Werner Almesberger schrieb: > Nils Faerber wrote: >> I also know from experience that some parts are really nasty to get - >> either you do not get them at all or you have to buy large quantaties of >> them. > Oh yes. You wouldn't believe just how often we had that sort of thing > happen to Openmoko. I've learned to treat sourcing with a healthy dose > of paranoia.
A very healthy feature! >> I know at least three such companies, one beeing in my home town. For >> such a large number of different components 10-20 units will be >> *extremely* expensive. > Seems to be about EUR 200-300 for 10 units. With the PCBs costing > around EUR 200 apiece, that would be around EUR 500 for the production. > Okay, that's about what I would have guessed. Limited editions are > always a bit pricy :-) Take those numbers with the necessary grain of salt. I wouldn't be too surprised if this doubles due to the high number of different parts and high density. >> 0402 is OK - we can do this in our work-shop, but that's smallest we can >> do ;) Density is indeed another critical issue. And pitily we cannot do >> any BGA at all. What we have is the "Expert" from Essemtec: > > Very nice equipment :-) Thanks ;) I wish I could afford the Microplacer and a small table-top full convection oven. This is basically what prevents us from building 32-bit designs since most Linux capable 32-bit CPUs nowadays come as BGA. Concerning hardware building I am always kind of shizophren. My one side is very interested in hardware, designs, ironing together your own hardware, etc. This is fun and very interesting. But the other side knows that the whole process is so much hassle and cost intensive. I am really unsure for myself what I would like ;) And then I am so annoyed, frustrated and almost angry when I see all this nice hardware on the shelves in the stores but not beeing able to get software access to it. In the end the whole discussion of building own hardware simply results from the lack of hardware, doesn't it? I don't want to talk it bad but there is much nicer existing hardware on the market than the GTA02 - think of a slick Nokia E71 for example. Wouldn't that be a great device? But no access to - full stop :( While thinking about it this brings me to an alternative idea... we have skilled hardware engineers at hand, as it seems. We have skilled software people at hand, for lowest level, bootloaders and kernel. Wouldn't it be more fruitful to create a project that is only concerned about providing the best possible tools, hardware and software, for braking into and reverse engineering existing devices? Hardware is needed in the form of good debug adapters. Those would be much easier to have made than a complete phone device. Good software is needed for the hardware debuggers and also for disassembly analysis, protocol analysis etc. This way we could probably save the hassle of making an own design (and having to update it or make variants) and always have the latest handsets at hand for our open source hacking? This would even pretty realistic since we already have OpenOCD providing a very good base. But this needs to be extended and made more user friendly and better integrated. In some countries such an enterprise might be illegal though ;) But at least in Germany it is not... > - Werner Cheers nils faerber -- kernel concepts GbR Tel: +49-271-771091-12 Sieghuetter Hauptweg 48 Fax: +49-271-771091-19 D-57072 Siegen Mob: +49-176-21024535 http://www.kernelconcepts.de _______________________________________________ hardware mailing list hardware@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/hardware
