Fully Open A13-OLinuXino Single-Board Linux Computer 111
Penurious Penguin writes "Via LXer, an article from PCWorld describes the A13-OLinuXino, produced by OLIMEX. Similar, but distinct from the Raspberry Pi, the Linux-powered OLinuXino is touted as 'fully open,' with all CAD files and source-code freely available for both personal and commercial reuse. Its specs include an Allwinner A13 Cortex A8 1GHz processor, 3D Maili400 GPU, 512MB RAM, all packed into a nano-ITX form and fit for operation in industrial environments between -25C and 85C. The device comes with Android 4.0, but is capable of running other Linux distros, e.g., ArchlinuxARM."
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From the 'fully open' link -
HARDWARE
The Hardware project is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
This is where you misunderstand what is 'open'. If you had the technical know-how and equipment, you could do this and release it into the public domain. When that happens, it has a 'mature ecosystem'.
You're free to fork it now and do what you will.
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Show me the ARM core thats public domain please. There isn't one, ARM kinda makes it that way on purpose.
Um, yeah, about that (Score:4, Informative)
I guess you may be looking for "fully" open in the mathematical sense, which is generally unachievable.
You can go over to OpenCores right now and download the spiffy OR1200 OpenRisc design and run it on the OpenRISC development board, but that board uses Altera FPGAs. Which themselves aren't open. Opencores.org had a failed kickstarter that they ran themselves (probably should have used Kickstarter), which raised about half the money needed to make a comminity sponsored chip of it.
http://opencores.org/or1k/OR1200_OpenRISC_Processor [opencores.org]
Since that was not successful, you're stuck buying someone's processor, for which they'll have some ownership. Once you accept that and realize there are enormous numbers of processors out there (not really a lock in), then the question of open is about your ability to redesign the board and exert complete control of all the peripheral chips.
The A13 will let you do that. At release time the RPi would not, due to some documentation restrictions and video binaries, but they are making progress in this vein.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/10/all-code-on-raspberry-pis-arm-chip-now-open-source/ [arstechnica.com]
So if you want fully open, (and I certainly do), we need to convince the OpenCores people to run a kickstarter for the remaining funds needed, and contribute. Until then the A13 is as close as we get.
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one could try making a cpu out of 74xx series ICs
it would be open, but i doubt you could get any meaningful performance out of it
unless we pool our money and get a fab make us some chips :/
it costs like what! $2K for a couple hundred thou transistors, low-volume? I have no idea, but i do know one single mask for small processes (80um) cost like a bazillion bucks D:
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Are you suggesting it would be impossible for a product to be 'fully open' unless there exists a 3D printer advanced enough to produce it?
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You are allowed to do that. It's up to you to come up with a printer capable of doing it, of course.
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I suspect that you'd be stepping on the mask works rights of a number of outfits, and probably some ARM patents, if you were actually capable of printing the entire thing.
Because low-volume production of most components is so wildly impractical, "Open Hardware" doesn't generally require any particular openness inside the bits that you solder together, just openness about how you solder them together and openness on the part of the software running on top of them.
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You can fork the software and hardware designs. Depending on how incredibly advanced your 3D printer is, you could in theory print it too...
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As soon as you come up with a printer that can actually print working circuits, including microchips, then the rest will be trivial.
Print the Printer (Score:1)
Until we have an open source printer that can be forked to print another printer which can be used to print the chip and the board, we won't be truly open.
Would the printer spec qualify for GPL or LGPL?
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http://dev8d.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2010/02/25/reprap-the-self-replicating-3d-printer/ [jiscinvolve.org]
yes, it still dont print the chips and boards, but we will get there :)
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I'll just hop on my 'Back to the future' skateboard, and go fetch a printer. This shouldn't take long . . . .
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1) 16 bit ALU in Minecraft [hackaday.com]
2) 3D printing of Minecraft models [minecraftprint.com]
3)
4) 3D profit
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This is admirable, but I'll know a product is "fully open" when I can fork the project, modify the designs, and then print the thing on my home 3D printer.
