On Sun, 2007-10-07 at 10:41 +0100, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:
On Tue, Oct 02, 2007 at 10:18:35PM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
Well, the Neo has proprietary software "on it" if you count the internal modem. I'm not sure how interesting a list that would be, particularly if you count firmware - the number of devices would basically be zero.
There is always some aspect of a device which is proprietary.
As far as I could understand from the Neo's information, it's all Free Software except some components put in ROM (well, maybe it's a REPROM) like the GSM and GPS components, allowing the system to operate without BLOBs.
Not quite, as I understand it. The GPS is a somewhat separate story, since it's not clear what chipset they're going forward with - the current one is proprietary, but I doubt that users of the GTA02 Neo will suffer that - even the current proprietary one has had some decent reverse engineering done it.
The GSM thing isn't in ROM; it's a GSM modem that's connected to an internal serial port. It's just like plugging in an external modem in the old days - it's effectively a separate piece of hardware, and you just send it AT commands.
Cheers,
Alex.