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With respect, the 8-bit era is still alive today with people repairing and creating peripherals for home computers from the early 1980s. Just go to Ebay and see the trade in Sinclair ZX Spectrums (Z80) and the other home computers such as the Commodore 64 (6502). Remember the Z80 vs 6502 CPU wars ?

It is still possible to purchase brand new 40-pin Z80 CPUs https://uk.farnell.com/zilog/z... so 8-bit is not yet fully dead... long live the Z80 !

Google were first out with the Cardboard concept that actually used real cardboard for low cost, but other manufacturers have been producing "proper" headsets using Cardboard's approach for a while now.

In the UK, the Farnell Group company CPC offers several brands of this type of headset, and the cheapest costs under 10 UK pounds. Google's a bit late to this market, and overpriced.

This happened to the A+: it got its memory size increased to 512 Mb.

In other news, the RAM on the Raspberry Pi A+ has been increased from 256 MB to 512 MB.

but one wouldn't be unjustified in claiming that the de facto DB9 is DB25 that has only the pins used by a PC serial port

Except that's not what the de facto use describes. DB denotes the shell size, commonly the one with 25 pins in it DB25. What people call "de facto DB9" is a DE shell size. Anyway you cut it the common usage is wrong.

At least it would be if the definition was regulated at all. Since it's not it's kind of hard to argue that a DB-9 isn't just another name for a DE-9 given how even manufacturers of connectors are using that nomenclature.

Indeed, it does not seem to have anything of the sort.
I'm guessing the target devices (smartphones, etc) wouldn't need anything resembling high speed networking.
For what it's worth, the Banana Pro (half the cores, higher clock, same A7) has a gigabit NIC, and I've gotten >500Mbps with it.

Hate to rain on this guy's parade, but conductive ink pens have already been for sale for quite some time. If he wants to reinvent the wheel, enjoy. Quite honestly, this looks amateuristic, so gefundenes Fressen for artists and "installations", I guess. Sorry for being so negative, it just feels unfair sometimes that hardware designers working their ass of to get you all these nice fancy iGadgets are rarely held in high esteem, while "artists" can "invent" something old, build something trivial (20 lights in parallel!) and makea big deal out of it.

The conductive ink plotter which was featured here some time ago is something completely different, of course.

Here is what you want to know: the board costs $200 or £135.

http://parts.arrow.com/item/detail/circuitco/minnowboard

http://www.uk.farnell.com/circuitco/minnowboard/atom-e640t-platform-sbc/dp/2319581

...it's called a Gertboard http://uk.farnell.com/gertboard/gertboard/board-gertboard-assembled/dp/2250034, plugs directly onto the Pi, has an Arduino, a motor controller chip, an A/D and D/A chip on it, breaks out all the GPIO pins, buffered, completely jumperable. Price equiv 46 USD.

Usually that's caused by retards pulling patch cables in reverse without securing the latch. Hirose has you covered.

They don't have a store, you can buy it from farnell, CPC(who are farnell but friendlier), RS, Allied electronics(whoever they are), NewIT(who i got mine from) and Maplin

If there isn't a single option there that offers it for less that 70 EUR with tax and shipping, i'll be a little surprised.
Charging 13 EUR for a pre-loaded SD card doesn't seem that awful, especially considering that they(the foundation, who aren't the ones selling the cards) provide you with all the tools and instructions to make your own bootable SD cards, no one's forcing you to do anything here.

They don't have a store, you can buy it from farnell, CPC(who are farnell but friendlier), RS, Allied electronics(whoever they are), NewIT(who i got mine from) and Maplin

If there isn't a single option there that offers it for less that 70 EUR with tax and shipping, i'll be a little surprised.
Charging 13 EUR for a pre-loaded SD card doesn't seem that awful, especially considering that they(the foundation, who aren't the ones selling the cards) provide you with all the tools and instructions to make your own bootable SD cards, no one's forcing you to do anything here.

I bought my first two from CPC http://cpc.farnell.com/
Unfortunately their "check stock" link isn't loading for me, so assuming the worst they may be sold out now.

Checking eBay though, here are 4 of them including a very nice case, for $35 each using buy-it-now (not an auction)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Raspberry-Pi-Model-B-ABS-Case-NEW-U-S-Manufacture-and-Seller-HDMI-/150928193043?pt=US_Computer_Cases&hash=item2324057613

I admit it's getting annoying searching ebay, with all the new case sellers that have popped up.
I hope this helps though.