Unfortunately for you, the real world makes things out of more materials than the ABS/PLA your bargain bin Reprap uses. Namely copper and silicon. That being said, this meets all of your criteria besides the random 3D printer hardon. You would just have to have your fork made by a PCB fab house because something this complex doesn't exactly lend itself to hobbyist PCB fabrication methods.
FULLY open? (Score:1)
freely available for both personal and commercial reuse
Well, unfortunately that comes with the danger of abuse: MegaCorp ripping it off, bloating it with crapware and selling it for x5 the price- but let's see.
Re:FULLY open? (Score:5, Insightful)
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How is that abuse? If they can do that, good for them.
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How is that abuse? If they can do that, good for them.
It would be abusive if the additions do not justify the price being higher: that is why I mentioned 'crapware'. I.e., a (misinformed) consumer usually falls for it, ending up being charged for the advertisment that went into a product (advertising products usually reflects on their pricing).
Otherwise, if someone builds on it and produces an even more useful device, then of course I see no problem with it, and good for them indeed.
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a (misinformed) consumer usually falls for it
Isn't that the consumer's fault for not doing their homework before making the purchase? under-educated consumers will always get duped, that's not the MegaCorp's fault.
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under-educated consumers will always get duped, that's not the MegaCorp's fault.
You cannot be serious: how can that be, since it would be MegaCorp that is doing the duping-- you said it! See this very recent thread [slashdot.org], and try to predict how good the 'dupe-non-tech-savvy-folk' business model will be for a company --unless, I guess, the company is too big (AT&T in the previous example) to give a crap: that's why I mentioned 'MegaCorp'.
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You missed my point... If a cheaper option is available, then it's the consumer's job to find it. It's NOT the Megacorp's job to show it to the consumer.
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Under educate consumers will be duped from time to time. It's the stupid ones who keep coming back, time and time again, to buy whatever Megacorp tells them they need to buy this year.
Telephones, for instance. There are a couple of camps that just HAVE TO HAVE the latest and greatest offering from their chosen Megacorp. Why? Ten year old phones do most of what the newest megadollar phones do. And, the extras that come with those phones are worth - a couple dollars. Certainly not hundreds of dollars.
Th
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Sorry but find me the 10 year old phone (at any price) with 16 gigs of RAM, built in GPS, a high resolution screen that can connect to my car's head either by wire or BlueTooth.
I'll even make it easier for you, find me the 10 year old phone that does anything of these things at any price.
Just because you don't value what some phone makers are bringing to the market doesn't mean that it's not worth something to someone.
Oh, and just as a FYI... my Motorola StarTAC cost more 12 years ag
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You and the GP seem to have very different definitions of "phone".
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megacorps are already selling pretty much the same thing for 5x the price - so what's there to lose there?
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the pi has ethernet going over usb. its not baked in. ethernet is still an add-on.
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But this board uses the A13, which is a cut-down version of the A10. Perhaps one of the things they removed is the Ethernet controller.
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the pi has ethernet going over usb. its not baked in. ethernet is still an add-on.
How it is implemented in the Pi is another discussion. I was only saying that possibly the A13 SoC has Ethernet but it's not implemented on this board.
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Really? No ethernet?
You have two versions of the A13 OLinuXino, one with WiFi and one without. Both of these have 4 USB ports available and Olimex sells USB Ethernet dongles. I have A13 OLinuXino with WiFi and with the USB Eth dongle, both thw WiFi and Eth work perfectly. I'm running Debian on it at the moment but I'm also preparing Fedora for it.
not however the gpu. (Score:4, Insightful)
On forking, however.
To elaborate on why open-source hardware is hard.
Why open-source software works is:
Widely available repository of code.
Many people able to review it, or sections of it, and understand it.
Ease of submitting tested patches.
Hardware has problems that don't really fit well with this.
The open schematic is the trivially easy part, and not really a problem.
(though in practice, you need a schematic with copious links to design documents, which isn't well solved by open tools).
The number of people who can review it is rather smaller - as you can't
open up a c file, and see a clear error or awkwardness in code that can be edited.
For all but the most basic errors, you are going to have to sit down and
read several hundred pages of hardware documentation about how the chips in question work, in addition to having in-depth knowledge about the circuit design, and costings of likely changes.
