CT-PC89E ARM netbook (was: Yet another [cross] installer)
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 3:59 PM, Benjamin Henrion <bh@udev.org> wrote:
> Do you know where I can buy such device?
cc'd to adam gill, he's the person with direct contact with the factory.
[ the rest of this message is informational, for your benefit, ben,
and also for anyone else who'd like one, too, so you know what to
expect ]
there are about 25 samples available in the configuration that the
factory put together, and adam's asked them yesterday to reserve 20.
the price we got on the last batch of 20, including something for adam
for going to china, picking them up, taking them out their 1.2kg
paper/box packaging and replacing it with 0.2kg bubble-wrap/jiffy-bag,
was $USD 162.80 ($148+10%). adam _will_ need to re-confirm that price
with them. add shipping (approx $30) and then pray for a
customs-related miracle (be ready to sacrifice goat just in case) in
the country of your choice hurrah!
if you're going to help get debian on it, then you definitely qualify
as "engineering", so you'd be perfectly within your rights to
legitimately request that adam put "engineering sample" on the customs
declaration, and thus would not need to pay customs import duty. VAT
and handling charges (ParcelFarce charge £13.50) are a different
matter, however. alain williams is evaluating one of these for
business purposes, so has been able to claim the VAT back.
so, from experience, that's what you can expect, ok?
in the mean-time i'm talking to numerous UK retail stores,
recommending to them that they consider stocking this item. before
that happens, it would be _really_ good to get debian on it, and a
GUI, all working in a similar way to http://mid-linux.org "MOS" which
is bloody good, btw, i'm dead impressed with MOS, so there's quite a
high bar set, there.
> I am ready to help trying to get Debian running on it.
great! well, i kiiinda have it going as a "starter":
http://elinux.org/CT-PC89E_Debian
with links there to the debian/lenny tarball on my web site and to
the factory installer zImage etc. which you have to replace the
datang-epc.tar.gz with your own ready-rolled rootfs _under_ 450mb in
size.
but that's nowhere like an "installer" per se, it's more of a
hacked-together lenny install, which originally came from a qemu
boot-up off of a debian-armel XFCE ISO (without the XFCE, it just
doesn't fit into 450mb).
following up from wookey's laughing at me (nicely, mind :) for
manually replicating hack-style what emdebian (grip) does to get down
to under 450mb anyway, it might be nice to have another go at doing a
rootfs tarball, but with emdebian (grip) and then another with
emdebian (squeeze) too.
l.
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