XO A

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XO Laptop Alpha test model A-Test, also known as A1, or just A.

Description

Power up of the first OLPC XO electronics prototype boards occurred April 15, 2006. Power and ground testing continued over the weekend, and formal debug and BIOS bring up started Monday, April 17, 2006 at Quanta Computer's labs near Taipei, Taiwan. By Wednesday, April 19, Linux was booting on the first generation prototypes. Several hundred of these boards were built and distributed to software developers.

Identification

• Bare circuit board, no case or display
  • socket for PLCC NAND Flash
  • VGA connector installed
  • no RF shielding on WLAN

Photographs:

• Component side OLPC circuit board
• Back side of the OLPC circuit board
• Picture of Linux running with circuit board in the lab
• Picture of the screen of Linux running on the OLPC circuit board; fittingly, it shows a Chinese desktop

Software Support

A-Test is no longer supported by OLPC software releases. Do not load E-, D- or C-series firmware (e.g. Q2E18) on A-Test machines.

Restrictions

• wireless is not encased,
• no longer included in testing,
• last known working firmware: ?
• last known working operating system build: ?
• some units had RAM that did not meeting CAS timing specification, code was added to Open Firmware to detect and compensate.

Followed by

• B1

Preceeded by

• a glimmer in Mark Foster's eye