Andriod/Koolu (Was: Experiences with GTA02 and OM2008.12)

Craig Woodward woody at rochester.rr.com
Wed Jan 21 02:58:46 CET 2009


I've found the the SMS buzz is there, but not as bad with images that have (or boot with) a recent kernel.  I seem to recall there was a patch that reduced the SMS buzz, so maybe the more recent kernels have that and that's the reason.  It's not that bad to be honest though.  Most of the images have had sub-par earpiece volume though.

---- Gothnet <openmoko at nastylittlehorse.net> wrote: 
>Two things I found that stop boots on android images I've used are - SD card partitions and uboot.

It was the partition that was stopping me.  Apparently my external card reader on my linux box doesn't see/partition/format that card the way the FR does.  While I was testing another image I partitioned and formatted a spare card, and now the Android system boots up.  Haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but it seems much nicer than anything else so far.

I figured out what was blowing up QTExt as well:  Bluetooth.  While setting up to drive w/ hands free worked, when I placed a call with audio over the headset, it worked for about 2 seconds (of ringing) and the dumped the GUI and died.  At the office I took off my bluetooth dongle from the PC there, and the FR was fine.  Plugged it in, and 5 seconds later QT died. :P

>If you're using uboot you must alter the uboot environment

Actually, the latest version from Koolu doesn't have this restriction any more.  They pushed some kernel drivers into modules so the kernel is under 2M now, so a normal uboot can load it.  It's still very picky about the card though... I haven't tested wifi yet, but sms and calls seem very stable.  I've yet to play with bluetooth and such, but it's not randomly crashing, so that's probably a good sign. 

I have noticed Andriod is still a little rough around the edges.  Little things, like it doesn't shutdown. But I'd much rather have a phone that doesn't want to turn off than one that doesn't want to turn on, or be bothered with calls. ;)

One thing I'm seeing is that most of the images fail in the same two system (at least, some fail on more...).  One is the sound system, which on some images just stops working after a while.  Audio output stops, be it phone, wave output, anything.  It really looks like a driver issue for the sound chip, since a reboot fixes it.  I'm wondering if it's compiled as a module if removing and reinstalling it would help, since that may re-init the hardware on re-load.  The other seems to be on GSM communication of "out-of-band" data.  Things like SMS and call notification.  That's my biggest gripe, missed calls and SMS messages.




More information about the support mailing list