> OK. So what's the difference between the silver ones and the purple ones?

No idea (we only made colour active matrix LCDs) - although I guess it 
might have something to do with the silver ones being reflective and the 
purple ones being transmissive (having a backlight)?

> [Rant] I remember when Maplin used to sell electronics. Now they're just
> a white-box shifting company. You used to be able to go in and just
> *buy* a string of 30 resistors or something. Now they're all like "oh,
> you want 10? Ooo, we'll have to order those in specially. We only have 4
> in stock." WTF?

- Plan in advance and buy from ebay
- Buy one of those 1000 piece packs of resistors of various values for a 
few pounds
- Get a job somewhere that has a ready supply of electronic components :-)

> Yeah, I thought that might be the case.

Interestingly even if a person goes through all the strictest clean room 
processes and clothing requirements the yield still drops noticeably 
when they go into the production area (and for some time after they have 
left). For this reason usually nobody is allowed in there unless for a 
very good reason.

> Interesting. I thought all the extra faff of assembling it was the
> expensive part.

Even a whole minute of additional manual assembly time (which is a lot) 
is surely cheaper than Atmel slapping a $0.50 premium on their latest 
design. IIRC a few years ago they were still charging around $5-$10 (at 
volume quantities) for the controller ICs, it's probably cheaper now 
with patents expiring, much higher volumes and more competition etc.

> Interesting. And here I was thinking the metal is expensive. ;-)

It is compared to plastic :-)

> 6. I have no idea WTF "BB+XCR" is.

BB is baseband (the phone/radio bit that nobody actually uses anymore), 
no idea what XCR is.

> 7. I enjoy that "Other" is nearly as expensive as the CPU.

That probably means a whole host of things like the PCB itself, various 
connectors, screws, cables etc.

Post a reply to this message