moko13 release done

[Mychaela Falconia]

Hello FreeCalypso community,

The moko13 firmware update for Openmoko GTA01/02 devices is now an
official release:

ftp://ftp.freecalypso.org/pub/GSM/GTA02/gsm-fw/moko13-official.tar.bz2

Or at least it is as official as we can make it, given that the people
who control the openmoko.org domain name and the wiki hosted there are
unlikely to ever accept it as such. :-(

To David: I decided not to delay the moko13 official release until we
have an updated QtMoko deb package of the new fc-host-tools-r6-ap
because, quoting from the README in the official release:

* Anyone who is going to manufacture new GTA02 devices that are hardware-wise
  identical to the historical Openmoko-made ones should use the present moko13
  release as the official firmware to be programmed on the factory production
  line.

* Service bureaus that provide GTA01/02 reflashing as a warranty service should
  use the present moko13 release as the latest official fw to be flashed.

* Individual GTA01/02 device owners who would like to run the latest and
  greatest firmware can update their own devices.

-- end quote --

and I did not want to needlessly hold up use cases 1 and 2 above
waiting for a slightly easier method for use case 3.  The instructions
included in the release tarball explain how to flash the firmware
using the "service shop" method with an external cable, which is also
perfectly usable for those end users who are willing to take the very
slight inconvenience of buying one of those very readily available and
very cheap cables.

If David or any other community contributor does make a deb or other
appropriate package of fc-host-tools-r6-ap for QtMoko or SHR or any
other expected-to-be-common FreeRunner user distro, the instructions
for the latter can be put on a howto page supplementing the official
moko13 release tarball.

With this moko13 release out of the way, I am hoping to not have to
spend any more time on the ghosts of Openmoko for the next while and
to get back to forward-looking new hardware product development.  The
good news on that front is that the Rigol oscilloscope I ordered from
Adafruit is supposed to arrive tomorrow, and one of the first
experiments I am going to do with it will be checking to see if the
Calypso chip puts out a clock on the MCSI_CLK line on our FCDEV3B, to
determine if the DSP code is putting the interface into clock master
or clock slave mode.

Moving forward, I find myself in a rather paradoxical situation.  On
the one hand, I have always felt and continue to feel that trying to
jump directly to building a libre smartphone without building a libre
dumbphone first (jumping the gun on evolution, skipping an essential
intermediate step) is a fundamentally flawed approach, and one of the
many contributing factors to the failure of Openmoko.  Yet why am I
not doing more work toward a libre dumbphone goal?  Why am I not
working on FreeCalypso on the C139, or on a successor board to the
FCDEV3B with dumbphone LCD & keypad hardware added?

The answer is that there exists something that is even simpler and
more basic than a dumbphone, and that something is a bare modem.  In
the same way that trying to build a libre smartphone without already
having a good working libre dumbphone is asking for trouble, I would
like to have a very solid and fully liberated (deblobbed) modem first
before moving on to the upper layers of functionality needed for a
complete dumbphone.

As my near-term goals, i.e., the things I would like to get done
before this year is over, I would like to make FCDEV3B boards
available for retail sale, to see if anyone will buy them, and gain an
understanding of the "Bluetooth headset" mode for digital voice via
MCSI.  If I can get these two done, I would like to put together a
more concrete proposal for my idea of building a FreeCalypso modem
module in the form factor of BenQ M32, but with the addition of MCSI
for digital voice and with quadband Rita RF instead of BenQ's triband
one with non-TI chips.  If the preceding steps on the FCDEV3B work out
well enough for me to feel confident in putting together such a
proposal, I will present it to the potential sponsors I have in mind,
and see what happens.

But for now it is bedtime for this girl...

M~