[LEDE-DEV] looking for ar7 testers

[David Lang]

On Sun, 19 Jun 2016, Daniel Curran-Dickinson wrote:

> On Wed, 2016-06-15 at 19:52 -0700, David Lang wrote:
>> Is there a list of hardware that is needed? (or do you want donations of money
>> for the project to buy hardware)?
>
> TBH I'm not sure how useful random hardware donations are.  For example
> getting a router which is more than just updating image generation
> specifics (and assuming there is even enough information available via
> flash browsing etc to do that, which isn't always the case), there is
> the problem most chips manufacturers don't talk to random developer X,
> and only want to give data sheets and programming information to people
> who sign an NDA and have a support contract, presumably with contracts
> to by X units from ODM who is actually the one making the information
> available, or enabling the request).
>
> Dealing with unsupported hardware is not something developers can often
> do something about simply by having random device X.  If it's just image
> generation usually it can be figured out, but beyond that it normally
> requires some level of information that isn't easy to discover simply by
> having a device.

Well, I'll point out that the thread I'm replying to started off with "I no 
longer have the hardware to test this"

I agree that random, unsolicited donations are likely to be less useful, but 
donations of hardware to solve the "I can't test this" or add to a test farm are 
directly useful.

And getting a new piece of equipment can get a developer interested enough to go 
after the NDAs needed to make it work well.

In some cases the vendors involved are known to 'not play well with others' and 
so donations of their hardware will do no good.

But those of us out in the wild can't tell the difference between the different 
categories.

That's why I asked for a list of what would be useful to donate :-)

David Lang