Pyra-news October 2017

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Let's move the moulds!
by Michael Mrozek 27 Oct '17

27 Oct '17

It's thttps://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/lets-move-the-moulds.81903/ime for another lengthy newspost, full of fresh and juicy stuff! 1. The cases ------------ Probably the most anticipated topic by everyone here, so let's start with that one first. As expected, nothing has happened anymore at the old company, so it's time to move. Originally, my contact planned to move the moulds himself, but it's safer (and insured!) to let a logistics company do that. The moulds will be picked up on Monday and they'll be delivered the same day. My contact will also be there on Monday to plan a test run with multiple materials (they got 15 different ones in stock for testing). After that, I'll fly over to Greece to test them out and check the results. If everything is fine and we'll have proper material in the selection, we can finally plan the mass production. All of that is planned to happen in November. They also have WAY better contacts for various other materials. We can basically get ANY material out there within 15 days if need be (compared to 10 weeks that the previous company needed.) Additionally, they already produced an SNES shell with their own custom made material which has already been shipped to me. And apologies to you, as the material is NOT a mixture of carbon with plastic, but rather glass fibre with plastic. It's a LOT more robust. But I'll make a video for you where I torture the poor SNES shell :) Okay, so much for the cases, let's move on to... 2. PCB work ----------- ... as Nikolaus has been very productive this week as well. He finished modifying a mainboard to test all the remaining issues we had and tested them. Here's a list of most of the fixes: * Removed an unneded connection between OMAP/BT UART and Modem * TCA6424A replaced by PCAL6524HE (which should provide better interrupt handling) * New Wifi antenna has been chosen: Ethertronics M830520. * EMU switch (NX3L2267) controlled by NRESPOWERON has been added to CPU schematics. This isolates the shoulder button and LID sensor for the first 10 ms after powering on the OMAP5. This fixes an issue where the system would not boot up when either the lid is closed or a shoulder button is pressed while powering up or rebooting. * Added fixes for OTG mode * Found the capacitors that are responsible for the sirring noise. Doesn't need a new board layout, just different capacitors (various will be tested soon) This fixes all known issues the mainboard had. The last thing is tweak the trace to the Wifi antenna (which will be done with a quick dummy PCB). That's good news, I think :) Next up: The CPU Board (4GB issue) Some final tests have been made, with 4GB RAM from a different manufacturer, and they mostly confirm what we already expected: The noise / groundplane on the CPU board needs to be improved. How is that confirmed? Well, regardless of the manufacturer, CPU Boards equipped with 4GB RAM show the same issue: They are pretty unstable and freeze easily. However, some of the CPU boards work fine for hours (with memtester), some work but show errors (with memtester) and some won't even boot. This shows that this is no software issue, but rather a hardware issue. And as there are fluctuations (tolerances) between the PCBs and we KNOW our groundplane is off the allowed tolerances, we can be 99% that's our problem. So Nikolaus has already started to improve the layout of the CPU board. Regarding the already produced bare PCBs which would work fine with 2GB: We have some plans what to do with them, but nothing is set in stone here, so I won't tell anything yet :) But we might also offer to downgrade to 2GB RAM if you like to receive the Pyra a bit earlier. This depends on how fast we get the cases done and the final mainboard. Please don't email me about that now - we'll let you know in time, no worries :) As usual, feel free to ask questions and discuss at the boards here: https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/lets-move-the-moulds.81903/ -- Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Michael Mrozek ----------------------- OpenPandora GmbH Geschäftsführer: Michael Mrozek Schäffbräustr. 11 85049 Ingolstadt Deutschland Tel.: 0841 / 990 5548 http://www.openpandora.de/ HRB 4879, Amtsgericht Ingolstadt ----------------------- eMail: mrozek(a)openpandora.org

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The tale of the cases
by Michael Mrozek 14 Oct '17

