It would however be fun to build a Natami main board into my car, and hook it up using blue tooth to my GPS. It would also be fun to build it into a water tight case and use it together with a sonar, and a GPS to use as a mapping tool while out fishing, or even as a fish finder. EXTERNAL LINK 
The reason I mentioned A driver for touch screens was that Scala MM was in fact designed with the intention of being used together with such devices. I don't know if any software drivers for touch screen ever was made. In those days touch screens cost about ten times what they do today, and very few took the Amiga seriously for being anything else than a games machine. Too bad since there where a lot of people using the AMIGA commercially.
I believe that the Natami can be the next AMIGA if promoted correctly, and enough software developers pitch in on making software and drivers for 3'rd party hardware.

Hello Thomas,

pls forgive me my stupid question but I am curious:
How does that work? You first need a company which produces the board? How many are the minimum size? 1,000? 10,000? How much would the production cost then? Eur 100,000 or even more like Eur 500,000?

Sorry, I really have no clue how that works, but I am very sure many others would like to know, too.
Thx in advance!
Greetings
Ingmar

It's when it is on the production line you like to see numbers that are big.
Usually a small company would take order sizes up from 35 if it is just a variation of a single component.
But still having a production run of 120 or above is more economical.

About actual cost it depends on the number of components and such.

10,000 will cost a couple millions to produce. :-D

Gunnar but the price per board would go down. ;)

I have just one question what are you gonna use a 1000 Natami's for?

The problem is, as smaller the batch, as more expensive it will become. Producing 5 x 100 units will make the system noticeable more expensive than producing 500 in one go.

This means if we produce the system in 100 batches than the people will have to pay more for the baords.

The problem is to know if 500 can be sold at all.
Producing 500 units and only able to sell 300 would ruin us.

Therefore a reservation system where people have deposit a small amount to reserve a board makes sense as it helps to find the ideal production run size. Which is in the interest of the users as this means lower price for them too.

Gunnar if you go for the reservation system it maybe would be a good idea to include rough price estimates on batch sizes and include how many reservations there are. this could encourage sales because people would say "wow only 20 more boards until we hit another limit and the boards will be $50 cheaper"

like:
100 units = $1200; 250 units $1100; 500 units $1000
curent numer of reservations: 481 

Me 2.

Anyway, you should check the market first, for example with little questionaire:

1) Are you interest in buying Natami real ?
2) Do you just think about buying Natami ?
3) What is the maximum price you can afford for natami (200USD / 300USD /500USD or price is not important)

etc, so you will get basic information about Natami and interest of people in buying it. It will be helpfull for you to decide how to go to next stage.  (for example, if 80% ppl wants cheap Natami, you will have to use lower quality component, or cheaper parts)

+1

Martin that would be a deal breaker for me, it is already a quality over quantity matter.

If the team goes that way the math changes of the design.
Some critical parts in the circuit cannot be of low grade quality since that would make the system as a whole buggy.(Resistor there is a 10% range to EITHER side 10K can be 9K or 11K, 5% range exist too)

For one component it doesn't matter but for the whole circuit it does.
This means in most if not all cases, for a complex board a redesign.
This is not acceptable since the Design is done.(it has been said before by team members)

if the 20 % wants buy expensive natami, and 80% wants buy cheap. The producing of expensive natami version (with japanese capacitors, very fast fpga, precise resistors etc etc) will sale in ten of pieces.
I am not saying that I want cheapest price. Its about demand.

For most components it won't matter much which ones get used.  As for the FPGA, some cheaper ones are slower but have the same pinout and could potentially be used for a lower-cost slower NatAmi model.  It all depends on how the bulk-pricing pans out later on.  Sure the board design is done but the boards will not be populated until later on.

What i am saying is that some components are critical in the circuit and affect the whole system.
On them we should not cut back, since it could mean a redesign of the board as a whole to do so.

Some other less system critical components can be cut on like headers, and connectors.
But people who complain about both price and connectivity, are those who want to sit on the front line for a few pennies.
I am not one of them.