FCDEV3B board giveaway

[Mychaela Falconia]

Hello FreeCalypso community,

I have a bunch of old FCDEV3B V1 boards (5 of them to be exact) that
are doing nothing but gathering dust in a cardboard box in my shop,
and I would like to get them off my hands.  Toward this end I am
offering them free of cost to anyone who can put them to good use,
with a first-pass definition of "good use" being anything other than
running OsmocomBB.

These FCDEV3B V1 boards have perfectly calibrated RF tracts, tested
good Rx and Tx in all 3 bands (900, 1800 and 1900 MHz), and all other
hardware functions are also good.  The only diff between these older
V1 boards and our current V2 is that you need to keep sleep modes
disabled when running on a V1 board - but you can still exercise all
of GSM and GPRS functionality, and I would like to see these V1 boards
go to people who would actually play with them, rather than just
sitting in a box like they do now.

If you are interested in getting one of these boards, please send me
an email introducing yourself, explaining your interest in FreeCalypso
and how you plan on using the board.  I will give first priority to
those people who run their own GSM networks (regardless of whether you
do it with a legitimate spectrum license or otherwise), and second
priority to people who would like to connect from a FreeCalypso modem
to whatever "regular" GSM network you have in your country, if you are
lucky enough to live in a country that still has GSM/2G service.  In
the second case (connecting to a "regular" GSM network that isn't your
own), you would need to be willing to connect to that network using
our official FreeCalypso modem firmware (not OsmocomBB), and even in
the case of people running their own GSM networks, I am really looking
for people who would be more interested in FC modem fw than in OBB.

I would be willing to give away a board to someone who is interested
in both firmwares (both ours and OBB), but then there would be two
additional conditions:

1) You would need to agree to spend equal or greater amount of time
playing with FreeCalypso fw as with OBB, and

2) You would need to demonstrate that you are able to run OBB in a
responsible manner that eliminates any possibility of radio
interference to GSM or other cellular networks that aren't your own.
Practically speaking, you would need either a cabled setup connecting
to your own BTS without any radiated transmissions at all (no antennas
anywhere in your setup), or a proper RF enclosure (Faraday cage)
containing both your BTS and your MS.  Running OBB with radio Tx
enabled on an FCDEV3B board with an antenna in open air is NOT
acceptable under any circumstances, even if your intent is to connect
to your own network only.

Hasta la Victoria, Siempre,
Mychaela aka The Mother