Bit late to go buy one then...
Bugger, would have been nice to grab a potential bit of history, not surprised they sold out quickly, but 10,000 in minutes... props!
The first batch of 10,000 ARM-powered Raspberry Pi computers went on sale at 6am GMT on Wednesday - and sold out within minutes. According to distributor Premier Farnell, there were at least 600 orders, visits or pre-orders every SECOND, producing a 300 per cent hike in web traffic. The electronic component sales site was …
Would this be an option? (found on the heise.de forum)
http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/
The Allwinner A10 CPU has been developed in, and is sold in, the People's Republic of China. Its mass-volume price is around $7, yet it is a 400-pin highly feature-rich 1.5ghz ARM Cortex A8 with a MALI400 GPU. It has the distinction of having the highest bang-per-buck ratio of any SoC available at the time of writing, by quite a margin. Features of the Allwinner A10 include:
1.5ghz Cortex A8 ARM Core
MALI400MP OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU
2160p Hardware-accelerated Video playback (4x the resolution of 1080p)
up to 1gb of DDR3 (800mhz) RAM
a NAND Flash Controller that is capable of 8-way concurrent DMA (8 NAND ICs) as well as supporting up to 500mhz DDR2 RAM
4 SDIO interfaces (SD 3.0, UHI class)
USB 2.0 Host as well as a 2nd USB-OTG Interface (USB-OTG can be reconfigured as USB 2.0 Host, automatically)
24-pin RGB/TTL as well as simultaneous HDMI out
SATA-II 3gb/sec
10/100 Ethernet (MII compatible)
a 2nd 24-pin RGB/TTL interface that is multiplexed (shared) on the same pins for a standard IDE (PATA) interface.
GPIO, I2C, PWM, Keyboard Matrix (8x8), built-in Resistive Touchscreen Controller, and much more.
Ordered mine at about mid-day after F5ing the Farnell website all morning. The order confirmation came through saying it would be delivered on the week commencing 16th April. Bit disappointed but I had no urgent need for one anyway. Maybe this will give some time for developers to get some decent stuff out there for it.
RS was just showing a form to register interest in it.
Thought I was doing well ordering it through the Irish site, until the delivery note was emailed with an ETA of 16th April.
I wonder how much of these sales are the likes of HUKD-ers buying for the sake of it being a bargain, then a small circuit board arrives and they don't have a clue what to do with it and go back to their laptops and iPads.
My mother-in-law bought an object in an M&S sale for the sole reason that it cost 50p. She had absolutely no idea what it was, but "it was cheap!" and she simply can't walk past a "bargain". (It turned out to be a USB hub, so quite a good deal theoretically if not for the fact I already have two.)
I got to the Farnell (Ireland) site at about 06:01 Thankfully I already had an active account. But unfortunately I had a pile of stuff already in the shopping cart that I was only half thinking of buying. So it was about 06:13 before I got all the crap out of the cart and managed to get an order through. The few items I had left in the cart (some soldering flux and capacitors... don't ask) have now shipped. But the Pi has not. It is in "back order" state with no date given. However this is to be expected as Raspberry-Pi-Liz tweeted that they had not arrived from China yet. So I'm still hopeful I might get one from the first batch. Fingers crossed!!
BTW: A big congrats to the Raspberry people... they deserve a good lie in tomorrow morning! It's a shame that a tiny minority of people gave them hassle. They have been so professional throughout.
Fairly professional. The immediate pre-launch and launch were a balls up though.
No emails sent to subscribers, instead many people found out via HUKD.
Displayed the choice of two distributors to buy from. With option 2 not selling any.
I remember reading this was supposed to be 'available' on 20th Feb, but delivery still looks like 2 months away.
That's the idea of the early geek launch.
By september there will be apps, tutorials,course materials etc all freely available online
It might have been better if they had allowed pre-orders a year ago for people on their mailing lists allowing them to build an initial 100K - but it wouldn't have got the press interest.
Unfortunately being in Cyprus means i'll prob have to wait a little longer than most (although RS Cyprus is just a forwarding address from RS UK technically) for my little beauty!
Registered my interest with RS UK for the moment but it'll give me plenty of time to find a suitable case for it.
