Hello what's left of Openmoko community, If there is anyone still using their FreeRunner (or GTA01) as a phone with working GSM (perhaps on a private island whose owner likes GSM and is committed to keeping it forever), there is a modem firmware update which you might find interesting:
ftp://ftp.freecalypso.org/pub/GSM/GTA02/gsm-fw/moko-new-fw-20190128.tar.bz2 The primary diff from previous versions consists of a couple of sleep mode improvements, i.e., improved ability to go into sleep modes which draw less power from the battery: * During those time windows in which the modem is disallowed from going into deep sleep by the UART activity timer (10 s after each transmission from the AP host to the modem on the AT command UART), previous fw versions needlessly suppressed big sleep in addition to deep sleep, allowing only small sleep. The present version goes into big sleep during these time windows, saving more power. * Some Openmoko devices suffer from a hardware defect that requires disabling deep sleep - the infamous bug #1024. Previous fw versions did not provide a sleep mode configuration that allows big and small sleep, but not deep sleep, forcing the user to choose between small sleep only or big sleep only on no-deep-sleep hardware. OM AP software distros have been using the big sleep only AT%SLEEP=2 config in these circumstances. Our new fw offers a new AT%SLEEP=5 option that allows big and small sleep, but not deep sleep, which should be ideal for deep-sleep-deprived OM hardware. The default is still AT%SLEEP=4 allowing all 3 sleep modes (small, big and deep sleep), just like before. * Most of the Calypso chip's GPIO and multifunction pins are unused and unconnected on Openmoko devices. All fw versions for this modem released prior to 2017, including all legacy mokoN versions produced by the now-defunct original manufacturer of the hw, contain a bug in this regard: they configure many of these unused and unconnected GPIO and multifunction pins as inputs, causing them to float. The general dictum in digital hw design is that CMOS floating inputs are bad, and they can sometimes cause increased power draw as a result of current flowing through both transistors of the CMOS input structure when they are partially open. This bug has been fixed in the newer FreeCalypso fw releases since 2017: the correct way to handle unused and unconnected GPIO and multifunction pins is to configure them as dummy outputs with a constant value, which is what our current fw does. This new firmware release is brought to you by Falconia Partners LLC, a manufacturer of new cellular modems under the FreeCalypso brand, currently for GSM/2G but perhaps some day for UMTS/3G as well. At the present time we don't do any work specifically for legacy Openmoko devices (there is no business case for it), but our own modem product is very similar to OM's, thus whenever we make significant improvements to the firmware for our own modem hw, it costs us nothing to compile and put out a new fw image for Openmoko's old modem as well. Please note, however, that even though our new FreeCalypso modem hw is very similar to OM's old modem, it is not identical, and the firmware images built for the two respective targets are NOT interchangeable! We build all of them from the same source tree, thus functional improvements made for one target automatically benefit the others as well, but a few hardware configuration and external interface bits are conditionally compiled. If you take a firmware image built for our FCDEV3B and flash it into an Openmoko device, it may corrupt your FFS, so don't do it - please be sure to only flash fw images which were built specifically for whichever hardware you have. Happy 2019, and enjoy improved power management in the modem if you still have a free-running Openmoko device. M~ P.S. In case anyone is concerned about the legality and safety of using new GSM products from Falconia Partners LLC, whether our new hw or our new fw for legacy hw from OM, please note that the products in question (both hw and fw) have been extensively used on public commercial GSM networks in several countries (at least USA, Canada, Austria, France and South Africa to my knowledge, plus maybe others I don't know about) over the course of many years now, without a single problematic incident anywhere ever. Getting an official stamp of regulatory approval is definitely in the plans, but no one has paid for it yet. In the meantime, despite having no official rubber stamp that says so, we already know with almost 100% certainty that our products (both hw and fw) function 100% correctly on the air, fully compliant with all of the relevant technical standards. _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
