Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien

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.

Efika MX Developer Edition 3.0

Just a little note to explain the change on the store to the Efika MX Developer Edition 3.0:

The Efika MXDE 2.0 was basically a bare-board model of the Efika Open Client, geared for developer use. It was based on the production prototype ("ER1") and was verified to a certain level of quality assurance for operation with Linux. Wire fixes were added to solve certain problems where necessary and for this reason it was VERY developer-oriented.

However, late in the stage of development (after it had passed initial verification), we found that certain features did not work as well when pushed for performance.. Parallel ATA needed a heavy hardware fix, sometimes caused random corruption, and some features on the board were otherwise unreliable in operation (VGA for example) and did not give the performance or features we initially envisioned. Fixing these problems would require far more than simple wire fixes.

We also decided that shipping developers one version of the board and "consumers" another version of the board was not fair on the developers who may have to deal with several problems which would impact development of their solutions, which would in turn affect consumer usage of the design.

You might notice we didn't ship too many of them for the above reasons! We apologize to everyone who is still waiting for a system but we really do want to give everybody the BEST POSSIBLE solution with as few problems as possible. It is for this reason alone that we postponed shipment. We do appreciate your support and your patience :)

Anyone who did not receive their board yet, will now receive an Efika MXDE 3.0 - this is a PCB fixed version of ER1 (no wire fixes required) inside the same case as the Open Client and will ship just before the Open Client ships. That is a $50 extra value for the price you already paid. Everyone who already received a 2.0 board will receive a 3.0 system too.

• The hardware difference between the MXOC and MXDE is a bundled JTAG & UART dongle with the developer board. They are the same price, same board.
• The software difference is that the MXDE has a developer environment installed and the MXOC has a desktop environment installed. Both of them are Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala Beta) but to fit the distribution on the board we had to cull a few "useless" features for the developer edition, while still giving all the tools (build-essential, debugger etc.) and ample space for development (we do not envision many people using Brasero CD burner anyway..)
• The VGA port has been dropped - we will only provide HDMI in future models. While this means developers with no digital monitor are going to have to buy a new monitor, these are very affordable these days (<$100).
• HDMI - in contrast to the VGA solution - will allow 1920x1080@30Hz (1080i) operation where the VGA support would only run at "WXGA" which is tantamount to 1024x768 or 1366x768. We deemed this too low resolution and too few displays could be supported.
• The Efika MX Open Client and Efika MX Developer Edition no longer come with Bluetooth but it is an easily installable additional module. We can provide this in special circumstances but otherwise it may be on the store as an additional product. Considering a USB Bluetooth Dongle can cost little more than $10 we do not feel that it is useful to provide this module when most people would not use it, although the internal module has the benefit of integrated coexistence signalling for better radio performance. Wireless 802.11n is still standard.
• Due to the extra development the Efika MXDE will come with a first version of the Aura firmware rather than alternative open-source boot solutions. This means developers and consumers get a better experience out of the box.