[MinnowBoard] A cautionary MinnowBoard tale!

[Montala]

Hi,

I hope my experiences will be of interest to anyone who has decided to order
a MinnowBoard Turbot with an 'upgraded' E3845 Quad Core processor.

As I live in the U.K. my preferred distributor is obviously Mouser
Electronics who have an office in England, and who also offer free delivery,
so I placed an order with them for a MBT-4220 which their website implies is
indeed the enhanced model, but with the same form factor, (74 mm x 99 mm) as
the original.

What I actually received however was a larger board (99 x 103) with dual
Ethernet connections, which will not of course fit into my previously
purchased “TackleBox” case, and after further research, I realised that the
board I require is actually the MBT-4210 which, although in production, is
not currently being offered for sale by Mouser Electronics, but only by
Netgate.

Mouser have given me a full refund, and I have now ordered (and received), a
MBT-4210 from Netgate, in America, albeit with a higher shipping cost, and
the addition of import duty and taxes!

In my opinion Mouser have not made it clear on their website that what they
are offering is NOT a direct replacement for the MBT-2210, but a larger
board altogether, with a different specification, and I am sure that I am
not the only customer who has been confused, and who feels misled here.

I also emailed MinnowBoard about my concerns, and received a very nice reply
from Brian Ottaway, who completely agreed with me, saying that “… the Mouser
website was quite unclear differentiating from the “Turbot Quad-Core” and
the “Turbot dual-e Quad-Core”. The boards are in fact quite different.” He
has highlighted this fact to both ADI and Mouser to address, and also said
that “Mouser should soon offer the same “Turbot Quad-Core” device.”,
although I am not sure how soon this will be!

Just as soon as I receive the necessary connectors for my case fan I finally
hope to be able to start putting everything together!




--
View this message in context: http://minnowboard.57273.x6.nabble.com/A-cautionary-MinnowBoard-tale-tp2616.html
Sent from the MinnowBoard mailing list archive at Nabble.com.