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[tickmike]

Thanks, I will look in to that.

[camallison]

I already have a business account with both Farnell and RS Components, even though I closed the business last year.  They are aware of that, and I pay by credit card, but still get the "perks" of a business account.

There is nothing to stop you ordering as a private buyer and paying by credit card - where they ask for company name, just put your own name again.  That way, their system picks up that you have entered your name twice, and allows the transaction accordingly.

Colin

[camallison]

Couldn't agree more about lottery tickets.  It was only a joke 

.. and received as such.   

Colin

[tickmike]

I see the 'Pi' web site is up and running today again, I think they were overwhelmed with the interest.
I did not see there message on there blog on the 27th about the sale on the 29th  so much for us registering by email on there site a few weeks ago to get an early warning .

[scottiesmum]

Some may find this of interest ....   

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17311146

[tickmike]

Some may find this of interest ....   

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17311146

Thanks, but that was on the Pi blog the other day  .

[scottiesmum]

I don't know what the Pi blog is Mike  ...     just thought it might be interesting .....

[tickmike]

I don't know what the Pi blog is Mike  ...     just thought it might be interesting .....

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

 

[burakkucat]

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

 

It's a pity there isn't a RSS feed for the site blog, for although I have it bookmarked, i forget to regularly go and check it. 

[sevenlayermuddle]

I have to say that I'm a bit disillusioned by that glitch over ethernet jacks.  For anybody who hasn't chased down the gory details, a twisted-pair ethernet interface requires coupling transformers.  The Pi interface uses jacks which have the transformers built in, but somebody substituted 'plain' jacks instead, so they didn't work ( and couldn't work).  What worries me is that this suggests they simply did not properly test ANY of these boards, not even a tiny sample, they just assumed that since they'd specified them correctly, they MUST work. 

For £16 you cannot expect every single specimen to be exhaustively tested, but I'd have thought the first handful off the line would still get tested, and thereafter some small statistical sample being tested.  But the evidence suggests that didn't happen.  Or  maybe they tested them, but the  tests were inadequately specified... testing external interfaces & connectors ought to be pretty fundamental to any production testing, though.

I'm still interested, and still enthusiastic, but I have to say my enthusiasm's a little dented.  I'll watch with interest...

edit, corrected 'STP' to 'twisted-pair'

[camallison]

This sort of production "glitch" isn't unusual in first batches.  Remember the Commodore VIC-20?  I was part of the engineering team that introduced it in 1971? to the European market.  Our first batches were built in Japan (At the insistence of the US management) and, on receipt of the first batch, we found that they had substituted the power socket on the unit.  It was designed to take low voltage from the power brick and we had specified a BS-standard/DIN-standard low voltage socket for Europe.  Imagine our surprise to find they had substituted a figure-of-eight (shaver) plug and socket "because it was easier to source in the Far East".  Naturally a safety concern because it meant 240v could be plugged directly into the unit.

The testing performed on the Raspberry Pi units will have been done on a bed-of-nails fully automatic tester and NOT via the various sockets, so missing the Ethernet connection cock-up.  Risky I know, but nonetheless standard for the industry.  It was only during initial batch sample testing in the UK that the problem was found.  To test 10s of thousands via the various sockets would be extremely time-consuming - automatic testers are rarely set up this way, but tend to be the bed-of-nails type.

Naturally, this doesn't excuse what has happened - maybe the Bill of Materials didn't specify closely enough to ensure the mag coupling - we may never know.  There is sure to be egg on someone's face though.  I see that Farnell and RS are striving to source the replacement as well as the factory procurement people.

I look forward to receiving mine and as a first project will be loading Fedora Remix and bringing my Linux programming back up to speed.  Then ..... who knows .... 

Colin

[sevenlayermuddle]

Bed of nails testing has been around since I entered the industry in 1970s.  It's quite a good way of testing PCBs.

But it doesn't prove the overall product is working.  Testing terminology varies from one company to the next, but what I have always been taught to call 'Production testing', on the other hand, should  prove that the whole production-cylce is providing the desired goods, and that means testing the interfaces too.  I have been called upon to write production test specifications, and I certainly wouldn't stop at testing just one component, such as the PCB.

But I do agree that it is probably common practice in the UK electronics industry to confuse components testing, and even software testing, with (what I call) production testing.  That may be one reason that, whilst we are generally applauded as a nation of innovators and inventors, we seem to be increasingly seen as a laughing stock when it comes to manufacturing, and cost-effective quality control.

I repeat... one wouldn't expect every specimen of a £16 product to be exhaustively tested, but to put it on sale, and to deliver to customers, before proper testing of even the first few off the line...   Hmmm

[camallison]

We will never know what regime of testing the Foundation signed up to, but bed of nails or finger probes are still the major form of testing, even in the Far East.  I recently had a large batch of smart electricity meters built out there, but still performed full functionality testing on batches here in the UK.  It was a matter of cost - we had the functionality testing jigs (each costing £15,000 to build) already here in the UK and it would have been a significant disruption and cost to the Far East production line to fully test there.  They are low cost only if you conform to their standard production line set up.

I agree though that it is all a bit of the old "c***-up syndrome".

Colin

[geep]

My R-Pi is due late mid-May according to Farnell.
Looking forward to hearing anybody's success, or otherwise, with theirs.

If I can get it to run OK and it's powerful enough, I'd quite like to use it to run a 24/7 weather station webserver,
with wi-fi connected thermometer, anemometer etc.

Was tempted by a Sheeva plug a while back, but didn't follow up on it.
http://www.newit.co.uk/shop/products.php?cat=5

Cheers,
Peter

[camallison]

Mine is scheduled for shipment on 2nd May, also via Farnell.  I aim to run plain vanilla Fedora Remix initially, so that I can run some performance checks.  I especially wish to test out the video performance considering the chip it is based on.  Then perhaps an XBMC media centre build to push it further - I see someone has done a build of XBMC that is stripped down to bare bones, except for the GUI (left alone) and optimised for the R-Pi, so I might also try that.

The last time I used Linux in a real live build was way back in 95/96 when everything was hand-cobbled.  Let's see how long it takes me to get back up to speed.

Colin