Changing the nub firmware?

[diligentcircle]

So, some time ago, a guy from DefectiveByDesign, Mattl, came by and asked how free the Pandora is, and in a nutshell, the response was:


- The 3D firmware and driver are both nonfree


- The WiFi firmware is nonfree, but the driver is free


- The nub firmware is nonfree, but the driver is free


Mattl mentioned (and it is true) that the FSF and related organizations allow nonfree software a free pass if it cannot be modified, since that at least means it cannot be automatically "upgraded" with something malicious; it will always function the same, so they just treat it as a circuit. This free pass has been given in the past to nonfree BIOSes, for example, since they were stored on ROM.


Now, someone mentioned that it is somehow difficult to change the firmware of the nubs, but this was never elaborated on. Can someone explain why it is difficult to change the nub firmware and what process is needed to change it?

 

[slaeshjag]

You need to physically connect some wires on the PCB to flash the microcontrollers using an external programmer device.

 

[diligentcircle]

Thanks for the answer.


Now the question is whether or not the FSF would handwave this case... I didn't get an answer on #fsf, so I guess no one there knows.

 

[Trip]

Now the question is whether or not the FSF would handwave this case... I didn't get an answer on #fsf, so I guess no one there knows.

They will probably be treated the same as plugging in a joystick I would have thought. They don't really have anything to do with the main Pandora board itself and a Pandora can operate fully without them.

 

[diligentcircle]

Now the question is whether or not the FSF would handwave this case... I didn't get an answer on #fsf, so I guess no one there knows.

They will probably be treated the same as plugging in a joystick I would have thought. They don't really have anything to do with the main Pandora board itself and a Pandora can operate fully without them.

Yes, but I'm pretty sure joystick firmwares are normally just burned to a ROM. I don't know if the fact that you can change the firmware of the nubs prevents it from qualifying for a hand-wave even though it's difficult and requires a human to do it (if I'm understanding this correctly).

 

[Trip]

I wouldn't have thought so. There has to be replacement firmware available before you can even consider going that far into it. As far as I'm aware there isn't.


The nubs were bought as a package with the firmware included and added onto the board which was created separately.


The Pandora uses open and free software whenever possible (as long as it's up to doing the job that it's there to do of course). This is completely different from a company that will use closed software/hardware to try and keep control of the market.

 

[tsh]

Now the question is whether or not the FSF would handwave this case...

Why should we care?


(they're welcome to their opinions, but I thought they were just a bunch of hippies...)

 

[moxie]

*considers making popcorn*


*hides in cave with blanket over head instead*

 

[diligentcircle]

Why should we care?


(they're welcome to their opinions, but I thought they were just a bunch of hippies...)

I'm one of those "bunch of hippies"... happily running Trisquel, thank you very much, and just yesterday I finally ordered this video card so I can enjoy 3D games such as Ryzom, Glest, and others in freedom.


I personally think the nubs are good enough if they require human intervention to upgrade. I'm just curious what other free software supporters think.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

and just yesterday I finally ordered this video card so I can enjoy 3D games such as Ryzom, Glest, and others in freedom.

And then you are buying Nvidia? Cool story bro...


Srsly, if you want to play games with free drivers you buy a Radeon card of similar age, if the required firmware is getting in your ideological way you get a recent Intel GPU, but Nvidia... let's talk about that in 3 years, nouveau simply isn't pushing it, yet.

 

[diligentcircle]

And then you are buying Nvidia? Cool story bro...


Srsly, if you want to play games with free drivers you buy a Radeon card of similar age, if the required firmware is getting in your ideological way you get a recent Intel GPU, but Nvidia... let's talk about that in 3 years, nouveau simply isn't pushing it, yet.

Are you trolling?

 

[TrashyMG]

I'd say anyone that has "Cool Story Bro" in a sentence is trolling.

 

[craigix]

So what open source controllers, mice and keyboards do these hippies use?

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

^^^Made from hemp ill bet.

 

[Exophase]

Yes, but I'm pretty sure joystick firmwares are normally just burned to a ROM. I don't know if the fact that you can change the firmware of the nubs prevents it from qualifying for a hand-wave even though it's difficult and requires a human to do it (if I'm understanding this correctly).

Making a ROM is relatively expensive, and microcontrollers that have flash embedded are cheap and plentiful. We're talking about firmwares that usually don't need to be more than a few dozen KB in size. The area savings you get by making this amount of code into ROMs is miniscule, and if said ROM is a separate chip from your microcontroller even the BOM cost would be higher.


Practically the only place where ROMs still make sense is when you have a relatively huge amount of data like on a cartridge, or there are serious reliability concerns like for something running in space (even there we usually just use hi-rel PROMs)


These embedded devices could however be using microcontrollers that, while they may have flash, aren't actually programmable anymore due to having fuses blown or something like that, or at least not having the right pins hooked to anything.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

Are you trolling?

Nope, completely honest. The nouveau driver is too young, it has too much issues and incompatibilities with dozens of cards, you likely won't have a lot of a good time with it if you didn't even research how well it works with that card - buying an Nvidia for use with nouveau blindly is like digging a hole in a minefield. radeon and intel are simply years ahead of time as they are actually being supported by the companies behind the hardware, both with manpower and public documentations - instead of completely relying on reverse engineering and developers from the community like nouveau.

 

[diligentcircle]

You did notice that I'm buying from Think Penguin, and that they tested the card to make sure it works, and found compatibility with Trisquel 5.5 (the OS I'm using), right? I mean, the word "Nvidia" doesn't even show up on the page, so I don't see how you can overlook that and only notice that it's an Nvidia card.


EDIT: Radeon? Seriously? Don't you know that ALL of those either don't work with free firmware at all or only work in 2D with free firmware? Because of AMD's DRM, from what I've read.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

Well, calling it the "Best supported 3d accelerated graphics card for free systems" surely isn't giving this site a lot of credibility, I have spent enough time supporting Ubuntu systems and following the development of the big 3 free drivers to know that this simply isn't true. But if they actually discard Intel's solutions for not being offered as a "card" and AMD's hardware because of the used firmwares, it's not like there's anything else left... "Hey, it's crap, but it's the best crap we offer!"


The "Comparable performance to binary drivers" part is BTW only true for a small set of selected games, just as you could say the free radeon r300g driver is faster than the last supported fglrx version because it got more frames in a few games while in many others it's only getting half of it.


The page kinda gives the impression that instead of testing thoroughly themselves they simply took a look at a Phoronix benchmark and simply tested if the listed systems boot properly.


And look out for a newer kernel, concerning nouveau having a somewhat recent kernel is very important.

 

[diligentcircle]

All I know is that the integrated graphics controller by AMD which is on the desktop computer I use not only requires nonfree firmware for 3D, it also doesn't even work properly when the nonfree firmware is there (e.g. on Linux Mint). And now you're telling me I should get a video card from AMD... all of which require nonfree firmware, which you know very well I am not going to use. Yeah, I ain't buying it (literally).

 

[Letalis Sonus]

And now you're telling me I should get a video card from AMD... all of which require nonfree firmware, which you know very well I am not going to use. Yeah, I ain't buying it (literally).

Scroll up again: I was talking about a Radeon card of similar age and that you should look out for a recent Intel solution if the firmware bugs you that much.