Welcome

Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller hns at goldelico.com
Sat Apr 18 19:22:45 CEST 2009


Following this discussion, I think there are two clear and quite  
independent paths/projects:

a) keep GTA02 living as long as possible

b) a camera & 3g device



Am 13.04.2009 um 18:39 schrieb Werner Almesberger:

>> The next Phone:
>>  1. GTA02 cost down
>
> Hmm, that would be
>
> - move BT to the PCB (yield goes up)
> - NOR removal (hard to source and eats space)
> Need to find a plan B for unbrickability then. Some possibilities:
> - do as we did in GTA01 and depend on the debug board
> - add a NAND trap-door circuit
> - integrate IDBG
> - remove one of the acceleration meters (useless)
>
> anything else ?
>
>>  2. GTA02 Glamoectomy - G
>
> The moment of great liberation :-)
>
>>  3. GTA02 -G+E Glamoecyomy, new Edge +E
>
> I'd very much like to see the demise of the Calypso. It's been EOL
> for as long as I remember, and while the consequences of working
> with a hopelessly obsolete chipset were still surprisingly mild, they
> are adding up.
>
> We should also review WLAN. AR6001 is about as dead-ended as the
> Calypso, so the least we would have to do is to replace it with an
> AR6002. I don't know how bad the driver situation would be, though.
> Atheros are working on a "lean" firmware for the AR6002, but that
> won't be ready for some more months.
>
> Switching to Marvell would mean that we'd either have to find a
> different module than the USI we have right now (because we don't
> have a UART for BT), accept that we have a useless BT component on
> that module, or upgrade to a CPU with one more SDIO port.
>
>>  4. GTA02 -G+E+P  add 6410
>
> The 6410 would give us more connectivity choices (more SDIO, more
> UARTs, High-Speed USB, etc.), better overall performance (FPU and
> all that), and more flexible clock management.
>
> Drawbacks of the 6410 include relatively new kernel support, more
> difficult SMT, and more difficult thermal management.
>
>>  then options of camera, 3g etc etc etc.
>
> With the design we have for GTA03, the camera interface works. I
> just have to figure out how to get the camera to make good
> pictures :-)
>
> 3G is the great unknown.
>
> For a community-centric approach, I think one important requirement
> would be to have a common set of tools, so that everyone can go
> through the schematics or layout, look at the CAD data, etc.
>
> In Openmoko, we always had that distinction of engineers with access
> to the proprietary EDA and CAD tools and the second-class citizen who
> depended on others to provide them with PDFs. This was always
> extremely dissatisfying, yielded a disconnected development process,
> and eventually caused problems to get overlooked.
>
> I'm not sure how feasible it would be to convert the existing material
> into something sufficiently free tools can use. PADS to KiCad, Pro/E
> to HeeksCAD ? :)

Well, community does not necessarily mean easy and simple write-access  
for everyone.

I think in terms of small hardware component teams recruited more from  
the community than employed by OM, Inc.

They can then decide themselves about the tools they need.

> Another issue is access to vendor documentation. There's a lot of
> material that is under some form of NDA and that would have to be made
> accessible to the community in order to allow people to understand how
> things work.

I there is a well defined project organization where it is clear who  
is part of let's say the GTA03-camera-development-group it should be  
possible that those members sign an NDA, even if they are not employed  
by OM. Usually they should anyway be less "Hobbyists" but Freelancers  
and have some tax and legal status in their respective country.





More information about the Gta03 mailing list