Need for JZ4730 development platform with QWERTY and 7'' display?

Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller hns at computer.org
Tue Aug 25 10:31:15 EDT 2009


Wolfgang,

Am 25.08.2009 um 15:33 schrieb Wolfgang Spraul:

> Dr. Schaller,
>
>> Yes, that is true. It comes from the business model behind. SkyTone
>> who originally designed the device and some other companies heavily
>> work on the design and change things over night (I guess for  
>> component
>> availability reasons). So it may happen that you get a different
>> device shipped than what you had seen as a sample 4 weeks before...
>
> Oh wow, that's bad...

Not really if you know what you are doing.

> In the future, feel free to contact us for interesting hackable  
> devices
> we could market together.

Well, you are far to late to help us :-) We did start this at a time  
where everyone who is now with Qi-Hardware was still very focussed on  
the Openmoko (i.e. summer last year).
But we will help you for marketing the NanoNotes when they become  
available.

> For Qi Hardware, I think it's safe to say we are the Chinese/Taiwanese
> company with the best English and free software skills in the whole
> world :-)

Hm. To be honest, there are others who are also good... E.g. the  
supplier of the L400 is sitting in Hongkong and as far as I know they  
speak English and Chinese pretty well there ;)

> Or a free software company with the deepest ties into China and  
> Taiwan.
> You don't even know whether we are Asian or Western, just global :-)

If you analyse a little, the reason is not language or culture but  
economic necessity. They simply can't afford to fulfill all customer  
wishes (being communication or features) for a low-price-low-volume  
product.

Look - if you come and order a small quantity of devices, the  
manufacturer wants to earn some money from your order. How much he can  
earn depends on price and volume. So if you come with a low volume for  
a low price product, he can afford let's say half an engineer for 1  
day to handle your changes. Now comes another customer and wants to  
have 100 times your volume. So they spend more engineers and come up  
with a modified and usually better design (e.g. some chips replaced).  
Then, you come again and want to have the old design. What they must  
tell you for economic reasons is that you can get the new design but  
not again your old one. And how much communication can they invest  
into a small volume customer? Only the necessary. I.e. it may happen  
that they don't tell you at all because they think it is not  
important. It is only different if you pay for your specific design  
modifications.

But we are leaving focus of the thread...

> Our rough plans include 3 product lines the next few years:
>
> 1. NanoNotes (super mini notebooks)
> 2. wall computers (picture frames with wifi+touch you can hang on  
> the wall)
> 3. phones
>
> But for now we start with the NanoNotes...

The key point is that the Letux 400 is already available and waiting  
for pleasant developers so that the NanoNote project can benefit from.

