Re: Windows

[John Watlington]

> On Apr 26, 2015, at 10:09 PM, Jhon Diaz  wrote:
> 
> Is there liks a old version or copy a zip or something or are all the copies 
> are deleted

One of the reasons we didn’t like Windows is that we can’t distribute it.
Even the version for the XO-1 had to be purchased from Microsoft (including a 
label to
affix to the computer).

Cheers,
wad

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interesting new battery technology

[John Watlington]

Aluminum and Graphite, in an aqueous solution.
Can’t wait till it hits the market!

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32204707
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Re: [Sugar-devel] seeking help to enable nepali keyboard input for XO-4

[John Watlington]

Sameer,
   We made a tooling change to improve that feeling --- we increased
the chamfer around the key openings so that if you miss the key slightly,
your finger slides into the opening more easily.
Unfortunately, this didn't go into production until the XO-4 hit production.

Thanks for pointing that out.   I'm not sure if Subir and Rabi are aware
that the original membrane keyboard is no longer available.   The current
membrane keyboard is covered by a plastic grid (making it much harder
to peel off a key).   See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/File:XO-1.75_siblings.jpg

Cheers,
wad

On Jun 16, 2014, at 9:08 PM, Sameer Verma wrote:

> On a related note, I was curious about deployment experiences with the
> new membrane design with plastic grid in between keys. Although this
> does help with premature peeling of keys, I've always had trouble with
> these keyboards - the outer edges of my fingers get in the way of a
> full key depress. Then again, the keys aren't designed for me, so I'm
> curious how these do in the field.
> 
> cheers,
> Sameer
> 
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 6:03 PM, John Watlington  wrote:
>> 
>> Walter,
>>   You remember correctly.  The hard/clicky/crunchy keyboards are not rated
>> for as long a lifetime as the membrane/chewy keyboards.   While the membrane
>> keyboard design was tested to 5 million key presses, IIRC the clicky
>> keyboard is
>> only rated to 1 million key presses.   (On the other hand, it takes one
>> minute
>> to replace a clicky keyboard versus twenty for a membrane keyboard.)
>> 
>> WARNING:  The clicky keyboard was not approved for use by small children
>> by UL.   The reason is that if the keys are pulled off they present a
>> choking
>> hazard.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> wad
>> 
>> On Jun 16, 2014, at 7:13 AM, Walter Bender wrote:
>> 
>> James,
>> 
>> Do we have any data re the mechanical reliability/durability/repairability
>> of the "hard/clicky" keyboards? We do know that although there were some
>> issues with membrane pealing (presumably resolved with the newer design)
>> there numerous ingenious local repairs such that most are still working
>> after 7 years.
>> 
>> regards.
>> 
>> -walter
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 5:35 AM, James Cameron  wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 01:54:19PM +0545, Basanta Shrestha wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>> We are planning on ordering the next lot of XO-4s and I need some
>>>> suggestions on which keyboard model to choose -membrane  or
>>>> hard/clicky one.
>>> 
>>> I think it is great to seek input from the community, but don't forget
>>> to ask your OLPC contact for help as well.
>>> 
>>>> We had membrane one for our first lot and keyboard switching was
>>>> very convenient on that model.  One reason not to choose hard/clicky
>>>> one is that it doesn't have key for language switching ( correct me
>>>> if I am wrong) -I have one spanish hard/clicky and it doesn't have
>>>> that key - key 56 at
>>>> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Keyboard_layouts.
>>> 
>>> Yes, that's a good reason not to choose the mechanical keyboard; you
>>> would have to customise your operating system build again, to add a
>>> key combination for keyboard language switch.  If the cost of
>>> customising is too high, you should order membrane keyboard.  I don't
>>> know the relative costs of the keyboards, and their replacement rates,
>>> but it might be factored in to your decision.
>>> 
>>> You identified the lack of language switch key in this same thread on
>>> sugar-devel@ back in November 2013, from which I'll draw some status:
>>> 
>>> Walter says use a key combination:
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-November/045724.html
>>> 
>>> And says that customisation will be needed:
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-November/045800.html
>>> 
>>> Then you suggest alt+space:
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-November/045807.html
>>> 
>>> Daniel Drake says to use olpc-os-builder:
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-November/045851.html
>>> 
>>> And you asked about the alt+space:
>>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-November/045857.html
>>> 
>>> But the thread dried up on that subject because the units you received
>>> had a membrane keyboard,

Re: [Sugar-devel] seeking help to enable nepali keyboard input for XO-4

[John Watlington]

On Jun 16, 2014, at 9:05 PM, Walter Bender wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 9:03 PM, John Watlington  wrote:
> 
> Walter,
>You remember correctly.  The hard/clicky/crunchy keyboards are not rated
> for as long a lifetime as the membrane/chewy keyboards.   While the membrane
> keyboard design was tested to 5 million key presses, IIRC the clicky keyboard 
> is
> only rated to 1 million key presses.   (On the other hand, it takes one minute
> to replace a clicky keyboard versus twenty for a membrane keyboard.)
> 
> ..if you have a replacement keyboard... any insight into how easy it would be 
> to make replacement keys in the field?

I would say impossible, but that would be underestimating the creativeness of
our deployments.

At the electrical level, the crunchy and chewy keyboards have the same contacts,
so I don't expect that to be the failure mechanism.   Failure should be due to 
the
mechanical parts (as it is with the membrane keyboards).   If you pull off the 
keycap
and the guide mechanism, the key still activates when you press on the membrane
or the rubber cap (which provides both the spring action and presses on the 
contacts)
glued to it.

Cheers,
wad

> WARNING:  The clicky keyboard was not approved for use by small children
> by UL.   The reason is that if the keys are pulled off they present a choking
> hazard.
> 
> Cheers,
> wad
> 

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Re: [Sugar-devel] seeking help to enable nepali keyboard input for XO-4

[John Watlington]

Walter,
   You remember correctly.  The hard/clicky/crunchy keyboards are not rated
for as long a lifetime as the membrane/chewy keyboards.   While the membrane
keyboard design was tested to 5 million key presses, IIRC the clicky keyboard is
only rated to 1 million key presses.   (On the other hand, it takes one minute
to replace a clicky keyboard versus twenty for a membrane keyboard.)

WARNING:  The clicky keyboard was not approved for use by small children
by UL.   The reason is that if the keys are pulled off they present a choking
hazard.

Cheers,
wad

On Jun 16, 2014, at 7:13 AM, Walter Bender wrote:

> James,
> 
> Do we have any data re the mechanical reliability/durability/repairability of 
> the "hard/clicky" keyboards? We do know that although there were some issues 
> with membrane pealing (presumably resolved with the newer design) there 
> numerous ingenious local repairs such that most are still working after 7 
> years.
> 
> regards.
> 
> -walter
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 5:35 AM, James Cameron  wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 01:54:19PM +0545, Basanta Shrestha wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > We are planning on ordering the next lot of XO-4s and I need some
> > suggestions on which keyboard model to choose -membrane  or
> > hard/clicky one.
> 
> I think it is great to seek input from the community, but don't forget
> to ask your OLPC contact for help as well.
> 
> > We had membrane one for our first lot and keyboard switching was
> > very convenient on that model.  One reason not to choose hard/clicky
> > one is that it doesn't have key for language switching ( correct me
> > if I am wrong) -I have one spanish hard/clicky and it doesn't have
> > that key - key 56 at
> > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Keyboard_layouts.
> 
> Yes, that's a good reason not to choose the mechanical keyboard; you
> would have to customise your operating system build again, to add a
> key combination for keyboard language switch.  If the cost of
> customising is too high, you should order membrane keyboard.  I don't
> know the relative costs of the keyboards, and their replacement rates,
> but it might be factored in to your decision.
> 
> You identified the lack of language switch key in this same thread on
> sugar-devel@ back in November 2013, from which I'll draw some status:
> 
> Walter says use a key combination:
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-November/045724.html
> 
> And says that customisation will be needed:
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-November/045800.html
> 
> Then you suggest alt+space:
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-November/045807.html
> 
> Daniel Drake says to use olpc-os-builder:
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-November/045851.html
> 
> And you asked about the alt+space:
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/2013-November/045857.html
> 
> But the thread dried up on that subject because the units you received
> had a membrane keyboard, not a mechanical keyboard.
> 
> I think you need to change the xkb files, but I'm not sure.  Do you
> have a mechanical keyboard you can test with?  If not, you'll have to
> get someone else to do this.
> 
> > Hard/Clicky on the other hard is more convenient while typing.
> > Please suggest.
> 
> I don't understand why you think it is more convenient.  To me the
> keyboards are equally convenient for an inexperienced child.  Perhaps
> you intended to mention some characteristic?
> 
> --
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.linux.org.au/
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Walter Bender
> Sugar Labs
> http://www.sugarlabs.org
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Re: [Sugar-devel] XO on Fedora 20 (was Re: [GSoC] Porting To Python3)

[John Watlington]

On May 12, 2014, at 7:34 PM, James Cameron wrote:
> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 10:08:41AM -0300, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:
>> Probably you already know that, but xo-1 and xo-1.5 have a 8686
>> wireless card, different to the 8787 in the xo-4
> 
> Actually, XO-1 has 8388 and is soldered down card.

XO-1: 88W8388 soldered to motherboard
XO-1.5, XO-1.75, and XO-4: 88W8686 SDIO card
XO-4: 88W8787 SDIO card

>From a hardware point of view, the 88W8787 802.11a/b/g SDIO card works
fine in XO-1.5/1.75/4 laptops (early driver development was done using 
XO-1.5...)
but was only certified/available in XO-4 laptops.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: WiFi Problem

[John Watlington]

When doing this step:

> > Release the '✓' (check) game pad key, and within ten seconds a Devel
> > key Signature valid message will appear, with an open padlock icon,
> > followed by Type the ESC key to interrupt automatic startup,


Did you see a "Devel key Signature valid" message ?

If you didn't, one possibility is that the UUID in our database
doesn't match the one actually in the laptop.  This is corrected by
getting the correct information using a new collection USB key.

John

On May 9, 2014, at 12:40 PM, Juan Carlos Garcès Mariño wrote:

> 
> 
> Juan Carlos Garcés 
> Ing. Electrónico
> Cel. 311 819 0835
> Bogotá - Colombia 
> 
> 
> From: juancarlosgarc...@hotmail.com
> To: qu...@laptop.org
> Subject: RE: WiFi Problem
> Date: Fri, 9 May 2014 11:40:08 -0500
> 
> I followed the instructions but..
> 
> I don´t know if it works, I do this proccess but I can´t enter in the OK 
> terminal for unlocked the security
> 
> What I doing bad?
> 
> 
> Juan Carlos Garcés 
> Ing. Electrónico
> Cel. 311 819 0835
> Bogotá - Colombia 
> 
> 
> > Date: Fri, 9 May 2014 08:52:56 +1000
> > From: qu...@laptop.org
> > To: juancarlosgarc...@hotmail.com
> > CC: w...@laptop.org; devel@lists.laptop.org
> > Subject: Re: WiFi Problem
> > 
> > On Thu, May 08, 2014 at 05:43:24PM -0500, Juan Carlos Garcès Mariño wrote:
> > > I can´t use the develop.sig file in this machines, don´t work.
> > > I copy the file in a folder with name: /security but not happen
> > > nothing.
> > 
> > Nothing should happen. You have to do an extra step to take full
> > command:
> > 
> > Shutdown the laptop,
> > 
> > Insert the USB drive or SD card containing the developer key, or with
> > the key on the internal storage,
> > 
> > Hold down the '✓' (check) game pad key and turn on the laptop, a
> > diagram of the game keys should appear with a message Release the game
> > keys to continue,
> > 
> > Release the '✓' (check) game pad key, and within ten seconds a Devel
> > key Signature valid message will appear, with an open padlock icon,
> > followed by Type the ESC key to interrupt automatic startup,
> > 
> > Press Escape key once, and the 'ok' prompt should appear immediately.
> > 
> > The laptop is now unlocked temporarily. 
> > 
> > If this doesn't work, try a different medium. e.g. USB drive:
> > 
> > Make a directory called security at the top of your USB drive and copy
> > the develop.sig file into it.
> > 
> > You should now have a USB drive a directory security which contains
> > develop.sig, in. This is an unlock stick ready to use.
> > 
> > > And in the console, appear me the follow: "/usr/bin/ping has both
> > > setuid-root and effective capabilities. therefore not raising all
> > > capabilities"
> > > 
> > > I don´t know if have something that see with the problem
> > 
> > It has nothing at all to do with the problem.
> > 
> > -- 
> > James Cameron
> > http://quozl.linux.org.au/
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Re: WiFi Problem

[John Watlington]

On May 5, 2014, at 4:49 PM, Juan Carlos Garcès Mariño wrote:

> I do not need upgrade to sugar 0.100, because I need have the XO with active 
> security, 
> really I need resolve this problem: the wifi have little power and not 
> detected with easily the networks, I changed the network card and the 
> antennas but did not work, besides  I installed again the operative system 
> sugar no luck.

Software confusion aside, now you have my interest.

You have tried using a known good antenna(s), and a known good card, and
still saw the problem ?

My first suggestion in a case like this is to replace the main antenna
with a known good one and retest.
The main antenna is the left-most one when looking at the motherboard,
and is usually connected to the right-most connector on the WLAN card
(labelled "Main").
The next suggestion is to replace the WLAN card.   If you've done both of
those and it still doesn't work well, look in /var/log/messages for any error
messages from the driver (indicating a possible problem with the SDIO bus).

Just about the only thing left to try is to measure the +1.8V and +3.3V at
the card socket while Linux is running, there could be something wrong with
the power switches Q29, Q37 and Q38.

Regards,
wad


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Re: Using a wifi dongle on an XO-1(.5) -- another dongle

[John Watlington]

On May 1, 2014, at 9:26 PM, James Cameron wrote:

>> The miniPCIe form factor is frequently used for USB-based wireless cards as
>> well, and XO laptops do provide USB signals at the appropriate pins although
>> the shipped wireless card doesn't use it.
> 
> I couldn't prove they were connected, on the XO-1.5 schematic (Rev M),
> as the signal name didn't appear elsewhere.

On XO-1.5 it is connected to the VX855 USB port 5 (page 15).

> They are tied to the USB hub on XO-1.75 and XO-4.
...
> Are you aware of any replacement USB cards that have been made to work?


