FreeCalypso status update

Mychaela Falconia mychaela.falconia at gmail.com
Sat Sep 1 02:18:59 UTC 2018


Hello FreeCalypso community,

This post is a periodic reminder that our family of projects is
currently blocked waiting for funding.  The immediate next step which
we need to do before we can proceed with any other hardware projects
is to build FCDEV3B V2 boards, and we need it for several reasons:

1) We need to prove our FCDEV3B V2 design (including my approach to
flash reset control) as good before we can use it as the basis for
further hw designs like the much-discussed FreeCalypso handset idea.

2) Our FCDEV3B is the only hardware platform currently in existence
that allows our FreeCalypso sw and fw to run with full functionality
and thus allows the full power of our FreeCalypso solution to be
demonstrated.  Thus we need to have these boards available for sale
(or for subsidized give-away to strategically important persons or
entities) at all times, but right now there are no V1 boards left to
sell or give away.  It does not make any sense to build more V1 boards
with a known hw design bug, hence making FCDEV3B V2 boards is the
proper solution.

So what do we need in order to make the first batch of FCDEV3B V2
boards?  The PCB design is already done (the files are on the FTP site
since July), and all of the needed parts to be populated onto the
boards are already in my hands.  What needs to be done now is PCB
fabrication, and it is the most expensive step in the entire process:
for this step we need about $3000 USD.

Per my previous forecast I was expecting to be able to cover this cost
with my own personal money around the beginning of September, but that
forecast turned out to be too optimistic: I now have my personal
finances for September worked out, and there is no extra money to buy
FCDEV3B V2 PCB fabrication.  The updated forecast is that I *might* be
able to cover this PCB fabrication myself around the end of September,
with funds from my September 24 paycheck, but even that forecast is
very uncertain: if I get any more in the way of unexpected personal or
family expenses, then the FCDEV3B V2 PCB order will have to be pushed
back even farther.

The message should be clear: everyone who would like to see FreeCalypso
continue forward and not be stalled for however many more months needs
to pitch in toward the costs.  I have already invested tens of thousands
of dollars of my own money into this project over the years, now it is
time for others to contribute as well.

In other news, I have started the process of trying to get the attention
of someone at TI.  All of my attempts to find a specific approachable
contact person at TI have failed, there is absolutely no information
or mention about TI's closed-down cellular baseband chipset business
anywhere in their web presence (obliterated like it never existed),
and there is no email contact address for support or licensing
inquiries about TI's obsolete products - thus my only remaining option
was to send them a snail mail letter addressed to just "Texas Instruments".

I sent my first letter to TI earlier this week, addressed to their
San Diego office.  I chose that office for my first contact attempt
for two reasons: (1) I live in San Diego area, and in my letter I
indicated that I would be very interested in an in-person meeting, and
(2) this San Diego office was once involved in the wireless chipset
program (AFAIK, TI's 3G work was done in SD), and while that business
was shut down in 2008 or 2009 (meaning that everyone in that office
must have been working on something completely different and likely
unrelated since then), there is a chance that some senior manager at
that office might have some memory of the long-bygone days.  To the
best of my knowledge, this San Diego office was the only TI office in
all of USA that had any involvement in the cellular chipset business -
the majority of the work was done at various locations in Europe.

Because I live in USA, have never been anywhere in Western Europe even
once and know absolutely nothing about European business culture and
how things are done over there in that foreign-to-me part of the world,
I do not feel comfortable at all with trying to contact any of TI's
offices in Europe, so I shall stick to the ones in USA.  I expect that
we will probably need to send them many repeated letters at 2-3 month
intervals (first to the San Diego office, then to their Dallas
headquarters) before we get any kind of response - thus the letter I
just sent them is only the beginning.

I am seeking to have a dialogue with TI about this ancient stuff for
several reasons:

1) There is a chance that they might still have the source for the
Calypso DSP ROM somewhere in their archives.  It is just as likely
that they don't have it any more, i.e., it might be completely totally
lost, but I feel that we have to make our due diligence attempt to dig
it up.  If we cannot get this DSP source (if TI no longer have it, or
if they have it but we are unable to convince them to release it), we
*can* recover its logic through painstaking disassembly of the ROM
dump (it was supposed to be protected against reading, but OsmocomBB
folks successfully circumvented that anti-read protection), but the
effort to reverse-eng that ROM by brute force would be *enormously*
massive.  It would be such a massive effort that I very much doubt
that I would be able to do it unless someone pays me enough to make it
my day job, and I don't see anyone in this community stepping forth
with *that* kind of money.  Thus if we can't get our hands on the
original source for this ROM, we will probably have to just live with
it being a mysterious black box.

2) I am trying very very hard to win people like Harald Welte or even
RMS over to our side, but those people insist on having the abandonware
copyright holder release the code under a free license before they
would grant Free Software recognition to our work.  The root problem
is that the operators of the last remaining GSM/2G networks in USA
(T-Mobile), Canada (Rogers Wireless) and probably other places are
itching to shut them down.  The only solution I can see is to build
our own community GSM networks to replace them, but such a venture is
totally beyond the means of our ultra-marginalized FreeCalypso
community.  However, I feel that the situation would be very different
if we had the backing of someone like the FSF: those leaders of the
mainstream free sw movement wield a frightening amount of power over
the hearts and minds of masses of people, and I feel that with their
backing we could apply some serious pressure on major network operators
to keep their 2G services around, and failing that, have enough people
to form our own GSM/2G village somewhere.  Hence my desire to have a
talk with TI about licensing.

3) It is a known fact that TI did have a working solution for 3G aka
UMTS aka WCDMA as they were exiting that business.  In late 2008 there
were press releases saying that they were looking to sell that
business unit, but I found no announcements or press releases saying
that it has been sold, thus I assume that they failed to find an
interested buyer and all that work went into the trash instead.  We
need to make a serious effort to try to convince TI to dig that stuff
up and release it to the FLOSS community.

In any case, I have started the process by sending my first letter to
them earlier this week.  If we don't hear any response whatsoever over
the next couple of months (the most likely scenario), I will follow up
with one more letter then, still addressed to the San Diego office,
and if that one also fails to elicit any response, I will write to
TI's headquarters in Dallas.  At some point it may become necessary to
have more people in the community sending letters to TI or contacting
them in other ways: it's easy to ignore one person, but more difficult
to ignore a larger vocal community.  But let's give them a few months
first, and see if they respond to one of my letters.

Hasta la Victoria, Siempre,
Mychaela aka The Mother


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