Two reasons

1: two USB ports isn't really quite enough, I want enough ports to have a keyboard, a mouse and a USB flash drive plugged in at once.
2: i've had more trouble with the SMSC chip used on the Pi than with other USB ethernet chips

So i'd rather have a model A and pair it with http://cpc.farnell.com/1/1/56475-hub-3x-usb-ethernet-blkgrey-psg90189.html. Total cost is about the same when you consider that the USB hub with ethernet comes with a PSU that can supply the Pi (they don't mention that in the description but i've bought several and it comes with a 5V 2.5A power supply).

OK, you try turning this into a viable commercial product at a lower cost than the competition. The problem is, this is a niche market because these things are really hard to find a suitable application for. You'll be setting up a manufacturing base and then selling maybe 1000 units per year, so you need to offset the cost of manufacturing, support staff, sales staff, development.... hence you'll be selling each unit for $1000 or more. Probably much more, because to make it useful you'll need precision manufacturing (alignment of multiple output beams so they don't diverge over a range of... well, current commercial systems vary between about 500m and 5km, so it won't be trivial). So, no, this isn't a significantly cheaper tech. It's the same tech using similar components that cost about the same (A typical currently available commercial system will use a diode like this one, which might cost 3 times as much as the ones in laser pointers, but it is also capable of 5 times the bandwidth). But it's optical frequency rather than IR, so the range per unit power will be lower, it'll be more disturbed by fog, and it needs multiplexing to reach reasonable data rates, so that will mean more expensive optics at the receiving end. Put this design in a commercial system and you'll see pretty quickly that it's as expensive as existing designs, if not more so.

Driver source? If it isnt out there yet it will be. Look at all the low level docs released.

http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1521578.pdf

I think there will be great open source drivers ;-)

I expect these devices do need a CE mark for electro magnetic radiation compliance (that it doesn't interfere with other equipment and its own performance isn't degraded by other equipment) and the companies in question are rightfully stating they're not going to start selling something which would land them in the shit if it is out of compliance. The US is no different with devices requiring FCC certification.

No. Farnell is quite happy selling $4 msp430 Launchpads
http://uk.farnell.com/texas-instruments/msp-exp430g2/kit-dev-msp430-launchpad/dp/1853793

that dont meet a single norm, no CE, no FCC nothing. Ti just states in the documentation those boards are DEV experimental stuff and thats it. TI sold >100K of them easily.

http://www.ti.com/lit/ml/slac432a/slac432a.pdf

“Texas Instruments (TI) provides the enclosed product(s) under the following conditions:
  This evaluation board/kit is intended for use for ENGINEERING DEVELOPMENT, DEMONSTRATION,
  EVALUATION PURPOSES ONLY and is not considered by TI to be a finished endproduct fit for gene
  consumer use. Persons handling the product(s) must have electronics training and observe good engineer
  practice standards. As such, the goods being provided are not intended to be complete in terms of requi
  design, marketing, and/or manufacturingrelated protective considerations, including product safety a
  environmental measures typically found in end products that incorporate such semiconductor components
  circuit boards. This evaluation board/kit does not fall within the scope of the European Union directi
  regarding electromagnetic compatibility, restricted substances (RoHS), recycling (WEEE), FCC, CE or
  and therefore may not meet the technical requirements of these directives or other related directives.”

“FCC WARNING
  This evaluation board/kit is intended for use for ENGINEERING DEVELOPMENT, DEMONSTRATION, OR
  EVALUATION PURPOSES ONLY and is not considered by TI to be a finished enproduct fit for general
  consumer use. It generates, uses, and can radiate radio frequency energy and has not been tested for compli-
  ance with the limits of computing devices pursuant to part 15 of FCC rules, which are designed to provide
  reasonable protection against radio frequency interference. Operation of this equipment in other environ-
  ments may cause interference with radio communications, in which case the user at his own expense will be
  required to take whatever measures may be required to correct this interference.”

I just preordered, and saw the same options. I'm in the UK.

Are you in the Faroes? I stuck the order code 2081185 into the box on http://dk.farnell.com/ and it leads to a message "Bemærk: Farnell handler kun med virksomheder med et gyldigt CVR nummer, og alle indkøb betales via faktura." (companies with VAT number only?), which isn't the case on the UK site, which instead say to call for international orders. The UK web site only delivers to the UK, Guernsey and Jersey, but says you can email for international orders -- although the language implies large orders.

Maybe try phoning.

Have a look at the cost of LEDs here. Select by luminous intensity and see what you pay for a decent lumen level. Hint - the highest lumen level is 1500 and the LED costs over £500 ! Not to mention that that LED is only 7mm x 7mm.

You can contrast equivalent incandescent lumen levels here.

