Community Updates

From Openmoko

Revision as of 23:49, 26 November 2007 by BernhardKaindl (Talk | contribs)

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

Even though FIC strives to keep the community informed of the development progress, FIC does not provide delivery dates. Instead, FIC tries to report on the project status here and on the openmoko-community mailing list.

The status is usually updated at least twice a month, usually by Michael Shiloh. Updates are also mailed to the community mailing list (see below for previous updates), and major updates are also sent to the announce list.

You are invited to add questions or topics you think should be included in the Community Updates.

The latest Community Update is the November 27, 2007 Community Update.

Discussion of current issues

GTA02 hardware design and test

The information below has been collected from various sources, feel free to add questions and comments here.

While writing a device driver for the new battery which provides an accurate counter of the charge state of the GTA02, the driver developer discovered that the device driver does not get a reading of the charge state due to a very long response time with only one I/O signal when trying to read the charge state. To be able to read the battery status properly, it has been written that it will be necessary to re-design that part of the GTA02 for hardware version GTA02A5 to use two I/O signals to reduce the response time (one for transmitting commands, one for receiving data?). Bug 957 may have more information.

Comment: Previously it was not known that there would be a GTA02A5 hardware design, so any estimates on when GTA02 will be released at the earliest seem to be outdated thereby and as there seem to be at least one month between new hardware designs, this seems to add at least one month of delay. In case previous estimates of delivery of GTA02 by early January would have been correct, this would now mean that GTA02 ships in February the earliest, but do not take this for granted, FIC does not give any dates.

gllin GPS driver for GTA01

We have received permission to distribute this driver in binary-only form, but the legal teams of Global Locate and OpenMoko have not been able to agree on a method for doing so.

November 13, 2007: We have heard that Global Locate is willing to let us release the binary without requiring any further legal steps, but we have not been able to confirm this with anyone of authority.

Note that the binary format of the driver will be OABI, which is different from what we now use (EABI). There are various work-arounds (chroot, wrapper).

850 MHz band not supported in USA+Canada (e.g. comment 24 on bug #256)

The GSM chip set is capable of quad band operation but the circuit implemented only supports 3 bands. So, 850Mhz is not supported on the GTA01 board. Instead we support 900/1800/1900MHz.

Anyone interested in more details is welcome to email me.

Delivery of a GSM firmware update for the 3G SIM bug (#666)

Background:

A bug in the GSM firmware prevents some USA 3G SIM cards from working properly. The bug has been fixed, but since the GSM module is under extremely tight legal protection, it is not clear whether or how we can allow customers to perform this upgrade themselves.

November 13, 2007:

We have heard that TI has figured out a way to let you, our customers, upgrade the firmware, but we have not been able to get hold of the person at TI who can tell us how we should do this.

We have permission to perform a Very Hacky Workaround: Get your Neo to me (Michael Shiloh), and I will perform the GSM firmware upgrade for you. Contact me for details.

Questions or Topics you think are missing

SMedia 3362 Documentation & OpenGL ES Drivers

There is an open source kdrive driver being written for the GTA02 which will use hardware to accelerate the XRender extension. While the chip is capable of 3D graphics, no OpenGL ES driver/library is avaliable and OpenMoko developers will not be writing one in the near future (although they have not ruled it out in the long-term).

Documentation for the SMedia 3362 has been promised (see this post). However, this refers to documentation OpenMoko developers will be writing themselves, not the technical documentation SMedia have provided OpenMoko with. The OpenMoko developers had to sign an NDA with SMedia to obtain this documentation and are therefore unable to pass this information on to community developers. (See this post for details)

Oh no, more delays.

I read from Claes Mogren's notes "a hardware bug in power management with GTA02v4... ...release will be delayed even further... " So how long is this deadly delay? Are we talking days, weeks or months of further delay.

I'm sure I'm not the only person feeling disappointed (and getting a bit despondent) as I had really hoped to get myself a wifi version of the phone for a Christmas present, even if I have to use the command line just to make a call at least I would have it in my hand.

How does this affect 850MHz?

Since an additional rev is required anyways, will this allow 850MHz support to be part of GTA02v5? (That would be very cool for those of us in the 'States)

Binary driver for GPS?

Last time I read, the GPS module would be identified as a serial port device that could be dealt with by existing GPS Free Software without needing binary drivers, what's this setback on user's freedoms due to? I was so hoping for a computer who could make calls and give me directions which was 100% Free Software. Is this only temporary or definitive?

