Another milestone for newRPL was reached. For the first time, our custom firmware was flashed and executed on the 50g hardware. It doesn't do much yet, just take control of the CPU, memory and LCD, display a few pixels and loop indefinitely. While this isn't much of an operating system yet, it means the project is setup for building custom roms (cross-compiler, makefiles, linker scripts, and a tool to extract the binary data from the generated ELF executable). Everything is in place to begin serious development.

The rom was flashed using the standard procedure: putting the file in a SD card, together with a file called 'update.scp' containing the name of the rom file. The calculator accepted the new ROM and flashed it without hesitation. A few milliseconds later the pixels were showing on the screen, just the way it was supposed to be. Resetting the calculator with the +/- keys pressed gave back the option to flash the calculator, proving that the calculator wasn't bricked, and that there were no permanent consequences in using the custom rom (it can be flashed back with a normal ROM anytime).

Next steps are to develop the basic services that newRPL will need: MMU management and basic drivers for keyboard, screen, timers, clock, SD card, and power management.

It's still a long way to go, but we are on the right track and pushing forward.