Finalizing the PCBs


EvilDragon

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A few days have passed since I came back from Greece, and quite a lot has happened.
Sorry for not posting earlier, but I first had to catch up with all the work that has stacked up while I was in Greece and then there was the preparation for the Black Friday (and shipping over 100 orders I received in my shop...)

It's Sunday night in Germany now, and I finally find the time to summarize everything that has happened.

1. The cases

This is just a summary of the results from my visit in Greece. If you fully followed the thread about it, there's nothing new in here (yet).

  • FormAction will finish the moulds. The stylus holder has already received a simple fix (to make it work properly). The last thing to tweak are the shoulder buttons. They are the most complex part - it was the same with the Pandora. I've shown them and my contact exactly WHAT's important about the shoulder buttons. He will supervise their changes and make sure they work as they should.

  • They will produce 500 sets of transparent cases (which will be sold in the shop). They will be sold in the shop, so you can use them to build a transparent Pyra, put them onto a shelf or whatever. The production run of 500 cases is included in the contract we have with them. The transparent cases have no issues with discolorizations or shrinking marks.

  • The moulds will then move to the new company. They are a lot more experienced with different materials. I've got a fibre-glass enstrenghtened SNES-cartridge shell from them and it's almost impossible to break!

So much for the cases, now onto some more very important parts...


2. The mainboard and CPU board

The bare PCBs of the mainboard with all known fixes and the Wifi improvement have finally arrived at Nikolaus' place!
The prototype PCB production facitily took 1 - 2 weeks longer than usual, but now it's here:

DSC00818.jpeg DSC00817.jpeg

These pictures are already a few days old - Nikolaus has already populated the boards and will test the fixes soon.
If all goes well, no more changes are needed and this is the exact same board that will go into mass production.


The CPU board layout has also been almost fixed!
Nikolaus vastly improved the area for the DDR3 and Juliano already simulated the new data and confirmed that the memory should now work properly. No more voltage drops or too much noise, everything is within specs now.

There's one last area which affects the OMAP5 (not the memory) that would be great to receive some improvement.
We haven't had any issues with the OMAP5 yet, so it might not be needed, but it's better to optimize that area as good as possible as well.
Nikolaus is already working on that - and Juliano is ready for another simulation.

So we might have a final, fully optimized PCB layout finished by the end of this week.
Then it's time to produce them and make sure the 4GB RAM is working fine...

Well, and that's it for the PCBs. I'll certainly make three crosses when they're done and mass production starts.


That's it!
Short but important news :)
 
Sounds like progress is being made! Thank you for the updates. Anything we can do to help things move along?
 
This post makes me feel that we are getting closer to launch, I am so flipping hyped! :D

Thanks for the update ED!
 
Many thanks for the update ED, best of luck for the 4GB fix.

They will produce 500 sets of transparent cases (which will be sold in the shop). They will be sold in the shop, so you can use them to build a transparent Pyra, put them onto a shelf or whatever. The production run of 500 cases is included in the contract we have with them. The transparent cases have no issues with discolorizations or shrinking marks.

Will there also be an option to order (or receive a pre order) of a complete Pyra with a transparent case? Seems a shame if not as that option appeared fairly popular based on posts to these boards.
 
One day we'll look back on this and laugh, all of the trials and tribulations and two months (tm) that the Pyra took. In a way that we've still not been able to do quite about the Pandora development. ED might have proven a little early to state he's 'nearly there' once or twice, but he's not descended to 'what's your ordernumber' levels of madness.
 
If the Case of the other Company is much more Robust, i think i will chose this Case because the Clear Case is cool, but only the first two months (tm), and then its anoying because the light leaking and because its ditnt last long because the not so robust case..

Buts its quite a nice collektors item, to show the Pree Pree Orderers PCB .., i have to think about this..
 
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