[Community] Staus update GTA04A5

Liviu Farbas liviu.farbas at gmail.com
Wed May 13 13:19:31 CEST 2015 

Apart from the case space, couldn't the second SD slot be connected to the
OMAP cpu instead of the emmc?
On May 13, 2015 10:05 AM, "Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller" <hns at goldelico.com>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Am 13.05.2015 um 08:38 schrieb Liviu Farbas <liviu.farbas at gmail.com>:
>
> If that is the case, it's OK. So if the memory chip containing bootloader
> will get damaged we can still use the phone?
>
> Yes. You can even reflash the NAND image (it is “unbrickable” by design).
>
> My main idea was to have 2 SD card slots: one for the card with the
> bootloader and operating system, and one with the card for the file storage.
>
> Ah I see. Well, we don’t have the space in the Freerunner plastics case
> and the OMAP3 has no spare MMC interface (one is for the uSD and the other
> one for the WiFi SDIO; the third MMC I/F is not available to pinmux
> restrictions).
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> BR and thanks for your suggestions,
> Nikolaus
>
> Liviu
> On May 12, 2015 8:52 PM, "Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller" <hns at goldelico.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Am 12.05.2015 um 19:37 schrieb Liviu Farbas <liviu.farbas at gmail.com>:
>>
>> i was thinking at something like the Raspberry Pi, which does not have
>> any memory built in, and everythin including bootloader is stored on sd
>> card.
>>
>> What would be the benefit?
>>
>> On the GTA04 you can store bootloader and kernel either in NAND or uSD or
>> both. By pressing the AUX button you can choose which memory the system
>> boots from.
>>
>> And, the NAND and the RAM are combined in a single multi-chip-module, so
>> you can’t remove just the NAND. You can erase it and then it will be
>> skipped when booting. So this would simulate a non-existing chip.
>>
>> IMHO a mix of boot loader in NAND and kernel/device-tree/rootfs on uSD is
>> the most flexible setup so that you can simply swap SD cards for different
>> OS versions to run.
>> Please also note that having the boot loader on the SD card requires a
>> two-parition layout and is quite inflexible. We have a tool that can
>> partition and format and fill SD cards in quite flexible choices [1].
>>
>> So what are you missing or trying to improve?
>>
>> BR,
>> Nikolaus
>>
>> [1]: http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-makesd/
>>
>>
>>
>> On May 12, 2015 11:37 AM, "Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller" <hns at goldelico.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>> the GTA04A5 has a NAND flash of 512 MB and a uSD reader up to 32 GB (see
>>> photos on www.gta04.org). The NAND flash is mainly used for the boot
>>> loader and a small rescue Linux system but real OS operation is done by
>>> swapping such uSD cards. So you can for example have a uSD card for
>>> Replicant and another one for QtMoko. Or put both on one in different
>>> partitions.
>>>
>>> BR,
>>> Nikolaus
>>>
>>> Am 12.05.2015 um 10:12 schrieb Liviu Farbas <liviu.farbas at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> What about the emmc module? Will that module be removable? Or instead a
>>> built in emmc, wouldn't be a better choice to add a SD card slot? It would
>>> be really great to experiment with operating systems without the risk of
>>> corrupting the emmc.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> Liviu
>>> On May 11, 2015 10:37 AM, "Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller" <hns at goldelico.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>> you may wonder what is going on with this project. Did it turn into a
>>>> black hole? Or
>>>> did someone do a “rm -rf /“ :)
>>>>
>>>> No, nothing of that. Therefore, I think we owe you some short status
>>>> update on this project.
>>>>
>>>> There hasn’t been much to report in the last months, but now we have
>>>> several news
>>>> within some days.
>>>>
>>>> 1. I have checked again and we can still get the GTM601W, but the
>>>> distributor says
>>>>     the risk is high that OPTION declares EOL any time and in that
>>>> case we would have
>>>>     to make an order of at least 3000 units so that they restart
>>>> production just for us.
>>>>
>>>>    This means we must secure these modules for us now, since there is
>>>> no replacement
>>>>    that easily fits into the space constraints of the GTA04 (resp.
>>>> GTA01/02 board).
>>>>
>>>>    Cinterion modules would be nice since they are planned for the Pyra
>>>> and the Neo900,
>>>>    but they are approx. 10% too big.
>>>>
>>>> 2. we see some difficulties in getting the W2SG0084 GPS module, but
>>>> that is some
>>>>     paperwork the distributor has to do with Wi2Wi.
>>>>
>>>>    Nevertheless, this is also a risk candidate for EOL because only one
>>>> distributor shows
>>>>    stock.
>>>>
>>>> 3. There are also good news:
>>>>     we participate in the risk buy of Samsung 1GB RAM+512MB NAND chips
>>>> (as
>>>>     planned for the Neo900). So the GAT04A5 gets twice as much RAM :)
>>>>
>>>>     This chip has already been tested by reworking a BeagleBoard XM
>>>> and modifying
>>>>     the boot loader (kernel didn’t find the NAND yet, but U-Boot did.
>>>> This is a problem
>>>>     that will jointly be fixed with the Neo900 software team).
>>>>
>>>> 4. Production: we still are a little away from the quorum of 100
>>>> preorders (at the
>>>>     moment of this writing we have estimated approx. half = 45 units).
>>>> So it is still
>>>>     not possible to make final decisions about production dates and
>>>> final pricing.
>>>>
>>>>     So we need to get a little more support for our project. If you
>>>> have ideas, please
>>>>     let us know or start activities. Many small activities are as good
>>>> as a big one!
>>>>     And we know that this is a niche product that requires an existing
>>>> GTA01/02
>>>>     device. So it is not possible to “attract the masses”. We must
>>>> find and convince
>>>>     the previous GTA01/02 owners whose devices are collecting dust.
>>>> There had been
>>>>     produced ca. 15k such devices so that we just need another 1/3% or
>>>> in other
>>>>     words only 1 out of 300 GTA02 owners needs to decide for a GTA04A5.
>>>>
>>>> 5. Regarding the risk buy of the GTM601W, RAM chips and W2SG0084, I
>>>> plan to
>>>>     take the budget (~5100 EUR) that we already have collected.
>>>>
>>>>     This will transform the vouchers into ownership of components. So
>>>> it has the
>>>>     consequence that we can’t refund in money (cash, bank transfer)
>>>> any more, but
>>>>     only in unused hardware components (i.e. 100 EUR ~
>>>> 1*GTM601+1*RAM+1*GPS)…
>>>>
>>>>     For future preorder vouchers you would also buy such a component
>>>> set (which we
>>>>     would keep in safe warehouse of course) until we can really build
>>>> the whole devices.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So quite some news and I would be happy if we can fill up the missing
>>>> preorders [1]
>>>> sooner than later so that we can start production. Please think about
>>>> securing your
>>>> set of components for the last production batch of the most open
>>>> smartphone platform
>>>> that we already have.
>>>>
>>>> BR and thanks for continued support,
>>>> Nikolaus Schaller
>>>>
>>>> [1]: http://shop.goldelico.com/wiki.php?page=GTA04A5
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