It looks like October is the month of waiting.. Waiting for the case, the keymat and the PCBs.
The keymat should be finished until October 17th, the case moulds will probably be finished early November (though I should receive some pictures of them upfront, during production) and the PCBs should also arrive early November, waiting to be populated.
Not much we can do about that - these things take time.
But I still got some info for you.
The case and its colors -----------------------
The layout of the moulds has been fixed, which means we can also think about colors. The nubs, DPad and shoulder buttons will all share one mould, so they will all have the same color.
The big case parts will also share one mould, so they will also have the same color.
That means the small parts can have a different color than the main case color. So... time to discuss about colors, eh? :)
Signal integrity of the CPU board ---------------------------------
Sometimes the world is full of pleasant surprises, and here is one we encountered: A member of these boards here, Juliano, contacted us that he could do a thorough signal integrity analysis if we provide him with board data and so-called IBIS-files. Thes are basically data files from chip manufacturers which make it possible to run a simulation before actually producing the hardware in order to find out whether there will be any signal problems.
He ran that test on the CPU board, which means that every single memory chip (of which we have four) has been tested and analyzed together with the OMAP5. With these tests you can be sure that all traces are compliant and won't cause any issues (so they are not too long, not too thin, etc.) I'm sure Juliano could explain that a lot better than me. And in case I got something wrong here: Feel free to correct me :)
Well, the good thing is: Our PCB passed without any issues, so we can be sure there are no signal integrity issues between the CPU and the RAM.
For the techy guys I've attached the results of all four memory chips at the forum post. You can download them from there.. Juliano also got the case files from me as he can do a thermal analyis as well (and that one will be interesting!
Oh, and he also created a neat video, showing all layers of the CPU board and where the connections are: https://youtu.be/qxW7bmmMi4w
Enjoy the video :)
Want to leave feedback, comment or see the pictures? Visit: https://boards.openpandora.org/topic/5600103-waiting-in-october/