FreeCalypso in 2018

Serg l serg at tvman.us
Mon Jan 1 05:35:00 UTC 2018


Thank you for all these really incredible achievements!

East coast is already in 2018 and hoping that it will be even better than
previous!

Happy New Year Mychaela!

-Serg

On Dec 31, 2017 9:50 PM, "Mychaela Falconia" <mychaela.falconia at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello FC community,
>
> Happy 2018 to all of you!  2017 has been a reasonably productive year
> for FreeCalypso: we have built our first non-historical Calypso board,
> putting to rest all speculations as to whether or not such a feat is
> possible, we've acquired our own production RF calibration capability
> matching what the historical Calypso device manufacturers did, and
> fully deblobbed firmware for the Standard Modem functionality is now a
> reality: our current Magnetite hybrid config has no blobs except for
> Nucleus and some parts of GPF.
>
> As for the most recent accomplishments (as in the past few days), I
> have reworked our new FreeCalypso battery charging driver (FCHG) to
> maintain the constant charging voltage during the CV phase of the
> Li-ion charging process by way of a software control loop, reverse-
> engineered from Pirelli's fw, and this new charging implementation
> works both on the C139 and on the Pirelli.  I have also created a new
> hybrid-vpm (voice pseudo-modem) build configuration in FC Magnetite:
> it is the TCS2/TCS3 hybrid config with CSD, fax and GPRS disabled,
> matching Citrine.  This configuration is optimal for running on the
> C139 and the Pirelli, i.e., on targets where CSD, fax and GPRS
> functions cannot be exercised for lack of a suitable UART.  Voice and
> SMS functions work just as well in this hybrid-vpm config as they do
> in its data-services-enabled bigger sibling.
>
> My goal for 2018 is to have a FreeCalypso phone with a working UI: the
> lack of a non-broken UI is currently the *only* thing that keeps us
> from being able to turn a Motorola C139 into a Libre Dumbphone, now
> that we've got battery charging, we have radio operation with
> Motorola's factory RF calibration values, and we have confirmed that
> there is no large parasitic current draw on the battery when we run
> our own FC firmware on the C139, unlike the situation on the Pirelli.
>
> In pursuit of the FreeCalypso UI goal, I am going to make an attempt
> to run FC Magnetite on the D-Sample board (TI's own development board
> of which I have one specimen), which will include an attempt to fish
> the tpudrv10 (TPU driver for RF type 10) code out of the ancient
> 20020917 fw image that came with this board.  If this idea succeeds,
> we'll be able to use the D-Sample board to whip the UI code into
> shape, then port it over to the C139 and have our first practically
> usable FreeCalypso phone on C139 hw without waiting for our own
> FreeCalypso dumbphone hardware.  However, I am going to put a bound on
> this effort, and if recovering the necessary tpudrv10 code from the
> 20020917 fw image proves too difficult, I am going to switch my
> efforts to designing and building our own Handset Motherboard
> Prototype (HSMBP) that will be able to replace the D-Sample as the UI
> development platform.
>
> On the hardware front, I am happy to report that I found someone who
> is willing to sell me their Openmoko tri850 device, I've already paid
> for it, and it should be arriving in the next few days once the
> working world reopens.  When this trophy arrives, I will take it apart
> and examine the 850 MHz downlink receive path, and then we'll
> hopefully gain the knowledge of how to build tri850 devices of our
> own, in addition to our current tri900 ones, and also the ability to
> convert any existing Openmoko-made unit between the two band
> configurations in either direction.
>
> In terms of geography, there are very few areas in the world where the
> GSM850 band may be needed: it is NOT needed in USA (no more Cingular/AT&T
> GSM here, only T-Mobile left, using only the PCS band), and it is
> certainly not needed in any of the EMEA or Asian regions.  Thus the
> only places in the world where the tri850 configuration may be
> advantageous are Latin America and possibly Canada (not certain),
> while for use everywhere else the more classic tri900 configuration
> remains the best choice.  Thus the tri900 config will always remain
> our primary offering, but it will be nice to offer tri850 as well for
> the sake of completeness.
>
> Hasta la Victoria, Siempre,
> Mychaela aka The Mother
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