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According to a recent , the company shipped just 700 of the devices out of the 220,000 preorders that were received six weeks ago. The volume of interest in the Raspberry Pi startled its nonprofit backers and they temporarily took down an ordering website.

Now, the U.K. tech news site asserted that some of the items are already up on eBay -- and going for more than $220, in contrast to their roughly $40 retail price tag.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation said that the product had only recently passed compliance tests, which accounts for most of the delay in getting the tiny computers to market. An earlier manufacturing error also complicated the process, as did an issue finalizing the custom Fedora distribution that provides the Raspberry Pi's operating system.

According to the foundation, the idea behind the Raspberry Pi is to provide a cheap, bare-bones computing system on which beginning programmers can take their first steps. The current generation of young developers, the organization says, doesn't have an equivalent of the Commodore 64 and Amiga machines, thanks to the rise of dedicated gaming consoles.