[Arm-netbook] Crowsupply update

[Richard Wilbur]

On Jan 8, 2018, at 07:57, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 2:28 PM, Neil Jansen <njansen1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I do completely agree with his
>> decision to get a few boards produced and tested before doing a complete
>> run.  Even with all the review, there are still plenty of possibilities for
>> show-stoppers.
> 
> the 2.7.4 board is the fallback.  it'll be... without an HDMI
> interface.  that's just the way it'll be.

One downside of the 2.7.4 board at this point is the changes in capacitor pricing that have been ameliorated only on version 2.7.5.  Here's hoping the 2.7.5 board works!

[…]
> software-wise i need something that does nothing more complex than
> mount stuff on a micro-sd card, show boot messages on both screens,
> and maybe has 2 keyboards plugged in (one into each USB socket) so
> that they can bash some keys and see that crud comes up on-screen for
> each.
> 
> going beyond that... testing I2C, UART and the GPIO.... *sigh*...
> that involves writing some software.

I'd be happy to write some test software for I2C, UART, GPIO, etc.  I've worked on drivers for those interfaces on embedded machines in the past.  I also have experience creating and implementing software and hardware test designs.  One example, I modified my employer's PCI VGA BIOS to test the card at boot which significantly streamlined testing of our cards.  Another example, in order to test a design I created I2C driver and test code to demonstrate feasibility on a prototype and then incorporated it into production code in the BIOS and driver.

Happy to collaborate on board bring up as well.  I've worked on bringing up in-house boards for two employers:  PCI graphics cards (for which we used oscilloscope and completed someone else's programmable logic design), embedded computers in different modules of high-speed wireless communications links (tools used:  spectrum analyzer, oscilloscope, logic analyzer, PCI bus analyzer, MPEG protocol analysis software, processor In-Circuit Emulator, serial terminal).

If you've got that covered, I'm happy playing the role of the ally you can describe the problem to and who, through listening to your description, helps you see the solution!

Sincerely,
Richard