Things are starting to heat up. In this update, we share progress on
the PCBAs, cardboard boxes, wire harnesses, enclosures, and firmware,
as well as discuss a potential future manufacturing run.
Manufacturing has been delayed until March. In the meantime, here's an analysis (and good news) of how the Spectre security vulnerability might affect the A20 and other EOMA68 computer cards.
Thank you to everyone who responded about the 3D printing: a special
update is being drafted. The pre-production EOMA68-A20 revision 2.7.4
samples arrived and have been tested. Decisions need to be made on
how to deliver OSes to people.
This update sheds some light on the complexities of this entire
project, summarises the status of the main portions of the project,
and announces our travel plans.
In speaking with people on the mailing lists and various forums, we're
getting a lot of questions from people new to the EOMA68 concept. After answering Nick's questions about how to set up ultra-low-power servers using EOMA68 Computer
Cards, he had these kind words to say...
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) posted an article on August 10, 2016 entitled "Support the Libre Tea Computer Card, a candidate for Respects Your Freedom certification."
Thanks to Albert for contacting us and agreeing to help out via arm-netbooks. He contacted me last week to ask if it the laptop would have AZERTY keyboard support. As this is a libre project, I explained to him the process, not realising that he was an embedded hardware engineer.
Mike has placed the order for 500 Micro Desktop PCBs and 1,000 EOMA68-A20 PCBs. The last of the components have been ordered and are on the way. What follows is a summary of what's to be delivered.
This update is primarily about the imminent Shenzhen Maker Faire 2017.
The HDMI review continues (leaving time for SZMF). A particularly
insightful and revealing conversation takes place on the Reprap Forum.
We asked on the mailing list if people could come up with examples
where EOMA68 could be used by people with more computing experience to
make it easier and less costly for them to support friends, family and
clients. What we weren't expecting was an actual real-world scenario
to occur during the campaign.