AMD to stop working on Geodes

Wed Jan 28 19:02:24 EST 2009

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 9:57 PM, Carlos Nazareno <object404 at gmail.com>wrote:

> > People say they buy computers to work, but by and large they really
> > buy them to play.  And geodes
> > wont run modern games so they aren't selling.
>
> Before the term DDOS came into use, there was only the Slashdot effect
> where entire servers would melt down because of the sheer number of
> geeks a link to the front page of slashdot.org would bring.
>
> foru simple words can save the entirety of OLPC and the AMD, and in
> fact make both filthy rich, rich enough to execute our insane kumbaya
> vision.
>
> military grade hacker toy
>
> say those four magic words, sell the XO via geek online stores, and
> 1CC will be so slashdotted to high heck with orders that the waiting
> list will take years to fill out. At similar price points, the XO-1
> puts the Nintendo DS, Tapwave Zodiac, GP2X, Sony PSP, Chumby and iPods
> + iPhones to shame.
>
> Support? real men don't need no steeenkin manuals or directions! just
> ship em in a plain cardboard box with a power adaptor and all will be
> good to go!
>
> Start selling current batches of 1GB Nand 256MB RAM. These are
> collector's items and will increase in value.
> Move out all existing stocks, and then fix fab to ship next version
> with 512MB RAM + 4-8GB NAND. Moore's law and Windows Vista have
> brought down the price of memory to dirt-cheap levels.
>
I'm with you. The small detail is that the Geode LX doesn't support DDR2,
AFAIK, and that's the cheapest RAM currently available, DDR1 is more
expensive, so that it may be prohibitive.
The most serious mistake, decision, whatever the case that the XO ships with
is the lack of swap memory on a "bloated" python based environment. I have
not used much my XO without the swap, cause I found that opening up 2 or 3
activities would make the XO "crash". Use 1GB of swap from an SD card and
all is good. The XO should, at least, pack more flash or an SD card to have
swap on it. If the SD card goes bad from constant swapping, exchange or
throw it away. It wouldn't be worse than as is today.

> Chipmakers produced so much RAM and opened so many factories in
> anticipation of Vista's insanely stupid bloatedness (that was the
> first time I ever saw a software company make bloatedness and
> inefficiency as a prime selling feature) that when it miserably
> failed, they now have so much RAM on their hands they don't know what
> to do with it.
>
> Chipmakers are in deep trouble right now and RAM prices have never
> been so low. Anyone looking to upgrade RAM, now is the time. OLPC?
> Have Quanta start on the XO-1.1 with the increased storage + memory.
>
> My concern with the upped specs is that AFAIK, more ram = increased
> power consumption? Or was that only for desktops and sticking
> additional sticks in empty memory slots?
>
> Also, here's something Jerome Gotangco over at OLPC Ph has noticed
> after sticking in Teapot's Xubuntu XO Intrepid Ibex liveSD: Battery
> life seems to have gone down a lot.
>
> I just recently managed to get the same working on 2 of the developer
> units with me on different kinds of SD Cards, and it seems that using
> the SD for the primary storage/OS cuts the battery life a lot because
> of the increased power draw from having to jump electricity through SD
> cards? (I haven't timed it yet, but I think battery life went down to
> about 2-2.5 hours with an active wifi connection and the screen
> brightness set to black and white sunlight readable mode?)
>
> Will do further tests.
>
> -Naz
>
> P.S. Seriously. Look at the popularity of the homebrew and
> retrogaming/emulation scene. Opening up sales of the XO to the geeks
> of the world will also provide the EXACT OPPOSITE of drawing away
> resources from OLPC. The sheer amount of geekery will give back and
> produce the amazing kinds of stuff you see from the homebrew and
> emulation hacker scene, creating troves of the much needed content the
> XO is lacking.
> P.P.S. Beggars can't be choosers. Asking for donations but putting
> conditions on it is just twisted ethics. Just sell 'em at $200 and
> economies of scale + moore's law will take care of things.
>
> P.P.P.S. Seriously seriously WTF seriously.
> P.P.P.P.P.P.P.S. WTF? WTF?WTF WTF?
>
> P.P.S. All snarkiness aside, will post better on why this is really
> extremely ethical and is the proper way to go. I have to sleep. Very
> little sleep since monday. nyt all.
>
> P.P.P.P.S. re: multitouch go for it! MPX, keep the "2nd screen" as a
> real keyboard -> power draw of 2nd screen + lack of haptics is a
> serious functionality problem. thanks to all who replied, such
> incredible starting points and I've done research on those 2 things I
> said even googling, but am tickled pink that the methods I outlined
> are in use :D check out
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQpr3W-YmcQ&NR=1 too :)
>
> nyt
>
> --
> carlos nazareno
> http://twitter.com/object404
> http://www.object404.com
> --
> adobe user group manager
> phlashers: philippine flash actionscripters
> adobe flash/flex/air community
> http://www.phlashers.com
> --
> interactive media specialist
> zen graffiti studios
> http://www.zengraffiti.com
> --
> "if you don't like the way the world is running,
> then change it instead of just complaining."
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>
I agree with all you said and hope that bringing the XO to mass availability
will be a reality soon.
Here in Portugal we had the (mostly ignorant) governors embrace the
Classmate from Intel and Microsoft, as soon as they had the opportunity.
Worse, they rebranded it as Portuguese built and tried to make it pass as
something huge, where we would actually be building the thing - we're
putting it a sticker made here, if as much. Needless to say, it would be
nice if this could be put to an end.
It may ultimately be a good thing (in some ways) but I don't really like the
driving force behind it.
Best regards,
                                Tiago Marques
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