Bye Bye PowerBook...<weep>
Well, it seemed inevitable that my PowerBook would be taken away. I have 10
days to give it back to my employer...
After getting a bunch of help on this list, my Pismo PowerBook has been very
stellar in operation running Debian PPC Linux, with airport and rage
driver...but the PowerBook belongs to my employer, and as George Harrison once
said, all things must pass...
I'll either be buying a new Titanium PowerBook myself or getting one when I
get a new job (whether it be as a consultant or an employee will determine
that). But first I need to take some time off, I haven't had a life for the
past year working on my previous project...and I need some time with my wife
and kids...
Some of you might be familiar with the project I was working on, the Kerbango
Internet Radio, which runs MontaVista Hardhat Linux running on a PowerPC 823
chip. 3Com acquired Kerbango last year as they mounted up their internet
appliance division, which is now being desolved as the new CEO is changing
direction of the company. Kerbango was acquired under the old management and
due to the new management not having a clue about this technology, we get put
on the butcher block.
In a way it's a sad day for embedded ppc linux, since our radio is farther
along than most of the embedded systems I've seen using Linux, but hopefully
the radio will be sold (I won't hold my breath though;-). At this point it
seems remote as the new management doesn't seem too positive about selling it
(per their press releases), it seems it will be going to the shelf as other
great projects of yesteryear have also done in the past.
The radio was actually finished, manufacturing was setup, all the packaging
was done, and we have a final version of the ROM and NAND images that would
have shipped on the radio. We actually have boxes that are ready to be shipped
to customers, but management decided they will not be selling it...the sad
thing is that management has no clue to the technology that was used in the
radio, or even the talent on our development team...
I wrote all of the communications on the radio, and it flashes the NAND over
the net and reprograms the radio on the fly, a very cool way of updating.
Previous to joining Kerbango I was a consultant for the past 20 years, and I
have worked on a lot of high exposure projects, but none have received as much
attention as the Kerbango Internet Radio. We continually won awards for it,
including a best innovation award at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas earlier in January this year.
They can kill our radio, but they can't kill this technology and embedded
linux rocks! My hardhat goes off to Jim Ready at MontaVista, he rocks also,
and it was great working with the MontaVista folks over the past year.
MontaVista has helped ppc linux out more than any other single company, IMO,
and it's certainly maturing and slowly catching up to it's intel cousin. It's
also becoming much more viable for embedded, although I would be first to
admit that linux has some quirks when running on devices with low memory
and/or low storage, it's getting better with time though...
You guys will see me around when I get my Titanium PowerBook, probably with
more questions than I had about the Pismo...;-) Thanks to all of you that
helped me with it!
--
Alan DuBoff
Software Orchestration, Inc.
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