The OSDCU is an Open Source Hardware design.  We have built a few physical
units for our own use (both lab and operational), but we are also releasing all
associated digital files (the stuff that others would call "intellectual
property") free to the world.

The hardware and software parts of the project are released separately.  For
the hardware part each "release" occurs when we order a batch of PCBs to be
physically fabricated - hence it occurs long before any testing can be done on
it.  Therefore, a hardware "release" does NOT carry any connotations of quality
assurance that are normally associated with this term in the software world -
but that's just the nature of hardware engineering.  With hardware one has to
build it physically before one can really know if it's any good or not, and once
it's been released to manufacturing, it has to be treated like a release, even
if it's half-broken.

The OSDCU-revN-* files correspond to PCB revision N.  OSDCU-revN-gerbers.zip is
what we send out with the order for PCB fabrication, the associated
OSDCU-revN-hwdoc.zip package contains the traditional set of documentation
products (schematics and PCB prints in PostScript and PDF, several tabulated
BOM formats), and OSDCU-revN-hwsrc.zip is the corresponding snapshot of the raw
"hardware source code" (for uschem and pcb tools) from CVS.

The current PCB release is OSDCU rev 1.  We have not yet built a batch of rev 1
boards physically - the build is currently delayed for budgetary reasons - but
this rev contains several important fixes for issues we have experienced with
rev 0 boards, which we have built and have been using operationally.  We do not
recommend building any more rev 0 boards, and as soon as we build our first
rev 1 board and test it, this README file will be updated with that experience.

The software part of the project (the code running on the MC68302 microprocessor
on the OSDCU board, aka firmware) is released separately and is more like a
traditional free software project.  The software releases are contained in the
swrel-?.?-*.zip files.  If you need code to run on an actual OSDCU board,
download the bin package; if you want to adore the source code, download the
src package.  In either case download the doc package as well.  The ZIP format
has been chosen because the OSDCU is a standalone network appliance completely
independent of any host computing platform.

Please note that the current-latest software release 1.1 supports rev 0 boards.
One small change will need to be made to the software in order to support rev 1
boards: the usage of the TCLK2 pin has changed from an input to an output.  We
will make the code change and produce a new packaged software release after we
build and bring up our first rev 1 board.

The following resources are essential for anyone who would like to get involved
in the project:

Master source in CVS:
cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@ifctfvax.Harhan.ORG:/fs1/IFCTF-cvs co OSDCU

Open WAN Connectivity Project home page:
http://ifctfvax.Harhan.ORG/OpenWAN/