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Raspberry Pi Beta Boards Unveiled

Posted by samzenpus on from the check-it-out dept.

First time accepted submitter anwe79 writes "Those of you who have been wishing for a Raspberry Pi this Christmas will sadly not get your wish granted. However, you may be happy to hear that populated beta boards have now been produced. Beta of course means the boards still have some more testing to undergo. But, if all goes well, those inclined should be able to get their hands on production boards in January!"

6 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Design flaw? by Keruo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think that surface-mount usb power connector will fail eventually since the images seem to show it not welded through-board.
    Maybe they'll fix it on later models.(or it is already, but I'm not seeing the throughwelds from the pictures)

    --
    There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
    1. Re:Design flaw? by fnj · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The surface mount USB on my Beaglebone fell right off. The glue holding it failed with hardly any stress. There are big lands to solder it to, but they didn't use these. They only used glue. What the heck is the attraction of these stupid mini and micro USB connectors anyway? Give me a soldered-through full-A connector any day.

    2. Re:Design flaw? by Gourou · · Score: 4, Interesting

      From the earlier post of the bare boards (http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/402) the holes are there for the micro-usb, and the project has been geared towards clumsy hands plugging and unplugging the ports a lot so I'd expect a robust connection.

  2. Bending USB the spec? by dbc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They appear to be bending the USB spec quite seriously. A USB device is allowed to draw up to 100mA before enumeration, and up to 500mA after being enumerated and negotiating for high power. They talk about using up to 700mA with networking connected -- it's not clear to me how it could enumerate without booting first -- so they seem to be giving the middle finger to the USB specs. I predict unhappiness when people find that only some USB power sources are going to tolerate the load.

    Is it so hard to put a couple of holes in the board to solder wire to?

  3. Re:Unsuitable for teaching by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 1, Interesting

    What other $25 Linux boxes are out there for teaching Unix, web programming,...

    Show me WHERE I can buy one of these for $25?

    Remember the OLPC project? Weren't those supposed to be sub-$100? How much did they end up being?

    These are *not* in production (or anywhere near production) yet.

    When (if) these make it to production, expect the price to be more than $25.

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
  4. Re:Arduino, anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's because it's the Arduino that is overpriced -- they're basically selling you a board with a $1 microcontroller and surrounding peripheral circuits for $15.