Mass SD Production

[Jim JKla]

There must be a way to mass pre install SD Cards.

What is the hardware available to do this and who is in a position to donate it's use?

I am reasoning there is going to come a time when the wave of model "A" machines start going out to schools and it would be nice if these went out with a pre installed SD Card with say a stable wheezy image on board (Note Wheezy was a random choice as an example).

I have seen SD Cards with pre installed software In fact I wiped a Bluebox pre installed 1Gig card to load my R Razor install I just cant see someone or even a group sitting with computers manually loading these pre instalations.

Also can you imagine the bandwith that would be soaked up if thousands of school kids all go on line to get their Wheezy image, yes I know torrent could help absorb that impact, but the Music and Cinema industries are trying their best to kill off torrrent. They are not going to look kindly on the RaspberryPi community activly encouraging its use.

The bandwith of a truck load of floppy disks was huge imagine the bandwith when the same truck is full of SD cards.

[RaTTuS]

there is nothing wrong with torrents
torrents do not make things illegal

[Jim JKla]

You know that and I know that but the you try telling the Music and Cinema industry.

[MrBunsy]

Then this could be a very good opportunity to educate people! Whole point of the Pi

[bill.f]

You are assuming quite a few things here.

1, the pi will be supplied with a SD card.
2, kids in schools aren't clever enough to download the image once and burn it to multiple cards.
3, every person will download the image at once.

just wondering how much of an issue this would be in reality ?

[mikerr]

For small / mediium scale - there are various sd card duplicators available,

e.g.This one will do 31 SD cards at once:


http://www.kingsaudio.co.uk/prod/55115/ ... duplicator

[Jim JKla]

You are assuming quite a few things here.

1, the pi will be supplied with a SD card.
2, kids in schools aren't clever enough to download the image once and burn it to multiple cards.
3, every person will download the image at once.

just wondering how much of an issue this would be in reality ?

1 Not assuming just suggesting it COULD be a good idea
2 Even kids downloading it once per class would still make for a download hit plus home downloads if we get a (I want one at) home market.
3 Still lots of traffic for the uploader even if not concurrent.

And this is all just speculation, debate and pondering options.

[Jim Manley]

I would turn the local duplication process into a demonstration of geometric expansion for students. One person would download the image file and install it on two SD cards. Those cards would then be given to two other people who each make two card installations that would be given to four other people, and so on and so forth. The kids should guess how many generations it would take for everyone in their school, neighborhood, municipality, the entire country, the whole continent, and every person on the planet to receive their own SD card installation. They would be amazed at how few it would actually take (33 generations for the entire world's population), and then they could try it with each person installing on 10 cards to see how much faster they could be replicated (10 generations for everyone).

[Jim JKla]

Then the SD Cards take over the world. HaHaHaHaHaHa!!!!!!

Isn't that the theory for the giant heads and no trees on Easter island?

[Burngate]

Actually, since the first guy still has the download he can keep making copies while his mates copy his copies and keep doing that ...the rabbit problem which is mathematically slightly more complicated but takes over the world a bit quicker.

And you could allow for errors in the copying, and see if evolution really works

[Jim JKla]

Then the MUTATED SD Cards take over the world. HaHaHaHaHaHa!!!!!!