Thanks for the links! The 'Making of Beaglebone' video was great to watch - I'd never seen how the selective wave soldering was done before. The 'Flashing and burn-in" at 3:15 with all the blue lights on dozens of boards looks a little scary :-)

Regarding the Adafruit tutorial, I'm not sure if the 'opkg update' is advisable on that web page, I think that step should be avoided currently.

The GSoC link is interesting. I hadn't realized there was any interest in reviving Minix though. The work on the JTAG is interesting, especially if there will be some drivers for programming popular devices (e.g. Atmel, Xilinx), to save having to buy so many separate tools, although costs have gone down nowadays. I wonder if 'LCD debug/patchwork' includes the ability to easily customize the frequency and resolution without people having to compile a driver, so that any generic TFT can be driven.

There are many ways to solder the bottom side, that's just one approach.  Others that have been used are to put the board into a heat resistant carrier that's machined out to mask off certain areas, it then goes over a normal solder wave.  Another would be that the bottom side isn't reflow soldered, the components are glued on and then the whole lower side is soldered by going over a wave.

The problem is always going to be what sorts of components are on the bottom, the microSD card and micro hdmi were always going to make traditional wave soldering hard.

The sequence of events in the video has been somewhat creatively edited, note that you see them enter the wash with no selectively solderd parts, but seemingly come out a few seconds later with all the selective soldered parts attached...  In the old days, the network socket with integrated magnetics might have been a no-wash part as it's un-sealed and retain water which could cause damage. So there's all sorts of design choices that can cause the production process to be changed to suit.

Would have been nice to have seen a bit more detail with some wider shots to get a sense of the scale of the machines used as most people will never get to see what's involved in making their everyday gadgets.

There are many ways to solder the bottom side, that's just one approach.  Others that have been used are to put the board into a heat resistant carrier that's machined out to mask off certain areas, it then goes over a normal solder wave.  Another would be that the bottom side isn't reflow soldered, the components are glued on and then the whole lower side is soldered by going over a wave.

The problem is always going to be what sorts of components are on the bottom, the microSD card and micro hdmi were always going to make traditional wave soldering hard.

The sequence of events in the video has been somewhat creatively edited, note that you see them enter the wash with no selectively solderd parts, but seemingly come out a few seconds later with all the selective soldered parts attached...  In the old days, the network socket with integrated magnetics might have been a no-wash part as it's un-sealed and retain water which could cause damage. So there's all sorts of design choices that can cause the production process to be changed to suit.

Would have been nice to have seen a bit more detail with some wider shots to get a sense of the scale of the machines used as most people will never get to see what's involved in making their everyday gadgets.

and I wonder what comes first, the 'flashing & burn-in' or the functional test ?   Note the connection being made to TP4 to allow programming the onboard eeprom during the functional test - would a normal sd-card flash image work properly (or even boot) if the eeprom is blank ?

glue dots to seal the boxes seems to be new too, none of mine have had one of those.

Derek's video does look interesting - looking forward to watching it.

I'd noticed that connection on TP4 too! and gone straight to the schematic ;-)