Tim Flavin wrote:
On 1/30/07, Mitch Bradley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
We shall take reasonable precautions to reduce the probability of
reflash-brickage to an acceptable level. A level of 0 is neither
achievable nor cost-effective.
Will the production boards have pads or a header that can be used
by an SPI programmer as a last resort?
They have pads that can be used for a serial recovery procedure. The
current run doesn't have a connector on those pads, but the factory has
a "stinger" thing that can connect to the pads without the connector.
Even if the connector was there, you would have to disassemble the unit
fairly extensively, removing several pieces including a metal shield.
Shipping one USB based SPI
programmer for each region that gets 10K to 100k laptops may be
a cost-effective way of fixing the small number of bricks created by
than 100% effective measures. It would also permit recovery from
a disaster caused by someone incorrectly telling a whole classroom
full of students the wrong way to re-flash the laptops.
The reflash procedure will be automated based on the presence of a
cryptographically-signed image that is written to the NAND FLASH at the
OS level. So in principle, there is no "telling" involved.
This would
require disassembling the laptops but it would be an extremely rare
requirement.
I guess the question is it cost effective to put the pads or headers
on if they almost will never be used.
It might be better just to treat reflash bricks the same as any other
non-user-serviceable failure - ship them back to the fully-equipped
repair center. If we can make the probability of reflash failure low
enough, then this is probably the right approach.
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