latest thoughts

[Mychaela Falconia]

Hi David,

> I've given the recent discussion a bit more thought.

Good to hear.  On my end nothing really changes: I got my Luna UI dev
platform with a working Calypso-interfaced LCD, and the keypad add-on
is in the works, specifically in PCB fabrication.  Once my keypad PCB
arrives, I will populate it with the actual tactile switches for the
5x5 keypad button matrix, connect it to the designated pins on the
Caramel board expansion interface (Calypso KBC and KBR), and our UI
firmware development platform will be complete.

I am *not* working on FC-on-C139 to the exclusion of all other
FreeCalypso project goals and aspirations, but given that the starting
point phone UI firmware we got from TI exists in two configurations,
big color and small B&W, I reason that we should be able to bring the
small B&W config into at least a minimally usable shape, and run it on
suitable hw targets like Mot C139.

Right now there is some UI and other cleanup that still remains to be
done in FC Magnetite, but then I will need to start a new FC firmware
source tree, tentative name FC Tourmaline.  FC Tourmaline will be a
hybrid-only derivative of FC Magnetite, dropping the non-hybrid configs
with the blob version of G23M PS and the old versions of ACI and
BMI+MFW, but unlike FC Selenite, it will include handset UI code (the
new hybrid version) and be practical rather than political, meaning
that TMS470 compiler, old Nucleus and the tiny OSL+OSX blobs remain
for now.  In FC Tourmaline I am going to extend the small B&W version
of the UI from 84x48 to 96x64 pixels (Mot C1xx display size), and I
will work toward making both big color (176x220) and small B&W versions
practically usable, even if only minimally.

> I do think it's a great pity that doing the same work on the Pirelli
> would be a job too far beyond what's possible

Once FC Tourmaline with 96x64 pixel small B&W UI configuration becomes
a reality, I expect it will be quite easy to run the exact same UI on
at least 3 targets: Mot C139, Mot C155 and Pirelli DP-L10.  (C11x/12x
is not on the list because of tiny RAM and flash.)  But I expect that
out of these 3 only C139 will be practically usable:

* FC on C155 won't be able to ring, only vibrate, while providing
absolutely no gain or advantage over more basic C139 hw.

* FC on Pirelli also won't be able to ring; we can still operate the
vibrator even on the Pirelli, but my concern is that without knowing
how to power down the unwanted chips for camera and WLAN, the phone
may be unusable in terms of battery life, going from fully charged
battery to emergency shut-off in about 10 hours of complete idle,
meaning just listening on the paging channel with no call activity and
with the display off.  But I definitely plan on including Pirelli LCD
support in FC Tourmaline just to try it.

> as I know that's the existing handset that you favour.

There may be some misunderstanding here; my actual view of this
Pirelli phone is two-fold:

1) Aside from unwanted camera and WLAN, I do like Pirelli DP-L10
hardware - but there are plenty plenty plenty phones out there
(although not hackable Calypso) with the same key hw characteristics,
meaning color TFT LCD, traditional 21-button keypad, loudspeaker and
a USB port.

2) I do use this Pirelli DP-L10 as my personal phone in the absence of
FreeCalypso because out of all existing proprietary options, I find it
to be the most tolerable one, given the ability to use fc-loadtool,
rvtdump, rvinterf and fc-fsio on it, tools which aren't available for
any mainstream (non-Calypso) proprietary phones.

Ancillary to point 2, I am not switching from the Pirelli to C139
because it would be a massive downgrade not only in end user terms
(smaller screen, no loudspeaker, no USB charging), but also in terms
of visibility into the workings of the existing proprietary fw: with
Pirelli's USB carrying RVTMUX this visibility is much greater than the
little bit of trace one can get out of Motorola's fw via the headset
jack and **16379#.

But I do need to make it absolutely clear that I will *never*, ever,
ever be satisfied with any phone that was physically made by any
company other than Falconia Partners LLC - my ideal phone absolutely
MUST be made by Falconia, not by Pirelli Broadband Solutions, not by
Motorola, not by Nokia, not by any other company than my own.  And
while I do plan to work on FC Tourmaline fw in such a way that it will
have a "FreeCalypso Lite" config that can run on cheap non-Falconia-
made hw, I am not giving up my main work direction toward my own true
FC handset.  Two aspects of my desired dream phone have already been
proven on our current Luna platform: connection of my desired LCD to
Calypso MEMIF and my unconventional way of driving the backlight,
documented in the freecalypso-hwlab Hg repository.

> but in the current state of the world I can't muster a lot of enthusiasm
> for any sort of cell phone.

My view will always be different because of my unique position: I don't
really care about cellular phones per se, instead MY elephant in the
room is that I have invested 7 years of my life into FreeCalypso, and
the only thing I am after is getting a return on my investment in the
form of being able to enjoy using my own creation - nothing more,
nothing less.

Hasta la Victoria, Siempre,
Mychaela aka The Mother