users. to me it's being useful for launching games, as there's no binary driver from nvidia for powerpc linux. btw, you get extra zealot points when you get one of these machines to run linux. things you never noticed being binary and not available to other architectures really pisses you off. some of those binary "blobs" (yeah, finally the openbsd cds and t-shirts arrived. never took so long to help keeping a project which I don't care alive) may be replaced by open source projects. in a more general view, the hardware is very well supported under linux and everything else than modem (which I didn't tested and probably won't) and nvidia related, just works. on nvidia support, it lacks 3D support (as expected) and tv/video output. on tv support, I managed to port nvtv to powerpc linux (it uses ioperm(), not supported on powerpc linux and maybe in other archs too) but it fails to identify and control tv out chip. on video out, it's possible to get external video but you will be unable to use notebook's tft. I guess nvidia is a lost case, as they aren't releasing documentation even for ethernet cards (martian technology) and IDE controllers (alpha-centauri technology).
bricks
so I did it again, but now I did it well: I bricked my wrt54gs in a way that JTAG cable is the only hope left. probably I managed to erase entire flash, so, as soon I get the cable built, I'll know if it's still possible to "unbrick" it. thanks to this, I finally built its serial port circuit.