Nope.

wad

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Re: Using a wifi dongle on an XO-1(.5) -- another dongle

[John Watlington]

On May 1, 2014, at 6:32 PM, James Cameron wrote:

> On Thu, May 01, 2014 at 03:56:32PM -0400, Nathan C. Riddle wrote:
>> Found another Ralink device that works: RT5370.   [...]
>> Now, is there a device based on Ralink chips to replace the internal
>> Libertas wireless module ? :)
> 
> No, certainly not.
> ...
> And, if I'm reading the schematics right, there's also two voltage
> variants, so the modules for XO-1.5 (3.3V) can't be swapped with the
> modules for XO-1.75 and XO-4 (1.8V).

Only cards built before we added the ESD protection (very early in
production) are limited to operation at +3.3V.   Most of the cards used
in XO-1.5 operate at either +3.3V or +1.8V, and are identical to the
88W8686 modules were used for XO-1.75 and XO-4.

> The XO-1.5, XO-1.75, and XO-4 main board wireless socket is a
> Mini-PCIe connector, but the electrical interface is custom, and
> carries SDIO, wireless indicator LED, and wakeup signals, so any
> new module must be custom made for the hardware.

The miniPCIe form factor is frequently used for USB-based wireless cards as
well, and XO laptops do provide USB signals at the appropriate pins although
the shipped wireless card doesn't use it.
Power, ground, and some auxiliary signals use standard pins.
But we did reuse the actual PCIe signal pins to provide the SD interface
so you might need to cut some wires to avoid conflict.
The pinout is available at:
http://wiki.laptop.org/images/d/d9/XO_4_Pinouts.pdf

Cheers,
wad

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Re: EC, CForth exploratory commands?

[John Watlington]

On Apr 14, 2014, at 1:30 AM, Jon Nettleton wrote:
> But I do like having the bootloader right on the SDHC card.  Virtually
> unbrickable.


But it precludes any of the anti-theft mechanisms that most
of OLPC's customers were looking for.

(anti-theft => keeping the NSA off my laptop/router/TOR box)

wad

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Re: EC, CForth exploratory commands?

[John Watlington]

On Apr 13, 2014, at 11:44 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> But in the back of my mind I run through  "how would you use
> u-boot in bringup instead of ofw?".

Before OFW, I used assembler code and C debugging shells (think
peek/poke/test mem/run dedicated test functions/boot OS), but I last
did than on single core PPCs.  Once you start talking multiple devices,
cores, caches, interrupt controllers, etc. that approach doesn't scale well.

The basic problem is that you need to be able to quickly modify the code
and test again.  It is hard to beat an interactive language at doing that.

I've watched David Woodhouse use the Linux kernel to do bringup
in a similar manner to Open Firmware, but only he makes it look easy
(and it does require some recompiling and downloading for testing).

Cheers,
wad



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Re: EC, CForth exploratory commands?

[John Watlington]

On Apr 13, 2014, at 9:19 PM, Jon Nettleton wrote:

> Otherwise you really need a jtag debugger.

Or Open Firmware --- by far the nicest bringup
tool I've ever had the pleasure to use.
It was painful enough using the JTAG debugger to
install Open Firmware.   I would hate to spend weeks
in it.

wad
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Re: EC, CForth exploratory commands?

[John Watlington]

On Apr 13, 2014, at 2:13 PM, Paul Fox wrote:

> martin wrote:
>> Yesterday I ran a workshop covering some topics about hw development
>> and mfg. Using a lot of material from Bunnie's blog, as well as from
>> my time in the trenches.
>> 
>> As part of it I tried -- and mostly failed -- to give folks a tour of
>> early boot, using some old boards I have stashed. Here I got truly
>> lost. I could not find current useful notes on what you can do in the
>> early CForth env.

Linked off of the XO-4 model pages:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_4_Memory_Test
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Debugging_Open_Firmware_Startup

Cheers,
wad
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Re: Announcing another early Android build for XO-4

[John Watlington]

Nice work.

I think the touchscreen driver is busted.
Open Firmware tracks two or three fingers nicely (if one avoids
occlusions in X and Y), but multitouch test apps in Android
confirm what I saw when trying to use Google Maps -- multitouch
is currently broken in Android.

Are bugs being tracked in Trac ?

Cheers,
wad

On Apr 7, 2014, at 2:23 AM, James Cameron wrote:

> An Android 4.3.1 (Jelly Bean) build for the XO-4 laptop.
> 
> OLPC is preparing an Android, Sugar and Gnome dual-boot system for the
> XO-4.
> 
> Our next development release of a dual boot build is available, with
> the following changes:
> 
> - include Google services,
> 
> - enable screen shot key combination, (press power, then X game key,
>  hold both for a second, release),
> 
> - camera preview and shot works,
> 
> - software codecs fixed,
> 
> The build is based on our arm-3.5 kernel, with changes which can be
> found in the arm-3.5-android branch of our olpc-kernel repository.
> 
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Android
> http://build.laptop.org/android/2014-04-07/
> 
> Note: the .zd file has the same name as previous releases.
> 
> -- 
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.linux.org.au/
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Re: Announcing another early Android build for XO-4

[John Watlington]

On Mar 19, 2014, at 5:12 PM, ben wrote:

> On 03/20/2014 07:01 AM, Esteban Bordón wrote:
>> Hi!
>> 
>> Someone knows how take a screenshot in android? Is there any keys 
>> combination for do it in the XO?
>> 
> Android brings in a hot key combination for screenshot which is press the 
> hard volume down and power 
> buttons at the same time, hold them for a second. But unfortunately it does 
> work on current XO-4 build.
> Need more investigation why.

Probably something to do with our power button going through the EC,
and not being directly sensed by the MMP3 SoC.
Power button events thus come in over the EC/Host communications ---
I'm not sure these are button down/button up events.

wad

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Re: [Server-devel] constant power "add-tag CP" fails on XO-4?

[John Watlington]

On Jan 24, 2014, at 6:36 PM, Adam Holt wrote:

> We've relied on this for many years on XO-1s and XO-1.75s (etc) to ensure 
> small XO servers auto-boot after the inevitable power failures -- and yet 
> today it (apparently) no longer works.
> 
> Is it possible this does not work on XO-4s, or are we somehow entering 
> "add-tag CP" incorrectly at the "ok" prompt, on this XO-4 Touch SKU306 (with 
> the latest stable firmware Q7B37 below) in Haiti?

I just tested on an XO-4 with Q7B37, and behavior with the CP tag set seems OK.

I'm sure you've used ".mfg-data" to make sure the tag is being set properly,
so perhaps this is a unit-specific hardware bug ?   Any chance of trying 
another laptop ?

Cheers,
wad

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Re: using laptop charger

[John Watlington]

James is correct about 19V probably not working with an XO-1, but with an 
XO-1.75/4
you should be fine up to 24V.

When running with an input voltage higher than 13V, the battery charger on the
motherboard runs noticeably hotter. Still within spec at 19V and 45C 
ambient,
but you might notice the difference in case temperature near the DC input plug
if charging an empty battery.

Cheers,
wad

On Dec 11, 2013, at 3:09 PM, James Cameron wrote:

> G'day Andrew,
> 
> There is a voltage above which the XO-1 will not charge, which had
> been often encountered by people using solar panels.  Along would come
> a cold sunny day, with a greater than normal voltage, and the charging
> would stop.
> 
> I don't recall the actual voltage (Richard may remember), but I think
> it was somewhere near 18V, and it varied slightly between laptops.
> 
> So it might work, or might not.
> 
> Instead of using a resistor, you might use two or three large diodes
> in series, each of which will provide a "forward voltage" 0.6V drop.
> Pick the diodes based on the maximum current 1.85A (usually double
> that), and the power that will be released as heat; P = V x I, where V
> is 0.6, and I is not to exceed 1.85A, so 1.11W minimum "power
> dissipation".  Place them in a way that does not hold the heat in.
> 
> https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/diodes
> 
> p.s. if you find one diode does what you need, then add another in
> case of variation in the supply or laptop.  You might even add a
> full-wave bridge rectifier instead of two diodes, that way the input
> polarity won't matter.
> 
> On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 01:52:54PM +, NoiseEHC wrote:
>> Hi!
>> 
>> I am thinking about using my laptop's charger instead of the OLPC
>> charger in the future as I move a lot and it's getting really
>> tiresome to bring both chargers with me. The plan is to create a
>> converter plug and use only the laptop's but it has different
>> voltage levels.
>> 
>> laptop: TOSHIBA
>> part: PA3715U-1ACA
>> model: PA-1750-24
>> output: 19V - 3.95A
>> 
>> XO-1.75: DARFON
>> model: BBOJ-C
>> output: 13.5V - 1.85A
>> 
>> So can I plug my XO to the TOSHIBA adapter? The page says that
>> 11-18V needed, while the laptop's is 19V. Shall I use a resistor to
>> drop the voltage or is it unnecessary? Power usage is not an issue
>> to me. (BTW I will use the plug from the XO-1's charger, I guess
>> that it did not change in the meantime.)
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Andrew
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> 
> -- 
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Re: The mouse touch pad doesn't work on XO4

[John Watlington]

Seconding what Paul said, the touchpad on XO-4
should be fully functional.   If you have one that isn't, I would
first test it from Open Firmware (halt the laptop boot in Open
Firmware --- at the ok prompt  and type:test /mouse

If that indicates a problem, see:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_Troubleshooting_Keyboard#Is_the_touchpad_unresponsive_.3F

Cheers,
wad

On Nov 21, 2013, at 5:29 AM, Basanta Shrestha wrote:

> Hi list, 
> Just realized that the mouse touchpad doesn't work for XO4. Has it been 
> disabled on purpose ? is there a way to enable it ?
> 
> -basanta
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Thanks

[John Watlington]

Since I finally mentioned that OLPC and I had parted ways in an earlier
email, I really need to thank the OLPC community for providing me
with the opportunity to work with you for the past seven years.

Reuben continues to provide outstanding deployment support for all XO laptops,
and I will still be available online for questions and deep support issues.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: [Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[John Watlington]

On Oct 31, 2013, at 2:10 PM, Sameer Verma wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 9:04 AM, David Farning
>  wrote:
>> I just wanted to bump this line of questions as, it is the critical
>> set of questions which will determine the future viability of Sugar.
>> 
>> If anyone as more informed, please correct me if I am sharing
>> incorrect information:
>> 1. The Association has dropped future development of XO laptops and
>> Sugar as part of their long term strategy. I base this on the
>> reduction of hardware and software personal employed by the
>> Association.
>> 2. The Association is reducing its roll within the engineering and
>> development side of the ecosystem. I base this on the shift toward
>> integrating existing technology, software, and content from other
>> vendors on the XO tablet.

The Association continues to have an engineering effort, but it has been
completely outsourced (mostly to MorphOSS) and almost entirely concentrated
on the "XO Learning Software" for the tablet for the last six months.

>> 3. The Association is shifting away from its initial roll as a
>> technical philanthropy to a revenue generating organization structured
>> as a association. I base this on the general shift in conversations
>> and decisions from public to private channels.

I have no knowledge about points 1 and 3.

> My understanding of the XO Tablet project was that it was designed as
> a revenue generator ($x per unit sale goes to OLPC A) so that work on
> the XO-4 could continue. In my own conversations with OLPCA, I was
> always reassured that the XO continues to be the pedagogical machine.
> However, I'm not seeing the evidence to that end from OLPCA. Pretty
> much all the staff that worked on the XO are either laid off or have
> quit.
> 
> There were other conversations at OLPC SF Summit, where the concern
> was that OLPCA is quietly trying to convert requests for XO-4
> purchases into XO Tablet purchases. I've raised this issue of device
> cannibalization with OLPCA. If the real plan is to keep both lines
> going, then the devices should have separate marketing and sales
> plans. Keep in mind that the XO4 has had close to zero marketing, and
> all the media I see about OLPC these days usually positions the XO
> Tablet as the new thing.
> 
> Today's Wired article makes the intentions clearer:
> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/31/olpc-and-datawind-tablet

> However, if all that OLPC remains is a vendor of cheap, proprietary
> Android tablets wrapped in green silicone, then what motivation
> remains to continue to plug for it? We all have different motivations
> for working on this project. I'd like to hear more from others.

OLPC was never about making cheap products --- it was about making a
good product at the lowest possible cost.   The Vivitar (XO) Tablet and the 
software
associated with it are a complete departure from OLPC's previous engineering
practices (and despite the marketing, had no input from the then-existing OLPC 
team.)
Unfortunately, as you point out, there is little effort to market the XO-4 and 
instead
a bewildering push to sell the Vivitar (XO) Tablet to large deployments despite 
its
unsuitability for such.OLPC and I parted ways at the end of September.

There are plenty of vendors of cheap Android tablets.  Perhaps Walter is right
that this is the time to concentrate on providing software designed for
collaborative, joyful, advertising-free, self-empowered learning, in a hardware
independent manner.   The seven years since OLPC started have seen a huge
improvement in MIPS/Watt and MIPS/$, making the hardware independent
approach (Python, Java, HTML5) an even better approach.

Regards,
wad

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Re: Android on the XO-4

[John Watlington]

On Oct 9, 2013, at 6:46 AM, Walter Bender wrote:

> Sorry for misleading the list. This is new information to me.
> Seems it is just a matter of doing the work then.

It is I who need to apologize.   This information was first communicated
to me around a week ago and I hadn't shared it properly.

On a more promising note, Jon Nettleton reported on IRC that he
made progress in getting big.LITTLE running on the MMP3.

wad

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Re: Android on the XO-4

[John Watlington]

There is no Marvell bottleneck.   Marvell has confirmed that they
will provide the few binary blobs required compiled in the right way
for Android on XO-4.  We just need to provide the target version of
Android.