Now, you've done this, and generated a patch that you think (for example) lowers the supply current by 1%.
Compile - test.
On a PC, this takes a couple of minutes.
For something of a smartphone class, a one-off PCB may cost several hundred dollars. Then the parts will cost another several hundred dollars in small quantities, as well as being difficult to obtain.
Now, you have to solder the parts onto the board, which is a decidedly nontrivial thing - and if you decide you want someone else to do this, it's probably another several hundred dollars.
So, you're at the thick end of a thousand dollars for a 'compile'.
Now, you boot the device, and it exhibits random hangs.
Neglecting the fact that you are going to need several hundred to several thousand dollars of test equipment, you now have to find
the bug.
Is it:
A) The fact that unlabled 0.5*1mm component C38 is in fact 20% over the designed value, as the assembly company put the wrong one in.
B) C38 has a tiny bridge of solder underneath it that is making intermittent contact.
C) The chipmaker for the main chip hasn't noticed that their chip doesn't quite do what they say it will do, and the datasheet is wrong.
D) You missed a tangential reference on page 384 of the datasheet to proper setup of the RAM chip, and it is pure coincidence that all models up till now have booted.
E) Because you're ordering small quantities, you had to resort to getting the chips from a distributor who diddn't watch their supply chain really carefully, and your main chip has in fact been desoldered from a broken cellphone.
F) Though the design of the circuit is correct, and the board you made matches that design, and all the parts are correct and work properly, the inherent undesired elements introduced by real life physics means it doesn't work.
G) A completely random failure of a part that could occur with even the best design, and best manufacture.
G - may mean that it's worthwhile making two or more of each revision - which of course boosts costs.
Hardware is nasty.
This gets a lot less painful of course for lower end hardware. For very limited circuits, which can be done on simple inexpensive PCBs, and be easily soldered at home - costs of a 'compile' can be in the tens of dollars, or even lower.
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Great copy-pasta, I've seen this before. And yes, hardware isn't as easy to develop as software is.
Nevertheless it's a good thing. Better than keeping it closed. Maybe you and I can't do anything with it directly, there are certainly people that can learn from it. It can be used as study object in universities, for example (where students routinely design and bake their own microchips, too).
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I should have stated it was copy-pasta.
(But I am the original author).
Is it useful - certainly - and lightly modifying an existing design without touching the core can give you considerable confidence that the design will work.
Also, it can mean that you need limited or no software mods to get it booting, and confirm at least basic functionality, at which point you can start hacking on the drivers for your integrated cheeseboard.
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The above points are of course true, to a degree.
Many peoples expectations about hardware engineering are unfortunately lead by software engineering - the two fields differ dramatically.
Is there a point in open-source hardware - of course!
It makes deriving working designs a _lot_ easier.
Does it make it easy - no.
Small batch production of anything more complex than a 2 layer board (cellphones will need 8) with relatively relaxed component density is expensive and unreliable, especially when you're not doing
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These are all similar problems that existed in the early days of software development. It was very tedious to write on punch cards, it could take days before your program was run and all you got out of it was an error, the equipment needed was prohibitively expensive for all but the largest organisations, debugging required dozens of manuals, etc, etc.
All these issues have been solved for software, and the open hardware movement is starting to help with these issues for hardware. Give it time, and runn
Or Get The Finished Product (Score:1)
Or you could just get the completeAndroid Mini PC [ebay.com] package for $36.
It's complete, smaller, cheaper, been available for a year or two...
Mali 400 GPU (Score:2)
Does that mean Allwinner finally opened the code to the Mali 400 GPU?
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Not to my knowledge; however, there is an open source driver being developed via reverse-engineering:
http://limadriver.org/ [limadriver.org]
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It would be nice; but I'd be surprised. The Mali 400 is straight from ARM, and for what Allwinner charges for A13s, it would be impressive if they managed to cram the cost of building their own driver or buying the right to open ARM's driver into the budget.
Re:Mali 400 GPU (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but it sucks.
I got a Mali 400 tablet based off what I read on the internet (must be true, right?) and came to find out there is NO working driver for it. There are two open source drivers - one official and one reverse engineered but neither work. The only way to get a Mali-400 functional device is to run android and use that driver. It seems that all other platforms (X, etc) were afterthoughts.
