Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] USRP2 Is Now Available

[Matt Ettus]

John Ackermann N8UR wrote:
> Are there any significant hardware differences between the beta and 
> production units?  If so, can the betas be reworked to production status?


Most of the small list of changes were in layout and are not user 
visible.  The only change of note is that two of the clocks swapped pins 
on the clock generator, but this is all handled in the standard firmware.

The reasons for the longer than expected beta period:

- Software -- We wanted to make sure all the daughterboards were 
properly supported, and there were some ethernet throughput issues in 
the host drivers that we wanted to address.  Everything works now.

- Hardware -- We got uncomfortably low yields on the first 2 batches of 
boards and needed to figure out the cause.  It turned out that the 
problems were with a couple of our vendors, but it took a long time to 
figure out the root cause.  We have corrected it, and neither of those 
vendors will ever be used again.  Note that this did NOT affect any 
boards shipped to customers, which were all very thoroughly tested.

- Long lead times for parts -- Once we were ready to go ahead and build 
more boards, some parts we had a "hold" on had been mistakenly released 
to a different customer, and we had to wait 10 weeks for replacements.

Matt