Cheers,
wad

On Oct 8, 2013, at 10:22 PM, Sameer Verma wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 12:29 PM, Walter Bender  
> wrote:
>> Not sure this helps us get around the Marvel bottleneck, but worth
>> investigating.
>> 
>> -walter
>> 
> 
> Thx. I've heard about this bottleneck but not sure what it is. Can you
> tell us a bit about what it is, or point to it?
> 
> Sameer
> 
>> On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Sameer Verma  wrote:
>>> I was at the Internet Archive for some work on Pathagar
>>> (https://github.com/PathagarBooks/pathagar). Also there that afternoon
>>> was John Gilmore (cc'd). We got to talking about the XO-4, Android,
>>> HTML5, etc. A bit of doodling on Physics, and John put together a two
>>> cylinder engine, complete with a rocker arm :-) He also suggested the
>>> possibility of CyanogenMod on the XO-4 as a starting point.
>>> 
>>> If there is any interest in this, please submit a proposal for the
>>> upcoming OLPC SF summit
>>> http://www.olpcsf.org/CommunitySummit2013/proposal
>>> 
>>> John,
>>> 
>>> If you are in town Oct 18-20, we'd love to have you there.
>>> http://olpcsf.org/summit
>>> 
>>> cheers,
>>> Sameer
>>> --
>>> Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
>>> Professor, Information Systems
>>> San Francisco State University
>>> http://verma.sfsu.edu/
>>> http://commons.sfsu.edu/
>>> http://olpcsf.org/
>>> http://olpcjamaica.org.jm/
>>> ___
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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>> 
>> 
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Re: [IAEP] Sugar on Android via HTML5

[John Watlington]

On Sep 10, 2013, at 5:04 PM, Sameer Verma wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 7:51 PM, Caryl Bigenho  wrote:
> One of the things that makes Sugar the ideal learning platform for children 
> (and youth) is the wonderful compatibility of so many of the Activities ... 
> both from Activity to Activity and from student to student. This facilitates 
> the sort of learning we are all hoping to see more of... creative problem 
> solving, project based learning and cooperative learning. Without this 
> ability to integrate parts of projects, it would just be another collection 
> of apps.
> 
> 
> I did not want to muddy the picture by injecting my own viewpoint, but now 
> that I've heard from others (on and off list) it is clear that the split is 
> driven by the role they play in the ecosystem. 
> Most technologists have come up with reasons why they don't think a complete 
> Sugar experience would work on Android. Therefore, activities must run like 
> any other app on Android. On the other hand, as Caryl said, "Without this 
> ability to integrate...it would just be a collection of apps". 
> 
> Somewhat knowing the limitations of what can be done with Sugar stuff on 
> Android, but disregarding that for a minute, I would say that Sugar as a 
> *platform* is an experience. It has a UI. It has a UX. Everything from the 
> Zoom interface to the activities to the Journal is Sugar. We have taken the 
> original "Sugar on the OLPC XO" experience and replicated that to the 
> classmate PC, SoaS, and other spins and distros, but in none of these cases 
> did we break the holistic Sugar experience. Now, along comes a popular OS, 
> and because the tech parts don't fit, we are advocating breaking up the 
> pieces and taking whatever flies. Memorize will become one of the few hundred 
> thousand apps on Android.
> 
> I disagree. 
> 
> It's like saying we'll do the cat sprite from Scratch, but nothing else. It's 
> like saying we'll do the birds and pigs from Angry Birds, but not the 
> slingshot. Sugar, without all its pieces isn't worth the trouble.

Sameer,
   I disagree somewhat with your thesis (and am very glad you started this 
discussion.)

From a technological standpoint, it is actually probably easier to implement 
what you describe:
Sugar as a monolithic Android application, which takes over the entire user 
interface when
launched.   The reason I never considered it seriously was the larger ecosystem.

The reason to move to Android from Linux is two-fold:
- Chip vendors are dropping Linux support in favor of Android.   The cheap 
chinese ARM
 vendors only support Android.
- Android/iOS are where application development is happening.  There is a much 
larger
community of Android developers than Linux or Sugar developers.

The hope was to provide the infrastructure underlying Sugar (the Journal 
datastore and
collaboration) as Android services, encouraging their use in new Android 
applications.
In this model, the Journal is another Android application, accessing the 
Journal datastore service.
New Sugar activities written in HTML should be capable of running in Sugar on 
Linux
or as Android activities (although perhaps with different execution wrappers).
In this manner, perhaps we can enlarge the Sugar community with developers 
mainly
targeting Android.   If we pursue Sugar as a single Android application, with 
embedded
Python activities, we are isolating ourselves from the Android community.

The danger of this approach is the loss of an integrated UX.  This could be 
addressed
by customizing the home UI, in the same manner that the XO tablet has a custom 
home UI
implementing the Dreams interface, but that would require "rooting" the tablet 
in some manner.
But the native Android UI isn't that bad...

Cheers,
wad

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Re: XO-tablet development? [Devel Digest, Vol 90, Issue 8]

[John Watlington]

By proposing that further development work be native to Android,
you are locking the fruits of that labor away from:

- Any child using a current XO laptop
- Any child using any other Linux laptop, such as the millions of children in 
Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, etc...
- Any child using a Windows laptop

Why would you do that ? By working within the proposed framework (Sugar on 
HTML5),
these children are supported as well as those using a Android tablet.

As James has already pointed out, the performance penalty of using
HTML5 is minimal --- probably less than that of using Python on most systems,
as much work (independent of OLPC) goes into optimizing its performance.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: XO-tablet development? [Devel Digest, Vol 90, Issue 8]

[John Watlington]

On Aug 13, 2013, at 1:09 PM, Yioryos Asprobounitis wrote:

>>> Paul wrote:
>>> If not, which way the tablet/laptop development team is heading?
>> 
>> don't know, sorry. 
> 
> OK, thanks. 
> Hopefully someone that does will care to comment.

It is lack of accurate knowledge of the future, not caring,
that keeps me from commenting.

> The current  laptop and tablet implementations  differ significantly and 
> would be important  to have an indication where the (limited) resources 
> should be deployed .

How would you devote resources to the tablet ?   It is closed source.

There is an attempt within the Sugar (and OLPC) community to move
the educational environment to HTML, where it can be used on both
Android (tablet) and Linux (laptop).   That is where I would suggest
deploying resources.

Cheers,
wad


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Re: Potential XO serial adapter - MicroFTX

[John Watlington]

Added to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Serial_adapters#Third_Party_Adapters

On Jul 18, 2013, at 7:05 AM, James Cameron wrote:

> Saw this https://jim.sh/ftx/ ... with suitable configuration this
> could be used as a USB serial adapter for an XO.
> 
> -- 
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.linux.org.au/
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Re: resurrected XO-1.5, died again

[John Watlington]

I'm tired of revisiting an issue that thankfully only affected less
than a thousand production units (repaired under a catastrophic
failure clause).  Unfortunately, the effect on our developer
community was disastrous, as they only received affected units.

I'm willing to send an XO-4 to replace a broken XO-1.5
if you tell me what you are using it for.

The root cause was the alloy used in the solder balls between the
CPU interposer board and the CPU silicon.   These balls are under
significant stress due to the difference in coefficient of thermal expansion
between FR4 and silicon.   This problem only showed up after the
solder balls had had time for the alloy to separate.
VIA switched the RoHS alloy used in these balls as we were entering
production.

So while mechanical stress on the motherboard might accelerate the
problem, simple thermal stress from powering the device on (or moving
in/out of suspend) is a more likely culprit.

wad


On Jul 2, 2013, at 3:26 PM, Ian MacArthur wrote:

> On 2 Jul 2013, at 08:58, Yioryos Asprobounitis wrote:
> 
>> Back to the original question. Should I conclude at this point that there is 
>> no information/experience  on the effect of repetition on the effectiveness 
>> of the soldering reflow process? (ie try and see what happens ;)
> 
> No OLPC information. However, a little time with google looking for the PS3 
> "yellow light of death" of the Xbox-360 "red ring of death" will produce more 
> opinions than could ever be wanted, all based on no substantial evidence 
> whatsoever...
> 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: resurrected XO-1.5, died again

[John Watlington]

On Jul 1, 2013, at 6:24 PM, James Cameron wrote:

> I agree.  I've found laptops with looser-than-i-would-like hinge and
> motherboard screws after children have been using them.  The hinge
> screws that are uncovered by disassembly were the most interesting.

There was a problem with the manufacturing process which
resulted in some of the externally accessible hinge screws
being cross-threaded or not fully tightened on the assembly line.
This process has been changed, but will require future monitoring.

wad
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Re: X0-4 (vivante) GPU driver development sponsoring

[John Watlington]

On Jun 26, 2013, at 9:21 AM, Christian Gmeiner wrote:

> I have heard that your X0-4 is powered by an Vivante GC1000 GPU. Cause of this
> fact I am looking for a partner to sponsor the development of
> etnaviv[1]. Together with the current maintainer we have a roadmap that looks 
> like this:

Unfortunately, I can't directly sponsor this project right now.
I have brought it to the attention of some people who might,
and can offer you hardware and help with testing the result.

Regards,
wad

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Headphone volume adjustment

[John Watlington]

We have noticed that under Fedora 18 (13.2.0 os10 on XO-4), the headphone volume
can't be adjusted to complete silence.  

Is this a bug ?
(The speaker volume can be adjusted to silence.)

Comments, por favor,
wad
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Re: Corrupted display on XO1.5 when suspended with screen on

[John Watlington]

On Jun 21, 2013, at 2:39 PM, Sebastian Silva wrote:

> Hello OLPC-devels and friends!
> 
> We're preparing an updated Operating System image targeted at the Peru 
> deployment.
> 
> For a while we've been observing a screen corruption when the XO1.5 goes into 
> sleep mode (where the screen remains on, but the computer goes to sleep).

This is likely due to the video controller being disabled before the DCON 
driver has completely
finished loading the image into the DCON.

> Our image is based on 11.3.1 shipping firmware olpc-firmware-q3c06 (but my 
> testing machine has q3c07 and exhibits the same malfunction).
> 
> I've looked around the issue tracker but couldn't find a similar issue.
> 
> It doensn't always fail but eventually it does, it can take a
> few tries to reproduce.


We did some work to fix the DCON driver in newer releases.

wad
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Re: Re (2): XO-1.5 build 885 no space in journal

[John Watlington]

On Jun 11, 2013, at 11:17 PM, peasth...@shaw.ca wrote:

> From: James Cameron 
> Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 11:54:36 +1000
>> Yes, another option is to buy 4 GB or 8 GB microSD cards and open each
>> laptop to install them.  But there's a small risk of them not working
>> with the firmware ... we made sure the ones we used in manufacturing
>> did work.
> 
> Some very economical offerings of flash storage are available on eBay, 
> with delivery to your mailbox.  If you find a promising choice, buy a 
> minimal order and test.  If it works buy more.  If it doesn't work, the 
> loss is small.

Absolutely agreed, but as the SD card is the primary storage and schools
were worried about kids removing them, it takes sixteen screws to upgrade.

Remove the Spanish Wikipedia immediately (I had to do it to run SD tests on
that model).  The non-sugar UI also consumes space...

wad
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Re: School networks and electrical equipment damage

[John Watlington]

I considered sources such as James' theory, as well as someone
connecting one of the ethernet cables to line voltage, and neither
accounted for the level of damage you described.

But I can't agree more with James' point about building from the ground
up.   The first thing we used to wire up in a computer room was the
frame grounds --- with modern SOHO gear that all comes through
the grounded power plug.   But it has to be plugged in to be grounded
(i.e. protected).

Coincidentally, today I checked out the earth ground in the new hardware office
and wired up the workbench grounding in OLPC Boston's new digs in Davis Sq.

wad

On Jun 6, 2013, at 6:51 PM, James Cameron wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 06, 2013 at 01:58:58PM -0600, Daniel Drake wrote:
>> And the most surprising thing - we had not even turned on the network
>> yet, pending some electrical work. Everything was connected up except
>> one crucial link - the UPS was not plugged into mains power. So all of
>> this damage happened without any of the devices having a connection to
>> the mains.
> 
> Actually not plugged in?  The whole network was therefore either
> isolated from building electrical earth ("ground") or had a series of
> surreptitious connections, the critical one being the telephone line.
> 
> Hmm.  Lightning wasn't necessary.
> 
> Here's my theory:
> 
> Each long run of ethernet twisted pair becomes one side of a capacitor,
> the other side being the building wiring, piping, or structure.
> 
> The long run of telephone wire picks up static charge from wind,
> lightning ground currents, test currents from the telephone exchange
> or line workers, or induced currents from other subscribers or power
> network switching.  Even turning on many lights.
> 
> http://www.pololu.com/docs/0J16/all can give you an idea of what can
> happen.  Any of these events will induce a starting pulse of DC in the
> telephone wire, which is analogous to the length of DC power cable in
> the Pololu explanation; the inductor.  The low equivalent series
> resistance (ESR) capacitor can be thought of as the long cabling
> against the building.
> 
> As a result of the capacitor and the inductor, the voltage is
> amplified until it reaches the breakdown voltage of whatever is
> connected.
> 
> Having the UPS plugged in might have prevented this voltage from
> finding a route through something more precious.  Instead, it might
> have found a route through a series of surge protection devices in the
> UPS, and then the only damaged equipment would be the ADSL modem.
> 
> The convention is to build from the ground up.  Don't plug the cables
> in until the ground is available, and then plug them in in strict
> order.  People get away with not doing this because the damaging pulse
> isn't constant.
> 
> (Reminds me of the time that I pulled a UPS input power plug out
> instead of just turning it off.  A bad idea.  The last pin to separate
> was active.  The connected equipment lost ground reference, the only
> ground reference that remained was through a device, so it took a full
> hit and died.  The resulting current passed into the building ground,
> and triggered the earth leakage breaker on the circuit that the UPS
> was originally connected to.  Other equipment connected to that
> circuit powered down.)
> 
> (Reminds me also of working for a cable contractor in the 1980s,
> looking after their cable management system on a VAX ... they were
> putting millions of cables into a power station, and the build was
> done from the ground up; that is cables were tracked as to whether
> they had been terminated yet, and the list of unterminated cables was
> a special report from the database that they always wanted to see.)
> 
>> I have seen that some UPSs (unfortunately not these ones) allow a
>> phone line to be passed through them, supposedly offering some
>> protection. Would such a system protect against a lightening bolt,
>> assuming thats what happened here?
> 
> Yes, but only if the UPS was earthed.  It would also protect the ADSL
> modem.  It would also protect from most other causes of a current
> pulse arriving on the phone line.
> 
> -- 
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Re: School networks and electrical equipment damage

[John Watlington]

On Jun 6, 2013, at 3:58 PM, Daniel Drake wrote:

> Those of us familiar with setting up school networks (server + switch
> + APs) in some of our deployments will be familiar with  the
> occasional loss of hardware, due to surges in the low quality
> electrical supply or whatever, even when the system is protected by a
> cheap UPS which supposedly offers some protection.
> 
> This has often been the case in Nicaragua, so the group is now buying
> more expensive UPSes, PoE switches, and PoE access points for new
> schools. This means that the server and switch are connected to mains
> power via a UPS which hopefully protects them, and none of the APs are
> connected directly to the mains (instead they get Power over Ethernet)
> which hopefully offers some isolation from bad electrical conditions.
> 
> This equipment is expensive, especially in places like Nicaragua where
> lots of import taxes are applied. But the hope is that the investment
> pays off in that the equipment doesn't get zapped.
> 
> However, one week after deploying this equipment in the first school,
> we are left with a server that doesn't boot, 3 out of 4 access points
> broken with a nice burning electronics smell, and a broken switch with
> a lot of visible damage to the electronics.
> 
> And the most surprising thing - we had not even turned on the network
> yet, pending some electrical work. Everything was connected up except
> one crucial link - the UPS was not plugged into mains power. So all of
> this damage happened without any of the devices having a connection to
> the mains.
> 
> Connectivity-wise, the setup was:
> WAN: Phone line - ADSL modem - XS
> LAN: XS - Switch - 4 APs
> 
> And power connections: the XS, ADSL modem and switch were connected to
> the UPS. The APs were connected to the switch over ethernet for both
> power and data. Again, since the battery was not connected to mains
> power, none of the devices had a power source.
> 
> The connectivity engineer's best bet is that a lightening bolt landed
> at the school or nearby, and that this caused a power surge on the
> phone line. This surge passed through the ADSL modem, server, switch,
> and 4 APs, destroying everything in its path (except 1 AP that was
> connected over a longer cable than the rest).

