Questions and Answers that don't seem to fit elsewhere
A: ipkg: http://handhelds.org/moin/moin.cgi/Ipkg
A: QEMU is a good place to start, and we should be able to run almost all OpenMoko apps with it. For a good start with the QEMU emulator visit: http://www.aurel32.net/info/debian_arm_qemu.php
Another is Xoo. Koen says: "Xoo should be enough for most apps people will develop, since most don't need access to the gsm uart directly. If you're hardcore you could use qemu + xoo, but that still doesn't emulate all the hardware quirks (e.g. unaligned access)". Xoo is at: http://projects.o-hand.com/xoo
Update: Stefan Schmidt has resized the Neo1973 Mock-up and writen a small description for xoo. In his words:
It's not really useable at all, as you need a really high screen resolution to fit the whole picture on your screen. And of course the dpi are wrong. Even no buttons because I can't remember where they are at the case.
http://www.datenfreihafen.org/~stefan/OpenMoko/neo1973-xoo-device.tar.bz2
Start with 'xoo --device /path/to/neo1973.xml'
A: This should get you started: http://www.gtk.org/tutorial/
A: No low power open source device was available when the neo was designed. Future versions of the device may have wifi. Sean Moss-Pultz's comment on this
A: Yes - see this howto for how to configure a linux computer to act as such a router.
A: See [wiki:OpenMoko/ToolChain the Tool Chain]
A: Wikipedia has a list of providers and technologies at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_mobile_phone_companies A brief look gives the impression that T-Mobile and Cingular (which is renaming itself AT&T) seem to be the only major ones.
A: The SoC handles the USB, and it's only capable of 1.1. As to why not a spiffier SoC, we presume that keeping the costs reasonable has something to do with it. But this shouldn't have too negative an impact: USB 1.1 are almost certainly OK for a phone: this is not a high-performance cluster node, just a power-saving phone. In particular, 11mps WLan works perfect with USB 1.1. I guess 54mps will work ok too, albeit perhaps a bit slower then they could.
The main problem (with more powerful SoC) is not to provide a USB2.0 host port in the device. The main problem is power. You need a pretty powerful DC/DC step-up converter to provide the 5V power supply to the USB bus. And you have to provide at least up to 100mA - but to support all devices, 500mA.
It's not a technical problem per se.
It's just that you have to have one extra (powerful) DC/DC step-up converter in the device, something that vendors of phones (and other devices) usually don't put there for cost, battery life time and PCB footprint reasons.
A: When the Neo is connected to a DOWNSTREAM port of a powered USB hub, it will start charging. It will also be able to access all devices connected to the hub while charging.
If you plug the Neo into an UPSTREAM port of any powered USB hub, you can access any (low-speed,full-speed) usb device on that hub but the NEO will not charge. This is because UPSTREAM ports on USB hubs are not powered.
FIC product development is looking in providing something that conveniently solves this problem.
A: The Neo1973 will have mini-USB-B. It will NOT be USB On-The-Go. OTG is a complex specification, and it comprises way more than just a AB socket, but also electrical and software components which cannot be provide by the S3C2410.
You will need a special Mini-B to regular-B cable. (Can someone specify what the "special" requirement is? How is this different from a standared Mini-B to regular-B cable?)
A: There has been some discussion of this on the mailing list. There is motivation, and there are interested developers. Not being a Mac OS X user, I don't know enough to summarize the discussion to answer this question. Can someone please fill in?
A: For IP over USB cable connectivity, it is planned to improve/adapt the AJZaurusUSB driver allowing to ssh into the OpenMoko
A: It is expected that (Bluetooth/UB) SyncML based interoperation for contacts and events can easily be achieved by a patch to the Apple iSync configuration tables.
A: There is an open source implementation of Cocoa (GNUstep) that aims to run MacOS X compatible applications (sort of PPC/x86/ARM universal binaries) on OpenMoko devices: mySTEP
A: Making legacy apps written for the "Garnet" OS (née "Palm OS") run on Linux is decidedly non-trivial. An emulator for this is going to be part of the ACCESS Linux Platform.
PalmOS uses a very different model from Linux: it doesn't really have a concept of a file per se; instead, all of memory is seen as a "soup" of records to access and manipulate (this isn't strictly true, as files had to be grafted on when removable flash was supported. But it's close enough, from a developer's standpoint). Also, the GUI toolkit looks very, very different from GTK. The result is that a very well-written, modular program that carefully separates its core algorithms from its user interface and data input and output can be ported by replacing those components. A program written by a mere mortal programmer is likely to have all these components intertwined to a point that a port will be challenging to say the least.
The ACCESS Linux Platform will include POSE, an emulator that simulates a Palm device on a Linux host. This emulator has been around a long time; one expects that it will also run on OpenMoko, but this has to be considered a short-term bandaid rather than a long-term solution.
A: The "Hacker's Lunchbox" will make this kind of stuff easy. Details will be provided by Sean/FIC later.
A: See xdpyinfo output.
A: No, see [:OpenMoko/Hardware] for details on what it does include. With the USB port and a powered hub, you should be able to attach to any external camera.
A: ?
A: ?
(It would be nice if someone who knows the answers put the battery life and weight specs on the hardware page - thx).
A: See the time line for when the phone is available. To be informed when it is available, subscribe to the mailing list announce.
A: These are the official Neo1973 requirements: Phase 1 buyers need to:
* have fun hacking devices * find their way through prototype software and hardware without much documentation * share the dream of a device powered by free software * not expect a consumer-level device * come up with new ideas for exploring the age of mobile computing
Ideally they also:
* can spot bugs and submit patches * love to cooperate with a community improving the software
(Michael Lauer http://openmoko.org/)
A: Please reply UNDER post.
A: Neo1973 is the hardware from FIC. OpenMoko is pure software.
A: By searching the mailing list archives. For example, using Google searches:
site:openmoko.org text
For example, to search for accelerometer:
site:openmoko.org accelerometer
If you only want to read the "official" mails from FIC people or from OpenMoko people:
site:openmoko.org text "at fic.com.tw" site:openmoko.org text "at openmoko.org"
For example to search for "release date" from FIC people:
site:openmoko.org "release date" "at fic.com.tw"
Alternatively you can use the custom OpenMoko search engine which has been created using Google Co-op.
A: The Neo1973 v1 will have no LEDs beside the screen backlight