[Fwd: Xo 1.5 wlan]

[John Watlington]

On May 30, 2009, at 12:04 PM, Reinder E.N. de Haan wrote:

> Subject: Xo 1.5 wlan
> Date: Thu, 07 May 2009 19:56:27 +0200
> From: Reinder de Haan <rs at mveas.com>
> To: John Watlington <wad at laptop.org>
>
> Hello,
>
> I have a couple of questions regarding the wlan module in xo 1.5;
>
> 1) will it be an off the shelf module (3th party) or a quanta/olpc
> 'private' module

One of the complications of the Gen 1.5 design has been improving
the WLAN module.   The existing module takes lots of power, and
the USB driver still needs extensive modification to speed up
suspend/resume.

Unlike Gen 1, we don't have the time or expected market to
develop and certify a custom module.

The current plan is to use an existing WLAN module, based on
the Marvell 88W8686 and connected to the system using an
SDIO interface.

> 2) if it is a private module please break out jtag and the serial port
> for debugging (xo 1.0 only had jtag.. serial ended right at the  
> balls of
> the chip :-(

Sorry, the module doesn't bring any of the internal debugging signal
out.

> 3a) if its a 3th party moduel is it posible to buy it somewhere ?

Yes and no.   There are 88W8686-based SDIO modules already
available, and electrically/software-wise they will be identical to the
one we are planning to use.

The actual module used in XO-1.5 will have a half-height miniPCI-e
form factor.   Even if you could buy it in small quantities, you  
would have
to arrange an adapter board to use internally.

Cheers,
wad