Hello Allen,

  AB> I think it would actually be cool to build a simple
    > ARM board for playing around with.

I've certainly thought about it.  Perhaps I will one day,
but not soon.  I too many other things higher up my 'to-do 
list'.  From a business standpoint it makes sense for me to
let someone else deal with that side of things.            

  AB> I don't know anything about what would be involved in
    > designing, building, and fabbing something, though.
    > Or what the costs would work out to be in what kinds
    > of quantities.

Exactly, what I'm tring to do is challenging enough for me
without introducing more questions.

Similarly could write my own simple system software (that
would fit for example where NetBSD can't), TCP/IP stack and
application software.  Not only would that take time I can't
spare, but it would burden me with writing drivers for each 
new piece of hardware I wanted to use.

Also (and most importantly), the developers who have made
NetBSD such a stable, portable and generally well-crafted
system certainly outclass me where programming is concerned.
I have some software ideas that I would like to realise,
(open-source naturally ;-)

I think that the things I need to do most urgently are best
achieved by pulling together existing (hopefully de-bugged)
hardware and software and tailoring them to my application.
It would take a lifetime to reproduce the efforts of the   
hardware and software developers that have brought us this 
far, and that's time I don't have.


I'll invest the time to put together the pieces of the
puzzle, perhaps hacking together odd code or hardware where
necessary.  I'll take the time to make sure that what I've 
got works, that it requires minimal support and that I can 
reproduce it easily.  I'll also take the time to support
the client/customer, since they're the whole reason behind
each project.

Regards,
  - Andy Ball.