Benji,
While I understand your concern, does it really matter how many manufacturerd boards ARE done at this point? 100 Nubs are done (is what I gathered) and enroute, which is 50 boards that these can be attached to. So once those boards have nubs, this is a days of work for Village Hall. Mass production has started on more nubs. What do you want from the board company in all reality? Give it a break, even if all 3000 boards were done, they are not done til they are nubbed. There are better things ED could be doing than asking the board company about reparations and repurcussions as far as this project is concerned at this point in the game in my opinion. The nub company failed here, delivering an untested unreliable product that ruined boards and caused a good bit of RMA Pandoras. The nub folks are trying to make that right. Board folks have not been 100% timely but boards aren't failing and they can't finish without nubs.
Have you considered for a minute that when this all started that the board people were supposed to manufacture the boards and assemble the Pandoras too. That changed, how do we not know the PCB company is losing money now that they aren't putting the Pandora's together? Hence the priority shift and really, there are no nubs yet.
My question to ED is what is the status of cases for Batch2?
Peace & Pandora,
Link
Link,
Of course it matters. Because if they told us they had 2000 3 weeks ago and didn't *actually* have them done, why should we believe it if they tell us that now?
More than that, it's because we have a signed agreement saying that they would be complete by the 18th. The whole point of doing that was to get the board company in gear, and have some penalty if it wasn't ready. So that they *would* be accountable, and give us something if they didn't meet their promised expectations, which they hadn't been doing to date. They didn't so OPT should get something in return - otherwise what was the point of the contract?
I don't disagree that the nub company failed equally hard, but if the board company was finished sooner, we wouldn't have to wait an extra couple of weeks in the middle to put the last nubs on the boards. And yes, the board company has failed many times - both to meet the promised speeds, and in the wireless trace issue (remember that?). They also changed their cost estimates for assembly, so it's no wonder that OPT changed their mind on it. Good thing, because they probably would have been slow on that, too.
50 Pandoras is nothing - OPT claims that they can build 200 in a day of work in the village hall, so 50 doesn't cut the queue a whole lot. Sure, they can't do much without the rest of the nubs, but the nubs are useless without the boards. And I'm not convinced that they'll be ready. Which is why I want to know how many are actually built/tested, why their numbers aren't consistent, and what their punishment is going to be, if they don't make this new deadline, either.
I'm also interested in the status of boards/cases for batch 2, but I think the boards will be a bigger issue, and you have to get through the rest of batch 1, first.
