Hello again everyone, Another update on the upcoming FreeCalypso baby:
* The reballing of the flash+pSRAM BGA ICs got done sooner than expected, and I have received the reballed parts earlier today. We now have ALL of the parts needed for the board assembly, and we are now waiting for the PCBs. * On the PCB front, the latest communication I have from pcbcart is the email they sent me on Feb 21, which said that the PCBs are "scheduled" to ship on March 13. If they are going to be shipped from China on the 13th, hopefully I'll get them by March 17-20 or so. * FreeCalypso just received a donation of $700 USD outside of the GoFundMe campaign; this money will cover the expected cost for the assembly of the first 8 boards, thus as soon as the PCBs arrive from China, I will immediately reach out to Technotronix and ask them to start the assembly at their soonest availability. In parallel with the wait for this very overdue baby, I am also making preparations for RF calibration - it's a step which we will absolutely need to perform on all FreeCalypso hardware products (regardless of whether the product is a dumbphone or a modem module or any other variation) in order to not be inferior in comparison to the historical commercial Calypso phone/modem products. The standard test equipment for performing RF calibration on Calypso phones and modems has always been R&S CMU200, and I am in the process of trying to buy one - using my own personal funds this time, not from the FCDEV3B crowdfunding. I grabbed a unit on ebay for $895 USD, but then discovered that contrary to usual ebay customs, this seller was not set up to accept Paypal. It appears that he wanted payment in some other convoluted way, but I couldn't figure it out, so I just sent him a paper check by snail mail instead. The check went out with the snails on Monday, March 6; if I don't hear from the seller in another few days, I'll need to bug him to see if he received my check. So this is where things stand currently. Hasta la Victoria, Siempre, Mychaela aka The Mother _______________________________________________ Community mailing list [email protected] https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community
