I know money is being raised for the reference board but isn't something missing? The cost of development of the new board.

To produce prototypes you're going to need small quantities of all the parts involved and in those quantities the prices can be extraordinarily high. Buying single CPUs from IBM or Freescale is in the order of $1000+ each (the top end G5 Mac is cheaper than buying a single G3 from IBM). Consider there's quite a few chips and do a few prototypes to test and thats a hefty sum, what if you need a second or third prototype run?

I'm not one to disuade future developments (quite the opposite in fact) but you need to be realistic, has this even been considered?

Also, to go into production I can't give a good estimate but you're taking at least $50,000, probably a lot more - where's that coming from?

I think this is a good project, I'd love to see a lower priced G5 on the market, in fact I'd like to see several of them (competition is a *good* thing) but I think finance is going to be a real problem for any community project.
I suspect the only way of getting a reasonably priced G5 anytime soon will be the new iMac (due next month).

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Whyzzat?