Previous Community Updates

Retrieved from "http://wiki.openmoko.org/index.php?title=Community_Updates&oldid=21664"
Personal tools

Contents

Even though FIC strives to keep the community informed of the development progress, FIC does not provide delivery dates. Instead, FIC tries to report on the project status here and on the openmoko-community mailing list.

The status is usually updated at least twice a month, usually by Michael Shiloh. Updates are also mailed to the community mailing list (see below for previous updates), and major updates are also sent to the announce list.

You are invited to add questions or topics you think should be included in the Community Updates.

The latest Community Update is the November 27, 2007 Community Update.

Discussion of current issues

GTA02 hardware design and test

The information below has been collected from various sources, feel free to add questions and comments here.

While writing a device driver for the new battery which provides an accurate counter of the charge state of the GTA02, the driver developer discovered that the device driver does not get a reading of the charge state due to a very long response time with only one I/O signal when trying to read the charge state. To be able to read the battery status properly, it has been written that it will be necessary to re-design that part of the GTA02 for hardware version GTA02A5 to use two I/O signals to reduce the response time (one for transmitting commands, one for receiving data?). Bug 957 may have more information.

Comment: Previously it was not known that there would be a GTA02A5 hardware design, so any estimates on when GTA02 will be released at the earliest seem to be outdated thereby and as there seem to be at least one month between new hardware designs, this seems to add at least one month of delay. In case previous estimates of delivery of GTA02 by early January would have been correct, this would now mean that GTA02 ships in February the earliest, but do not take this for granted, FIC does not give any dates.

gllin GPS driver for GTA01

We have received permission to distribute this driver in binary-only form, but the legal teams of Global Locate and OpenMoko have not been able to agree on a method for doing so.

November 13, 2007: We have heard that Global Locate is willing to let us release the binary without requiring any further legal steps, but we have not been able to confirm this with anyone of authority.

Note that the binary format of the driver will be OABI, which is different from what we now use (EABI). There are various work-arounds (chroot, wrapper).

850 MHz band not supported in USA+Canada (e.g. comment 24 on bug #256)

The GSM chip set is capable of quad band operation but the circuit implemented only supports 3 bands. So, 850Mhz is not supported on the GTA01 board. Instead we support 900/1800/1900MHz.

Anyone interested in more details is welcome to email me.

Delivery of a GSM firmware update for the 3G SIM bug (#666)

Background:

A bug in the GSM firmware prevents some USA 3G SIM cards from working properly. The bug has been fixed, but since the GSM module is under extremely tight legal protection, it is not clear whether or how we can allow customers to perform this upgrade themselves.

November 13, 2007:

We have heard that TI has figured out a way to let you, our customers, upgrade the firmware, but we have not been able to get hold of the person at TI who can tell us how we should do this.

We have permission to perform a Very Hacky Workaround: Get your Neo to me (Michael Shiloh), and I will perform the GSM firmware upgrade for you. Contact me for details.

Questions or Topics you think are missing

SMedia 3362 Documentation & OpenGL ES Drivers

There is an open source kdrive driver being written for the GTA02 which will use hardware to accelerate the XRender extension. While the chip is capable of 3D graphics, no OpenGL ES driver/library is avaliable and OpenMoko developers will not be writing one in the near future (although they have not ruled it out in the long-term).

Documentation for the SMedia 3362 has been promised (see this post). However, this refers to documentation OpenMoko developers will be writing themselves, not the technical documentation SMedia have provided OpenMoko with. The OpenMoko developers had to sign an NDA with SMedia to obtain this documentation and are therefore unable to pass this information on to community developers. (See this post for details)

Oh no, more delays.

I read from Claes Mogren's notes "a hardware bug in power management with GTA02v4... ...release will be delayed even further... " So how long is this deadly delay? Are we talking days, weeks or months of further delay.

I'm sure I'm not the only person feeling disappointed (and getting a bit despondent) as I had really hoped to get myself a wifi version of the phone for a Christmas present, even if I have to use the command line just to make a call at least I would have it in my hand.

How does this affect 850MHz?

Since an additional rev is required anyways, will this allow 850MHz support to be part of GTA02v5? (That would be very cool for those of us in the 'States)

Binary driver for GPS?

Last time I read, the GPS module would be identified as a serial port device that could be dealt with by existing GPS Free Software without needing binary drivers, what's this setback on user's freedoms due to? I was so hoping for a computer who could make calls and give me directions which was 100% Free Software. Is this only temporary or definitive?

Previous Community Updates