This was my most likely hypothesis as well.
I believe the damage would have been less had the UPS
actually been plugged in, but most probably have their input
protected, not their outputs!

> I figured this is a story worth sharing, for any other projects
> considering splashing out on more expensive equipment...

> Also, I'm wondering if anyone has any advice/experience here. Would
> others expect this more expensive setup to be more resilient to bad
> electrical conditions than a cheaper setup - will the investment pay
> off?

Cat5 Ethernet transformers generally provide 1.5 kV of isolation
(at each end) but PoE breaks that.

I believe the actual protection provided by the UPS can vary widely.
They are usually required in situations like yours to protect the hard
drivers, not as much for power line protection.   I would use a periodically
replaced surge protector before it and maybe a surge protected power strip
after it.

> I figure that the case of a lightening bolt might be a bit extreme,
> but electrical storms are a nightly occurance here almost daily during
> the 6 month rainy season.

Nothing will protect against a direct lightning strike of the wire.
The more common case is a strike near the wire or the central office which
can induce still induce many kV of surge on the lines.   If electrical storms
are common you need to take precautions.

I hope all the network cabling is indoors ?   If it is only partially so,
consider something like:
http://www.l-com.com/surge-protector-indoor-4-port-med-power-10-100-base-t-cat5-lightning-surge-protector

> I have seen that some UPSs (unfortunately not these ones) allow a
> phone line to be passed through them, supposedly offering some
> protection. Would such a system protect against a lightening bolt,
> assuming thats what happened here?

Probably not.

Primary protection on the phone line should be an gapped carbon block
or gas tube protector at the entrance to the building between each line of
the phone pair and a good ground.These protect against higher
energy surges, and generally kick in at over 1 kV.

I would suggest using primary protection that includes secondary protection,
such as you see in:
http://www.l-com.com/surge-protector-outdoor-high-power-telephone-dsl-lightning-surge-protector-screw-terminals

You could also loop it through the UPS at this point for redundancy
(but it MUST remain plugged in to provide protection --- it not, it makes
things worse!)

Then there is the protection in the modem itself, which should be able
to handle the remaining surge.   They are so common in telephony as to be
required --- but primary protection and proper grounding is always assumed.

Sorry to hear about your misf

USB Network Adapter recommendations

[John Watlington]

Can you recommend a particular USB network adapter for long term reliability ?

I have been using the Zoltan USB adapters that Michail had manufactured
for use with the XO, with ok performance.   (I have been told that under
heavy load they don't work as well.)   After only a year of continuous use, I 
just
had one stop working: transmissions (receptions ?) saw increasing errors but
kept operating (just dropping seriously impacting link performance).  
Occasionally,
however, it would overcurrent the XO USB port, giving a clue as to the 
defective component.

Cheers,
wad

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olpc-dev-kernel and yum update

[John Watlington]

This isn't a bug report, just an observation to keep anyone else from
spending time on this known condition (cjb's comment was "of course!"):

If you want to update a kernel on a 13.1.0/13.2.0 build, you must first
run olpc-dev-kernel.   Running it after doing the yum update kernel
will result in a confused system, which cannot be fixed using yum alone.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: video broken on 1.75?

[John Watlington]

They should be in an upcoming 13.2.0 build.

wad

On Apr 3, 2013, at 6:51 PM, Sameer Verma wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Tom Parker  wrote:
> On 20/03/13 14:27, Sameer Verma wrote:
> 
> I got the source from TED as a MP4 wrapper.
> http://video.ted.com/talk/podcast/2009/None/RennyGleeson_2009-light.mp4
> 
> Interesting, the XO-1.75 with VMETA drivers plays most .mp4 videos from the 
> internet as-is, but it does not play this one -- the sound stutters and it 
> drops a backtrace on exit due to I think memory corruption.
> 
> However http://video.ted.com/talk/podcast/2009/None/RennyGleeson_2009.mp4 
> plays just fine on XO-1.75 with VMETA drivers. The quality isn't great, the 
> XO-1.75 could play a much higher quality version if you have the bandwidth 
> and storage (and one is available).
> 
> 
> I've tried to wget this version into /home/olpc/Documents and then run it in 
> jukebox via the journal. It won't play. It won't play in Browse directly 
> either. I suspect it has something to do with this VMETA drivers you speak 
> of. Does the stable image have VMETA? If not, how does one get the drivers?
> 
> Sameer
>  
> Is your goal to get one file that plays on both XO-1 and XO-1.75? Maybe you 
> could try transcoding the not-light version and see if that results in 
> something that both devices can play?
> 
> The goal is to play video on the 1.75, but thus far, the only video that will 
> play is a tiny sized ogv video in Browse (no hardware accel, I presume). 
> 
> A working solution would be great. 
> 
> cheers,
> Sameer
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Re: RAM in XO-1.75-models

[John Watlington]

On Mar 27, 2013, at 1:49 PM, Paul Fox wrote:

> ajay wrote:
>> Hi all.
>> 
>> As per http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO-1.75, the RAM in XO-1.75 is
>> 
>>   "DRAM memory: 512 MB or 1GB DDR3 dynamic
>> RAM;
>> "
>> 
>> Is there any specific criteria as to which models have 512 MB, and which
>> have 1 GB?
>> I, for example, have 512 MB of RAM, on a CL1 model.
> 
> the SKU number of a laptop tells you how it was built:
> 
>http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Manufacturing_data#XO-1.75

This information is also printed in the Open Firmware banner
when pretty boot is disabled by holding down the check gamepad key.

wad

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Re: OS Builder output img ?

[John Watlington]

I thought you should set the dk manufacturing tag, but I
just noticed that is only supported on XO-1 and 1.5!

wp and ww are different tags, you can't just change the
tag value with change-tag.

wad

On Mar 25, 2013, at 7:07 PM, James Cameron wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 06:50:00PM -0400, Richard Smith wrote:
>>> But maybe you don't need to do that, if you are only changing one tag?
>>> How many tags are you changing?  If one, then finish the script with
>>> the tag change.
>> 
>> I mentioned that he could also disable security.  So he would be
>> deleting the 'wp' tag too.
> 
> Really?  disable-security changes the wp tag to ww rather than
> deleting it.  Do you think he should delete it instead?
> 
> Is there a risk of having to reboot to enable writes?
> 
> -- 
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.linux.org.au/
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Re: Customize default language with OS Builder

[John Watlington]

If you change the LO tag for a laptop before the first boot of an image,
its value will get picked up and used.

- Stop a boot in OFW by pressing the ESC key.
- fs-update (or copy-image) the new image into place
- Change the manufacturing tag:
change-tag LO fr_FR.UTF-8   / only works if the same size as current tag
 (or if a different size, use:)
delete-tag LO
 (on reboot, stop in OFW again and:)
add-tag LO fr_FR.UTF-8

Cheers,
wad

On Mar 24, 2013, at 6:54 PM, Jerry Vonau wrote:

> On Sun, 2013-03-24 at 23:02 +0100, lio...@olpc-france.org wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I’ve seen that the « langs= » property in the .ini for OS Builder
>> allow to choose the language sets installed on the image.
>> 
>> I wonder if there is a way to specify the default language (FR instead
>> of EN for example).
>> 
>> Do I need to use a custom script for that?
>> 
>> 
> 
> Yes, sugar reads ~/.i18n for the language list in cp-languages. You
> could do something like:
> 
> cat << EOF >> /home/olpc/.i18n
> 
> LANGUAGE=en_GB.utf8:en_US.utf8
> EOF
> 
> 
> This will only work if olpc-utils version 3.0.3 or later is used in the
> image, prior versions deleted .i18n when first booted.
> 
> Jerry
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> Thanks in advance for your answer.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>Lionel.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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Re: video broken on 1.75?

[John Watlington]

When using a block transform based video codec (MPEG-1/2/4, H.263/4, etc)
the dimensions of the video being encoded/decoded should always be a multiple
of the block size (8x8 in the above cases, although for MPEG 16x16 should be
used.)  To do otherwise requires serious contortions of the codec and doesn't
reduce the processing load.  I'm not at all surprised that a hardware
encoder/decoder would just fail.

Cheers,
wad

On Mar 19, 2013, at 3:37 PM, Daniel Drake wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 7:37 PM, Sameer Verma  wrote:
>> We have a bunch of XO 1.75 going to Madagascar. These have build
>> 13.1.0 (candidate 35). This ogv file [1] works well on a XO-1 but does
>> not play via jukebox. The ogv file plays well in Browse (trouble with
>> going fullscreen). It plays ok for a few seconds via MediaPlayer in
>> GNOME.
>> 
>> [1] http://verma.sfsu.edu/projects/olpc/sample-for-xo.ogv
> 
> Thanks for reporting.
> Unfortunately there are many ogg theora files that don't play back on
> XO-1.75, but they normally fail with an error message:
> http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/12004
> 
> So I filed a new ticket for this video: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/12634
> 
> The reason that it works in Browse is probably that it is not using
> hardware accelerated playback there.
> 
> When I saw a case of #12004 before, I worked around it by re-encoding
> the video as it had some slightly special parameters. This video would
> appear to be similar. It is a 320x180 video somehow encoded into the
> 320x192 theora resolution. I suspect if you re-encode it so that both
> measurements are equal, it will work OK.
> 
> Daniel
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Re: [support-gang] Customization Sticks fails on 13.1.0 & 12.1.0 for XO-1

[John Watlington]

On Mar 12, 2013, at 3:54 PM, Holt wrote:

> On 3/11/2013 10:08 PM, John Watlington wrote:
>> Please don't redistribute secure laptops --- OLPC's policy since early 2009 
>> has
>> been to deprecate the security system.   The exceptions have been deployments
>> "large" enough to have dedicated support staff capable of handling their own 
>> keys.
> 
> I wish :)  We have no choice but to continue to distribute secure laptops in 
> Haiti as these are Give1Get1 redonations that are already (largely) moved 
> from the USA to Haiti where the developer key process is 
> unrealistic+overwhelming to largely offline deployments.

No more unrealistic than upgrading them.   All it takes is running a collector
USB key over the laptops, mailing or emailing the small text file generated to 
the
US, and receiving a small text file back.

wad

> The only realistic solution (for Haiti here) is USB stick reflashing for 
> evolving/expanding small deployments every few years (or months when we're 
> truly lucky!  With Customization Stick or similar offline one-offs.

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Re: [support-gang] Customization Sticks fails on 13.1.0 & 12.1.0 for XO-1

[John Watlington]

On Mar 11, 2013, at 10:44 PM, Richard A. Smith wrote:

> On 03/11/2013 10:08 PM, John Watlington wrote:
> 
>> Please don't redistribute secure laptops --- OLPC's policy since early 2009 
>> has
>> been to deprecate the security system.   The exceptions have been deployments
>> "large" enough to have dedicated support staff capable of handling their own 
>> keys.
> 
> That policy is fine but perhaps needs to be more visible to the people going 
> into areas where secure laptops were distributed and we should try to be 
> helpful to those people when they request developer keys.

If someone isn't being helpful about providing developer keys, let me know.

wad

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Re: [support-gang] Customization Sticks fails on 13.1.0 & 12.1.0 for XO-1

[John Watlington]

On Mar 11, 2013, at 1:54 PM, Richard A. Smith wrote:

> On 03/11/2013 10:26 AM, Daniel Drake wrote:
> 
>>> would have to be signed by OLPC or Reuben would have to give them a Haiti
>>> key thats installed via keyjector.
>> 
>> This is not a new situation for us, and the approach we have taken in
>> the past is to help such deployments un-secure all of their laptops,
>> or provide a keyjector to insert custom keys, upon their request.
> 
> Nod. Kejector for small deployments is new to me.  I thought keyjector was 
> only for special cases.
> 
> I don't think most of the folks on say the support-gang list have any idea 
> that keyjector is an option for them.

I don't think it is an option.   A keyjector should not be made publicly 
available.

Please don't redistribute secure laptops --- OLPC's policy since early 2009 has
been to deprecate the security system.   The exceptions have been deployments
"large" enough to have dedicated support staff capable of handling their own 
keys.

wad

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Re: Video on XO 1.75 (URGENT)

[John Watlington]

On Mar 5, 2013, at 3:41 AM, Tom Parker wrote:

> On 05/03/13 17:40, tkk...@nurturingasia.com wrote:
>> I am making the transition from XO 1 to XO 1.75.  I plug in a USB with some 
>> *.ogv to play on a FEW new XO1.75 (12.1.0 customised build 10 ). When I 
>> click on it some files will play but some would not play at all - as if it 
>> is choking!. Run fine on my XO 1.0.
> 
> I'm not sure if the VMETA processor will help with .ogv (presumably theora 
> codec?) files, but it is worth a try.
> 
> Install 
> http://dev.laptop.org/~jnettlet/f17/vmeta/gstreamer-plugins-marvell-0.10-3.olpc.armv7hl.rpm
>  and 
> http://dev.laptop.org/~jnettlet/f17/vmeta/libvmeta-marvell-005-1.olpc.armv7hl.rpm

Unfortunately, we haven't paid the license fee for distributing those in a 
general fashion,
and those RPMs have been removed for now.   The business team is looking into 
making
them available to deployments without incurring the wrath of MPEG-LA.

