[Repairs] [Community-news] OLPC News (2008-07-14)

[Alan Claver]

On 7/14/08 2:45 PM, "Jim Gettys" <jg at laptop.org> wrote:

> 5. Quanta is revising the motherboard to make incremental cost
> improvements. We are also improving protection on the microphone input.
> In order to best track this, we are incrementing the motherboard ID to
> C3 (from C2). Richard Smith made a few tweaks to current EC code to
> support this new ID. Unfortunately, our firmware (until this revision)
> has suffered from lack of forward compatibility. We are working with
> Quanta and countries to ensure that only new firmware (Q2D17 or later)
> will be loaded on these new motherboards.

How is this going to affect the current repair efforts? Will these mobys be
backward compatible with older XOs?  If any real program to sell repair
parts appears, will we sell only the new moby configuration?

How about our support efforts (especially those that ask folks to reflash
their systems)? 

Will the flash images/routines figure out the correct firmware for the
different hardware?