Poll: How much would you be willing to pay for a Neo900 (complete device) with TI DM3730 1GHz/512M-RAM/1GB
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How much would you be willing to pay for a Neo900 (complete device) with TI DM3730 1GHz/512M-RAM/1GB

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#2271
Originally Posted by joerg_rw View Post
Quoting Nikolaus:
[..]
apt-get update/upgrade does not fail (which I hope is testing the RAM well enough).
Certainly a good start, but it's no replacement for a proper test.
memtester [1] would be more reliable.


[1] https://packages.debian.org/sid/memtester
 

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#2272
Originally Posted by sulu View Post
Certainly a good start, but it's no replacement for a proper test.
memtester [1] would be more reliable.


[1] https://packages.debian.org/sid/memtester
This is not meant to *test* the complete RAM for bad bits or whatever. Rather it's supposed to verify that RAM generally works and has no short-circuited address bus lines or terribly wrong timing or whatever (think PC POST mem-test). For that it's just fine.

Thanks nevertheless for the hint, we will need it later on :-)

/j
 

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#2273
The Neo900 website says that the Neo900 will come bundled with Debian. Is this still the case? If so, what do you have planned?

I currently maintain a set of scripts to assist with the installation of Debian on the N900. I would gladly collaborate with bringing Debian to the Neo900 if you would like any help. My current plan is that my scripts will eventually form the basis for a full mobile Linux distribution based on Debian and/or Devuan.

Some have suggested that I might be eligible to receive one of the Mozilla donated N900s. I only have one N900 which is my daily device so to have second one dedicated to development and testing would be a great help. Are there any left?

It sounds like Android_808 might benefit from one too.
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DebiaN900 - Native Debian on the N900. Deprecated in favour of Maemo Leste.

Maemo Leste for N950 and N9 (currently broken).
Devuan for N950 and N9.

Mobile devices with mainline Linux support - Help needed with documentation.

"Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." - Henry Spencer

Last edited by wicket; 2015-02-13 at 04:20.
 

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#2274
We did it! Prolly the first BeagleBoard-xM worldwide with 1GB RAM - for sure the only device except Nokia N9 I know of that has a OMAP3 and 1GB RAM on PoP *): (quoting a report I received from Nikolaus)
Code:
Texas Instruments X-Loader (MLO) 1.4.4ss modified for GTA04 (Mar  7 2015 - 18:35:51)

> OMAP36XX/37XX-GP ES2.1
> Board detected: Beagle xM Rev A
> SYSBOOT[5:0]: 0x12/18
> GMPC Memory: 3
> SDRC Memory 5 5: SAMSUNG MCP 512(?)MB/bank

^^^ well, this is currently hard-forced in my code

> Reading FAT boot sector
> Loading u-boot.bin (296020 bytes) from mmc/sd
> 
> 
> U-Boot 2011.03-rc1-00967-g671281f (Feb 09 2015 - 16:15:52)
> 
> OMAP36XX/37XX-GP ES2.1, CPU-OPP2, L3-165MHz, Max CPU Clock 1 Ghz
> OMAP3 Beagle board + LPDDR/NAND
> I2C:   ready
> DRAM:  1 GiB

^^^ looks good!

> 
> —— snip ——
> 
> [    0.000000] Memory: 1004440K/1047552K available (5817K kernel code, 592K rwdata, 2280K rodata, 404K init, 8173K bss, 26728K reserved, 16384K cma-reserved, 252928K highmem)

Linux is now booting (didn’t with this mirrored RAM address ranges)!

> 
> —— snip ——
> 
> Linux gta04 3.19.0-gta04+ #992 SMP Mon Feb 9 09:04:09 CET 2015 armv7l
> 
> The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
> the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
> individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.
> 
> Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
> permitted by applicable law.
> root@gta04:~# cat /proc/meminfo 
> MemTotal:        1021228 kB
> MemFree:          905016 kB
> MemAvailable:     995204 kB
> Buffers:            7076 kB
> Cached:            89968 kB
> SwapCached:            0 kB
> Active:            69492 kB
> Inactive:          31260 kB
> Active(anon):       3728 kB
> Inactive(anon):      148 kB
> Active(file):      65764 kB
> Inactive(file):    31112 kB
> Unevictable:           0 kB
> Mlocked:               0 kB
> HighTotal:        269312 kB
> HighFree:         242656 kB
> LowTotal:         751916 kB
> LowFree:          662360 kB
> SwapTotal:             0 kB
> SwapFree:              0 kB
> Dirty:               452 kB
> Writeback:             0 kB
> AnonPages:          3712 kB
> Mapped:             6664 kB
> Shmem:               172 kB
> Slab:              12100 kB
> SReclaimable:       6716 kB
> SUnreclaim:         5384 kB
> KernelStack:         448 kB
> PageTables:          216 kB
> NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
> Bounce:                0 kB
> WritebackTmp:          0 kB
> CommitLimit:      510612 kB
> Committed_AS:      29916 kB
> VmallocTotal:     245760 kB
> VmallocUsed:       23120 kB
> VmallocChunk:     125352 kB
> CmaTotal:          16384 kB
> CmaFree:           16128 kB
> root@gta04:~#
Many thanks to Ivo and Nikolaus!