Nikolaus

> Wolfgang
>
> On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 03:05:59PM +0200, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller  
> wrote:
>> Hi Wolfgang,
>>
>> Am 25.08.2009 um 14:14 schrieb Wolfgang Spraul:
>>
>>> Hi Dr. Schaller and Nils!
>>> very good to see you here...
>>
>> Yes, I follow the qi-developer list right from the beginning but  
>> was a
>> little quiet because of other tasks and holiday season...
>>
>>> We know about the Letux 400, like you said it's available in a lot  
>>> of
>>> countries under different names, for more information see
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skytone_Alpha-400
>>
>> Yes, there are many many variants out there. It looks as if it is
>> becoming more and more difficult to get such a device that is really
>> based on MIPS and without WinCE in ROM. Some of the brands  
>> (Razorbook,
>> Bestlink etc.) indicate even no stock.
>>
>>> I agree that we should pool development efforts, for developers the
>>> most
>>> important thing to get started will be access to serial console, how
>>
>> http://projects.kwaak.net/twiki/bin/view/Epc700/SerialConsoleHowto
>>
>>> to reflash the device (can you do USB booting on the Letux 400?).
>>
>> http://projects.kwaak.net/twiki/bin/view/Epc700/UbootStuff
>>
>> Reflashing without u-boot is a little tricky but works:
>>
>> http://lists.linuxtogo.org/pipermail/mipsbook-devel/2009-July/000092.html
>>
>>> How do you build your rootfs?
>>> We are using OpenWrt and can already boot a 2.6.31 kernel on the
>>> NanoNote.
>>> See
>>> http://github.com/lindnermarek/openwrt-x-burst/commits/x-burst
>>>
>>> If you point people to the Letux as a development platform, the one
>>> thing
>>> that makes me a bit nervous is that the Wikipedia page says the
>>> successor
>>> has switched to a Marvell PXA27x CPU? And the next switch to a  
>>> Chinese
>>> ARM CPU (Jade Tech Z228) is already announced. Is that true?
>>
>> Yes, that is true. It comes from the business model behind. SkyTone
>> who originally designed the device and some other companies heavily
>> work on the design and change things over night (I guess for  
>> component
>> availability reasons). So it may happen that you get a different
>> device shipped than what you had seen as a sample 4 weeks before...
>>
>>> Are you planning to come out with more Ingenic-based devices?
>>
>>> I think we should stick to a stable platform. The one thing software
>>> development needs is a stable open platform and time.
>>> There is a lot of ground to cover with the XBurst SoCs. The SIMD
>>
>> So far our Letux 400 was a one-time effort to get a single batch of
>> small MIPS based device to the European market and to support it
>> better than all the mass market resellers of the same model.
>>
>> Therefore, you don't need to concern about platform changes. The  
>> Letux
>> 400 will remain the same as it was and is... And it is the variant
>> with 2GB Flash, WLAN and MIPS JZ4730 (whatever else is out there).
>> This makes it very compatible to your new hardware (we are all  
>> waiting
>> for...). The backside of the coin is that we have only limited stock
>> of these machines. I.e. the Letux 400 is not a consumer or mass  
>> market
>> thing but a developer platform.
>>
>>>
>>> instructions look very interesting, MPlayer source codes already
>>> exist and
>>> need to be sent upstream. Boot time and power consumption can be
>>> optimized.
>>> Etc.
>>
>> There is even a friend who is running GNUstep on it:
>>
>> http://multixden.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html
>>
>>> We welcome all Letux 400 (and all other Skytone Alpha 400)  
>>> developers
>>> to the Free XBurst devices community, and we are happy to be a part
>>> ourselves...
>>
>> Yes, we will be happy to contribute by enlarging the base of JZ47xx
>> developers. So if anyone needs L400 hardware, please drop me a note  
>> or
>> go to http://www.handheld-linux.com/wiki.php?page=Letux%20400
>>
>> Nikolaus
>>
>>> Wolfgang
>>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 12:40:50PM +0200, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller
>>> wrote:
>>>> Hi all developers,
>>>> I just realized that Qi hardware is focussing a lot around the new
>>>> MIPS SoC. So it could be interesting to get more real Ingenic JZ
>>>> based
>>>> hardware to active (potential) developers who want to work on  
>>>> kernel
>>>> and user space software.
>>>>
>>>> Maybe, our Letux 400 is the right thing to use as a (inexpensive)
>>>> MIPS
>>>> target development platform. It is a small (7 inch, 650 g)  
>>>> "Netbook"
>>>> based on the JZ4730 (it was originally developed by SkyTone and is
>>>> essentially the same device that became broadly known as  
>>>> Razorbook).
>>>> Ard has collected a lot of reverse engineering results http://projects.kwaak.net/twiki/bin/view/Epc700/WebHome
>>>> e.g. look here: http://projects.kwaak.net/twiki/bin/view/Epc700/HardwareLayout
>>>>
>>>> Nils from www.kernelconcepts.de has worked heavily on a Linux  
>>>> kernel
>>>> and is mostly done. More links on this can be found on http://www.letux.org/wiki/index.php?title=Kernel_Development
>>>> Main activity is on the mipsbook-devel mailing list (http://projects.linuxtogo.org/mailman/listinfo/mipsbook-devel
>>>> ). Looking into this material may benefit the NanoNote.
>>>>
>>>> So if developers on this list are interested in getting more or  
>>>> less
>>>> compatible hardware, please contact me.
>>>>
>>>> BR,
>>>> Nikolaus
>>>>
>>>>
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