What happened to the Beta Boards?

So, the beta boards were sold off to the highest bidder, so where is the buyers videos of the R-Pi in action? I doubt they bought them to keep in a drawer somewhere..... Are they being used to test OS's for the R-Pi? Maybe finally end that debate on whether the R-Pi can be used for NAS? Or for a website? or for a streaming radio station?

Its like those 10 boards never existed, not a single buyer has put a video on youtube showing off their beta board in action.

[jamesh]

I think at least one person has put some video on YouTube. One went to a museum. The others? Who knows.

[Lynbarn]

dh04000 said:

... not a single buyer has put a video on youtube showing off their beta board in action.

I don't think that was a condition of the sale! As private buyers, and generous supportes of the Foundation, I'd say they are entitled to do (or not do) whatever they like with them

Plus keep in mind that there were 100 beta boards... Serial #'s 1-10 were sold, but there's 990 (or so) others out in the wild that were seeded to various groups to do development work on and such so we'd have an OS or two to run when the first production boards are released....

mkopack said:

Plus keep in mind that there were 100 beta boards... Serial #'s 1-10 were sold, but there's 990 (or so) others out in the wild that were seeded to various groups to do development work on and such so we'd have an OS or two to run when the first production boards are released....

You mean 90 others among developers and VIPs.

It remains to be seen what will actually be available as OS. Sure any ARMv5 Linux will work, but if an ARMv6 will be around...?

It makes a difference as v6 has hardware floating point in the CPU and v5 only software emulation. Same difference as SX vs. DX for i386/i486 in those days.

It would be a bit ironic if no v6 OS will be available as the R-Pi project is all about software development and maximizing performance by brain power, not hardware power.

Well i think some must have gone to case manufactures to get a head start, small price to pay if your the first out there with cases ready for shipping by the tens of thousands.

Mezo.

Wow, 100 boards? The sitution is worse than I thought.

Really, I know people are not required to produce videos of their boards, but with all the excitement and energy behind this project, it feels like a waste to seed the boards to people if they are just hoarding them instead of supporting the project with exhibitions of their work.

"There's a disturbance in the force, like as if 100 beta boards screamed out at once and were lost to time forever"  (to sit next to some nerds anime figurines….)

EDIT: I forgot about the xmbc people, they must have a board, and the fedora to r-pi port people. I'm glad they got a board, more power to them!

Just because people aren"t posting videos to youtube and wasting time tweeting doesn"t mean they aren"t doing useful and valid work. I"m hoping at least some of the betas went to educators and those developing educational software.

Obviously you need 90 boards in order to bribe the right government officails etc... All part of the business right?

http://www.reddit.com/r/raspbe.....board_ama/

for one of the 10

others are being used to make things work with a bit of luck

[jamesh]

There were not 100 beta boards, IIRC. There were more than 10 though, and most are being used internally at Foundation/Broadcom for development or for demos. The alpha boards are still out with distro people etc, or again, being used for demonstration.

JamesH said:

There were not 100 beta boards, IIRC. There were more than 10 though, and most are being used internally at Foundation/Broadcom for development or for demos. The alpha boards are still out with distro people etc, or again, being used for demonstration.

There should be 100: http://www.raspberrypi.org/for.....rds/page-2

[dom]

There were 25 beta boards.

I also thought there was 100 beta boards and looked back through the blog on the front page. Liz's posting on the 1st Dec 'We have PCBs' says "We’ve made 100 of these betas"

I'm guessing you decided to only assemble 25. Mystery solved!

arm2 said:

I also thought there was 100 beta boards and looked back through the blog on the front page. Liz's posting on the 1st Dec 'We have PCBs' says "We’ve made 100 of these betas"

I'm guessing you decided to only assemble 25. Mystery solved!

Probably the hardware bug is the cause. Having to sit with a microscope and fix 100 boards can't be fun, so Pete and Eben got bored after 25?

[Gert van Loo]

She meant "We made 100 of these beta PCB boards". There where ever about 20-25-ish assembled and modded.

Mod deleted message. Didn't like the tone and the way it was heading.

Mod deleted message - didn't like the 'cleaned up version' either.

[jamesh]

FYI, I have also edited out the offending post which instigated the previous two messages.

I have also deleted smart arse comments without reference or reason. Play nice.

I would like to apologize to the raspberry pi community. I lost my temper, sorry about that.

On a more positive note, I'm excited for the release of the R-pi. I'm sure a community as creative as this will do amazing things!

So were the beta's considered part of the 10,000 production boards or were they a completely separate PCB order than the 10,000

just wondering

What is the future of the 75 to 80 that were not modded.(rubbish bin)

of the modded 10 went to auction

15 went elsewhere

Vindicator said:

What is the future of the 75 to 80 that were not modded.(rubbish bin)

It would be nice to think someone is sitting at Foundation HQ wearing plate-mail armour made from production-test R-Pi boards

[Lynbarn]

hippy said:

Vindicator said:

What is the future of the 75 to 80 that were not modded.(rubbish bin)

It would be nice to think someone is sitting at Foundation HQ wearing plate-mail armour made from production-test R-Pi boards

or ... perhaps they're using some as coasters for their coffee cups...

[Lynbarn]

Vindicator said:

So were the beta's considered part of the 10,000 production boards or were they a completely separate PCB order than the 10,000?

The answer is in the question really - the beta boards (as in "beta-testing") are, by definition, pre-production, so no, they were not part of the first 10,000 production boards.