view doc/Freerunner-Howto @ 600:8f50b202e81f

board preprocessor conditionals: prep for more FC hw in the future This change eliminates the CONFIG_TARGET_FCDEV3B preprocessor symbol and all preprocessor conditionals throughout the code base that tested for it, replacing them with CONFIG_TARGET_FCFAM or CONFIG_TARGET_FCMODEM. These new symbols are specified as follows: CONFIG_TARGET_FCFAM is intended to cover all hardware designs created by Mother Mychaela under the FreeCalypso trademark. This family will include modem products (repackagings of the FCDEV3B, possibly with RFFE or even RF transceiver changes), and also my desired FreeCalypso handset product. CONFIG_TARGET_FCMODEM is intended to cover all FreeCalypso modem products (which will be firmware-compatible with the FCDEV3B if they use TI Rita transceiver, or will require a different fw build if we switch to one of Silabs Aero transceivers), but not the handset product. Right now this CONFIG_TARGET_FCMODEM preprocessor symbol is used to conditionalize everything dealing with MCSI. At the present moment the future of FC hardware evolution is still unknown: it is not known whether we will ever have any beyond-FCDEV3B hardware at all (contingent on uncertain funding), and if we do produce further FC hardware designs, it is not known whether they will retain the same FIC modem core (triband), if we are going to have a quadband design that still retains the classic Rita transceiver, or if we are going to switch to Silabs Aero II or some other transceiver. If we produce a quadband modem that still uses Rita, it will run exactly the same fw as the FCDEV3B thanks to the way we define TSPACT signals for the RF_FAM=12 && CONFIG_TARGET_FCFAM combination, and the current fcdev3b build target will be renamed to fcmodem. OTOH, if that putative quadband modem will be Aero-based, then it will require a different fw build target, the fcdev3b target will stay as it is, and the two targets will both define CONFIG_TARGET_FCFAM and CONFIG_TARGET_FCMODEM, but will have different RF_FAM numbers. But no matter which way we are going to evolve, it is not right to have conditionals on CONFIG_TARGET_FCDEV3B in places like ACI, and the present change clears the way for future evolution.
author Mychaela Falconia <falcon@freecalypso.org>
date Mon, 01 Apr 2019 01:05:24 +0000
parents c9a65db8be4a
children
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The latest official firmware for Openmoko Neo1973 and Neo FreeRunner Calypso
modems is moko13 as of this writing; moko13 is FreeCalypso Magnetite Hg
changeset 286:840113655bbf built for the gtamodem target in the l1reconst
configuration.  There have been many changes in FC Magnetite since then, but
few of them affect the l1reconst config on the gtamodem target in any
noticeable way.  The few noticeable post-moko13 changes which we do have in our
current l1reconst code are not deemed important enough to justify making
another formal release for a no-longer-made hardware platform that no longer
has any real user community either.

However, we also have the new TCS2/TCS3 hybrid config in which the old version
of the G23M protocol stack from Openmoko (binary libs only, no source) has been
replaced with a newer version from TI's TCS3/LoCosto program, and this new
version is full source.  This hybrid firmware has now reached the state where
it is ready to be exercised by adventurous beta users in real-life usage.

The new hybrid fw for the gtamodem target can be built as follows:

./configure.sh gtamodem hybrid
cd build-gtamodem-hybrid; make

Then after enduring the very slow build, you can flash it with fc-loadtool:

loadtool> flash erase 0 0x250000
loadtool> flash program-bin 0 fwimage.bin

If you are brave enough to do the above, please let us know how this new modem
firmware fares when driven by QtMoko or SHR on the AP - it would definitely be
an adventure!  We would be most interested in working with developers or
maintainers of specific AP software components that are directly responsible
for talking AT commands to the modem, if there are any such developers or
maintainers still around.