Doc,
If you're displaying your ignorance on that topic they your doing it for both of us! I had that exact same thought and I HAVE worked in robotic manufacturing. It flies in the face of my experience for them to have retooled and redie'd just completely just for those modifications. If I remember correctly from having my own 6000 apart the WiFi is almost a "plug-in" module itself, it might be soldered to the motherboard but it's totally concentrated on a removeable daughterboard itself. The bluetooth module and the sdram are definitely things that would have to be assembled at the time the motherboard was hotshot. But still, these would be things you would ADD to a production line rather than rework the entire line.
The problem with a lot of the info I've been able to drag up is that it's from non-animate sources. Documentation is helpful but you can't ask it questions when you read something you wish to have clarified etc. I've heard of this sort of thing happening before but only because the physical factory had to be moved between production runs. I'd just love to get ahold of some quality control personel from Sharp's production team and put a bright white light in his face and grill him for a few hours so we can just know all the details and be done with it.
There's two or three other things that I've found out that sound really cool-- but I've kept them to myself as they have the same problem as the retooling issue: They just don't make good sense. Trying to weed through stuff like this is terrible, ESPECIALLY, when most of it is in another language.
Oh about the specs you linked to- I don't know. I've seen the SL-6000D referenced quite often while researching this and they have always referred to the sdram being the key upgrade from the 6kw, but never a 64mb sdram version that had 128mb of flash. I suppose from Sharp's point of view that it doesn't matter to them since they never actually sold any. I'm more and more warming up to the idea of christening the MX1 that I hope to buy and reflash with Linux with the designation "SL-6000X"!
Spec,
Thanks for pointing that out, I thought I had said it earlier but I wasn't very clear about it. The Flora-ie MX1 is only being marketed to Corporations in Japan. If you're purchasing for a Corporation you can either buy them (in any quantity) from one of Hitachi's certified resellers in Japan or from Hitachi Direct in Japan. If you're a private citizen wanting one on your own behalf you can buy one ONLY from Hitachi. If you can read Japanese then you can order one from the HitachiDirect portion of thier site, but they will NOT deliver to a mailing address outside of Japan. I've already talked to Stephen at Streamline and he is looking into whether he can start reselling the Hitachi FLORA-ie MX1 or it's batteries to us. Either may be helpful, especially if he can swing a discount from Hitachi so that their mark-up doesn't go far beyond the already expensive $800 price tag of the MX1. I'm willing to pay a bit of a premium on something like this just to have their experience of dealing with Japanese companies etc. in my corner. But it's probably going to get even closer to a thousand dollars and that could be unreachable for me.
Plus, don't forget- we don't even know if these units can be re-flashed to Linux yet. However you can get a battery from them right now if you can figure out how to get navigate through the purchasing website without knowing Japanese. The price on the battery works out to be right around $80usd I believe.
G'luck all!
-NeuroShock
I googled for the Hitach Flora MX1:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hitachi+flora+mx1
and there's not many results.
I then tried adding "buy", "purchase" etc to the search, and nothing turned up.
Is there anyone selling these mythical beasts online, or, as 'shock said, you have to be a major corporate in Jp before you get to buy one?
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