As you may have guessed (or been told if you mailed) we have been having some nightmares with software support, including a hard-to-reproduce crash bug related to bus clock speeds, and some other nightmares coming with the support of the iMX515 from Freescale as it moves into 2010.. not to mention Thanksgiving getting in the way.
As it stands right now all units are shipping TODAY or TOMORROW with the following packing list:
- Efika MX Developer Edition 3.0
- i.MX515 "TO2" at 800MHz
- 512MB RAM (configured at 166MHz because of above software bug)
- RT3070 USB Wireless
- 4GB SSD (soldered)
- 12V/5A Power supply with "C5" Power connector (US). European users will need to buy a ~5,00 EUR cable.
- Serial & JTAG debug connector dongle (whether you ordered developer edition or not)
- 2GB MicroSD card with SD adapter
Remember the ONLY difference between a Developer Edition board and the Open Client is the inclusion of the serial/JTAG board, which we are providing anyway. The 2GB microSD card is both useful at this stage, and a gratuity to our customers for hanging on :)
Software on the boards:
- U-Boot 2009.01
- Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10) "ubuntu-minimal" - a console environment ready to install whatever desktop or software you like
- Kernel 2.6.28 - we understand this is not 2.6.31 as Ubuntu 9.10 would ship with..
We decided against providing a GNOME desktop as it is a pain to uninstall once it's there - and if you prefer GNOME or Xfce or KDE or LXDE, and these are all available using "apt-get whatever-desktop". It also means developers will be able to get compiling without dealing with a 3GB+ software install :)
We will be providing software updates in the next weeks for:
- U-Boot performance update
- Accelerated X11 graphics and YUV video overlay
- Media codecs (especially H.264)
- Precompiled wireless driver (although you can build it yourself from the source at www.ralink.com.tw)
- Precompiled 3D GPU driver (closed source, sorry)
- a proper package repository for Ubuntu/Debian
- .. and maybe Fedora 12 & openSUSE 11.2/Factory.
This will include, by the end of December, a 2.6.31 kernel and possibly a 2.6.32 kernel once it gets past Release Candidate (soon!). Aura should be on track for release by New Year's and will replace U-Boot and possibly several of the precompiled drivers. Software development is on a fast track, and we feel that we can adequately provide updates to solve issues, however there are enough major issues solved that this is shippable to customers.
Again, sincere apologies for slow shipping. Support will be available on the forums and customers need not hesitate in contacting me personally (matt@genesi-usa...) for any problems or quirks they may experience. Documentation and software downloads will appear on PowerDeveloper before the end of the week.
Wow, this is great news! OpenSUSE 11.2 base system is now fully compiled for ARM, the rest of the packages are on the way to get compiled.
ReplyDeleteMatt, what would be the earliest time to get an efika MX with Aura out-of-the-box? You said by New Year, but will the production units have it by then?
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work! Can't wait to get mine for the GCC compile farm :).
ReplyDeleteHi :D
ReplyDelete@Laurent: your system shipped and we send you a couple extra Developer Edition 2.0 PCBs for the GCC compile farm. They won't have PATA working (so you'll need to compile that driver out of the kernel) but the systems will boot from SD card. The documentation will be online on Friday.
@Peter: is there an OpenSUSE ARM rootfilesystem that is not just for Beagleboard SD? That split archive thing was awful. We'd like to provide something on PD... along with the Fedora support. I'm going to blog about that on Friday.
@blu.dark: we can't give a date, I'm sorry, but we should have something by Christmas for existing customers. Aura will ship out of the box when it's ready. We need to make sure we can produce the same volume of software updates in as reliable manner as possible. Luckily the system will happily boot firmware directly from SD card so there is no flashing involved to test.
Also blogging about this before the end of the week..
Matt, thank you very much for the christmas present :) Fedex just delivered today. I still have to buy some FR power cables to put these beasts online in the compile farm.
ReplyDelete