On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 05:32:05PM +1100, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote: > On 23 January 2012 17:20, James Cameron <[email protected]> wrote: > > I thought you were doing this test to detect early units that may have > > a failed heat spreader, and you were doing it at the time of reflashing > > because that's when you had some control. > > Yes, that's the primary reason. Our initial batch of XO-1.5s have an > inefficient heat spreader. They've been burning out, and replacing the > motherboards is getting expensive and time consuming. We'd like to > detect potentially faulty units early, and recommend a heat spreader > change for them.
I don't think burning out is the right wording. Perhaps you mean they have been losing contact with the CPU. This would be a gradual process, and would be encouraged mostly by handling, including compression of the case and opening and closing the lid. I'm certain fs-update would not affect this process. > As a thought - maybe we should be identifying the serial number as > well? Yes, you should be able to skip the test if the serial number is not in the range of your initial batch of XO-1.5s. > > > I don't think it is worth doing this test for the purposes of flashing > > the XOs. ?The built in throttling will work fine. ?If the heat spreader > > is dodgy, you'll either get a hang during fs-update or it will take much > > longer. > > Hangs are annoying and don't provide any useful feedback to the user. > It might be true that the XO can't get damaged from flashing, but the > symptoms at runtime are random and are difficult to diagnose. I think > that forcing a heat spreader test can provide a warning to the user > and allow them to do something before any damage or annoying behaviour > can begin. We have long since fixed the problem that led to random symptoms after boot following an incomplete reflash ... I trust you are using that code which writes the zero block last in the .zd file? So unlike your previous experience I don't expect any random and difficult to diagnose symptoms. Perhaps you should test what the result is. The unit should fail to boot. You can simulate a hang during fs-update by forcing the power off. The result should be identical. -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
