hi folks, thank you to everyone who's posted, i was caught a little by surprise at the enthusiasm which is a good sign. so, let me go over things i've seen:
1) a trouble-maker who thinks that the openpandora is a scam. greaat! healthy scepticism. it's why i'm a) contacting other highly respected free software community representatives, to ask _them_ if they would like to be the treasurers b ) endeavouring to reach the OP shop owners to see if they would like to be the ones to take pre-orders etc. i was expecting the reputation of the respected free software community representatives to be "good enough to trust", and i'm actually glad to see that someone spelled out to mr troll that in fact the OP shop owners are considered likewise highly reputable. oh, and reminded people that we know where they live
2) someone wanted 3D graphics. there are three ARM SoC CPUs that meet the criteria: a) the NVidia Tegra b ) the OMAP3530 c) the Samsung ARM11 S3C6410 d) four. the fouur ARM CPUs ("nooobody expects the spanish inquisition") d) the Samsung Cortex S5PC100. of these, the Tegra is out the window because Nvidia are such f****rs on NDAs and refuse to recognise the free software community, i cannot encourage such corporate stupidity so their CPU is out, and that's the end of it (if that's not ok, please phone nvidia and get them to change their corporate policy: ask them to release all documentation on nvidia products so that free software developers can write drivers _without_ having to waste vast amounts of time on reverse-engineering). the OMAP3530 is great - but it is truly dreadfully expensive in comparison, you _really_ have to have a good reason to use OMAPs as you pay through the nose for the DSP. the S3C6410 is great - it supports OpenGL ES 2.0 and there's even a free software linux kernel driver, but the DDR1 RAM and the ARM11 architecture kill it for all but "embedded" roles... and that leaves the 833mhz or the 1ghz S5PC100. the 833mhz version also supports OpenGL ES 2.0, and is $14.50 in 1k volumes according to ebv.com, which is *under half* the price of the 600mhz OMAP3530 and only 28% of the OMAP3530 720mhz price! in my mind, it's going to be truly hard to beat that for at least the next eight to twelve months until Cortex A9 and A5 CPUs start vaguely coming out.
3) screens: it looks like there's going to be a big push to replace the truly dreadful 1024 x 600 10.1in LCD with a slightly-more-tolerable 1200 x 720 in netbooks. i anticipate that this will be only slightly more than the $32 mass-volume price of the current 1024 x 600 10.1in, and am asking a samsung supplier for info. by the time you get up to 1280 x 768 11.1in i am guessing that you'll be looking at around $70 (ridiculous, isn't it...) and about 4 to 5 watts. i _really_ want to try to avoid the circuitry required for a Charge-Coupled Fluorescent Light (CCFL) you need an inverter circuit which generates 700 to 1,500 volts it's just madness, so am going to try hard to find LED backlit screens. i do have to warn you, though: don't be surprised if some of the 12in or better options turn out to be $200+ especially at the higher resolutions. the prices on ebay, esp. for items sold direct from china or hong kong, aren't _that_ far off the 1k volume prices (10-15% or so)
4) keyboard, mouse - reliability seems to be key, not price. perhaps unsurprisingly
5) SATA. if you do a search for SATA controllers (google "SATA PHY IC") you find a ton of references to forums where people have been looking for _years_ for SATA controllers esp. ones to connect to FPGAs. there are two ICs which come up: one is from ATMEL and is 1.5gbps and the other is by Marvell and is 3.0gbps. the trouble with these ICs is that if you order a million, they fire up a special run, just for you, no problem. everyone else can simply get stuffed, as far as they're concerned. so, some embedded systems engineers simply write their own SATA controllers, as an FPGA or using a low-speed CPU! it has to be said though: even 1.5gbps is 187mbytes per second; 3gbps is 375mbytes/sec... running an ARM CPU's General-Purpose Memory Bus at up to 375mbytes/sec when the CPU is 833mhz or 1ghz? mmm... there had _better_ be a DMA engine handling the data transfers, that's all i can say about that. but - i quite like the idea floated by michelle (an embedded designer) of using a general-purpose 75mhz 8051 CPU with lots of GPIO and an on-board 32k PROM, and implementing SATA or even PATA in assembler! that would be just absolutely wicked (and probably a lot cheaper than asking IC manufacturers to fire up the boilers just for us). it will take quite a bit of research, but it's such a cool idea that it just has to be investigated
lastly: i've begun writing the survey, i dragged my questionnaire software out, last seen in 2004, and managed to give it the kiss of life. i'm trying to remember how to use its archaic admin interface (which i wrote!) and have begun filling out questions. it'll be quite a comprehensive survey, because the questionnaire software is designed to be flexible and allow complex formulae and calculations to be carried out behind-the-scenes (python code fragments - stored in the database and executed on-demand!)
the point is to gather as much useful information as possible, then advise people along the way of the estimated costs involved in their decisions. that's what this questionnaire software excels at. then, i will begin to create some reports and statistics about the number of people who want particular configurations, and those results will be fed _back_ into the system to augment peoples' individual reports. 's'all very clevvah
the end result will be that people will know when certain critical threshold points have been reached and we can send out messages like, "congratulations - 1000 people want the same thing that you do; you said you'd be willing to pay for this type of configuration, now you can commit to that, as long as they all do as well. hurrah!"
ok enough.