If you need a copy for testing, please contact me directly.

Sorry,
John

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Re: Anything to be done about a blown XO-1 fuse

[John Watlington]

On Feb 4, 2013, at 8:18 AM, Christoph Derndorfer wrote:

> Hi again,
> 
> while investing why an XO-1 wouldn't charge I discovered that the 2A fuse 
> near the power plug seems to have been blown and was "fixed" by someone 
> simply soldering over it (see the attached photo).

Wow, first we've seen outside of torture tests!  That fuse should only blow if 
someone tried to
power the laptop with greater than +/-40V.

> Now I'm wondering whether there's anything to be done about that or if that's 
> something that essentially can't be fixed in the field?

Solder down another small 2A fast blow fuse (3A for XO-1.5 or later).

If a repair center found a blown fuse, I would also recommend checking the 
protective diodes
D118 and D123.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: Cameras not working on XO-1s

[John Watlington]

On Jan 31, 2013, at 11:10 AM, Christoph Derndorfer wrote:

> Hi again,
> 
> this may sound like a stupid question but how would one go about swapping out 
> the camera modules?

> I couldn't find any instructions on the wiki on how to actually remove the 
> motherboard from the chassis (probably one of the few things I have never 
> done on an XO so far).

Access the motherboard by removing the back (removing the LCD and the 
microphone cable from the
motherboard in the process of removing the back.)
Remove the speaker cables, the keyboard cable, and the battery cables.
Disconnect the antenna cables to the WLAN module.
XO-1.5 and later: remove the WLAN module
There are three screws holding the heat spreader down (1.5 and later have 4 
screws).  Remove them.
You should now be able to lift the motherboard out, starting with the side with 
two USB ports.

Remove the camera and camera mount as one unit.
Be careful not to damage the motherboard when removing the camera mount.   It 
is adhered to the
USB connector with double sided tape.Remove the camera and its mount first,
then disconnect the cable.  When mounting, make the electrical connection 
before placing the camera
and mount into position.

When reinserting the motherboard, make sure all cables are clear and insert the 
side with the
audio/power jacks first.

> That step seems necessary in order to access the module because from the 
> front the white plastic piece makes it barely possible to see the cable and 
> push the connector in place with a small screwdriver.

It is impossible to replace the camera without removing the motherboard.   One 
of the most annoying
simple mistakes I make is mounting a motherboard and starting system testing 
before realizing that the MB
didn't have a camera mounted...

Cheers,
wad

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video of XOs in the Amazon

[John Watlington]

Wikipedia pointed me to this excerpt from an upcoming film, "web".
It shows kids with XOs in the Peruvian Amazon creating on Wikipedia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XPnH_rF9ks&feature=youtu.be

Cheers,
wad

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Re: Cameras not working on XO-1s

[John Watlington]

On Jan 30, 2013, at 3:02 PM, Christoph Derndorfer wrote:

> Hi again,
> 
> another issue we encountered during today's workshop session was that on 3~4 
> XO-1s the camera didn't work (all machines are running 12.1.0 with the 
> associated firmware).
> 
> The effect in Record is always the same: a grey still image. However when 
> running the hardware self-test 2 of the machines passed the test even though 
> the camera output on the display was total noise. With the other machine or 
> two the self-test failed.
> 
> Since I've never seen issues with the camera before I was wondering whether 
> there was anything we could try beyond verifying that the camera connector is 
> in place (as described at 
> http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO_Troubleshooting_AV#Errors_communicating_with_the_camera)?
> 
> Thanks,
> Christoph

Oh, dear.   You might have run into a failure of the camera flat cable.   We 
changed the mainframe
in 2010 (IIRC) to fix this, and there is a simple preventative measure to 
prevent it from happening
on older machines (adding two pieces of cellulose tape to the right place on 
the motherboard.)
Details and the fix are at http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/10148

As someone already pointed out, please try replacing the camera assembly --- it 
is the quick
way to see if this is the camera or the motherboard.

Regards,
wad

 



> -- 
> Christoph Derndorfer
> 
> volunteer, OLPC (Austria) [www.olpc.at]
> editor, OLPC News [www.olpcnews.com]
> contributor, TechnikBasteln [www.technikbasteln.net]
> 
> e-mail: christ...@derndorfer.eu
> 
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Re: XO-4 lack of keyboard/mouse input - still happening?

[John Watlington]

On Jan 29, 2013, at 11:45 AM, Jon Nettleton wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 5:40 PM, Daniel Drake  wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Jon Nettleton  
> wrote:
> > I have seen this problem on both my machines today while testing.  Sometimes
> > just keyboard, sometimes touchpad, sometimes both.  I found that if my
> > machine was in this state and I suspend it, resume would hang at ec_irq on
> > the console.  The only fix was powering off and removing plug and battery.
> 
> Which OS build (any custom kernel?), OFW and EC firmware versions?
> Touchpad type? Any kernel logs saved?
> 
> 
> OS build is os26, OFW is Q7B12mb EC is 0.3.10
> 
> Touchpad is Sentelic, no kernel logs.

Somewhere in the tickets I noted that I saw this problem with both touchpad 
types.

wad

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Re: [IAEP] XO-4 Questions After Viewing CES video

[John Watlington]

Caryl,
   My apologies, I thought you were talking about this afternoon's video,
not that one.   Yes that is the XO-4 (although with a clear bottom unit).

I believe Mike pegged the Sesame Street answer.

We are getting the Sugar for the XO-4 from Sugarlabs, and I don't
think they've made any startling changes to the Journal.   This is just
a new spin on it.   I don't know how to delete an entry from the Journal,
do you ?

Cheers,
wad

On Jan 10, 2013, at 11:46 PM, John Watlington wrote:

> On Jan 10, 2013, at 10:54 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote:
> 
>> I finally found the video done by Giulia D'Amico today about the XO-4 at 
>> CES. Watch it and see if you also have questions. Below you will find some 
>> of mine. Add yours below and pass it on.
>> 
>> http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/06/marvel-olpc-4-0-ces-hands-on/
>> 
>> Can anyone verify any of these ?
> 
> Please don't confuse the XO Learning Tablet with anything else OLPC is or has 
> been
> doing.   No one within the OLPC engineering or learning teams had any part
> in the development of the XO Learning Tablet hardware or software.
> 
> They completely downplayed the XO-4 Touch Laptop in that presentation.
> 
>> It sounded like she said some content from Sesame Street and others would be 
>> included in Sugar on the XO-4. Is this correct?
> 
> No, I don't believe so.   She was talking about content on the XO Learning 
> Tablet (under Android).
> 
>> She mentions the Journal as a means of "Parental Control." Does this mean 
>> the XO-4 may be marketed to individuals?
> 
> Again, she was talking about the XO Learning Tablet, which will be marketed 
> to individuals
> (exclusively through Wallmart.)   Unfortunately, there is still no plan to 
> market XO-4 Touch to
> individuals.
> 
>> She said the child cannot remove things from the Journal. Does this mean it 
>> will be locked? Can a teacher or parent remove things?
> 
> No idea.   We were all surprised at the notion of the Journal as parental 
> control.
> 
>> I notice that Tam Tam is still included. Has anyone managed to make the 
>> touch-screen standard type musical keyboard available as I have been 
>> suggesting?  If so... I want to "test drive" it!  If not, I hope it is in 
>> development and want to be a "beta tester"
> 
> Me too!   More recent versions of the XO-4 touchscreen firmware should allow
> a many-finger keyboard.   I hope someone with an XO-4 is working on a demo!
> 
> I'm surprised to hear that there is an Android version of Tam Tam.
> My guess is that it is a similar Android app.
> 
> Regards,
> wad
> 

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Re: [IAEP] XO-4 Questions After Viewing CES video

[John Watlington]

On Jan 10, 2013, at 10:54 PM, Caryl Bigenho wrote:

> I finally found the video done by Giulia D'Amico today about the XO-4 at CES. 
> Watch it and see if you also have questions. Below you will find some of 
> mine. Add yours below and pass it on.
> 
> http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/06/marvel-olpc-4-0-ces-hands-on/
> 
> Can anyone verify any of these ?

Please don't confuse the XO Learning Tablet with anything else OLPC is or has 
been
doing.   No one within the OLPC engineering or learning teams had any part
in the development of the XO Learning Tablet hardware or software.

They completely downplayed the XO-4 Touch Laptop in that presentation.

> It sounded like she said some content from Sesame Street and others would be 
> included in Sugar on the XO-4. Is this correct?

No, I don't believe so.   She was talking about content on the XO Learning 
Tablet (under Android).

> She mentions the Journal as a means of "Parental Control." Does this mean the 
> XO-4 may be marketed to individuals?

Again, she was talking about the XO Learning Tablet, which will be marketed to 
individuals
(exclusively through Wallmart.)   Unfortunately, there is still no plan to 
market XO-4 Touch to
individuals.

> She said the child cannot remove things from the Journal. Does this mean it 
> will be locked? Can a teacher or parent remove things?

No idea.   We were all surprised at the notion of the Journal as parental 
control.

> I notice that Tam Tam is still included. Has anyone managed to make the 
> touch-screen standard type musical keyboard available as I have been 
> suggesting?  If so... I want to "test drive" it!  If not, I hope it is in 
> development and want to be a "beta tester"

Me too!   More recent versions of the XO-4 touchscreen firmware should allow
a many-finger keyboard.   I hope someone with an XO-4 is working on a demo!

I'm surprised to hear that there is an Android version of Tam Tam.
My guess is that it is a similar Android app.

Regards,
wad

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Re: [Techteam] Announcing Q7B11 for XO-4

[John Watlington]

On Jan 8, 2013, at 12:49 AM, James Cameron wrote:

> XO-4 C1 only: after upgrading to Q7B11 from Q7B10 or earlier, you
> should use this command once at the ok prompt:
> 
>   update-nn-flash
> 
> This will update the touchscreen firmware to 0.0.0.10.
> 
> XO-4 B1:

A number of B1s have a tinted light guide.   You should upgrade as with the C1.
If you don't have a tinted light guide and want one, let me know.   I still 
have some left.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: [Testing] 13.1.0 release candidate 2 (build 21) released

[John Watlington]

On Jan 2, 2013, at 10:16 AM, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:

> 
> This build now enables XO-4 idle suspend by default. This is still a
> work in progress, there are still various instabilities which may make
> this build feel more unstable than previous ones. You can disable
> automatic power management in sugar's Settings panel to restore
> previous behaviour.
> 
> 
> These are the instabilities I have found in a few hours using it:
> 
> * The xo shutdown showing a big 01 (or OI) in the screen.
> Serial connector show a lot of:
> [  660.846067] mmcblk0: error -110 sending status command, retrying
> [  660.846068] mmcblk0: error -110 sending status command, retrying
> [  660.846098] mmcblk0: error -110 sending status command, aborting
> [  660.846128] end_request: I/O error, dev mmcblk0, sector 3614152

Are these two separate tickets ?

wad

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Re: dead wifi module? [Devel Digest, Vol 82, Issue 34]

[John Watlington]

On Dec 30, 2012, at 12:55 PM, Yioryos Asprobounitis wrote:

>> Looks dead to me.  I suggest:
>> 
>> 1.  remove external power cable and battery for five
>> minutes, then test again,
>> 
>> 2.  remove and reseat the wireless card, (taking care
>> with electrostatic discharge risk),
> 
> Tried 1 and 2 with no success. Unfortunatelly I do not have my other XOs with 
> me right now test 3 but looks pretty gone.
> 
> Tried to locate a sales point for 88w8686 sdio module but the only one I 
> found [1] looks nothing like the XO's one. 
> iLovemyXO also does not appear to have it.
> Are these available only through OLPC?

Possibly.   Their sale to other companies is encouraged, but as the SDIO
interface is generally only available in soldered-down modules they were
manufactured for OLPC.They also take advantage of +1.8V SDIO signaling
and efficient +1.8V power supplies on the motherboard to save power.

For failure analysis reasons, can you verify the vintage of the 8686 card ?
The serial number of the laptop it came in should be sufficient.

If it is a developer unit, contact me off list with a shipping address.  I keep 
a
few on hand for use with new motherboards.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: HDMI port

[John Watlington]

On Dec 2, 2012, at 5:06 AM, Sameer Verma wrote:

> I was looking for a cable for the micro HDMI port on the XO4. I couldn't find 
> it locally, so I bought it online. The connector is similar to a micro USB on 
> my phone (size wise) but after plugging it into the XO, I realized that the 
> connector is very flimsy. I suppose the bit sticking inside the XO doesn't 
> feel robust enough to forgive any major movement of the cable on the outside. 

We missed the catch by around 0.25mm.  It feels fixed on C1, after moving the 
connector.

> A type A HDMI cable connector seems to be quite robust, like a USB A 
> connector. What was the thinking behind picking a micro HDMI connector?
> A regular HDMI connector seems more robust and easily available (my 
> experience...yours may vary).

Regular HDMI couldn't be retrofitted into older chassis.  A rubber plug is 
available which
glues into place from the inside in an older chassis when installing an XO-4 
motherboard.
Micro HDMI seems set to become as standard as micro USB.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: 13.1.0 development build 12 released

[John Watlington]

More importantly, occasionally boot with two sources of power (battery and DC).
Q7B01 should have been replaced automatically a number of builds ago.

On Nov 16, 2012, at 6:16 PM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote:

>> What version of Open Firmware?
> 
> Q7B01
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Re: 12.1.0 on XO-1 customization stick

[John Watlington]

On Nov 15, 2012, at 8:44 PM, Tony Anderson wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> If I understand this:
> 
> 1. Get a developer key for each laptop in the school.
> 2. Use the developer key to unlock each laptop.
> 3. Do a normal install of the build image.
> 4. Relock the laptop by removing the developer key on the XO

Once you remove the developer key, it will refuse to boot an
unsigned image.