I was excited to read about the board, but then my heart sank. Whoever did the research and selection for the Mali 400 on this board did exactly what I did, and now they and their customers are going to be very disappointed. The Mali-400 is a good chip, but lacks non-android support.
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The only way to get a Mali-400 functional device is to run android and use that driver.
Why can't that driver be ported to vanilla Linux?
I was excited to read about the board, but then my heart sank.
Me too. No native XBMC means no sale. I will keep my x86 HTPC with open source ATI video drivers in service then.
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There are massive architectural differences between Android's graphics subsystem and X.
Same reason Samsung's "open source friendliness" in terms of claiming "Hey we have a DRI driver" is kind of pointless when 99% of their Exynos4 chips are in Android devices. (Exynos5 is a bit more even thanks to Chromebook.)
Re: NO XBMC (Score:2)
I only clicked the comments to check on XBMC support. This too makes it a non-starter for me.
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You seem to care about some of the same things I do, do you know if there's anything out there with 1080p, XBMC, and properly-working Netflix? I personally want it to run Android, but anything Linux-based would be OK.
PIVOS XIOS DS (Score:2)
Comes stock with Android, but they have a pure XBMC build. The company sponsors developers to work on XMBC for Android.
It's in what I would call beta stage at this point. Not perfect, but pretty decent. It is supposed to run Netflix, but I haven't actually tried yet.
I use it mostly for watching TV shows and movies stored on my NAS, and my wife/kids watch streaming video from websites via an addon.
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I actually managed to find that before you posted, but thanks anyway, I couldn't find any reputable reviews of how well it actually works. I'm a little hesitant to spend $120. There's also this UG802 thing, but people say it won't actually decode 1080p in realtime. There's 1.2, 1.5 and 1.6 GHz clocks, and people say the faster-than-1.2 GHz ones like to overheat. It is fifty bucks, though.
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It's because all of these open source projects go gaga over the Allwinner A10 despite the fact that it's at least 2 generations behind in the CPU and no usable open source driver exists for the Mali GPU.
This is why I'm actually
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It's not theirs to open. Mali is made by ARM.
No Ethernet, no HDMI, no internal Flash (Score:3, Insightful)
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this one has more memory
The RPi actually has 512M memory in its B model nowadays
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I'd rather have a VGA port instead of HDMI. Lack of Ethernet is a killer, and lack of firewire is a dissappointment.
cubieboard (Score:1)
Found this relatively interesting board in rpi price range.
Official site: http://cubieboard.org/ [cubieboard.org]
They sold small numbers last month and are now trying to fund a 1k+ run via indiegogo: http://www.indiegogo.com/cubieboard [indiegogo.com]
Some difference highlights from specs:
1G ARMv7 cortex-A8 processor (2x as fast per clock), NEON, VFPv3, 256KB L2 cache vs 700MHz ARMv6
Mali400, OpenGL ES GPU (lima reverse-engineered drivers) vs VideoCoreIV (free "shim")
There is Also the Cubieboard for $49 (Score:5, Informative)
http://cubieboard.org/ [cubieboard.org] and also on http://www.indiegogo.com/cubieboard [indiegogo.com]
It uses the A10 and has more features. The A10 is a full featured version of the A13
1G ARM cortex-A8 processor, NEON, VFPv3, 256KB L2 cache
Mali400, OpenGL ES GPU
512M/1GB DDR3 @480MHz
HDMI 1080p Output
10/100M Ethernet
4Gb Nand Flash
2 USB Host, 1 micro SD slot, 1 SATA, 1 ir
96 extend pin including I2C, SPI, RGB/LVDS, CSI/TS, FM-IN, ADC, CVBS, VGA, SPDIF-OUT, R-TP..
Android, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions
Re:There is Also the Cubieboard for $49 (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet another option is the Hackberry [miniand.com], which is a few dollars more but has wifi built in.
Re:There is Also the Cubieboard for $49^H^H $59 (Score:2)
not $49 , its $59 now and has been for some time .
when the indiegogo started, it costed only $19
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The extra $10 is for shipping. The cheaper options were a special for those who got in early.