14 Oct '17

I'm pretty sure you've all waited for news from me - especially as I said I will post pictures as soon as I have them (which should've been last Monday). So... what happened? Oh well... it was all very annoying. And I had some serious déjà vu, but this time, I'm prepared. Okay, let's start the story with... Monday ------ Not much to say here. My contact didn't manage to find the time to visit the case company. That's not really their fault ;) He did make an appointment with them for Tuesday, where the CEO will have the time to answer all his questions, he can thoroughly check the new cases, etc. So, let's move over to... Tuesday ------- This is where the annoyance did start. My contact arrived at the company - but they didn't really have time for him. No time for discussion, no real time to look at the cases. He did get a quick view into the production hall, so he could at least confirm they ARE producing the Pyra cases. However, he did notice that some parts share one mould. This is normal, and nothing special or something to be concerned about But: They did invoice that as two moulds - so I actually paid more than I should have. Both me and my contact don't think they did this intentionally - their whole bookings and invoicing is quite a bit of chaos... I didn't even receive all invoices yet (even though I paid them already), so this probably accidentally did happen. But that's still something unacceptable... especially in combination with the slowness they showed so far. If you followed the news, you might remember that I said back in August that we will move the moulds and the production to another company if they will not have any new cases soon. While we never told that to them so far, we were preparing that in the background, so we can move everything quickly if need be. The new company is not unknown to us. I already produced over 5000 NES, MegaDrive, SNES and N64-shells with them. I never had to wait longer than 1 week. :) So... time to share that information with them, right? Wednesday --------- My contact did pay them another visit to confront them with the issues. The deal is simple: Until Monday, we want to have: * The final 3D data files * The produced cases using the new material, properly produced * Corrected bookings and all invoices If that doesn't happen, we'll move the moulds to the new company. We made that pretty clear. Thursday -------- I think I mentioned that the new company has a pretty awesome material mixture (that is about 5x as strong as other plastic materials). They produced some samples for us on Thursday (as they had a production running that used that material). As they don't have the Pyra moulds yet, they used some of ours. So I'll probably receive the most sturdy SNES / N64 / NES or MegadDrive cartridge shell of all time! My contact plans to pick those up on Monday and will then ship them to me. Hopefully with the new Pyra case samples as well.. but we'll see. What's the déjà vu? ------------------- This whole story reminded me of the Pandora a long, long time ago. Remember the PCB production run in Texas? Where the CEO always told us how the production is running already, but we never received any pictures? Then we sent one community member, who happened to live there, to them. To check on the production and make some pictures. We even made an appointment... and guess what: When he arrived, the CEO didn't really have time. And while he did see some PCBs, it were only a few and they weren't really producing any right now... It's almost the same story! I also had to move the production away from them to Germany... THAT was quite an act, moving all the parts over the seas and through customs, etc. But: It did work out fine! We've walked through hell and back to get the Pandora production running smoothly - and I'm prepared to do the same thing for the Pyra as well! Though moving moulds from one company to another one (which is only 5km away) is definitely a LOT easier than moving the parts back then. Some 4GB RAM news ----------------- We're now 99% sure that the issue with the RAM is a too high voltage drop on our PCB, which means it needs some improved vias and ground plane. This is what tests have shown. While it WAS possible to modify the software to make the 4GB RAM PCBs I have here boot and run properly, it's unknown whether that setup will work reliable in all working conditions and with all PCBs produced. But that means that even a little bit of improvement will make things work properly. We'll work on that - and it shouldn't take too long (depending on Nikolaus' free time though). Some really sad news - and our condolences ------------------------------------------ While the news about the cases are very annoying, this is something we can (and will fix), so nothing too bad. However, the news I have now are very sad ones - they are linked with aboves déjà vu as well. Part of the halt in the Pandora production back then was because the nubs broke very easily and needed to be redesigned a bit, which took 4 or 5 months alltogether. During the wait, to keep you all entertained, one of our trainees back then created the Nub song: https://youtu.be/rvHJbmO9I04 Mardt has really improved since then and became a really good musician (just check some of his songs in the channel... nice instrumental ones). However, due to an accident, Mardt has died on September 30th, at the young age of 28. He was really an astounding guy! Quite a bit crazy, always motivated. This part of the newspost is dedicated to him, to keep him in good memories. And with that, I want to end the post for today. Thanks (as always) for your support. As usual, feel free to ask questions and discuss at the boards here: https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/the-tale-of-the-cases.81813/ -- Greetings, Michael Mrozek ----------------------- OpenPandora GmbH CEO: Michael Mrozek Schäffbräustr. 11 85049 Ingolstadt Germany Tel.: +49 841 990 5548 http://www.openpandora.de/ HRB 4879, Amtsgericht Ingolstadt ----------------------- eMail: mrozek(a)openpandora.org

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Analyzing 4GB RAM
by Michael Mrozek 01 Oct '17

