Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: mingle on September 25, 2007, 11:04:31 AM
-
There's a huge amount of interest in pre-assembled Minimigs, so I wonder why it seems to be so hard to get hold of one?
For those (like me!) who have neither the time, nor the surface-mount soldering skills required, the only way we'll ever be able to get one of these darned machines is when they're sold "ready to go"!
If a shiny new PCB is only 9 quid, surely a fully assembled board couldn't cost more than 50 quid?
This is a prime opportunity for someone to make a buck and also to help out the Amiga community by getting a 'new' machine out there for people to buy!
So C'MONNNNNN someone! (please :-D)
-
SMD soldering is not all that easy, and let's estimate you need 3 (probably 4 or 5) hours for one board, take the material costs into the equation, as well as having to give a guarantee for the minimig being working for a amount of time. And probably a hundred of other issues as well.
Considering all of that your 50 bucks is no-go.
I can't see many people wanting to go through the hassle of smd soldering with a hourly wage of $3.50.
Why not order the pcb plus all of the required parts, and ask someone professional in your local area to do the job for you. Thats the most realistic approach i currently see for people like you (and me) getting a decently working minimig.
-
Yeah. With Xennep's cancellation on the pre-assembled boards (no hard feelings), I'm also interested.
-
You seem to have mistaken 'quids' for 'bucks'. £50 is $100.
However the component costs have to be taken into consideration - the FPGA, the 68k, the RAM, the ports, the resistors and capacitors, ...
The boards could be assembled in China however in proper ovens - and if you're doing that, then why not switch to a PGA FPGA? However I'm willing to wait for such a "version 2", and just want a version 1.1, fully assembled, for around £75. After that it is just time to get the woodworking skills developed and make a nice pretty case.
And the system would make a damn neat FPGA programming platform, besides being a MiniMig. Who's going to write the first demo in Verilog + 68k?
-
There are a few blocks to getting a commercial production run of minimigs.
1. Capital. Up front costs
2. Legal: (A inc)
3. Legal: World EMC and Saftey testing (FCC etc) (very costly)
4. Unknown demand.
You would probably need to make and sell at least 1000 to make it worth while.
-
I guess what it needs is someone (an Amiga-oriented company?) to (excuse the buzzwords!) pick it up and run with it.
Surely the manufacturing costs in China would be low enough to make a profit? There are places that specialise in smaller production runs. Anyway, I'm sure that they could sell a thousand - how many of the C64DTVs are out there?
I don't fancy getting someone local to do the donkey-work - can you imagine the hassles of fault-finding and rework?!?
I'm sure they'd be quite a few people who would be willing to put up deposits to get the ball rolling...
I'm quite capable of fitting the assembled PCB into a case and adding connector and other bits and pieces, but unless I can get one of these I'm going to have to stick to WinUAE for my Amiga-thrills!
Cheers,
Mike.
-
Would anyone care to guess how many minimigs you could sell in 3months without paying for any advertising? Assume US$120
-
2. Legal: (A inc)
Let's review history please.
1. Back in the day PC clones had a phoenix bios to avoid paying IBM royalties for their IVM PC bios ang guess what, there was never a demand from big blue against those doing clones even though they took the market from them. The bios shipped with the minimig is the PIC controller program released under the GPL.
2. When apple clones arrived, companies were lazy and never created an MacOS compatible bios, the result? Steve Jobs returned to apple and prohibited these companies from bundling the bios or their operative system with the machines. Guess what, the miniming will not be bundled neither with the bios nor the operative system property of A inc.
IMO it would be the last nail on this legal issue if someone writes some verylog code so the miniming runs another 68k era computer, the Atari ST for example, so the minimig would be a generic 16 bit emulation solution.
-
little wrote:
2. Legal: (A inc)
Let's review history please.
1. Back in the day PC clones had a phoenix bios to avoid paying IBM royalties for their IVM PC bios ang guess what, there was never a demand from big blue against those doing clones even though they took the market from them. The bios shipped with the minimig is the PIC controller program released under the GPL.
2. When apple clones arrived, companies were lazy and never created an MacOS compatible bios, the result? Steve Jobs returned to apple and prohibited these companies from bundling the bios or their operative system with the machines. Guess what, the miniming will not be bundled neither with the bios nor the operative system property of A inc.
