[OLPC-devel] I tested the new graphical interface in buildrom

[Ronald G Minnich]

OK, further messing around. I'm enjoying the fact that a reset to the 
initial screen is only ever 10 seconds away.

I can highlight icons by using arrow keys. I can move to the usb key, 
hit return, and ... IT BOOTS MY KERNEL! YEEE HA!
This is really cool! The outstanding thing here is that the kernel it 
boots is the one I use to death for reflashing the BIOS :-) So I can 
recover from this not-completely-working-bios.

And the kernel waits 10 seconds for usb to come up ... it's funny that 
we can boot the machine so much faster than USB solid state disks can be 
ready to use. Yikes.

If I select any other icon, well, things don't go quite as well. Blank 
screen in every case. I betcha this is something simple, since the kexec 
gets me a display back.

I think we have to have a scrolling message area.There are fprintf 
things in the bootmenu code -- but where will they show up? is it too 
hard to put something like that in?

It would be interesting to actually have an area below the icons with an 
ash; I have 5 things to cycle through; the 4 icons and then the ash. 
This may be a step too far, however.

There's still a lot of display trash on the screen. We need to finish up 
the fbdev for OLPC. What's the refresh rate, anyway? For text, you can 
see things wavering.

thanks, this is really fine work. I have to admit, this kind of eye 
candy tastes good :-)

ron