Re: Update on 39xx ?

OK, and I have now followed some of the group discussions on 'policy'
over binary drivers.

I, for myself have just ordered a Zaurus SL-C860, there was some self
justification in parting with a large chunk of cash for my 6th PDA in
that at least there was manufacturer support for getting ALL the
hardware working - maybe open source will arrive later for the SDCard
bits on this platform.

I actually made the purchase decision on the 3970 (PDA #5) based upon
the fact that it had 48Mb flash - good enough for a reasonable size
JFFS2 file system and that the SDCard stuff may work better under Linux
than the CF suspend/resume bits that at the time were available on my
3660 (PDA #3) - sorry to see this is not the case.

I pose a question to the community: "Is it better to withold a driver
for hardware to ALL the community based upon some ideals that may be
better addressed via another means ?" - e.g. I begrudge using binary
only drivers for my Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card but I'm glad I have
Hardware 3D Acceleration and FAST 2D Acceleration.

Surely it is better to lobby for/concentrate on 'Open Hardware
Certification' for devices where purchasing managers can select hardware
that has 100% open exposure in terms of design, programming requirements
and specifications. - This way large volumes of hardware may be selected
without having to make highly technical decisions whilst raising the
profile of the issue potentially into the board room !

The consumer immediately gets the benefit of having hardware that WILL
be supported endlessly if they have the engineering resource to do it -
this may frighten some manufacturers who's market is individuals/SMEs,
however, there's always the pull of faster/better hardware and
purchasing to cover hardware replacement/maintenance to satisfy larger
suppliers - mission critical means that you are going to replace EOL
hardware anyway right ?

Don't know if there's a means for a poll on these subjects on
HandHelds.org - and sorry, don't have the free time to get this off the
ground (actually I would love to do it) but maybe introduction of the
idea could start some lively (if not healthy) debate.

Regards to the community,

Andrew Smith

On Wed, 2004-06-02 at 19:46, Jamey Hicks wrote:
> Andrew Smith wrote:
>
> >Everything seems to be a little vague as to what's happening if anything
> >with the 39xx MMC driver.
> >
> >The 54xx port seems to be working fine (did I see that SD cards were
> >working too ?) so there seem to be drivers for PXA250 although the GPIO
> >lists in the current Kernel Source for the 39xx seem to be lacking some
> >of the entries present in the 54xx source (SD/MMC Power Enable etc. -
> >bit of a show stopper).
> >
> >
> >
> The spec for the chip in the 5xxxx and the h22xx is available publicly.
>
> >There are loads of references to the SD card spec being under NDA and
> >that this project will never release an open source driver for SD. Is
> >this related in any way to the difficulty in releasing specs for the
> >39xx that would enable a functional MMC driver at least ? + Why doesn't
> >this effect the 54xx, is this something related to Toshiba's chipsets in
> >the 39xx ? Is it that chipset particularly thats under NDA ?
> >
> >
> >
> The spec for the chip in the 39xx is non-HP proprietary, so HP cannot
> release the spec. The vendor has declined to make this spec public.
>
> >I think it's been about a year since we heard the current status on the
> >39xx MMC any chance of a word or two (even if it's stalled due to lack
> >of enthusiasm).
> >
> >
> >
> It is stalled due to lack of time inside HP and lack of information
> outside HP.
>
> Jamey
>
Received on Sun Jun 20 08:14:55 2004