[Arm-netbook] ST Nova™ A9500

[lkcl luke]

On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 9:01 PM, Bari Ari <bari at onelabs.com> wrote:

> ST got back to me and the A9500 is available through any of their distis
> in any volume:
>
> USA :  Arrow, Avnet, Future and Digikey

 superb!  ok.  the key decision is on pricing.

 ah wait....

http://www.igloocommunity.org/support/Technical_documentation

"The Snowball board uses the same ST-Ericsson SoC (System on Chip) as
mobile phones and other mobile devices soon to be released by various
vendors. In order to make sure that commercial products are not
compromised using tools or information publicly available for
Snowball. For this reason the initialization code in Snowball must be
signed. This signed software is not open source.

The signed code is executed before u-boot, and the tool chain will
insert a small partition ("config") on the eMMC to hold it. From
u-boot it is possible to execute anything, e.g. a Linux Kernel. The
default u-boot looks for partitions named "boot" and "root" on either
the on-board eMMC or the SD card. "

morons.  absolute morons.  like it's going to make _any_ difference.
if someone wants to compromise a device and run quotes untrusted
quotes software, they'll find a way.

 anyway _apart_ from this it's looking good.  the absolute key will
however be pricing.

 l.