IMO it would be the last nail on this legal issue if someone writes some verylog code so the miniming runs another 68k era computer, the Atari ST for example, so the minimig would be a generic 16 bit emulation solution.
Um.. wrong on both points.
1) The "BIOS" in the Amiga is the AmigaOS itself! The PIC loader is there to load this BIOS as well as the FPGA programming.
2) Incorrect here as well. Mac's used (until they switched to Intel) OpenFirmware, same thing the Pegasos used. OF, mind you, is an industry standard, IEEE-1275. Anyone can impliment it. Apple locked out the clones by killing access with custom chips, also by refusing to sell Mac OS seperately. Some of the clone makers held on, but with no OS, they too fell.
-
@Downix
Ever heard the terms "new world Mac" and "old world Mac" ? ;-)
-
skurk wrote:
Yeah. With Xennep's cancellation on the pre-assembled boards (no hard feelings), I'm also interested.
what??? when did this happen? does that mean the original 10 or so that were going to be developed has been cancelled?
-
The "BIOS" in the Amiga is the AmigaOS itself!
Are you serious? The amigaOS is not and has never been the BIOS, the kickstart is. Before you argue that the kickstart is the same as the amiga operative system remember that you can since the old days you also load unix/linux into the amiga. Also as I have stated before, it is a matter of time befor somebody develops verilog code that you can load into the minimig to run another machine (a c64? an atari st? a classic macintosh? only time will tell) so I stand by my words, the PIC code is the bios of this machine, everything on top of it won't run unless the PIC code is run first.
2) Incorrect here as well. Mac's used (until they switched to Intel) OpenFirmware
Next time please double check you facts. The whole mac clones drama was before the days of openfirmware, before the days of PowerPC and when system 7 was the cool kid on the block. The mac had no custom chips like the amiga, you could use chips with a similar functionality and voila, you had a functional mac clone. Steve Job didn't refused to sell the OS, he locked out the clones from bundling the next version (system 8) locking them into obsolecence, but that trick won't work on a 100% retro system.
So I stand by my words, A inc has no legal grounds against the minimig and with amiga forever there is the posibility of 100% legal clones.
-
The main problem is the initial investment. To do a production run large enough for savings to come in (200) the guy doing it will have to put up several thousand pounds (perhaps £2-3k, perhaps $6000) for at least 2-3 months.
That is a lot of money to find, and risk, on an as yet (v1.1) untried design.
It's going to take:
a) someone for whom £3k is not a large amount of money
b) prepayment ordering where the risk is giving your money over and never seeing it again.
-
little wrote:
So I stand by my words, A inc has no legal grounds against the minimig and with amiga forever there is the posibility of 100% legal clones.
Not true. Whoever owns the copyright for the book "Amiga Hardware Reference Manual Third Edition 1991" (http://www.amazon.ca/Amiga-Hardware-Reference-Manual-Commodore-Amiga/dp/0201567768) could sue for infringement of copyright. Minimig is effectively an unofficial translation of this book from English to Verilog.
You could of course sell the boards unprogrammed.
-
I for one plan on ordering one and assembling it myself. I dont have a lot of time and it'll take a while due to that, but I am a very experienced solderer on both through hole and surface mount, but it is still a tedious task and time consuming. I think it will be a fun project but to think someone could make money doing it, time and cost would not be worth it unlee\ss they sold them for a high cost
-
I have a better idea, whoever owns the copyright to this book (http://www.amazon.ca/Beginners-Guide-C-Ivor-Horton/dp/187441615X/ref=sr_1_2/701-0153256-9166752?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190735634&sr=1-2) can sue ALL C programmers for "infringement of copyright since coding C is effectively an unofficial translation of this book from English to a said computer language".
-
@little
The Mac-clones came during the early PPC-days, the only 68k-clones I'm aware of would be things like Emplant or Shapeshifter :-o
What has the abilty to run another OS has to do with the question wether Kickstart is an OS or an BIOS ??
You know, one could start linux from Workbench (thats how I did it when I tried 68k-linux for the only time).
Kickstart is the AmigaOS, just not all of it.
Exec, Intuition,GFX and DOS are in ROM, and even started before anything is loaded from disk (hint: the basic shell/cli that appears after booting an empty disk is NOT part of the boot-block).
