OLPC News 2007-12-30

[Mitch Bradley]

Richard A. Smith wrote:
> Mitch Bradley wrote:
>
>>> Richard noticed that on the community-development list there are at
>>> least two reports of the EC going "terminal", meaning that on boot
>>> they get the error message: "EC problem. Remove all power and
>>> restart." We need to get those machines to Cambridge to investigate
>>> further.
>>>   
>>
>> It is unlikely that getting those specific machines to Cambridge will 
>> prove helpful, unless one of those systems exhibits the problem with 
>
> A fact ommited from the summary of my report was that it happens 100%. 
> The laptop won't boot regardless of how long they leave it without power.


Ah, those would indeed be worthwhile to analyze.  I'm not sure they will 
shed much light on the sporadic occurrences of the "EC problem" symptom, 
though.  The 100% case is likely to be an EC that is completely broken 
in some way.  We need to get root cause on both, eventually.

The "EC problem" message is not particularly precise as a microscopic 
diagnostic - it basically means that OFW tried to talk to the EC and the 
EC didn't answer.  That could be caused by any number of EC issues into 
which OFW has little visibility.  My best guess is that "fails every 
time" is probably due to a different root cause than "fails once in a 
blue moon".  I would bet on hardware for the former and 
software/firmware for the latter.