The process is more like:

> 1. Get a developer key for each laptop in the school.
> 2. Use the developer key to unlock each laptop.
2a. Install local keys (either in addition to the OLPC keys or replacing them)

> 3. Do a normal install of the build image.
3a. This build should be signed with the local keys

> 4. Relock the laptop by removing the developer key on the XO

Cheers,
wad

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Re: OLPC XO 1.75 replace one of the 3 usb port with a mini hdmi

[John Watlington]

On Jan 19, 2011, at 6:48 AM, Andrew Puch wrote:

> Is the cost and form factor viable to replace one of the external usb
> ports with a mini hdmi Type C or D port ? 

Yes.   We finally took your suggestion on XO-4.

> When students or teacher give talks it would be nice for them to show to
> the class on the tv what they are doing.

> The type hdmi 1.4 , D connector is 2.8 mm × 6.4 mm, where as the hdmi
> 1.3 type C connector is 2.42 mm × 10.42 mm; for comparison, a micro-USB
> connector is 2.94 mm × 7.8 mm and usb a is 11.5 mm × 4.5 mm.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Connectors
> 
> Looks like the  ARMADA 610 has support for hdmi 1.3   
> http://www.slashgear.com/marvell-armada-610-app-processor-1080p-hdmi-3d-graphics-more-0567682/

As does it's successor, the PXA2128, used in the XO-4 and XO-4 Touch.

> Also I hope there is a give1get1 one for this machine along with a nice
> touch screen :) 

There is a touchscreen on the XO-4 Touch.   We are thinking of ways to
increase availability of these.

> Maybe a usb header on the motherboard, along with pcie mini card a boy
> can dream. 

There is a spare USB port on the motherboard, although it is accessible
on resistor pads, not a connector.   Sorry about the mini-PCIe --- we
use that connector for the WLAN but it only has SDIO and USB.

Cheers,
wad
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Re: Multi-touch test activity

[John Watlington]

We got a new version of firmware from Neonode last week that improves
things a small amount.  I'm not sure what the state of the firmware auto-update
it.

One complication is that it was tuned for the tinted light guides, and
doesn't work as well with the clear ones.   I have some tinted light guides
to send out --- reply to me privately if you are doing a lot of touch work.

Cheers,
wad

On Nov 4, 2012, at 5:48 PM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> I made a simple Sugar activity to test the XO-4's multi-touch screen:
> 
>   http://activities.sugarlabs.org/en-US/sugar/addon/4611/
> 
> It works fine most of the time. Sometimes the touch contact ends unexpectedly 
> without lifting the finger.
> 
> It also demonstrates that the Neonode sensor's two touch points are not 
> independent: If you put down two fingers simultaneously, it does not know in 
> which of the 4 possible positions the two fingers are (it only knows that 2 
> horizontal and 2 vertical beams got obstructed) and so it has to guess. Also, 
> the tracking sometimes "switches over", e.g. when doing a pinch-zoom using 
> your right hand.
> 
> For activity developers this means that pinch/zoom and rotation gestures will 
> work fine, but we cannot rely on truly independent touch tracking.
> 
> Also, two-finger sweeps are not always recognized as two fingers if they are 
> held close together.
> 
> Nonetheless, it is fun to play with if you happen to have an XO-4 Touch :)
> 
> Source code:
> 
>   http://git.sugarlabs.org/testmultitouch/mainline
> 
> Patches welcome, but I want to keep the source simple, this is not going to 
> become another Paint activity.
> 
> - Bert -
> 
> PS: Could some admin please delete the accidental non-mainline repo in 
> http://git.sugarlabs.org/testmultitouch/ ? Keep "mainline", remove 
> "testmultitouch". Thanks.
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Re: Sandisk extreme 32GB and 16GB dont initialize in XO-1.75

[John Watlington]

Based on that error message, my guess is that those Sandisk cards are the
first to support +1.8V operation.   The kernel is detecting this, but getting
confused as it doesn't know how to turn on +1.8V power to the SD (it isn't
supported by that motherboard).

On XO-1.5, we supported operating SD cards at +1.8V, but since we never
encountered such a card the feature was dropped in XO-1.75/XO-4.   All cards
have to support operation at the +3.3V these systems provide.

The kernel should recognize this limitation, and not try to negotiate for
lower voltages.   This sounds like a bug in build 21, please file a ticket.

Thanks,
wad

On Oct 7, 2012, at 7:33 AM, George Hunt wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I've been working on a XO-1.75 as XS project. The smallest form factor XS 
> would use an SD card for School Server storage. So I purchased fast, large SD 
> cards from Amazon.  These cards work in my mac, and they initialize, and 
> appear to work on the XO-1.5 running build 860.
> 
> The XO-1.75 software is build 21 (12.1.0), firmware is Q4D17.
>  
> The error message in the /var/log/messages is:
> Oct  7 11:18:44 schoolserver kernel: [157819.81] sdhci: Switching to 1.8V 
> signalling voltage failed, retrying with S18R set to 0
> Oct  7 11:18:44 schoolserver kernel: [157819.876896] mmc0: error -110 whilst 
> initialising SD card
> 
> In my reading about SD cards, I discover that some SD cards are not genuine. 
> I have looked at /sys/... and the manufacturing number was "003" which is 
> appropriate for sandisk.
> 
> This error message is mentioned in 
> Ticket #11736
> 
> 
> I'd be happy to give more info, or do testing. 
> 
> George
> 
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Re: XO-1.5's sudden death - oven resurrected!

[John Watlington]

On Oct 16, 2012, at 12:27 AM, Chris Leonard wrote:

>> Having said that, in cases like the XO boards I think that we could and 
>> *should* know, at least the chemicals involved
> 
> This link is the RoHS declaration for the XO-1.  I have no knowledge
> of the potential changes in chemical composition between the XO-1 and
> the XO-1.5 or of the availability of the RoHS certificate for the
> XO-1.5 at this point in time.
> 
> http://wiki.laptop.org/images/d/d2/RoHS.pdf
> 
> I imagine this would probably be a reasonable approximation of what an
> XO-1.5 RoHS sheet would look like, but that is purely speculation on
> my part.

Yes, every XO model meets RoHS.   Starting with the latter half of XO-1.5
production, we also meet the USA's Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act
as a child's toy.  This covers nasties like phthalates (the power supply cord
wasn't passing at first).   The motherboards are not, however, halogen free.

Despite all this certification, I know that compliance checking of 
suppliers/materials
is expensive and rarely done periodically (the power supply cord manufacturer
assured us that the second and third failing samples were phthalate-free!)
Take caution (and preheat the board at 80C for an hour, not 15 min.)

Regards,
wad

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Re: My XO-1.5 Lights

[John Watlington]

The LED intensities reflect the voltage of the main power rail of the XO, saving
a small amount of power.  When the laptop switches from charging to discharging
the resulting change in brightness is noticeable.   This can either be a 
diagnostic
tool or an annoying distraction.   There should be no visible change in 
brightness
when running from battery.

Cheers,
wad

On Oct 13, 2012, at 10:58 AM, Aaron Bedford wrote:

> While on battery or the charger I noticed the green lights will flicker. The 
> power light does it the battery light will too along with the wifi lights. 
> They flicker the same way the lights in a house would during a storm when 
> then power goes in and out but not completely off.
> 
> Is this common with this board
> 
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Re: SD Card bug? XO 1.75 (Repeat post)

[John Watlington]

On Oct 7, 2012, at 2:04 PM, RJV wrote:

> Bug?
> 
> A SD card, with a .Rpm file, crashes the XO whereas any external device 
> should only be used as a booting device if there is a boot image in it or is  
> this an assumption in XO? 

We would need to know if your XO is in developer mode or "locked down".

> I re-flashed the XO but the Linux installation needs to be re-done.
Huh ?  Were you running something other than the OLPC build ?

> Thoughts or any past experiences, anyone, on this?
Shouldn't happen.   One possibility is that some XO-1's weren't as robust as 
they
should have, and many SD cards push the standard.   Try another card if 
possible,
or run some data tests of the SD card to test this. 

Cheers,
wad

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Re: sketchometry

[John Watlington]

It runs.  The UI is non-intuitive enough that I didn't get very far.

How can an HTML5 app be closed source ?  It may not
be free, and you may not be able to redistribute it, but it is HTML...

wad

On Sep 18, 2012, at 1:59 AM, Peter Robinson wrote:

> This is an interesting HTML5 geometry app that works with
> tablets/touch. Would be interesting to see how well it works on the
> XO-Touch.
> 
> http://www.sketchometry.com/
> 
> The BBC reported that it was open source, I can't see the details as
> to whether it is or not, it's certainly based on some open source bits
> though.
> 
> Peter
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Re: Attempting to re-purpose former XO 1.5 4GB microSD cards.

[John Watlington]

No idea.  I've done that any number of times with no problem
from XOs, and even my Mac.

wad

On Sep 16, 2012, at 2:52 PM, Kevin Gordon wrote:

> Folks:
> 
> I am to understand that any upcoming m/b upgrade to an XO 1.5 will perhaps 
> come with an 8GB card, thus making the old 4GB card superfluous.  As such, I 
> figured I would run an attempt at repurposing them.
> 
> So in anticipation, I've taken out two (working perfectly) microSD 4GB cards 
> from a couple of test 1.5's, placed 8Gb cards in the machines, re-flashed 
> them, and all is good on those XO boxes with the new cards
> 
> I then take the removed 4GB cards over to my Fedora 17 box and try to 
> reformat them.  I must be doing something wrong, or have missed some basic 
> info - and, no, I am in as su, and the cards are not in hardware read-only 
> switched adapters :-)
> 
> I've tried parted, fdisk, then tried diskutil over on a Mac, Ubuntu. and yes, 
> even disk manager on Windows.  I cant seem to find any way to delete the 2 
> linux partitions and make just one big happy fat32 partition on either card, 
> on any machine, using any software. On Fedora, fdisk seems to let me delete 
> the partitions:  i choose, i delete 1 & 2, i write, i look and it says there 
> are no partitions.  But lo and behold, when I reboot as suggested, they 
> 'reappear'.  I even tried on an F11 and F14 box too. gparted shows them 
> successfully deleted, then on the post-op rescan, they're back.Am I 
> missing something basic?  I have happily formatted and reformatted, 
> partitioned, resized, and otherwise intialised  many other (non-former XO 
> boot) SD cards with linux/fat32/linux-swap partitions on all of these 
> machines; but. alas I now feel all newbie again.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> KG
> 
> 
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Re: ARM motherboards

[John Watlington]

On Sep 12, 2012, at 1:43 AM, Sameer Verma wrote:

> I was walking through a replacement workflow in my mind for my Jamaica
> and India projects, and I realized that if/once the upgrades are done,
> one would be left with several older working motherboards. What's to
> become of these? If someone could design a chassis to hold a bunch of
> boards together...imagine a Beowulf cluster of these! (sorry, couldn't
> resist).


Use them as mesh relay nodes ?

wad
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Re: ARM motherboards

[John Watlington]

On Sep 4, 2012, at 10:47 PM, Sameer Verma wrote:

> Hi gang!
> 
> http://blog.laptop.org/2012/09/04/are-you-working-with-xo-laptops-that-need-an-upgrade/
> 
> So, is there a minimum number of motherboards that one has to buy?
> Pricing?

Both answers should be available from the email listed in the blog:
countr...@laptop.org.

> Any other details?

We've supported this from the beginning by design.   Kits have been available
as spare parts for deployments to purchase.  Upgrading an XO-1 to an XO-1.5
or higher motherboard requires the insertion of a small metal bracket to hold 
the
WLAN card.   The XO-1.5/1.75 chassis are mechanically identical.
Upgrading an earlier laptop to an XO-4 motherboard will require a
small rubber piece inserted to change the size of one chassis hole
from USB to micro HDMI.

Unfortunately, the mechanics of XO-4 Touch mean it cannot be retrofitted.
You can get the higher performance by upgrading to an XO-4, but sadly
no multi-touch support.

A kit includes all the parts needed to upgrade a particular laptop model.  In
addition to a motherboard (if XO-4 with an internal connector missing)
this generally includes a new heat spreader, a WLAN card (if needed), and
conductive foam/tape as needed to improve the ESD shielding of the earlier
chassis.   We do perform some testing of older laptops upgraded to each
new motherboard design in order to construct appropriate upgrade kits.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: [OLPC-AU] Retina display

[John Watlington]

Don't go there.

It is hard to talk about the resolution of the PixelQi display.
In BW mode, it is 1200 x 900.In color mode, it is something
closer to 690 x 520, but the human visual system has much
less color resolution anyway so it appears sharper.
MLJ did a great job of matching the display to the HVS.

Cheers,
wad

On Jul 27, 2012, at 11:56 PM, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:

> On 28 July 2012 13:51, James Cameron  wrote:
>> On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 09:45:04PM -0400, Chris Leonard wrote:
>>> IANAL, but the term "Retina" in reference to computers and mobile
>>> devices is an Apple trademark, so any such use (referring to anything
>>> but an Apple device) would be violating their rights to that mark.
>> 
>> IANAL too (although I Am Known As Legalist fits me) ... and any bid 
>> specification from a purchaser that uses the trademark would be effectively 
>> saying "we want an Apple".
> 
> Just to be clear, my question was not based on any external request.
> It was just an instance of curiosity from yours truly :)
> 
> Sridhar
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Re: Engadget post on XO Touch

[John Watlington]

On Jul 26, 2012, at 11:09 PM, Sameer Verma wrote:

> www.engadget.com/2012/07/26/olpc-xo-touch-1-75-to-use-neonode-tech/
> 
> The post says "as yet unreleased XO 1.75". What's the official status
> on the 1.75? Still as yet unreleased?

It's been shipping for some time now.
I don't know where they got that information.

And the correct name for the new generation will probably be XO-4 and
XO-4 Touch.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: Nandblasting not working in one xo

[John Watlington]

NANDBlaster uses a fixed transmit speed (modulation).
If the signal budget for a laptop isn't sufficient to support
that speed, it will fail to receive many packets.

When using normal WiFi, the transmit speed (modulation)
is decreased until reliable communication can be obtained ---
therefore a laptop with decreased signal budget (e.g. bad antenna)
may still work, although with degraded performance.