Oh, and that book was written years after Kernie&Ritchie developed and documented C, so what every you were trying to argue here, you failed
:-D
-
The Mac-clones came during the early PPC-days, the only 68k-clones I'm aware of would be things like Emplant or Shapeshifter
No doubt this macintosh clones (http://lowendmac.com/clones/index.shtml) are a figment of my imagination :-o Some mac clones no doubt could be upgraded to PowerPC just like the amiga, but that does not mean the mac clones made their appearence at the time the PPC macs made their debut.
What has the abilty to run another OS has to do with the question wether Kickstart is an OS or an BIOS ??
You do not need Windows (or other operative system) to run linux, beos, aros, etc. only the bios of the machine.
You know, one could start linux from Workbench (thats how I did it when I tried 68k-linux for the only time).
Nowadays you may use tools like vmware, qemu, etc. to run another one operative system inside another, but that does not change the fact that operative systems are created to run atop of one bios (be it phoenix, open firmware, efi, linux bios, etc.)
Exec, Intuition,GFX and DOS are in ROM, and even started before anything is loaded from disk
You may place parts of an operative system within the bios, heck linuxbios includes the whole kernel, kickstart 3 has fonts for crying out loud. But that does not change the fact that the bios is the "basical input output system".
Oh, and that book was written years after Kernie&Ritchie developed and documented C
Are you trying to imply that the "Amiga Hardware Reference Manual Third Edition 1991" was written before the amiga made it's debut in 1985? holy time continium distortions batman :-o
or that Kernie&Ritchie should sue all C programmers :-?
-
amigakid wrote:
... I am a very experienced solderer on both through hole and surface mount, ...
What is your technique for surface mount soldering? One pin at a time or do you have an oven? One time a tool slipped and I broke some SMT pins on my then-$1000 Warp Engine accelerator. A technician friend at work fixed it for me using a video microscope and some type of solder paste that melted and adhered to the pins when blasted with a heat gun. None of that equipment is usually found at home.
There used to be a conductive epoxy that was used in place of solder by some hobbyists, but the danger of shorting pins would be high.
-
Hmm, if you can find 10 people willing to put up $1000 / £500, then I think you will be able to make an order for 100 MiniMigs, fully assembled with parts, with a per-board cost of around $100.
If each board after that was sold for $150, including delivery and packaging and an SD card with a default environment (BTTR games, etc), then you could see a 20-30% return on the investment - which is fair enough for the people risking the money.
I don't see a single person risking $10k of their money. I also think that selling 100 MiniMigs isn't an impossible task. Turn it into a niche demo machine (writing demos in verilog + 68k) and you could shift a thousand into the scene, but that's a bigger risk.
Legally the MiniMig should be fine, hardware wise (even with the Amiga custom chip reimplementation), but getting AROS for MiniMig is quite important in my opinion for those people who want to use it as a computer. AInc will never license AmigaOS for MiniMig, and will most likely prevent Cloanto from offering it as well.
-
So there were (inofficial) 68k-Mac-clones ... so what ? Apple wasn't "killing" them, it was the PPC-cloes (UMAX for example) they killed back then.
Sure you don't need Windows to run Linux, but what has that to do with the price of the fish ?? Kickstart is AmigaOS, all you need to start basic apps (as long as they don't need libs found on the WB disks), and thats what defines an OS.
Try starting an MS-DOS-EXE directly from BIOS and you'll see the difference.
To put is simple, there is NO BIOS in Amigas, just as there was no BIOS in the C64 (here it was the BASIC-interpreter acting as OS/bootloader), that does offcourse not mean that one can't use Kickstart as some sort of BIOS.
And your book-example was just even more insane then the one about the hardware-reference.
-
Instead of debating BIOS' and OS' etc... What do we need to get this up and going?
Well from what I can see is:
1. We need a firm price from a manufacturer (someone in another thread has asked a place in China and is awaiting costs) for say 200-300 instead of people guessing costs.
2. Once cost is established check for demand. A quick post on the front page of Amiga.org should get this done.
3. After a month of checking for interest - if there is enough people then I would suggest a pay first system. This would have to be hosted by someone trusted by the community and using a safe payment system (paypal?). Maybe an Amiga website owner could be asked to look after the money? Then when the target is met the order is placed. If the target is not met then people get refunds (minus the paypal fees! :madashell: )
What do people think of this idea? Have I missed any area that may cause concern? I would guess the items would be sold with no warranty - like buying from a car boot - or ebay.
