NetNews Offline 2/NetNews Offline Volume 2.iso/news/comp/dcom/modems-part1/8133

Internet Message Format | 1996-08-05 | 4.2 KB

Path: slip-63-15.ots.utexas.edu!user
From: [e-mail] (Donald L. Nash)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.modems
Subject: Re: What's the situation with Moto Power 28.8?
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 13:36:27 -0600
Organization: Univ. of Texas System Office of Telecom. Services
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In article
<[e-mail]>,
[e-mail] (Paul K Witting) wrote:

>This doesn't change the fact that the original Powers DID have a flashable
>DSP.

I've never denied this.  However, Motorola has said that they will not
support a software upgrade to 33.6 for the Power, so it doesn't matter
whether the older Powers have a flashable DSP or not.  A flashable DSP
doesn't do you any good if Motorola doesn't make use of it.

My point all along has been that Motorola never advertised DSP
flashability in the Power.  Their ads were vague enough that many people
(myself included), thought the DSP was flashable, but Motorola never came
out and said so, at least not that I ever heard.  They have since said
that it isn't.  Whether this means that the older Powers really aren't
DSP-flashable in spite of the use of flash memory in the DSP, or that they
are DSP-flashable but Motorola simple refuses to take advantage of it, I
don't know.  But as I said above, it doesn't matter.  New Powers
definitely are not DSP-flashable and I strongly doubt that Motorola is
going to release any firmware upgrade that would make the newer Powers
look crippled in comparison to the older ones.

On the other hand, they have said specifically that the Premier does have
a flashable DSP.  Someone here asked what you got in the Premier besides
"a few extra bps," that justified the extra $100.  I said that you get a
flashable DSP.  What I should have said was that you get a DSP which
Motorola advertises as flashable with the intention of offering DSP
upgrades, as opposed to the Power, in which Motorola refuses to support
the flashability of the older models and removed this ability from the
newer ones.

>Once Motorola was satisfied with the code, they switched to a burned
>in ROM to save $$$.

There was only one public release of new firmware before the ROM version
of the Powers came out, Rev 2.  The ROM Powers shipped with Rev 2, so one
would assume that this is the version they were happy with.  I wonder if
Rev 2 for the RAM Powers contained DSP code or just controller code?  If
it contained only controller code then it is difficult to justify your
statement since in that case we haven't actually seen any DSP upgrades.
Unless Motorola speaks up someone disassembles the Rev 2 image, we'll
never know.

>If you check their latest Flash distributions there
>are two versions, one for RAM (flashable DSP) and one for ROM (burned ROM
>code).

This doesn't necessarily mean that the RAM version is different because it
contains DSP flash.  There might be other changes in the hardware between
the RAM and ROM version of the modem which necessitate differences in the
controller code.  Again, unless Motorola speaks up or someone disassembles
the two different Rev 4 images and compares them, we'll never know.

>If you search the flash code, BTW, you'll find 33600 and 31200 response
>codes.

So?  All this proves is that the engineers entertained the possibility of
33.6 support in the controller code (response strings are in the
controller, not the DSP).  It doesn't mean they planned to implement this
for the Power.  I'd be greatly surprised if the Power and the Premier
didn't share a common code base, so those strings may be in there for the
Premier.
                                ++Don Nash

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