01 Oct '17

Did you miss me? I have to admit - I had some annoying issues happen in my "normal" life (bike stolen, smartphone broken, etc.), so I was pretty much absent from the boards and also twitter. That should now change again! I'll try to resurrect my Twitter with even more Micro-Pyra-News than before, and of course, have more information for you more often here on the boards as well. Okay, time to start with the news... 1. Remaining work for the Mainboard ----------------------------------- After Nikolaus came back from holidays, he resumed working on the last fixes for the mainboard. He will modify an existing one with all the proposed fixes and will test them right away. Most of them have already been implemented and quick tests assume these work fine. He'll continue to work on those during this week and I'll let you know about the results (quick news via Twitter this time). The mainboard dummy for measuring and testing the Wifi antenna is already in the hands of the RF expert. He didn't give us a date yet when he'll find the time to do that, but he tries to work on it as soon as possible. So the mainboard is almost ready now. 2. The 4GB RAM issue -------------------- Well, I had hoped to tell you that's all fixed now. That's on top of my personal wishlist, as this is the issue that really pulls me down... It's really demotivating, but don't worry: The last thing I'll do is give up! We managed to resurrect the Pandora, so we'll manage to fix this as well! And we have some good ideas what the issue is. We've tried quite a few things in the last week, and here is what we know: Tony's Pyra works with 4GB RAM, if he powers it with at least 1.39V or if he disables DLL (then it also works with 1.35V) Usually, it should work worse with DLL disabled - so this is a bit weird. He provided patches - but those didn't work for others (it's still unstable for them). However, he uses his own compiled U-Boot and bootloader - so it could very well be he's got some other different settings we didn't think of. To confirm whether that's the case or not, I'll try his compiled binaries on multiple Pyra 4GB RAM boards later tonight. I'll make sure to update you here on the boards and on Twitter about the result! But why does the 2GB RAM board work whereas the 4GB might not? There's an easy answer: Juliano simulated the noise and voltage drops of the VDDR3L ground plane (which is the power supply of the RAM chips). The noise is too high compared to the allowed value in the datasheet and the voltage drops too much on some balls. This is not necessarily a problem, as all chips have tolerances and the values provided in datasheets ENSURE that everything will work fine, so they have even higher tolerances here. The 2GB RAM chips are so-called single-rank chips, which means they consist of four 512MB chips. The 4GB RAM chips are dual-rank chips: each chip has one 512MB chip stacked on top of a 512MB chip - so these are basically eight 512MB chips. These, of course, need more power than the 2GB RAM version. All 2GB RAM boards work reliable. As mentioned, Tony's Pyra works with 4GB RAM, which means: we're not THAT far off! This means that the CPU boards probably just need a BIT of enhancement (by using capacitors, some more vias for the VDDR3L ground plane and other changes). This is something Nikolaus needs to check: What is possible in our already pretty much cramped setup? Or maybe we CAN get the 4GB RAM to work without a hardware fix - that's something we'll know tonight when I tested the boards! There's also nother possible solution: Nikolaus has reworked two CPU boards. One with different 2GB RAM chips (for comparison), one with different 4GB RAM chips. If these 4GB RAM chips have a higher tolerance, they simply work. More information about that when this has been properly tested. Well, let's assume for now the 4GB RAM needs a hardware change on the CPU board: a) Ask all preorderers whether they would be okay switching to 2GB versions. If at least 400 want to do that, we can produce those with the boards we already have lying at GC while we can work on improving the design and produce 4GB later on. As a little compensation, I'd offer the new 4GB boards to everyone who agreed to get the 2GB version for production cost price. We still plan to produce a stationary motherboard - so you could use the old CPU board to power this one. b) Sell the existing bare CPU boards as keychains (17 EUR each) and improve the design. This would cover the costs for the already produced CPU boards and we could deliver 4GB RAM boards to everyone. Of course, Option a) is preferred (even though it means a lot more work for me) and production will start earlier, but if not enough people are willing to switch to 2GB, Option b) would be the better one. The only real bummer would be if we can't find the space to fit more capacitors onto the CPU board... in this case we'd have to try to sell the 4GB Memory chips we already have on stock (worth a whopping 23,000 EUR), but we hope that won't happen. I guess you can imagine how much that issue is weighing on my mind. But there are multiple options for us, it's not a dead-end for the Pyra. We can also get help from a company that the memory distributor suggested to us. They have the possibility to do live-measurements with the memory while the system is running. That company isn't located too far from us, so in worst case, we can find out more details what's going on with their help. That would cost quite a bit though, so let's first see if Nikolaus can improve the design enough. We can easily test that thanks to Julianos simulations! Speaking of costs... 3. What's the financial situation? ---------------------------------- If you followed the newsposts, you probably can imagine that these issues have added quite a lot to the development costs. And yes, these have cost more than I ever had planned. However, we don't have any financial problems - because my shop is growing more and more popular and the profit has increased quite a lot - which is great! I'm still keeping my wage as low as possible (I'm earning 690 EUR per month, in case you're interested) to make sure as much money as possible is available for the Pyra. The production of the first 550 Pyras (first production run) has already been fully paid. This includes the full PCB production including all needed parts. We already own 3000 batteries and 1500 LCDs as well as 10,000 nubs. We still have more 100k EUR on our bank account (which is more than enough to start the production of the next 550 Pyras) and the shop is making a profit of about 8000 - 10,000 EUR per month. So yes, unless there's a sudden mass cancellation (which I certainly don't hope!), the development and production is safe. We won't give up as long as you don't give up on us! Promise! 4. What's the status on the cases? ---------------------------------- I'm getting more information on those tomorrow. My contact will be visiting the companies in Greece and checks on the status. So yeah, expect another newspost within the next two days :) Well, I hope todays newspost didn't disappoint you too much. I know you had hoped the 4GB RAM are working now - I had hoped the same. But the most important thing is that we've not hit a wall but have different options to proceed. We can do it! And yes, if ANYONE wants the Pyra to be finished as soon as possible, it's me (because it's all really stressful). Thanks as usual for your support. Now off to test the 4GB RAM boards I've got here. I'll report back later! As usual, feel free to ask questions and discuss at the boards here: https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/analyzing-4gb-ram.81687/ -- Greetings, Michael Mrozek ----------------------- OpenPandora GmbH CEO: Michael Mrozek Schäffbräustr. 11 85049 Ingolstadt Germany Tel.: +49 841 990 5548 http://www.openpandora.de/ HRB 4879, Amtsgericht Ingolstadt ----------------------- eMail: mrozek(a)openpandora.org

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Pyra-news October 2017