[Arm-netbook] Any progress?

[Paul Boddie]

On Monday 29. June 2015 17.58.50 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 4:06 PM, Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:
> > Luke, others,
> > 
> > Has there been any recent progress on the crowd-funding campaign or on
> > other things?
> 
>  ironically we just cross-over on what i've been up to, mostly it's
> been the laptop casework whilst waiting for quotes from china assembly
> companies.

Right. What about the mini-desktop, though? Wasn't that the original crowd-
funded proposal?

> > From what I've seen from following other lists, there's progress on Linux
> > device tree support for various Ingenic JZ-series SoCs, which might have
> > a beneficial impact on any jz4755 card that is produced.
> 
>  great!  oh - it's a 4775 not a 4755.  the 4755 is a veerry loooow end
> SoC, whilst the 4775 is an FSF-Endorseable 1ghz MIPS with a 720p video
> decoder that has full source code available for it.

Yes, I meant jz4775. After a while all the numbers blur into one another. ;-)

>  anyway, yes: it was very unfortunate that the company in the USA -
> despite having amazing interactive facilities which made the job of
> communicating with them both a pleasure as well as a cooperative task
> - had such high manual assembly costs.  ordinarily on USA-based
> pricing for parts, or if the unit sale price was even 3x to 4x the
> costs it would not have been a problem, but when the assembly cost is
> nearly 80% to 100% of the component cost, _that_'s a problem.

So, "onshoring" still has a way to go, then. ;-)

>  so it has been back to square one to find a china-based contract
> manufacturer, and i just have to let them get on with it and get back
> to me when they can.

Oh dear! Well, as long as you can identify reliable and reputable 
manufacturers who can schedule the work.

Paul