Regards,
John

On Jul 9, 2012, at 11:10 PM, James Cameron wrote:

> That the antenna change did not work shows the problem is in the
> wireless card.
> 
> You asked why not use the same mechanism as Sugar?
> 
> Consider the transmitter performance.
> 
> Your network used by Sugar probably has an access point with higher
> transmit power and better antenna than the laptop being used as
> NANDblaster sender.
> 
> So it is perhaps the combination of small damage to one laptop and
> large damage to another laptop, that causes NANDblaster to fail.  But
> the combination of good access point and large damage causes Sugar
> networking to be successful.
> 
> See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Antenna_testing#Link_Budget for a
> calculation of wireless success, to see what variables are important.
> 
> Does Sugar in ad-hoc wireless mode work between the two laptops?  Or
> Sugar in mesh wireless mode with no other laptops nearby?
> 
> If so, that's very interesting.
> 
> Open Firmware and Linux use different commands sent to the wireless card.
> 
> I've checked, and we are using the same wireless firmware 5.110.22.p23
> in both Open Firmware and Linux (build 883).
> 
> Daniel, do you know of any commands that the Linux kernel may have
> sent to the card that may improve signal, even by accident?
> 
> On Mon, Jul 09, 2012 at 04:06:16PM +0545, Roshan Karki wrote:
>> I tried with antenna change but as you told, didn't work. So I think this is
>> the dead end. Thank you for your help. But one question I wonder is in Sugar 
>> I
>> can use very poor network very well. Why not use the same mechanism in OFW as
>> well?
>> 
>> On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 10:41 AM, James Cameron  wrote:
>> 
>>G'day,
>> 
>>Thanks for the photographs.  There's nothing wrong that I can see
>>either.
>> 
>>Repair may attempt antenna change, but it is unlikely to be fixed with
>>only antenna change.
>> 
>>Perhaps the radio module has been damaged.  On XO-1 the module is
>>soldered down and is impractical to replace.  In later models (XO-1.5,
>>XO-1.75) the module is in a socket.
>> 
>>--
>>James Cameron
>>http://quozl.linux.org.au/
>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.linux.org.au/
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Outdoor Light Sensor

[John Watlington]

We are looking for a better place for the outdoor light sensor
in a future laptop, where we have a chance to make minor
changes in the mainframe tooling.

The problem with the current location is: interference from
LEDs (noticeably the storage LED, with which it shares a
package and light-guide) and interference from the display
backlight, which shines through the back of the display
and can easily be brighter than room lighting in the current
setup.

Suggestions ?
wad

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Re: Turtle Art sensor xo 1.75 range voltage

[John Watlington]

On Jun 1, 2012, at 9:24 PM, fors...@ozonline.com.au wrote:

>> We should test the calibration again.
> Walter, Guzman
> 
> Testing with TA140
> 
> It looks like the 1.75 audio circuit was changed between the preproduction 
> and the ramp unit 1.75's
> 
> Testing on SKU199 and SKU204, the impedance has gone from 1k to 4k and the 
> calibration is all wrong on 204
> 
> (TA calibration should be OK for the moment on preproduction SKU199)
> 
> Can laptop.org please confirm that there was an audio redesign between SKU199 
> and SKU204? Is the SKU204 design now stable or can we expect further changes? 

Yes, there was a redesign which increased the resistance between the Mic 
voltage source and the mic jack
from roughly 1K to roughly 3K for improved microphone performance.All 
production XO-1.75s use the SKU204 circuitry.

> Is the input protection the same as the 1.5: "The XO-1.5 is protected by a 
> resistor,(1/16W 470 ohm SMD0402) and a pair of diodes to ground and to +3.3V 
> which should protect -6V to +9V continuously, and up to higher voltages for 
> shorter periods of time." 
> http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt/Using_Turtle_Art_Sensors#Specifications

Yes, the protection circuitry is the same as used on 1.5.

Chers,
wad

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Re: XO-1 SD card access during boot-up

[John Watlington]

On May 30, 2012, at 3:42 AM, James Cameron wrote:

> Agreed.  I meant a proper power cycle, not the type provided by XO-1
> without supply discharge.  My point is that it is hard to know if
> leaving the power on and using CMD0 is any better than turning the
> power off.  We already have a delay in the firmware to provide 250ms
> fall time for XO-1 and XO-1.5.  We could increase that, but it will
> slow booting still further.


I misunderstood the question, and can answer that one.
CMD0 only works if the card is already in a working state.
Power cycling will always reset the card to a working state.

A while back, Microsoft finally got tired of the number of computers
that could get themselves wedged into a state which required a hard
power cycle, and starting insisting that the ability to power cycle the
SD/MMC card was required for Windows certification.

Cheers,
wad
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Re: XO-1 SD card access during boot-up

[John Watlington]

On May 30, 2012, at 2:04 AM, James Cameron wrote:

> On Wed, May 30, 2012 at 12:08:40AM +0200, Sascha Silbe wrote:
>> Or is a "software reset" (i.e. CMD0) insufficient for
>> reinitialisation in Linux? (The standard suggests [2] it is, but actual
>> cards may or may not be behave that way.)
> 
> I don't know.  Let me know if you test it.  We know that a power cycle
> will reset a card.

Probably not.  If a card suffers a "brownout", which is what is happening here,
all bets are off.   You have to power cycle the card (leaving it powered off
long enough to ensure the supply voltage drops close to zero) to ensure proper
operation.

wad


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Re: Battery losing charge while off

[John Watlington]

On May 24, 2012, at 2:56 PM, Yioryos Asprobounitis wrote:

>>> One of my XO batteries (~2years old) is loosing about
Can you please provide the battery serial number, as well as the
laptop serial number.   Was it a pre-production XO-1 ?

Cheers,
wad

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Re: [OLPC Engineering] [Techteam] #11599 LOW 3-softw: Requesting new TS mode: DEVL

[John Watlington]

I was thinking that DEVL mode would trigger runin, with aggressive timing and
24 hour cycles.

Richard is thinking about whether or not to keep the battery test.

Cheers,
wad

On May 1, 2012, at 3:17 AM, Zarro Boogs per Child wrote:

> #11599: Requesting new TS mode: DEVL
> -+--
>   Reporter:  wad|   Owner:
>
>   Type:  enhancement|  Status:  new   
>
>   Priority:  low|   Milestone:  3-software
>
>  Component:  manufacturing process  | Version:  Development build 
> as of this date
> Resolution: |Keywords:  runin, DEVL   
>
>Next_action:  code   |Verified:  0 
>
> Deployment_affected: |   Blockedby:   
> 
>   Blocking: |  
> -+--
> 
> Comment(by Quozl):
> 
> DEVL mode implemented in git, but does nothing, still need to know what it
> should do.
> 
> -- 
> Ticket URL: 
> One Laptop Per Child 
> OLPC bug tracking system
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USB cameras

[John Watlington]

Does anyone have experience trying to use a USB camera with
an XO1.5/1.75 ?

Cheers,
wad

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Re: Announcing Q2F10 for XO-1

[John Watlington]

On May 3, 2012, at 1:37 AM, Hal Murray wrote:

>> ok dir u: says "Can't open directory"
>> In case it matters, this USB drive is old, old, old...  16 MB.  :)
> 
> I took the discussion with James Cameron off-list to reduce clutter.
> 
> For the archives and/or in case anybody is curious.
> 
> The problem turned out to be that dir u: doesn't support USB 1.1 drives.  
> (Remember, I said it was old.)

Just for clarification, do you mean full-speed (11 Mb/s) devices (USB 1.0) or
low-speed (1 Mb/s) devices (USB 1.1) aren't supported by dir u: ?

Cheers,
wad
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Re: Switching to randomly generated hostnames

[John Watlington]

On May 1, 2012, at 6:49 PM, John Gilmore wrote:

>> Currently, XO hostnames are set on first boot in the following format:
>> xo-A-B-C
>> Where A, B and C are the last 3 bytes of the MAC address expressed in hex.
>> 
>> In Nicaragua we are seeing cases where XOs have no hostname set, both
>> on XO-1 and XO-1.5. On XO-1 this is presumably because libertas
>> usb8388 init was never 100% reliable, and on XO-1.5 its presumably
>> because the wireless card was DOA but was replaced after first boot.
> 
> Why would we need to get it from the wireless card?  Isn't the
> laptop's MAC address stored in the manufacturing data in motherboard
> flash?

I second this recommendation.   While the MAC address in the manufacturing
data may not be correct (if the WLAN card has been changed), it is guaranteed
to be as unique as the laptop serial number.

Using only the last three bytes of the MAC may not result in a unique name, 
however.
It was when we only used cards from one manufacturer, but that changed starting
with XO-1.5.

My problem with the suggestions to randomly generate the host name are
that no-one has proposed a method for detecting and correcting the name 
collisions
that are sure to occur.   (How is /dev/urandom seeded these days ?)

Personally, most of the laptops I use don't have manufacturing data, but that
can be corrected.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: Asymmetric Multiprocessing

[John Watlington]

Thanks for the pointers.
Sigh...   As usual, our ability to build fun hardware has way
outpaced computer science's ability to program it outside of
simple manually partitioned examples.

Cheers,
wad

On Apr 30, 2012, at 9:53 AM, Peter Robinson wrote:

> Various links below, in fact yesterday Linaro I believe released a
> qemu image that allows big.LITTLE to be emulated for dev and testing.
> 
> https://lwn.net/Articles/481055/
> http://www.linaro.org/linaro-blog/2011/12/15/big-little-technology-two-usage-models/
> https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/Kernel/Big.Little.Switcher
> http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-big-little
> http://git.linaro.org/gitweb?p=arm/big.LITTLE/switcher.git;a=summary
> http://www.linaro.org/linaro-blog/2012/04/26/linaro-12-04-released/
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Re: Asymmetric Multiprocessing

[John Watlington]

On Apr 30, 2012, at 9:28 AM, Peter Robinson wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 2:23 PM, John Watlington  wrote:
>> 
>> Can someone please enlighten me as to the current state
>> of Linux and asymmetric multiprocessing ?   A number of
>> ARM SoCs on the market include both high performance
>> and low power cores.
>> 
>> Does Linux have a strategy for scheduling to these
>> asymmetric processing units yet ?
> 
> Presumable you're referring to the general cores like the Tegra3 and
> not some of the supplemental cores like on the OMAP devices for media
> processing?

I'm referring to cores running the same instruction set, but with
widely varying processing speeds (OMAP 5, Marvell PXA2128,
i.e. ARM big.LITTLE).

wad

> Support for the Tegra 3 core landed in 3.4, Linaro is
> working on the arm big.LITTLE Cortex A15/A7 support. There's a two
> phase approach to this, I thing there's a couple of articles on LWN
> about the direction they are taking.
> 
> Peter
> 

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Asymmetric Multiprocessing

[John Watlington]

Can someone please enlighten me as to the current state
of Linux and asymmetric multiprocessing ?   A number of
ARM SoCs on the market include both high performance
and low power cores.

Does Linux have a strategy for scheduling to these
asymmetric processing units yet ?

Cheers,
wad



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Re: [PATCH runin] Port to systemd

[John Watlington]

Daniel,
   Are you sure about this ?

Runin does not perform any "first boot" functions.
IIRC Richard goes through great lengths getting X
to start...

Cheers,
wad

On Apr 23, 2012, at 11:46 AM, Daniel Drake wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Martin Langhoff
>  wrote:
>> Hi Daniel
>> 
>> it's excellent that runin is a runlevel. That's been pending for long.
>> However...
>> 
>>> A runin-check service is run every boot, after olpc-configure but before
>>> the rest of the system. runin-check is based on the old init script.
>> 
>> _After_ olpc-configure? AIUI, runin was running much earlier, _before_
>> olpc-configure.
>> 
>> My (naive?) assumption was that a small script would try to do the
>> runlevel change as early as possible. I assume there is a reason why
>> you are doing it late... my concern is that any changes to
>> olpc-configure may change the env runin expects.
> 
> runin was always ran after olpc-configure. This is nothing new. You
> cannot start X before olpc-configure has run.
> 
> Thanks
> Daniel
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Re: [support-gang] XO brightness key operation

[John Watlington]

On Apr 9, 2012, at 11:02 PM, Kevin Mark wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 11:33:01AM +1000, James Cameron wrote:
>> G'day Kevin
> 
> thanks for the intro to LEDs and answering my question.
> oh, well, so its only on the 1.75.

Yes.  It's a bummer that it took us this long to get it into the laptop.

It is a perfect example of adding $0.004 to the BOM cost and
saving 1W every time an XO laptop wanders outdoors.  Once you
are outdoors, you can't even tell if the backlight is on!

Our manufacturer kept wanting us to use a $0.50 part (which does work very 
well).
But the biggest problem turned out to be placing a sensor LED without altering
the existing ID (plastic parts).  We ended up using a dual LED package
shared with the storage LED (third from the right), to minimize damage
due to PCB handling prior to laptop assembly.  The storage LED can
be forced off by the EC to allow a light reading to complete undisturbed.
Many of you might remember the flashing WiFi LED in B1 prototypes due
to poor consideration of this mechanism on a constantly-on LED...

It turns out that the effect of the backlight on the outdoor light sensor is
not negligible either.   These things are very hard to retrofit!

Cheers,
wad

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Re: XO-1 to switch back to JFFS2

[John Watlington]

On Apr 4, 2012, at 10:37 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 5:33 PM, Daniel Drake  wrote:
>> Comments/objections?

JFFS2 worked well enough when those laptops were built and tested!

> It's sad that this space (raw NAND filesystems) isn't seeing more
> attention from filesystems people.  But it seems a pretty established
> trend, now that FTLs have gotten better and their cost has for all
> practical purposes disappeared.

I started looking at ubifs expecting to at least have the chance to use
it on larger raw devices.  The nine-month technology cycle time of the
NAND Flash industry just doesn't fit well with the larger SoC design time.

The notable point, IMO, is the growing acceptance of FTLs everywhere,
through SSDs.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: 11.3.1 development build 32 for XO-1.75, XO-1.5 and XO-1

[John Watlington]

os32 seems to dump core on XO-1.75 if the serial console is enabled either via 
the
enable-serial value in olpc.fth or by holding down the check key.

