Originally Posted by Some generic questions

> Do someone know the status for the hardware: how fare are we from the
> 250 hit?

There is currently 302 people interested in being notified as soon as
the preorder is available. So even optimistic assessment of 50% of
people subscribed will actually preorder, we are getting close.


> As far as I know about the software the Cordia Os is not ready yet but
> would Meego or Maemo work on Cordia Tab right now or would need some
> work too?

Would need hardware adaptation, but the Core software is already
running.


> Actually I don't know if I can find some spare time but if I want to
> actively help what positions are currently needed?

Coders are welcome as we need to adapt and rewrite a lot of Maemo stuff.

We also need a nice GTK+ and Hildon theme. Distinctive icon theme would
also be nice. So a good computer artist is also needed.




--
Smoku

Originally Posted by Partitions

Firstly if you want to lookup the documents I'm reffering to, please
download imx-android-r10.1.tar.gz (IMX51_R10_ANDROID_SOURCE_CODE) from
Freescale site [1] and install it.

As doc/i.MX_Android_R10.1_User_Guide.html#3_2_1_Storage_P artitions
explains, we currently have boot space and 5 partitions on the device:
BOOT(10MB), MEDIA, SYSTEM, DATA, CACHE, RECOVERY.

The BOOT space contains U-Boot, kernel and initrd.

As I mentioned, I currently have initrd modified, to look at the
external SD Card file meego-*.img and if present boot from it.
This is temporary, for initial testing and development.

The included U-Boot allows two boot configuration. One standard and one
recovery. Standard configuration boots initrd. Recovery configuration
boots the recovery partition directly (skipping initrd) if you hold HOME
+MENU while booting.

I wonder your opinions on the desired partition layout, what to boot in
normal mode and what in recovery mode, what to use initrd for (or
whether to use it at all), etc.

Of course I have my own idea, but I withhold it for now, not to suggest
anything and encourage out of box thinking. :-)


[1] http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/...e=IMX51ANDROID

Originally Posted by SD card

> The specs say that there is an SD card slot. assuming that it is SDHC
> then we can add 32GB easily (if it is SDXC then even better).

It's SDHC and 32GB card works fine. I use one for development.


> will we be able to boot from SD?

Surely. My current setup is internal initrd that looks for inserted SD
card, then checks for meego-*.img file there and if the file is present
it boots the image. If not it continues to boot the internal MMC.

Originally Posted by Just to give You some highlights, why we have to use such not effective, counter-productive and time consuming way of communication between forum and mailing list ;)

> I may post on Maemo forum every time i have to report something from
> or to this mailing list, but I see you already care of that forum so
> maybe it's not needed.

I am very sporadic visitor to TMO now (mostly when notified by google
alert), so if you want to be posting there regularly, feel free to do
so. :-)


> I may also create a twitter channel.

I don't know what a twitter channel is. Could you describe in more
detail what do you want to do?


> Do you think this would be useful?

My opinion is that we don't need a lot of general publicity directed to
regular people yet. The OS is being built, the Tab is not ready for
consumption. This may create a lot of unmet expectancies.
I.e. I wouldn't like if some review site meant for generic consumer
reviewed the pre-alpha Tab or HD, not meant for real use, as a complete
crap (as it happens with N950 and pre-release Harmattan) now. That could
really hurt the project.

On the other hand, we need as much developers eyes and hands as
possible. I'm not a One Man Army (as much as I would like to be ;-) and
I care for all the comments and insights of people more clever and/or
experienced.



P.S. This is the reason I'm not a regular user of TMO any more, as the
vocal newbs flaming everyone and everything already scared away most of
the experienced people actually caring and doing stuff. I'm trying to
rebuild that culture here.

Originally Posted by hardware hacking

> Seriously though, why someone that can get Dreambook W7 must start
> from scratch, to contribute with something useful? Isn't it worth to
> start at current point - i.e. reproduce state of Your "hacked" device
> - base research @ work You've already done - and contribute further?
> Or it's just me, that misunderstood something (quite likely)?

I see no reason why anyone can't. This hardware is available on the market. I will answer any question and share any code.

I just don't advocate this approach, as it's extremely easy to "brick"
the hardware to the point needing soldering iron intervention, to get the serial port and/or JTAG out.

Having a stable bootloader and working recovery partition will make working on the OS image easier. And we will have this in the pre-release developer device. But up to this point, you need to get your hands dirty and have at least some knowledge in electronics. If you do, please speak up.

Originally Posted by Smoku

For the ones having the W7 tablet and wanting to hack it, I've uploaded
the stuff I use to hack mine.
http://cordiahd.org/download/Tab/20110717/

Provided uramdisk.img will look for an SD Card in slot, then for a file
named meego-*.img (picks most recent one of many) and if found, boot
this filesystem image as rootfs.
If the image is not found, it continues booting to Android.

If you don't know what to do with header.img and uramdisk.img please
read doc/i.MX_Android_R10.1_User_Guide.html in Freescale's EVK support
files.

Originally Posted by Estel (Post 1084351)

There is a list of closed-source apps and possible replacements for them in Cordia. List is open, and everyone can add missing program or propose something:

http://cordiahd.org/os/maemo5-apps