Prototype mainboards coming soon


EvilDragon

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My normal daytime job is still giving me a lot of work... I had to edit 3 commercials and one cooking show last week, so combined with the daily shippings in my shop, I didn't have much time for anything else.

Of course, that doesn't mean nothing has happened, as there are other people working on the Pyra :)

1. The mainboards

The bare prototype mainboards (which most likely won't be different from the production run mainboards) will arrive at Global Components December 12th and will be populated shortly after (like the CPU boards, 30 in number).

As soon as we have the cases and the keymats for those, we can assemble them for devs, Pyra preorderers and the remaining ones will be auctioned so anyone can get them (yes, the vouchers for the Pyra can be used to get one of those if you like).
These will clearly be marked being prototypes, so they might be of some value to you :)

Speaking of keymats and cases...

2. The keymats

I received some inbetween sample of the keymat, but it was a bit rushed (as they wanted to finish it as fast as possible) and in my opinion, it was way too stiff.
I told them to hurry but not rush. It's more important to get perfectly working samples one or two weeks later instead of imperfect ones as fast as possible.

The good thing is, once they're working perfectly, mass production of them won't take long and can be done within a few weeks.

I'll keep you posted. This won't prevent me from building a new prototype though, as the look of the keymat won't change, only the stiffness and feel of it.


3. The cases

According to UPS tracking, a sample of the new case including the sealing for the speakers has been shipped November 28th and will arrive tomorrow until the evening.

Let's hope everything will be fine now - but we won't find that out until tomorrow or Tuesday (depending whether UPS will keep their time :))
Of course you can expect some highres pictures of those - but don't expect them to LOOK perfect, as the moulds won't be hardened before everything is 100% okay physically (and therefore you will probably see a few discolorations in there).

Once the new mainboards are finished, I can finally built a prototype that works perfectly fine using a battery, as these will have the battery connectors in the proper position (running it with battery was a bit of hit and miss before).

UPDATE (did I mention I had too much work? I almost forgot this:)
4. The CPU boards

Nikolaus has been done countless tests (also huge thanks to notaz for a NEON-Stresstest-tool) to rule out different possibilities why the CPU boards could fail running higher than 1,2GHz. It could've been the RAM, the clock itself, power source, software settings, etc.

With these tests we could slowly rule out various issues. The RAM is fine, the power source is fine, so what we're most likely missing are some more decoupling capacitors.
So there's a very good change the next CPU boards will work fine. I'll let you know once I get more details.

Exciting times :)
 
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Nice, we are commin closer (slowly though).
It's fascinating how long they tinker on this tiny keymat it's been all together an year or so I guess? And it's still not usable? Did they ever made such an keymat before?
I really hope the cases will be perfect now, they also took way to long imho.
 
By Preeorderers; you mean "Prototype Orderers"
Great news by the way..
do you use these Prototype also to test that you can start the massproduktion, so if everything went well
 
Nice, we are commin closer (slowly though).
It's fascinating how long they tinker on this tiny keymat it's been all together an year or so I guess? And it's still not usable? Did they ever made such an keymat before?

Of course, they've done countless of keymats before, however, this is all customer specific. Some want to have them more stiff, some less. The key size makes a huge different in production, etc.
It's not that easy :)
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By Preeorderers; you mean "Prototype Orderers"

Yes :)

do you use these Prototype also to test that you can start the massproduktion, so if everything went well

Yes, of course. They will be used to test that the production run will work fine (which was already confirmed for the CPU boards, as 29 out of 30 worked) and as well to find any remaining issues with all the devs and users who get them.
 
So there's a very good change the next CPU boards will work fine.

Let's hope so, else it'll take another six weeks for a (more or less) simple test run.

But the rest sounds really good now :)

As soon as you have complete new Pyras I come for a visit ;)
 
So if I want to have my Pyra faster, than I would use my Preeorder Voucher for a Prototype Unit,
But this is will be more expensive, will have a case whit some flaws due to the not finished mould, and it will have a unfinished OS whitout 3D Driver ,
And the Games also aren't ready..
but I would have my Pyra..

If it's shure that the Prototype still have a better Case than my Pandora, and it will work like a Massproduktion Pyra in the near future, than i think i will buy a Prototype..
 
I road from 4, that the Massproduktion of the CPU Boards was confirmed,
Aren't these the Part which takes longest?? So if everything works, could it bee that where in the last two months tm maybe ??
 
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I can't believe you work a busy day job while still working on this... that's crazy! You deserve far more recognition and a much greater financial reward. Thank you for all the world!
 
I think the answer on the question, why there aren't so many replies on this thread is, that most peaple first have to translate my Posts in usual English instead of writing an reply.. ". "
 
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Always exciting to read another update :)
Any updates about 4GB ram versions of the cpu board?
 
Also a reason why i should wait whit my Unit until my Number 28 is ready to ship, there is a lot of development work to make the Pyra that noobfriendly enought for me..
 
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