[Community-news] OLPC News (2006-05-14)

[Walter Bender]

14 May 2006

1. David Woodhouse of Red Hat reports that his JFFS2 (Journaling Flash File
System, Version 2) is now running on the 512-megabyte NAND flash on the
OLPC board. A worry had been that mounting the file system might take too
much time, but preliminary data is very encouraging: we no longer have
serious
worries about whether we can use JFFS2 at this scale (JFFS2 was original
designed for much smaller flash memories, hence the concern that mount
times might be excessive). More work needs to be done, but it will put into
service soon.

2. Marvell will be releasing new firmware and drivers for the 8388 on June
1st. This release will include support for power-saving modes, direct frame
forwarding and blinding (a debugging feature defined by OLPC). With that
firmware, static meshing will be possible, which in turn will allow for
application testing.

3. Layout and fabrication of the A-Test PCB has been completed. The first
build of 20 of these cards are now being assembled and tested in Taipei.
Upon the completion of initial tests, we will release the developer-board
build for SMT/assembly. To assist with debugging, the A-Test boards will be
supplied with standoffs for desk mounting, as well as a serial-port
daughter card that will provide Linux console access. Quanta and Brightstar
are now working through the logistics for distributing these cards.

4. SINA did an on-line survey about OLPC to solicit feedback from Chinese
government officers. Most Chinese net users support OLPC.

-walter

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Walter Bender
One Laptop per Child
http://laptop.org