[IAEP] Sugar/OLPC Relations

[Caryl Bigenho]

Could a small external battery pak, like we see so many of these days, be used to power an XO? You would need a suitable cable.
Caryl

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jun 3, 2016, at 11:43 PM, Samuel Greenfeld <samuel at greenfeld.org> wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, Jun 4, 2016 at 12:02 AM, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:
>> Sam, I am eager to learn what you personally think the date should be :)
> 
> My personal answer (at least in past private discussions) has been to end support sometime in 2020.
> 
> The logic behind that being:
> OLPC no longer makes any batteries compatible with the XO-1 (or any unit prior to the XO-4).  By 2020 the existing battery stock for older XOs should be pretty much dead.
> 
> It may be possible to convince Paul Fox or someone to write "compatible" embedded controller firmware which charges multiple types of batteries sub-optimally given the limited EC flash space available.  But that would require the more general availability of replacement batteries.
> 
> Support for i586 CPUs is starting to leave mainline Linux distributions.  Note Debian's recent announcement about processors supported in Jessie but not Stretch.
> 
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2016/05/msg00001.html {The AMD Geode LX in XO-1's is a MediaGX derivative}
> 
> The somewhat odd processor in XO-1s has had a history of throwing illegal instruction errors whenever someone compiled a library incorrectly, or a just-in-time compiler took advantage of an instruction the CPU lacked.
> 
> Other Linux distributions such as RHEL/CentOS have gone 64-bit only.
> 
> Experiments have been made, but no big push has been made to update XOs beyond Fedora 18, which hit end-of-life in early 2014.  This requires kernel work to fix upstreamed drivers (XO-1 & 1.5) & more kernel work to upstream & port non-upstreamed drivers (XO-1.75 & 4).
> 
> The alternative is to port an older systemd forward; potentially an equally annoying headache.
> 
> By 2020 one would hope Sugar is targeting the latest & most appropriate platform of the day, and not restricting itself to capabilities invented 15 years ago.
> 
> 
>> Fair enough. I've schedule a chat with Leah at OLPC in a couple of weeks, and I'll keep you all posted on what I can find out. 
> 
> If there is a reason to go to OLPC's Miami office again I don't have an issue with that.  I was there in October, and as far as I know I'm still on good terms with them.
> 
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