Bummer,
wad

On Mar 29, 2012, at 4:56 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> This build brings fixes to powerd and OFW on all platforms. XO-1.75
> gets a kernel fix for Libertas reset.
> 
> Updatable via olpc-update -- try the cmdline below.
> 
> Notes:
> 
>  - On XO-1.75 the getty on the serial port is _disabled_ by default now 
> (that's
> the workaround). It gets enabled when you hold the "check" game key
> during boot (for verbose boot).
> 
> Upgrade online with:
> 
>   olpc-update 11.3.1_xo1.75-32
>  olpc-update 11.3.1_xo1.5-32
>  olpc-update 11.3.1_xo1-32
> 
> Download from:
> 
>   http://build.laptop.org/11.3.1/os32/
> 
> Fixes (please help us confirm):
> 
> #11730: Libertas: command timeout, does not recover
> #11723: OFW XO-1.75 - only escape key should escape to prompt
> 
> Changes XO-1.75:
> 
> -kernel-3.0.19_xo1.75-20120320.1540.olpc.7e610e7.armv7l
> +kernel-3.0.19_xo1.75-20120321.1512.olpc.1398916.armv7l
> -olpc-firmware-q4d05-1.unsigned.noarch
> +olpc-firmware-q4d08-1.unsigned.noarch
> -olpc-powerd-46-1.fc14.armv5tel
> -olpc-powerd-dbus-46-1.fc14.armv5tel
> +olpc-powerd-47-1.fc14.armv5tel
> +olpc-powerd-dbus-47-1.fc14.armv5tel
> 
> Changes XO-1.5:
> 
> -olpc-firmware-q3c02-1.unsigned.noarch
> +olpc-firmware-q3c03-1.unsigned.noarch
> -olpc-powerd-46-1.fc14.i686
> -olpc-powerd-dbus-46-1.fc14.i686
> +olpc-powerd-47-1.fc14.i686
> +olpc-powerd-dbus-47-1.fc14.i686
> 
> Changes XO-1:
> 
> -olpc-firmware-q2f07-1.unsigned.noarch
> +olpc-firmware-q2f08-1.unsigned.noarch
> -olpc-powerd-46-1.fc14.i686
> -olpc-powerd-dbus-46-1.fc14.i686
> +olpc-powerd-47-1.fc14.i686
> +olpc-powerd-dbus-47-1.fc14.i686
> 
> Kernel changelog XO-1.75
> 
> Daniel Drake (1):
>  libertas: add sd8686 reset_card support
> 
> cheers,
> 
> 
> 
> m
> --
>  mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: XO-1.75 OpenFirmware serial terminal

[John Watlington]

On Mar 27, 2012, at 5:52 AM, James Cameron wrote:

> This is a serial terminal implementation for an XO-1.75 using Open Firmware.

Useful --- the computer science equivalent of the voltmeter.
Educational --- I learned that OFW has structs, and some new primitives (/n, 
ukey).

> Credit to the existing Open Firmware serial port FIFO queue
> implementation.  Couldn't have made it stable without it.

Nice.  It is cool to see a Forth version of what I wrote so many
variations of in C.

My favorite two lines (for simplicity) in the terminal emulator were:
\ serial interrupt handler for received data
: si ( -- )  ukey read-q enque  ;

I'd love to see serial terminal preloaded, but also acknowledge that I'm the
one pushing against a 2MB SPI Flash ROM.   How about specifying
a location in the main build, where another 20KB of example OFW code
isn't as important ?   Say:

devalias lib int:2  # build a pointer to the library into OFW

dir lib:\ofwlib\  # See what is available (anyway to avoid the dir 
name ?)
fload lib:\ofwlib\serial.fth
serial

We could also move some of the existing non-essential OFW utilities there as
SPI Flash ROM space gets tighter, such as emacs.

Cheers,
wad

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Documentation

[John Watlington]

While on the topic of lack of documentation, I would like to
thank John Gilmore for reminding us about unfulfilled promises
and Harald Welte for working with Via to get the Programmer's
Guide to the VX855 Companion Chip used in XO-1.5 publicly
released.   It is linked into the XO-1.5 wiki page:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XO-1.5#Core_electronics

Cheers,
wad

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Re: coding 88W8388 firmware

[John Watlington]

On Mar 21, 2012, at 5:47 AM, lluvia_li...@lavabit.com wrote:

> Hi list,
> 
> I'd like starting learning the skills for helping to write a firmware
> replace for the 88WW8388 chip. I was reading on the wiki, specially this
> entry
> 
>  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/88W8388
> 
> However, I don't know which is the current state or if some code is
> already available. I couldn't find any yet.

The firmware for the 88W8388 was developed by Marvell, and source
code has never been released.   I don't believe efforts to develop an
open source alternative went anywhere.

> I found this link on the Libertas wiki page:
> 
>  "Discussions about how to open libertas firmware"
>   http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2007-January/003720.html

There was no success in getting the software ported or released.
(In searching to see if we publicly recorded any of regular internal
arguments about this, I instead found OpenMoko's statement which
summarizes the situation nicely, even linking to the thin firmware
compromise we adopted.)

Starting with the XO-1.5 (and continuing with the XO-1.75), the WLAN
module is based on a Marvell 88W8686.   This chip uses the same
libertas driver as the 88W8388, but has simpler firmware which is
incapable of performing the mesh routing on the WLAN's processor.

We did pay to get a version of firmware developed for both the 8388 and
the 8686 which offloads the packet processing to the main processor
(normally much of this is done by the WLAN's processor).   This "thin
firmware", while consuming more power does allow open source support
for 802.11s and AP mode as well as open experimentation with mesh
routing and protocols.  See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Thinfirm_1.5 and
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Libertas_Thinfirmware_HOWTO

> PD: I'd like to report also that the following material is not working:

It's a wiki --- go ahead and fix it!

Cheers,
wad

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Re: [PATCH] olpc.fth - grow the root filesystem partition on boot

[John Watlington]

On Mar 14, 2012, at 7:29 PM, James Cameron wrote:

> fs-verify is used after fs-update in factory to ensure that the
> fs-update was successful.

But the factory can use the correct size image (within a few tens
of MB) in the first place, resulting in no change by the resize
operation.

> We might instead place it in the olpc.fth path for insecure boot, and in
> the fs-update path for secure install.

> Or we might add it to the tail of fs-update, and add an
> fs-update-no-resize for the factory to use, with an fs-resize for them
> to use after fs-verify.

This sounds like the right compromise...

Cheers,
wad
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Re: [PATCH] olpc.fth - grow the root filesystem partition on boot

[John Watlington]

On Mar 14, 2012, at 6:04 PM, James Cameron wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 08:37:23AM -0600, Daniel Drake wrote:
>> On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 7:06 AM, Richard Smith  wrote:
>>> On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 1:35 AM, James Cameron  wrote:
 Grows the second partition so that it takes up all remaining space on
 the eMMC or microSD card. ?Fix for #11690. ?Part of #10040.
 
 Costs 120ms. ?(Use of a flag file costs 130ms).
 
>>> 
>>> I don't think its necessary to do this check every boot. I propose you
>>> move it to after fs-update has installed an image.
>> 
>> Also, olpc.fth isn't executed in the secure boot path, so it does need
>> to be put somewhere else. I like Richard's suggestion.
> 
> This would break fs-verify, and is therefore unacceptable.

Is this really a concern ?   It doesn't break fs-verify if one is using the 
correct
image for the storage device in question.   Or are we tweaking the filesystem
to get the extra few MB with some cards ?

Cheers,
wad

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Re: power saving available in different stages

[John Watlington]

Can you tell us which generation XO you are asking about ?
They are all somewhat different.

The backlight in all XO laptops draws 1W at full brightness.
dim it, and you can save 40% of that.   Blank it, and you save
the full 1W, plus another 300 mW or so for the DCON and
display electronics.   Go to sleep, and you save all that plus
much more.

Cheers,
wad

On Feb 20, 2012, at 7:15 AM, Jerry Vonau wrote:

> Hi All:
> 
> I'm wonder if anybody would know what the potential power savings might
> be while in the stages of dim, blank, and sleep? 
> 
> Thanks for any feedback,
> 
> Jerry
> 
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Re: [OLPC Engineering] [Techteam] B Test keyboards on eBay

[John Watlington]

Those keyboards are not usable with any OLPC laptop ever put
into production.

They are truly XO-1 B2 series keyboards.   My guess is that
someone was tasked with selling useless inventory...
They won't even work with XO-1 B3/B4 pre-production laptops.

I suggest that the Association contact EBay, and have the
sale pulled for (1) using our trademarked name and (2) offering
a product which doesn't work with any XO ever shipped.

Cheers,
wad

On Feb 19, 2012, at 9:47 PM, Samuel Greenfeld wrote:

> I don't know where the seller got them, but if you search for "OLPC keyboard" 
> on eBay, someone from China is selling several lots of B-Test keyboards for 
> $18.99 per keyboard.
> 
> The photographs are interesting to look at, as I've never seen old prototype 
> keyboards before, and there are some languages being offered I've never seen 
> physical keyboards of.
> 
> ---
> SJG
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Re: Must just be my week for strange behaviour

[John Watlington]

On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:50 PM, Kevin Gordon wrote:

> I'm fixing up about 5 XO-1s I bought from eBay, all with what appear to be 
> RTC issues.  
> 
> 4 all worked nicely, page fault error from the serial adapter console, 
> entered the select/decimal/set-time, they rebooted and re-flashed very well.
> 
> Alas, number 5, when I crank up the power, all that appears on the serial 
> console is a '+' sign, no pretty Forth message, no Page Fault error, just 
> that lonely arithmetic symbol.
> 
> Went back to a couple of the others and verified that serial adapter and 
> console still worked
> 
> Is there a possiblity that this one beast might have a different baud rate or 
> parity?  I didn't really want to try the o, let's say, 32768 different 
> combinations of values, if instead there is knowledge out there that this is 
> a recognized issue that indicates an SPI explosion or sumpin'  :-)

That means that open firmware didn't get very far in the boot process.
I recommend reprogramming the firmware, but that is hard to do when
it is in this state...  Taking a known good SPI Flash from another board
would test whether this is the problem.

Cheers,
wad

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Re: Weird behaviour

[John Watlington]

Sounds like a signal integrity issue is forcing the USB to run at 10 Mbps on
those two laptops.   Have you tried another USB stick ?   Or different ports on 
the
malfunctioning laptops ?

There is little on the motherboard which can affect these ports --- they run
from the connector to the Via companion chip (VX855).   Perhaps this is
due to ESD damage of the VX855 itself...

Regards,
wad

On Feb 14, 2012, at 8:47 AM, Kevin Gordon wrote:

> No, this email is not about my generally weird behaviour, it's about a couple 
> of my new XO 1.5's :-)
> 
> I have 2 x XO 1.5's that seem to have a very slow USB transfer rate; like, I 
> mean glacial.
> 
> I use the same USB build sticks to build many XO 1.5's, but on these 
> particular two it takes close to an hour to do a refresh, or sometimes just 
> stops in the middle of the refresh block colour animation  - regardless of 
> the stick used.  I have many times verified that the same sticks refresh in 
> normal time, on about 8 other 1.5s.  All the XO's are currently at the 
> default 883 build with q3b11 when doing this refresh test.  I then suspected 
> maybe main memory, but then a refresh from the SD card slots on these same 
> two suspect machines is lightning fast, (in fact way faster than I've ever 
> seen using USB), and the machine seems to be successfully built.  However,  
> I've also then done just a USB copy from another stick down to the file 
> system, and it too is really, really slow, if and when when it finishes.
> 
> The standard short-cut key at boot-time diagnostics show no errors.
> 
> Any hints?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> KG
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Re: Grid keyboard

[John Watlington]

On Feb 6, 2012, at 10:03 AM, Alan Jhonn Aguiar Schwyn wrote:
> This keyboard seems more robust..
> 
> http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150536964113124&set=a.10150432289628124.353732.197253613123&type=1&theater

Other pictures are at:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/File:XO-1.75_siblings.jpg
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/File:XO-1.75_Grid_Keyboard.jpg

> It will be the default keyboard on XO 1.75?

Yes.  Although it is also possible to order a "traditional" keyboard for
older children, UL does not approve of its use with younger children.

> There are someone test of "number of pulsations" that resists?

It passes the same test as the original membrane keyboard: 5 million key 
presses.
Attempts to further thicken the rubber membrane to prevent key tearing could
not pass this number of key presses, leading us to look to alternative ways of
reducing the key tearing.

> In Uruguay, the keyboard and the "old touch" mouse (with 3 panels) there are 
> biggest problems...

Yes, Ceibal was involved in the improvement of the keyboard.

Regards,
wad

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Re: [OLPC Engineering] [Techteam] olpc-kernel.git - arm-3.0-ramp vs arm-3.0-wip

[John Watlington]

What kernel tree will support the XO-3 ?   arm-3.0-wip ?

On Jan 30, 2012, at 3:20 PM, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> In the olpc-kernel git repository, Andres has opened arm-3.0-ramp to
> track the "stable" kernel tree that we're bringing into ramp, and
> probably into mass prod.
> 
> arm-3.0-wip will continue to be the wild and wooly west for short and
> mid-term hacking.
> 
> Our next target release, mid 2012, is going to be in sync with F17, so
> for long-term efforts, I assume we'll want to target v3.4 or something
> like that.
> 
> cheers,
> 
> 
> 
> m
> -- 
>  mar...@laptop.org -- Software Architect - OLPC
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: Unable to Browse the Internet from XO

[John Watlington]

On Jan 27, 2012, at 1:45 PM, HALL,Brian C wrote:

> Good Day All,
> 
> I am currently using the 1.5 XO at a couple of schools. I am  able to connect 
> to the school server and hence access moodle instance on the server itself. 
> However i am unable to browse the internet from the XO.

Can you provide a little more information about your installation ?

> I have connected the ETH1 to the ISP switch and still no success.

What IP address gets assigned to the ETH1 interface on the school server ?
(Type "ifconfig" on the server to get this info)

Can you access the internet from the school server itself ?

What happens when you try to access the internet from the laptop ?
Does DNS work ?  (what happens when you type: "dig www.apple.com" ?)
Can you ping outside the school server internal network ?

Cheers,
wad

On Jan 27, 2012, at 1:45 PM, HALL,Brian C wrote:

> Good Day All,
> 
> I am currently using the 1.5 XO at a couple of schools. I am  able to connect 
> to the school server and hence access moodle  instance on the server itself. 
> However i am unable to browse the internet from the XO.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I have connected the ETH1 to the ISP switch and still no success.
> 
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Brian Hall
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