-
I think that whoever has the means to do this feat will think about this and decide whatever means he dims more adequate to acomplish it. We can give our opinion, make suggestions, but at the end of the day it is his/their money on the line.
One thing I can add, I think that whoever is the first to deliver a "finished product" and by that I mean a fully populated minimig, a case, a 5v power supply, a joystick and a MMC card with either a kickstart or AROS kickstart replacement and some games will have the oportunity to sell them beyond the community, articles at techie and game sites will make aware former amiga users of the chance to re-experience the amiga without the hassle of buying old hardware that can no longer work with modern equipment or the hassle of configuring emulator and obtaining roms for it. A "plug and play" package will no doubt give new life to the community and who know, with the extra sales and extra disk storage we might see some new games make its way specially if we get ECS/AGA in the months to come.
It would be nice if before that there could be a minimig 1.2 design with DDR ram (16mb I think is the minimum sized chip one can get) and maybe a RTC.
-
Guys,
I've been through all the scenarios described in this thread. At this point the only thing hold me back is the lack of a BOM. I mean a complete Bill of Materials with part listing right down to capacitors and resistors listed.
No one will give us accurate costs without that.
If anyone has a list send it to me, I will forward to factory and we can move forward.
The whole reason for me contacting factoires in China is their experience with this kind of product, and speed.
I may just ask the factory to go ahead and spec out the parts as they see fit based on the data on Dennis' site to move things along.
-
TheMagicM wrote:
what??? when did this happen? does that mean the original 10 or so that were going to be developed has been cancelled?
It happened right about here (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=30516). The unpopulated PCB's are still available, though.
Since I solder like a drunken monkey, that leaves me empty handed for now.
-
lol.. thanks for the heads up..
very disappointing to say the least.
(of course I used a slew of obscene words and gestures to show my displeasure of this news item.. I just cleaned it up in that sentence.)
-
Have you tried contacting Dennis directly for the BOM?
-
Get over it folks, learn how to solder. :roll:
-
Belial6 wrote:
Have you tried contacting Dennis directly for the BOM?
Yes, yesterday and I can imagine he's quite busy from reading his posts.
There is a Holiday in China this week so they're all off giving them some time to digest all the data I sent, and us some time to assemble a BOM.
I'm going to have to send them my Cloanto Amiga forever CD so they can get up to speed with Amiga, being they're gonna be the first to actually build anything in years.
:lol:
-
interesting tutorial.
http://www.infidigm.net/articles/solder/
-
(Thin) Quad Flat Package - SO.80mm example :
HOLY CRAP! Talk about chip suicide!
Just flux the pads and the tip, get a fresh solder ball on the tip and rake the pads till you have an even coat on the pads and tack the pins down individually.
-
To borrow from OJ...
IF I DID IT...
or more like when I do it... we're trying to structure this so that there is NO risk.
After cost analasys we will review. If it makes sen$e to tool, we will ask the factory to roll out a few boards to see for a QC check.
We will take it from there. If the boards don't work, we'll sell them as modern art on ebay...LOL!
Regardless those Amiga.org members that have contacted get first dibs on a production run.
All of this provided the get a complete BOM.
-
koaftder wrote:
Get over it folks, learn how to solder. :roll:
Well, I actually can solder. :-)
Where to get the software and manual about which parts are needed and how to assemble it? :-)
-
little wrote:
Are you trying to imply that the "Amiga Hardware Reference Manual Third Edition 1991" was written before the amiga made it's debut in 1985?
Nope, the first edition was published in 1986 shortly after the debut. The 1991 is an update for ECS.
When I said earlier "the copyright holders", I was of course trying to explain that the copyright for this book was originally owned by Commodore Amiga, but with all the history that has taken place, the current owners is unknown to me.
little wrote:
whoever owns the copyright to K&R can sue ALL C programmers for "infringement of copyright" since coding C is effectively an unofficial translation of this book from English to a said computer language
You are not comparing the same thing. The K&R C book describes a language and not an object (such as a program) this book describes a bit of patented hardware in English. If K&R were also the authors of the language, I am sure their copyright could have prevented others writing compilers, and probably other books which used explicit C-Syntax, if they had wanted to.
