[Arm-netbook] 100 samples A10 EOMA-68 CPU Card

[luke.leighton]

ok - i'd like to put a preliminary batch order together for these
first CPU Cards, as a way to test them, get them out there and get
people familiar with them.  there are several caveats as these are
ALPHA boards:

* there is NO FCC/CE approval.
* therefore you will be buying them AS-IS, as "test" / "engineering samples".
* as with all test / engineering samples, there will be NO WARRANTY.
* as with all test / engineering samples, there will be NO RETURNS.
* there may be android pre-loaded (even working) but you'll need to
help get alternative software up-and-running
* these devices will *not* come with a case: it will be a bare PCB
(with all its connectors)

so those are the conditions.  we thought about doing a "club
membership" in return for which you'd get access to a test /
engineering sample but heck it's all the same, in the end.

also as it's the very first boards, and it'll only be a small
production run, the production costs will be slightly higher, and,
also, you'd be helping to support the project.  i'm asking two PCB
companies to quote for a run, but i should imagine it'll be somewhere
around $100 excl. tax, shipping etc. etc.

later on we will have a beta run, which will cross over with the
flying squirrel PCB and at that point we'll get FCC/CE approval
Certificates (between $7k and $15k) but as it'll be on the order of
10k units that's something that can be absorbed into the costings.

so this is *before* all that, and you'll need to take that into account.

so!  let's see.... how's best to do this.  could i ask people to
modify the status on their preorder to "1stbatch"?   look for your
preorder here:
http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/orders/

or go directly to the link if you know it already, and edit the page
so that the "Status" line says "1stbatch"?

* Quantity: 2
* Max Unit Price: $100
* Max Budget: $100
* Purpose: educational, development, testing for graduate school/university
* Stage: alpha
* Status: 1stbatch

if you don't have an order already, then create one! :)

also please take the opportunity to update to a VALID email address
that's easy for the little order_processing.py program to "extract"
your email address!

i've covered the majority of the obfuscations, it's a huuuge list of
over 100 different substitutions covering dot, doot, -dot-,
"(this-is-a-d0t)", (youknow) and so on.  the full list is in the
function translate_email at line 142, here:
http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/order_processing.py

if anyone would like to pay _more_ than $100 in order to help support
this project, then please do update the pricing accordingly on the
preorder.

if you would like to pay _less_ than $100 then please do put, after
the preorder, a good reason why you feel that your input is valuable
in some strategic way that will immediately help us to achieve the
goal of getting these cards into mass-volume appliances world-wide.

if we end up with more than 100 units, that's fine, we'll get to that.
  if however it starts to go over 250 then we'll need to put a cut-off
in place because we can't really justify shipping out that many "test
samples" unless we do the "club membership" thing and you "get a free
engineering sample" as part of the membership.

ok that's all for now.  i'll do a quick clean-up of the preorders so
you may find that your preorder has been moved to "not_valid" if the
email's invalid, or if you put in an unrealistic price, despite the
template saying "THE SALE PRICE IS NOT $15!!!!!!!".

all good fun....

l.