Back in December, we heard that the Raspberry Pi mini PC would be available in January. As you've probably noticed, it's already February, and the only availability we've seen is through eBay for upwards of $2500. Obviously, many people don't have a couple of grand lying around to blow on a computer willy-nilly, and there was only a limited number of them available through the auctioning site. However, it seems Raspberry Pi is on track to launch for real this month.

According to the official Raspberry Pi blog, there has been a small delay in manufacturing due to trouble sourcing a specific component. Liz from the Raspberry Pi Foundation writes that the foundation chose a specific quartz crystal package when it thought the motherboards would be manufactured in the United Kingdom and it was the cheapest one they could find. However, in China, the price and size of this particular crystal package has been outdone by a smaller, cheaper one. As a result, the factory was having a bit of trouble sourcing the package the Raspberry Pi crew had designed for.

The good news is that the part has been found and things are back on track. Liz says the first batch of boards will be finished on February 20, after which they'll be air-freighted to the UK for availability before the end of the month. Additionally, the company has been leaning on Broadcom, which produces the BCM2835 SoC powering Raspberry Pi, for an abbreviated datasheet describing the ARM peripherals in the chip. You can check that out here (PDF alert).

For the uninitiated, Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that can plug directly into a TV via an RCA jack or an HDMI port. Users can also connect a keyboard via its one USB 2.0 port, or connect a wireless mouse/keyboard like Verbatim's Mini Wirless Slim set. Two versions will be offered at launch: the $25 Model A with 128 MB of RAM and the $35 Model B which sports 256 MB of RAM and an additional 10/100 Ethernet port -- Wi-Fi can be added using a standard USB dongle.