Well, I dunno whether you just worded your comment wrong but a two-second search on some major UK electronics manufacturers says you're wrong, even down to the datasheets. The first hit I got was:

http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/104589.pdf

which quite clearly is an IR LED that has GaAs in it. And I imagine IR LEDs are quite popular in, say, every remote control made in the last ten years?

Or were you trying to say that blue and white LED's don't use GaAs?

while vista doesnt fare so well and cant run aero without a pretty beefy one

This is a total myth. I'm the last person to be a Microsoft Fanboi (look back at my posting history) but I have Vista with Aero running on a bargain basement notebook (Acer Extensa 5220) and it works perfectly. Sure, it would fly along with XP or Ubuntu and just about chuggs along with Vista, but it is perfectly useable - just like when XP was first installed OEM on low end laptops circa 2002. It's for my mother-in-law by the way.

I've been running Vista for about a fortnight, on the aforementioned laptop for my mum and also on my Dell XPS M1210, and I have to say it's pretty much comparable to OSX. I've used OSX on G3 Powermacs and it's painfully slow but useable if you must have OSX for some reason. On decent hardware OSX flies and is a big improvement on OS9. My nine month old M1210 is pretty much the same spec as the same age Macbook - and would probably run OSX very nicely with the right hack - and Vista absoulely flies along.

maplin suck nowadays. Thier prices are high and thier range has got shittier and shittier over the years. They still have a few kits from velleman but the huge range of maplin own brand kits is long gone :(.

For buying electronic components in the UK rapid ( http://www.rapidonline.com/ ) farnell ( http://uk.farnell.com/ ) and cpc ( http://cpc.farnell.com/ ) are your best bets. Rapid also have some kits availible mainly from velleman. (OT: they are also a good place to buy lego mindstorms stuff).

If you are going to order a lot of stuff and are prepared to wait digi-key are also a good bet. They are in the USA but provided your order is over a certain size (i think it's about £100) delivery and associated charges are included, thier prices are good and so is thier range.

maplin suck nowadays. Thier prices are high and thier range has got shittier and shittier over the years. They still have a few kits from velleman but the huge range of maplin own brand kits is long gone :(.

For buying electronic components in the UK rapid ( http://www.rapidonline.com/ ) farnell ( http://uk.farnell.com/ ) and cpc ( http://cpc.farnell.com/ ) are your best bets. Rapid also have some kits availible mainly from velleman. (OT: they are also a good place to buy lego mindstorms stuff).

If you are going to order a lot of stuff and are prepared to wait digi-key are also a good bet. They are in the USA but provided your order is over a certain size (i think it's about £100) delivery and associated charges are included, thier prices are good and so is thier range.

Summary of RoHS legislation from Farnell.

Basically, most electronic products shipped to Europe and operating under 1000V (military and medical products except for now) must not contain 6 restricted substances. One of the biggest is lead. There is a large push in many electronic industries to convert their electronic products to RoHS compliant products. It's a lot of work.

Sony and Nintendo have to do this too if they want to sell their units to Europe. From a general industry trend, Japan tends to be ahead of the game compared to US companies in terms of RoHS preparedness.

Eventually most of the entire world will have this type of legislation.

During this year and the next, a pair of directives will go into effect in the European Union.

WEEE and RoHS mandate manufacturer takebake of waste electronics, and prohibit the use of lead, cadmium, mercury, or polybrominated fire retardants in electronic equipment.

Fun trivia fact: Did you know that most all network cables include a significant amount of lead in them?

Farnell the electronic component suppliers have taken it on themselves to bring the people of Earth into an age of interstellar travel early by having started to stock Dilithium Crystals. If you go to the Farnell site, select the UK site, then the Online Catalogue, Electronic components and finally Crystals, you can see them.

Unfortunately they seem to be out of stock right now if you were thinking of building your own Warp engine.

Farnell the electronic component suppliers have taken it on themselves to bring the people of Earth into an age of interstellar travel early by having started to stock Dilithium Crystals. If you go to the Farnell site, select the UK site, then the Online Catalogue, Electronic components and finally Crystals, you can see them.

Unfortunately they seem to be out of stock right now if you were thinking of building your own Warp engine.

Get your stuff from Digikey [digikey.com] for quality (and inexpensive) electronics.

<cough> did you say cheap and digikey in the same sentence?!!

DigiKey is known as the Radio Shack of the professional electronics industry. Sure, they can get you pretty much anything and fast, but they are not cheap by any means, even when you look over on the table to the bulk prices.

You're far better to go to Future-Active, Arrow or even Farnell for your parts. Digikey is quick and fast, and their quality is the same as anyone else. But they are NOT inexpensive for anything. You're paying a premium to have them ship 16 identical catalogs to your shop every quarter.