[Arm-netbook] a10^Wa20 eoma68 card

[luke.leighton]

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 8:23 PM, Derek LaHousse <dlahouss at mtu.edu> wrote:
> luke.leighton <luke.leighton <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>>
>> we've got a price for doing 25 boards: there's zero change out of $2500 -
> and that's not including shipping costs.  we think it's a bit steep, so are
> looking for alternatives.  if we could get to 50 boards then the price comes
> down somewhat.
>> so!if there are 25 more brave souls who'd like a board, the kernel's
> sorted, u-boot's sorted, debian's sorted, android's sorted,
> boot-loading-over-usb-fex is sorted, so the "early days" are over and i
> think we can declare this as almost going into alpha phase now.
>
> Luke,
> I took this to mean you're looking for more people to sign-up (probably @
> http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/orders/ ) for a "pre-alpha rev 2"
> board that costs around $100.

 at a cost (to us) of $60 we could potentially get away with less than
$100 price, but i'm not authorised to commit to selling prices.

>  However, there's been little additional
> message on the list.

 .... and if that gives you any indication of how bloody busy i am
right now, then that's good!

> 1. Am I correct, looking for a new set of 25-50 people?

 really, yes.  or as many as possible.  the NREs won't go down, so the
only way to get the price down is to have more people.

> 2. What should I put for Development Stage?

 alpha.  but change stage to "1stbatch" as that's what
order_processing.py is using to distinguish them.  btw: if you want to
do more after this (alpha, beta, stable) then create a 1stbatch entry
as a *separate* order.

> 3. Do you have any time frame for board 2?

 about 2-3 weeks after we put full (cash) payment in to the ODM.

> 4. Could you repeat what this group is testing?  It sounds like you've got a
> working board, so why not rolling into larger production, why limit to 25-50
> "brave souls"?

 because i would like as much testing and as many OSes done as
possible prior to going "alpha".

 this is really really really *really* early.  no warranty, no
returns, no support, no FCC/CE approval certificates - nothing.
everyone involved will have to sign something agreeing to those
conditions.

 that's all rather inconvenient, so i'd kinda prefer it not to be too
many people.  we *could* go to a maximum of 250, but that is a hell of
a lot of "test / engineering" boards.

 mostly though it's about the FCC/CE certificates.  i know that
GNURadio USRPs are sold as "Test Equipment", but i can't say i'm
massively comfortable with that, so we keep it to 50.

l.