cgrafx wrote:There is zero evidence of a preloaded OS on ROM on any Nord keyboard aside from the boot loader.
I don't believe that's true... I remember reading that the reason that (unlike every other sound) the Nord organs cannot be updated (no Electro or Stage has ever been able to have its basic organ model updated to a later implementation) is because all the code for the organ modeling is in ROM and not in rewritable flash. So there is apparently some code other than a boot loader in there.
cgrafx wrote:t is all flash, doing otherwise would be an utter waste of engineering time, money, and board real-estate.
I don't understand that argument. To the contrary, putting stuff in ROM is cheaper than putting it in rewritable flash. All the rewritable flash is part of what makes Nords more expensive than boards that have almost everything in ROM. If you don't need it to be rewritable, you put it in ROM.
cgrafx wrote:Nobody who knows anything about production would pre-build a years worth of product before it ships and they can gauge what demand will be
They already had a rough gauge of what demand would be, because they knew the rate of sales of the NS2EX, and before that, the NS2, etc. They would not have to pull a number out of the air. A pretty safe, conservative estimate would be that the NS3 would likely sell at at least the rate the NS2EX had been selling.
cgrafx wrote:You build what you need to fill your first orders and make sure you don't have any major issues before ordering in large quantities.
That's what prototyping is for, and building patchability into the design. But let's even say they did a small initial run, and determined it was sufficiently properly functional (with the ability to software-patch as needed). They could have gone through those very quickly, and they could still then be shipping boards manufactured long ago, from the first "volume" run.
From what I know, just a plain PCB with no components on it, per unit, costs about 250% more in quantities of 1,000 as it does in quantities of 10,000 and about 250% more again in quantities of 100 as it does in quantities of 1000. With that kind of cost differential, if you had the capital or cash flow to support it, you'd be better off ordering a year's worth at a time.
derrellpiper wrote:My impression as a software engineer, is that the firmware contains the entire OS. That's consistent with the write times for the flash during OS updates.
There is no way to know that, since we don't know the size of the complete set of NS3 operating code. The Nord Stage 3 update 1.36 is about 8 mb (including the code to execute the update itself). It's possible that the total NS3 OS is only 8 mb big, and the update indeed replaces the entirety of it; OR the 8 mb could be patches to an OS that is in ROM. Knowing the write times gives you no clue whatsoever as to which of those two are true.
analogika wrote:Purchasing and finishing the entire run’s worth of boards ahead of time is a perfect way to bankrupt a company: if you have a years’ or two years’ worth of product investment tied up and sitting there (and consequently a years’ worth of potential profits), a single error in the hardware wipes out the entire investment.
This is what all companies deal with. In my own company, we have labels and packaging that will last us over a year, because it is simply far more cost effective than having it printed as we need it. But yes, there is a risk. If we mess up and order thousands of wrong packages, or if a product change happens requiring us to change the packaging and leaving us with a lot of unusable packaging, that will cost us a lot of money. That's business.
It is possible that a year's worth of a circuit board would cost Nord, say, only 3x what a month's worth would cost them. Assuming it is not such an expensive board that that much outlay would cripple the business, it would make sense to order a year's worth.
) NS3C and again, I put both NS2 and NS3 Side by side to "comparing the incomparable".
