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Well, a grand total of NINE petitions in one day. Hardly spectacular.
It was and still is barely even a few hours :)
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We do need a desktop computer. Simply building CPU cards won't do, because that's not a full computer that one can sell. Nor do G4 cards work in non already G4 Pegasos II.
Any Pegasos II motherboard can take a G3 or G4 processor card as built by bplan. The system is interchangable. It is however true that G4 cards from the Pegasos II will not work in a Pegasos I, and that Pegasos I G3 cards will run overclocked (dangerously!) in a Pegasos II. Between the major revisions it's not interchangable.
But any
2Bx PegasosPPC board will take any CPU card meant for it.
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How about making again the existing Pegasos II product? If I remember correctly, they simply can't be built ROHS (lead free) compliant, which rules them out of regular market.
It can. We have an RoHS BOM. However it is far from cost effective to do so. The Pegasos II is a 5 year old design, using a 6 year old Northbridge, a southbridge which needs to be purchased in very large quantities, and it requires a rethink of the CPU card to support 7447A and 7448 chips while still supporting the older CPU board revisions (and vice versa). Then both boards (motherboard + CPU) need to be FCC and CE certified (this costs money), RoHS certified (money + responsibility), prototyped, tested, put into a mass production.
This is far from a 20 minute hack job we can do, buy the parts, and ship units. It would again be a $450 motherboard and a $199 CPU card (maybe more!) just like it was 5 years ago, for something which had it's demand wane for obvious reasons.
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Stupid ROHS. It should be applied only to high volume makers, where contamination figures show.
It is basically and simply cheaper and easier to build a whole new motherboard design around modern components than it is to resurrect the Pegasos.