We now urgently need to raise more funds to secure those 1GB chips for the number of devices we plan to build, as well as for other similar risk parts. We also are about to source a sufficient number of used/refurbished N900 to revamp for the LCD, digitizer, mechanical parts, for those who want a complete device rather than a PCB to upgrade their own N900. Those will presumably also cost ~100some bucks per device, so we need to raise "funds" for those too, from prospect customers of complete Neo900.
I'm in the painful process to set up a proper webshop where you can place regular preorders to purchase parts of your Neo900 we're going to build for you, please stay tuned and keep your kitty in reach :-). The target for this preorder DOWNPAYMENT will be around 300EUR (total incl any "donation" you already did) for the NeoN bare board which will cover ~40% of the final price, and a 150EUR on top for the N900 we will use to mount the NeoN board into for you (you'll receive a supposedly working spare N900(!) PCB with that).

cheers
jOERG

*) some question that arrived at me was: "why don't you go for 2 or 4 GB already?" A: 1GB is the physical maximum an OMAP3 can address. So we hit the limit, can't do any better

Last edited by joerg_rw; 2015-03-09 at 14:25.
 

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#2275
A year ago I definitely would have ordered this device, even with the ~700€ price tag. But with all the delays (and while you’ve announced a webshop, you are still not actually selling this product), my interest has waned. I’m sure I’m not the only one. While I would have liked a phone focused on privacy, I think I’ll simply use a competing smartphone for the bare minimum and do most of my computing needs on a notebook.

That’s not to denigrate your efforts, joerg_rw. Obviously you’ve had lots of fun with this project and it would have been a rewarding experience even if no one ultimately bought the phone. But it’s worth voicing some disappointment that, I think, many others here share.
 

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#2276
id be with you, CRCulver, except that there actually arent any competing phones (except perhaps jolla, if its available in your country).

every other option is either ridiculously anti-freedom (android) or non-feature-competitive (openmoko/shr/etc).

the n900 and the n9 are easily the best phones that exist, on balance, for freedom+usability. aaand they STILL both suck so hard that its difficult to decide which one is better.

if a jolla2 was suddenly on sale with an LTE radio for my region, then maybe id have to make a tough decision.
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#2277
Don't forget maybe the main thing that sets the Neo900 project apart from the other open/semi-open solutions: a separate baseband modem fully "sandboxed" by the application CPU.

Many other devices might run more or less open operating systems, but they are still on the mercy of the baseband modem runing a fully proprietary firmware not doing shady stuff in the background (or even touching the application CPU memory!) without basically any means to find about it.

Neo900 is about the only modern smartphone project I know about where the modem is controlled by the application CPU, not the other way around and where it can be verifiably powered down, denied access to the microphone, etc. And that's something you can really do without hardware support with just a software solution...
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#2278
@MartinK you are absolutely right there. As good and open the Jolla device is, Neo900 is alone in its class, peerless.

In all the "modern" devices baseband processing has been integrated on the same silicon with O&M processing, making it necessarily for the device to run unknown, closed, unaudited binaries as ring-0 processes on the same CPU that processes all user data.

This is especially bad as the chipset vendors have tight coupling with military-industrial blocks in the world superpowers;
It is well known that Qualcomm is owned and operated by USAF and I have no doubt that chinese solutions have similar ties with PLA.
 

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#2279
This is all very well known to people who have been following this project for a long time. However, it remains a mere project. As long as there is no actual product for sale, then it is hard to boast about its supposed specifications.

Furthermore, the N900 screen resolution and even the upgraded Neo900 specifications seem more antiquated by the day – this should have shipped a year ago, and I think a lot of people have decided, privacy be damned, they are going to use something up to date. The Neo900 is now sort of like a project saying in the age of tablets “Hey, look, here’s a Sharp Zaurus-like device that cares about your privacy!”.

Last edited by CRCulver; 2015-03-09 at 20:49.
 

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#2280
Originally Posted by CRCulver View Post
Furthermore, the N900 screen resolution
Please show me another real Linux smartphone with a toushc screen as precise as the N900 - precise enough to edit OpenStreetMap or to draw gorgeous pictures.


Originally Posted by CRCulver View Post
and even the upgraded Neo900 specifications seem more antiquated by the day – this should have shipped a year ago, and I think a lot of people have decided, privacy be damned, they are going to use something up to date. The Neo900 is now sort of like a project saying in the age of tablets “Hey, look, here’s a Sharp Zaurus-like device that cares about your privacy!”.
I think a slightly updated Sharp Zaurus running a close to normal Linux distro would be really nice.
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