Amazing that the site is still (20:00 +2 GMT) on the static webpage to conserve bandwidth!
Well, it's a small low-power computer with some hardware acceleration for media, so maybe they'll use it as a small, low-power computer that can do some hardware-accelerated media stuff.
Or, for example, if your cable box is fucking shite and uses 20W in standby just so you can have fast access to an EPG instead of waiting for an hour after it turns on, instead of paying $15 per year in electricity for the privilege of fast EPG access to find out whether there's anything worth watching on TV, you could have a little low-power media server that could read the information off the internet and display it for you. Maybe it could stream some music from Pandora for you while you check the TV listings at the same time, which your Blu-Ray player can't do.
Well, a lot of keyboard-playing musicians and electronica enthusiasts generally are currently using laptops for their virtual instruments and FX. If you're using VSTs/VSTIs, the standalone-box alternatives are vastly expensive (Muse Research Receptor) or rather unreliable (SMPro V-Machine). I can definitely envisage someone using a Raspberry Pi as the basis for an alternative.
See, I was thinking exactly along those lines. But I don't think it physically has the oomph to handle some of the larger VSTs, such as Guitar Rig (which I use on a regular basis), or some of the Pianos. I think it would be a case of clustering say, 4 of them in a box, assigning a VST to each one, and then having hardware switches on the front join the dots between inputs and outputs.
At least, that's my plan :-D
And odd thing for someone to say when their web site has been down for much of the day.
I pity the poor fools who got up before six this morning to do frenzied 'F5 battle' against the other 100K+ who had expressed their interest and expected it to be any different than it was. Of course it would have lowered load if people had been given direct links from the foundations' announcement site, not told to go to the Farnell or RS and search. Ho hum.
Both RS and Farnell now seem to be treating it as an opportunity to build up their mailing list numbers with just their 'express an interest' pages than any option to actually pre-order. Indications from those who did place orders is mid to late April seems the earliest most people can expect to receive one. Will be interesting to see how many go up on eBay before then.
Feeling smug.
Farnell have given me an EDD of w/c 12th March
Sat there participating in a manual DDOS for nearly to hours - 7:53 order time.
Although I had managed to register interest on the RS site a long time before then. I'll either decline that offer if/when it comes through or get it for a friends 8 y/old who already loves scratch.
Mid-may is my EDD. I'm not bothered; it'll be fun when it gets here. With any luck I'll have figured out what I want to do with it by then. There may be some giants' shoulders I can easily stand on to achieve it by then as well.
I can't be the only dilettante wannabe-hacker who's quite keen to encourage "proper" IT in our curriculum, not just lessons in how to use Microsoft Publisher and Facebook Studies? IF nothing else, I reckon my kid'll get a blast out of seeing a tiny board functioning as a real computer. I still have fond memories of the blinking light on my Dad's ELF II...
"Huge respect for what??"
Huge respect for working incredibly hard and dedicating themselves to a noble and worthy cause, trying to spark an interest and educate younger generations in developing technology. Actually getting off their backsides and doing something to try and continue this countries proud tradition of engineering and looking to secure that reputation in future years to come.
As opposed to you, a nobody, a nothing, who's only contribution is to make snarky, ignorant comments off the back of other peoples best efforts.
For actually creating something - a real something that really ships real things to real users.
Not just a social media site to share links to other social media sites. - That's worth an awesome in itself
Then this is going to enable lots of people to do things with computers that they didn't think of. Yes most of them are going to el'reg readers who already have a dozen PCs making XBMC players - but this just means more units being built to go to schools and kids.
Any government with an ounce (25gm) of foresight would have lent them $20M to make an initial run of a million - for less than it's cost them to print the brochures about the next "key stage achievement target ratio of excellence in ITC teaching".
Surprised to see Farnell still borked over 12hrs later. I was going to register for the next batch, but I guess not. I hope those that have bagged one are active in the community and build some great projects so when I eventually get mine, i'm not limited by my own imagination. Plus 10,000+ units in, hopefully any bugs and manufacturing kinks will be worked out.
Oh, and any bookies running odds on how many will end up on ebay?