Welcome

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Am 19.04.2009 um 20:06 schrieb Steve Mosher:

>
>
> Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
>> Following this discussion, I think there are two clear and quite   
>> independent paths/projects:
>> a) keep GTA02 living as long as possible
>
>   I would pick this path as a demonstration excercise.
>
>    1. To prove that the community can in fact execute a HW project.

Hm. Why do you need to prove that? To whom?

Economics tells that as long as there is a demand (free & open HW)  
there will be one who tries to achieve it. Not necessarily successful,  
but will try.

So, either we have a community that is interested in a future of OM or  
not. And is willing to donate time, effort, money, and opinion  
building. Everyone provides what he can best.

IMHO, it is mostly a matter of really inviting the community to  
participate. Remember all discussions about chipsets during Neo 1973  
development? During that time, there were regularly asked questions on  
the mailing lists like this:

	http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2007-March/004195.html

I was astonished how many people returned with a lot of knowledge.

>    2. I may be able to get parts for proto boards, That is, if the  
> community can actually get toether and do a glamoetcony design, then
> fabbing some prototype boards should be within reach.
>    3. the whole marketing question is taken off the table..

That would of course help to discuss the right things.

>
>> 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.
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