Boards of Canada
February 17, 2010
Posted by: atomicthumbs
MWeston’s Photobucket account has revealed a new picture: the Rev 5a Pandora board. This includes some new solder pads (serial pads near the EXT port, and I2C pads near the wireless chip), and various other thingies.
Update: Never content to leave a question unanswered, pandoratoday.de blogger Screeny dropped Michael Weston a line to ask what this 5th board revision is all about. The reply:
Hi,
There is not much to say. We made 105 rev4 boards. I tweaked a couple things and added a lot more test points, then called it rev5.
Rev5 is the paying customer’s board, rev4 [was] for testing and for devs to work with.
Michael
In other words, the thousand(s) we know to be in production already are the same revision that we see here.
So…where did this come from? I thought the boards were done and ready for assembly in the cases we’re waiting on.
The board is dated 09/09
I was wondering about this myself, tnx for pointiing that out. This must be one of the final boards waiting for it’s case in texas then ;D
That’d be great. And seeing as the board is dated 09/09, doesn’t that put it right around the time they said the boards were finalized? I guess maybe i’m just being paranoid of any further delays, seeing as we’re in the home stretch
Please tell me that this revision of the board is the one that passed the CE testing. or is it ok to make minor updates without re-testing?
either way it should have no bearing on the CE results.
What is the meaning of this image? I’m not clear on it’s implication to the current 1st batch assembly.
it is an awesome electro band
how the hell is boards of canada electro
It is electronic music. I love it.
Yeah but Electro usually refers to a more dance oriented type of music.
I’d categorise BOC as Retro-Electronica.
According to AMG they are classed as ‘Intelligent Dance Music’.
Whatever the genre – BOC really do make incredible music! If you like them, I suggest checking out Lone as well…
It means that the 1st batch are going to be no-where near as good as the later runs. So I hope you don’t have a 1st batch!?!
J/K! According to the comments, there’s no difference from a consumer/user point-of-view. They’ll be indistinguishable inside the case and in terms of functionality.
Are the I2C pads addressable from inside the os?
I hope so.
Yes – AFIAK, you’ll be able to get to i2c via the pre-existing linux drivers for this. I think (but I can’t remember) that the i2c pins can also be accessed on the external connector – but the port has to be initialized that way (i.e. those pins are dual function).
I’m looking forward to some hardware hacking!
The I2C isn’t available on the EXT port. MWeston said all the I2C lines were being used for other things. It’s possible that this I2C3 is serving a double purpose and he didn’t want to officially put it on the EXT port, but exposed them for those that really know what they’re doing.
Boards of Canada are good listening
Boards of Canada are auditory awesomeness!
boards of canada are god
boards of canada is canada
Sometime in the future, you may have the opportunity to serve as a juror in a censorship case, or a so-called obscenity case. It would be wise to remember that the same people who would stop you from listening to Boards of Canada may be back next year to complain about a book, or even an open source handheld games console.
“Do not touch when live” is a nice touch.
Also: LED 7/8 pads for high power LEDs via mosfets?
So can you touch it when you’re dead then?
Since they’re labeled with “Q”…BJTs?
BoC is so overrated and boring.
this
wrong
drink less caffeine
DO MORE METH
Wow I definitely read that as math
Sweet. Not sure what this picture is about either but I like the post title…
So is this a final mass production board or are we still tweaking stuff? I thought the rev 4 board was approved and in production no?
It’s great to see what interfaces will be inside there.
Hardware hacking ftw!
just wondering… where are the jumpers to select the cpu speed so i can overclock my p4ŋđørð?
Just in case that’s not sarcasm, overclocking is done in Software with OMAP devices.
Didn’t motherboards stop having clock jumpers in 2003?
smaller devices do have jumpers though… think the PSP did (well something similar, required hardware)
No it didn’t. PSP clock speed can be set in software. Same is true with the Pandora. You want faster, just call the right function and it goes. Up to a point, of course. Eventually the bits start flipping so fast things get missed, and the whole thing crashes and needs to be rebooted. No doubt there will be a lot of “I can overclock mine to XYZ!” bragging threads posted on the forum eventually.
Could somebody add footnotes to this image please? Like “this chip is SoC”, “this is WiFi”, this is blah-blah, etc.
I second that. Intensely curious as to what I’m looking at here.
Can’t say I’ve seen such big images of previous board revisions so excuse me if they’ve been answered, but there is obviously space for us to Mod L2 and R2 extra shoulder buttons, yes?
And KB BL = Keyboard Backlight?
LOL How the hell did I see a B? KP BL, Nevermind.
Changes nothing to it: Is it KeyPad BackLight?
Nevertheless it’s not needed because auf the Display Backlight
I wouldn’t be so confident. With the hinge open past 90 degrees there’s not much light hitting the keypad from that angle – if it’s anything like my EeePC. But the gaming controls should be easy to use even in the dark at least
Keypad backlight it is.
I’ll see if I can arrange a labelled version of the pic.
Wait, what? My sarcasm detector is broken, are you being serious?
Serious! Michael made quite a few allowances for hardware mods, including solder pads for keypad backlighting and a second set of shoulder buttons.
I’m putting a thread up in the forums right now, to see if we can get some labels on the pic.
lol “Do not touch when live”
Sadly, it’s a real warning! Capacitance changes brought about by touching that spot are liable to muck things up – that’s just how high-tech the Pandora is
Luckly, when it’s in a case you can’t get close enough.
Or at least that’s how I remember it, I should have added.
luckily I got my “pants” on ^^
speaking of the optimus maximus keyboard, which we weren’t …
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/22/optimus-maximus-at-long-last-we-bring-one-home-to-test/
They made the moving parts of the keys transparent, and don’t move the actual little displays. So why not just use a single screen, like add a clear keypad thing over an iphone or ipad or DS or any (touch)screen for your typing and animated keys? I think the optimus would look better if it just had one single screen behind all the clear keys – what is the point of having 120 or how many separate screens, one for each key? It would certainly be a lot cheaper to have one big screen I think.
If using a touchscreen as a keybaord, rather than clear raised keys, you could have clear raised key boundaries, so you fingers go into holes / depressions in the clear guide. That might work better and be less expensive. Not sure how it would compare to a normal keyboard, it would surely be better than an on screen keyboard without any shape, guide or tactile feedback.
I thought the backs of the keypad was black, would an LED underneath actually show, or does one have to do something major besides adding the LED to get it to show through as in modding the actual keypad? I guess I need to find and take another look at the keypad to see how that would show through. I would actually think of doing that if it will show through. I’m really surprised they didn’t do that originally. Once you do add the LED, I would assume it’s switchable somehow so you can turn it off?