Neo900 - finally a successor of N900 - Page 225 - maemo.org

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	joerg_rw	2014-11-20 , 00:54
	Posts: 2,222 \| Thanked: 12,651 times \| Joined on Mar 2010 @ SOL 3	#2241

Originally Posted by Wikiwide

...
Going to double my donation, soon (within this week).
...check out http://neo900.org/ : "starting to source risk parts for board itself, like 1GB RAM and RGB LEDs for kbd backlight." As mentioned on IRC, 'The funds basically don't allow securing of "expensive" stuff like the PoP RAM'...

Thanks a lot to wikiwide for your support by donating and by helping all the time with e.g. sourcing the components. Much appreciated.
Here's the RAM critter we are about to secure: http://neo900.org/stuff/joerg/N9_1GB...9_23-03-52.jpg

cheers
/j

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	joerg_rw	2014-11-21 , 19:03
	Posts: 2,222 \| Thanked: 12,651 times \| Joined on Mar 2010 @ SOL 3	#2242

Originally Posted by joerg_rw

Here's the RAM critter we are about to secure: http://neo900.org/stuff/joerg/N9_1GB...9_23-03-52.jpg

And it seems we actually might have found a source for a sufficient quantity of those. So we now run into the problem of securing risk parts early, without really having the funds in our kitty for such expense. I like to pre-announce a possible start of a "buy your RAM!" campaign to raise the needed funds to secure those components. It will have to be a fast campaign since our time window for ordering is very short, and we never again might find similar source.

stay tuned!
/j

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sulu	2014-11-21 , 20:25
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How many units at what price (roughly) are you talking about?

btw:
Are there any synergy effects developing between Neo900 and Pyra (apart from Nikolaus being involved in both)?
I mean, Michael is basically handing over the mic to Sebastian at oshw and both seem to be quite vocal people.
So I'd imagine them having a beer and a nice talk together with Nikolaus.

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nieldk	2014-11-21 , 20:41
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Seems like too many critical parts, like the RAM, that is quite too risky for me to ensure a proper device to invest in. Tells new that this will die by default in 2-3 years easily, when parts starts to malfunction, and new parts are unavailable even for service, yet to say, new devices.

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	pichlo	2014-11-21 , 21:12
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Originally Posted by joerg_rw

I like to pre-announce a possible start of a "buy your RAM!" campaign to raise the needed funds to secure those components.

But everybody has already bought their RAM, by contributing at least €100. Some of us much more than that. So I have to second sulu's question,

Originally Posted by sulu

How many units at what price (roughly) are you talking about?

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	joerg_rw	2014-11-22 , 00:14
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Originally Posted by pichlo

But everybody has already bought their RAM, by contributing at least €100. Some of us much more than that.

Of course we will count all the already done donations exceeding 100 as participating in this campaign with the "excess".

The 100€ are for R&D, not for securing/sourcing components for a final product. Those components sum up to much more than the 100€ anyway, see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...09#post1442609. The modem alone costs in that range, luckily the modem is not one of the risk parts. The 1024MB RAM (maybe 10..15EUR/chip, not 25 like quoted in above linked post) is, though. The 512MB RAM is easily available and probably will stay to be for a few more years. RGB-LEDs for kbd backlight are somewhat troublesome to source, but we can easily go for monochromatic/white LEDs any time. Please don't turn our very-open-communication policy into an argument against the project. Every hw development needs to deal with such issues of component availability and securing, and virtually not a single product out there will promise that spare parts are available on the free market 5 or 10 years into the future. Just usually you don't get to know of it. Also note that those "risk" parts often are for feature boosts like 1GB RAM or RGB backlight which were not on the list of guaranteed features of the original device.

The original idea has been to develop and build the prototypes, test them so you know what you get when you order. Then open up the regular order page, collect the payment and source the components and build the devices, which will take around 8 weeks after payments been collected. There's been no early sourcing of huge amounts of relatively expensive risk parts in that equation, but we found parts availability to be a more troublesome issue than originally expected, for some of the parts.
About repair: we will keep sufficient parts and even completely built boards for repairs and replacements. And in 3 years we don't expect any parts to start malfunctioning since we select parts to work for much longer than 3 years.

cheers
jOERG

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	peterleinchen	2014-11-22 , 08:54
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Agreed.
But I think it will be hard to collect the new funds in time (do not expect everybody to read/be noticed, to agree or just to transfer money (especially those from foreign countries where fees would exceed the requested amount).
Furthermore I would like you to put a statement that those parts are belonging to the donators (in contrary to R&D donations). In case of bankrupcy (beware) I do not want to deal with an 'Insovenzverwalter'. And take a look into future what resources might have the same prob, so if that happens request full amount of desired money, not slice by slice.

--
positive aspect:
this will give you another chance to correct estimation of real number for to-be-expected orders.

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Last edited by peterleinchen; 2014-11-22 at 09:03.

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	ste-phan	2014-11-22 , 10:00
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could you remind one of your humble 100euro donators one more time why the choice is between a common 512MB and a rare 1GB and not a common (?) 2GB?

thanks in advance and sure I agree to prpay parts. Hope is a valuable asset in life =)

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jake42	2014-11-22 , 10:51
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Originally Posted by ste-phan

could you remind one of your humble 100euro donators one more time why the choice is between a common 512MB and a rare 1GB and not a common (?) 2GB?

There aren't any 2 GigaByte RAM chips known which fit on an omap3. I also think an omap3 can't address 2GB of RAM in a sensible way, which might also explain why there aren't any POP chips with 2GB of RAM :-)

joerg_rw will most likely be able to explain this in more detail.

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	joerg_rw	2014-11-22 , 15:03
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Originally Posted by peterleinchen

Agreed.
But I think it will be hard to collect the new funds in time (do not expect everybody to read/be noticed, to agree or just to transfer money (especially those from foreign countries where fees would exceed the requested amount).
Furthermore I would like you to put a statement that those parts are belonging to the donators (in contrary to R&D donations). In case of bankrupcy (beware) I do not want to deal with an 'Insovenzverwalter'. And take a look into future what resources might have the same prob, so if that happens request full amount of desired money, not slice by slice.

--
positive aspect:
this will give you another chance to correct estimation of real number for to-be-expected orders.

Yes, all this is what we're pondering right now. Werner checked all other major parts for their risk status. We probably won't be able to do this whole thing in one week, but we can borrow the money from R&D funds for a while to allow this new thing to take the time it needs, while we evaluate the amount it needs in the end and we implement a proper shopping procedure to make sure this is no donation but a regular purchase.