Publications of HRM's are common in the hardware world. They help extend the life of IP protection beyond patents. Whereas any patents registered for the Amiga would have expired by now, the publication of this book has extended protection by perhaps upto 70+ years after 1991.
-
Publications of this type are common in the hardware world. They help extend the life of IP protection beyond patents.
I think it is highly unlikely that after IP has changed from owner to owner that they have remembered to include this book in all the transactions.
Besides, there is something no one has said so far, last time we heard the newest/biggest plans from the owners of A inc. was about a year ago. They have sued Hyperion but seems they are going to finish and sell AmigaDOS 4.0 in a few weeks, which seems to imply that either A inc. has lost interest on the amiga (unless they can do a quick buck) or they simply cannot pay the lawyers bills, rendering the whole demand DOA.
-
IF the copyright owners know they are owners, and IF they know about MiniMig (I know that is a lot of IF's) as soon as someone started to make any serious money they would come out of the woodwork for their slice.
Something that anyone thinking of investing lots of money into this area should consider.
Making and selling unprogrammed boards, perhaps as "general purpose FPGA boards" should be fine.
-
There won't be any large scale minimig production that I can see. It's going to be us geeks rolling our own and selling off some extras to our friends who can't solder. :-)
-
as soon as someone started to make any serious money they would come out of the woodwork for their slice.
... and they could be counter sued for racketeering, because is the only reason for a demand, extort money, there is no piece of hardware in the minimig that would holds water in IP demand in a court of law.
-
alexh wrote:
IF the copyright owners know they are owners, and IF they know about MiniMig (I know that is a lot of IF's) as soon as someone started to make any serious money they would come out of the woodwork for their slice.
Damn straight... the kicker is, it's not about who's right. It's about who has the most money to dump into legal proceedings.
Making and selling unprogrammed boards, perhaps as "general purpose FPGA boards" should be fine.
How would the end user go about programming or loading the emulated Amiga bits into the FPGA?
-
Hi,
Not posted here for a very long time due to family problems.
Anyway dusted off my A1200, fitted a Chinnon(sp?) floppy, got the PCMCIA flash working, installed WB3.1 and have WHDload working fine. Next comes the CF to IDE HD :)
Then I spotted the Minimig threads popping up on here. I'm an electronics engineer and have done a lot of prototyping especially with SMT. I'm inclined to get one of the boards and see how long it takes to do. It would take a long time and the hardest part would be the gate array. It's not impossible though by any means.
How are you attempting to programme the FPGA?
-
Eclipse wrote:
Hi,
Not posted here for a very long time due to family problems.
Anyway dusted off my A1200, fitted a Chinnon(sp?) floppy, got the PCMCIA flash working, installed WB3.1 and have WHDload working fine. Next comes the CF to IDE HD :)
Then I spotted the Minimig threads popping up on here. I'm an electronics engineer and have done a lot of prototyping especially with SMT. I'm inclined to get one of the boards and see how long it takes to do. It would take a long time and the hardest part would be the gate array. It's not impossible though by any means.
How are you attempting to programme the FPGA?
Spartan 3 FPGA is SRAM based.
On power up, the PIC microcontroller reads a file with the FPGA configuration data from a MMC Flash memory card in order to serially the load FPGA. Then, the PIC microcontroller loads the kickstart image into the kickstart ram area and acts as an Amiga floppy emulator.
:-)
-
Assembly time should be about an hour per board.
-
jkonstan wrote:
Spartan 3 FPGA is SRAM based.
On power up, the PIC microcontroller reads a file with the FPGA configuration data from a MMC Flash memory card in order to serially the load FPGA. Then, the PIC microcontroller loads the kickstart image into the kickstart ram area and acts as an Amiga floppy emulator.
:-)
I see, PIC's are dead easy as well.
-
there is one guy I know that has the connections to "GIT R DUN" but I doubt he'd be interested and I'm sure some folks wouldnt want to send $ in his direction.. (Bill Buck)
-
I'm sure some folks wouldnt want to send $ in his direction.. (Bill Buck)
From Genesi? Please correct me if I am wrong, but they have already won a legal demand vs. A inc. so I think they fit the bill to sell a "Finished product". AFAIK people dislike genesi because EFIKA does not run AmigaOS (or AROS or MorphOS or any amiga flavored OS). But minimig DOES run amigaOS up to 3.1, what is there to dislike?
