arm-netbook January 2015

arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk

5 participants
6 discussions

LCD cables - anyone know where to get them?
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 13 Jan '15

13 Jan '15

does anyone know - preferably have already bought from and so knows they can do it - of a source of LCD cables? i need QTY 3 cables with an I-PEX-20453-040T connector at both ends, length 0.5 metres. wires not FPC. i found a company in germany however they quotes only deal with companies quotes. l.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] The Unplanned Obsolescence of the First Fairphone Device « Paul Boddie's Free Software-related blog
by Paul Boddie 12 Jan '15

12 Jan '15

Joining the discussion late and breaking the threading... ;-) Nico Rikken wrote: > > Having had recent contact with the Fairphone-team on this issue (as a > potential customer), they state that above all they are interested in > working with the community to get this sorted. Now that they have a > dedicated Software Developer in Kees Jongenburger hopefully they'll be > able to turn things around for future models. We know the difficulties, > but they clearly underestimated … [View More]the impact of their hardware decision. I must admit that I felt a bit bad complaining about their software strategy when there is someone who does seem to care about the matter (at least now, anyway). But I still feel that the initiative managed to store up a lot of problems that they could easily have avoided. As I noted a year-and-a-half ago [1], the publicity materials seemed to play fast and loose with things like software sustainability and platform openness: mocking up Skype running on a phone (or perhaps just taking a screenshot from an existing phone) might work for much-needed stock images, but it sends the wrong message on a number of issues (Skype being proprietary software, uses a proprietary network, has various intelligence agencies and corporations eavesdropping on conversations, is controlled by a single corporation who happens to have a competing software platform and is shaking down Android product vendors for patent licences). Of course, a lot of the potential audience don't care about that: they just want to be reassured that the materials in the phone are ethically sourced before reaching for their usual toys, and they hadn't then (and probably haven't now) widened their ethical concerns in the areas of privacy and transparency. My impression is that those running the initiative either didn't have such widened concerns, didn't want to tackle such things as well as the other stuff, or just got some bad advice. The sad thing is that good advice could have been had for a tiny fraction of the effort that these people have gone to in the areas of materials sourcing and fair working practices, which as far as I can tell, have been thoroughly dealt with and require a commitment to social justice that involves dealing with some fairly entrenched and, particularly in the case of the minerals supply chain, some rather horrible problems. I have to note that I wouldn't have been so aware of the dubious practices of the hardware business myself if it hadn't been for Luke and others documenting it on this list and elsewhere, or of the mishaps that plagued the first attempt at the Vivaldi tablet, but those lessons have been out there for people to learn from, and it seems now that either those responsible for the groundwork just didn't have the community awareness or that they felt that things would mend themselves when selecting manufacturing partners: itself a compromise between the flexibility to get the software done the right way (potentially treading on toes and "offending" existing suppliers), and the flexibility to change their other practices to make the manufacturing workplace generally fairer. But then again, running a choice of a MediaTek product by just a few knowledgeable people would have been enough to set the alarm bells ringing. Maybe Fairphone would have made the same decision, anyway, and as the notorious Stephen Elop speech [2] noted (dredged up recently in another blog post of mine [3]), cobbling together MediaTek designs and throwing them over the wall was (and undoubtedly still is [4]) common practice, to the point that doing something else might have been a struggle. But as we all know, you have to make and sustain investments to do the right thing. If you look for short-term fixes, you get short-term solutions, and that's what some of Fairphone's customers will be experiencing in the coming months and years. Again, Fairphone have committed themselves to ongoing investments in other areas, and it's a shame that they didn't consider the technological realm worthy of the same consideration. Paul P.S. I just realised that this could have been another complete article. Sorry to make it a long message for this list! :-) P.P.S. For those who haven't read it yet, Bunnie's MediaTek reverse- engineering article [4] below is long but interesting reading. You've got to admire Bunnie's determination! [1] http://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=168 [2] http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops- in-brutally-honest-burnin/ [3] http://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=835 [4] http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297 [View Less]

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CM108AH
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 11 Jan '15

11 Jan '15

ironically, i have had a CM108 chipset sitting right here, in continuous use, for about 7 years now. i bought a usb dongle in canada back in 2007. i had my suspicions, and i've been able to open it up and confirm that yes it's the CM108. i've made a couple of minor changes to the tablet's audio circuit as a result. all good! l.

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The Unplanned Obsolescence of the First Fairphone Device « Paul Boddie's Free Software-related blog
by Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross 09 Jan '15

09 Jan '15

https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=802

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tablet, microdesktop and laptop progress
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 09 Jan '15

09 Jan '15

well... some good news, we have sponsors for both the 7in tablet and also a 15in laptop, which is amazing! the laptop we have chosen a 15.6in 1366x768 LCD because anything lower than that (either in size or in pixel resolution) is no longer properly fashionable, it appears, whereas i am surprised to find that 15.6in 1366x768 LCDs are not only extremely popular (over 50,000 for sale on panelook.com), but also their power requirements are far more modest than one might expect: around 3.5 watts … [View More]

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revision 2 EOMA68-IC3128 board works
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 07 Jan '15

07 Jan '15

i'm delighted to be able to announce that the revision 2 of the EOMA68-IC3128 ICubeCorp board is 100% working. the board arrived from HK at the end of last year, but the hub appeared to be not working and neither was the MCS7832 USB-Ethernet IC. it turns out that the hub is working fine: the preliminary kernel support for the IC3128 at present only supports high-speed devices, so for example a mouse or keyboard (which are only USB 1.1 devices) are not recognised but a Genesys Logic USB SD/MMC … [View More]

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arm-netbook January 2015