I got the $59 option and am looking forward to using it as a headless torrent box.
Anything with Mali-400 is a problem (Score:2)
There are only Android drivers for it. The Android graphics stack is not reusable in Linux. Stay away.
The linux drivers that are for mali-400 are rudimentary. That is to say, they don't work in general. You can get them to work under very limited functions, but you can't just run OpenGl on it and expect it to work. They won't.
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It seems that Mali is trying to open up:
http://www.malideveloper.com/developer-resources/drivers/open-source-mali-gpus-linux-kernel-device-drivers.php [malideveloper.com]
... provides the low-level access to the Mali-200 or Mali-400 GPU. An important, secondary component is the Unified Memory Provider (UMP) which can be used in a variety of ways to facilitate zero-copy operations within the driver stack. An additional component, the Mali Direct Rendering Manager (DRM), is provided to integrate the Mali DDKs into the X11 environment and for enabling the Direct Rendering Interface (DRI2).
Disclaimer: I don't have a Mali to play with so I can't say how well the driver works.
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Well I was going to put Active Plasma 2 (Linix/X/KDE stack) on my Mali-400 tablet, and basically, it was a no-go. That was last month. We'll see in a few months then the tablet is out of date.
Yes, I was aware of the above link.
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Of course you can't run Autocad or Call of Duty on it. But I don't think that's the intended use case.
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Are you using the Android version or the Ubuntu version?
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The board layout isn't the problem (Score:3)
No ARM system can be truly "open", because no one who produces these SoCs is releasing full specifications. The GPUs are a particular problem, since almost all of them rely upon binary blobs. With more and more functionality being moved to GPU hardware, this is an area where Open Source is really falling behind.
Having Linux or Android running on a cheap ARM board is nice, but if all you get is non-accelerated 2D graphics, you won't be able to be competitive with closed commercial products.
What for email? (Score:1)
Come January I was going to use a Raspberry Pi as a personal ( sorry can't remember the name now ) mail server.
Now I'm confused about what board to use.
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raspberry pi!
It have good support and will have it for long time (unlike most of this "clones" ).
For a mail server it's powerful enough
Caveat Emptor (Score:1)
I'll have to plead guilty to associating any outfit labeled 'A'nything as somehow connected to the A7 people, who let dozens of small kitchen table folks design products around their bluetooth offerings, shipping a dozen or more of the finished product, only to have them lock the door, disconnect the phones and disappear forever without notice to anyone, leaving the producers of the finished product who had paid the one time costs for the PCB's etc hung out to dry. Some paid in advance, and are still due r
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Wrong temp range (Score:2)
What is the operating temperature range of A13-OLinuXino-WIFI?
The board works in the commercial temeprature range 0+70C
Allwiner - failed platform (Score:2, Informative)
Some experience http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?6,10012 [doozan.com]
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Cubbieboard (Score:1)
It's important to remember that A13 is actually cut down ($5 cheaper) A10 present in Cubbieboard. Most interestingly Cubbieboard offers double the RAM and SATA port for the same price.
No-one here has done their homework. (Score:1)
The allwinner A10 currently ranks as one of the most hackable and open platforms, thanks to the freenode #arm-netbook and http://linux-sunxi.org communities, communities where Olimex has actually contributed.
As the developer of the lima driver, i have finally found a Mali based SoC with a proper linux, one that is affordable and hackable. Heck, i even have Q3A running on ARM Mali binaries (check my the linux-sunxi and my github if you do not buy it).
How can everybody here just be spewing baseless bullshit a
Just received... (Score:1)
I bought one of these and just received it last night.
Unfortunately, the Olimex people have no clue about how to package for shipping. I received a touch screen overlay that was cracked in half. The PCB had two ferrite core in the power supply broken apart since they loosely packaged other components on top of the PCB!.
I ordered a "preloaded" SD card which arrived... blank.
I've noted several "bugs" in the design although this is a rev. 'c' board and am now questioning this whole model of "ultra" cheap.
I gla
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Yeah! Olimex only provide full board schematics and actually help the linux-sunxi.org community, and even explain to their customers how to fix the few errors in the first run of boards that they produced! What a total rip-off!
-- libv