-
I dont dislike Bill at all, others do. if you're asking me "what is there to dislike" then you must be a newbie to the Amiga scene and whats gone on.
legal demand or not, Bill can have these put together without any sort of repercussions from Amiga Incompetent.
It was just a idea.
-
then you must be a newbie to the Amiga scene and whats gone on.
If by newbie you mean "skipped almost a decade of melodrama" you are bloody right. I suffered the dying of the amiga like everybody, voraciously reading every new amigaworld issue hoping news of change for the best. After the bankruptcy I heard every few years news of "The new Amiga" but never saw it materealize. Then I hear about the minimig and for the first time in YEARS it is for real, it might not be a microsoft killer, but has a lot of potential. I really could not care less about all the drama gone in years past, if this bill guy can deliver a finished product all the thousands of people that left the amiga when commodore died will have a good reason to return, if only to take a nice trip down memory lane.
-
wtf?!
-
little wrote:
... and they could be counter sued for racketeering
Yeah, right. Not.
little wrote:
because is the only reason for a demand, extort money,
One way to look at it, but it happens all the time. It's pretty rife in the US at the moment.
little wrote:
there is no piece of hardware in the minimig that would holds water in IP demand in a court of law.
As a hardware engineer, a patent holder, and some experience at being an evil SOB, I say you are wrong.
Unfortunately some of Dennis' posts to this forum backup such a claim :-(
Dennis wrote:
Minimig is based 90% on the documentation provided by the Hardware Reference Manual
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=31078
-
Unfortunately some of Dennis' posts to this forum backup such a claim
Is that all? Man, you had me worried there for a second. SCO had better chances with imaginary patents than A inc has arguing they have a book copyright, since they will have to show proof to the judge and the instant they come out empty handed it will be over, as simple as that.
-
little wrote:
Unfortunately some of Dennis' posts to this forum backup such a claim
Is that all? Man, you had me worried there for a second. SCO had better chances with imaginary patents than A inc has arguing they have a book copyright, since they will have to show proof to the judge and the instant they come out empty handed it will be over, as simple as that.
You know, knowing who has the rights to the RKM's would be good to know anyways. They are hopelessly dated, being only OS 2 and ECS.
-
@nBit7
2. Legal: (A inc)
What legal issues one FPGA board has? What relevance whatsoever with Amiga Inc?
-
koaftder wrote:
Assembly time should be about an hour per board.
An hour using crude and purely manual tools, like a soldering iron and a magnifying glass? (No hot-air rework equipment, etc)
-
little wrote:
Is that all? Man, you had me worried there for a second.
Heheh.
SCO had better chances with imaginary patents than A inc has arguing they have a book copyright, since they will have to show proof to the judge and the instant they come out empty handed it will be over, as simple as that.
You're making one assumption, that Amiga inc. owns the copyrights to that book. Who's to say it wasnt Tulip or someone else who bought Commodore?
I am sure everything will be fine.
I just thought that anyone considering investing their own personal money making and selling MiniMig's should weigh up this as a small but potential risk.
-
Who's to say (the book copyright) wasnt (kept by) Tulip or someone else who bought Commodore?
Now that would be a BIG relief. Because none of them could care less about it (it would a piece of paper no one knows it is there) or if they have been following the amiga scene up to now they must be amiga fans that would not stop the minimig production.
-
mingle wrote:
There's a huge amount of interest in pre-assembled Minimigs, so I wonder why it seems to be so hard to get hold of one?
)
Need an accurate real world BOM Bill of Materials, I've spent a lot of time this week going back and forth between factories and you cant get from point a to point b without it. You can probably let the factory source a working version from the schematics but that will take time and development costs with risk that they may not be able to source all the parts.
Without a BOM you can print circuit boards till you're blue in the face, without , the IC's to populate it, the circuit board is a fancy piece of digital artwork.
You can hang it on a wall as a testament to the tenacity of the Amiga fantatical spirit.
But if you want the working model we all crave, need the BOM.
:-D
-
another SMD tutorial...
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/present.php?p=SMD-HowTo-1
-
i can solder that stuff..i only need to buy a good iron for myself