|
Hi Andrew, and all, Just my 2c, whatever the costs are, so be it, but for me
personally I really, really like the $20 per board, even if it means a little
delay it means I can get multiples of the same boards in case of problems as I
perceive this as a long haul effort. I’d also kind of suspect the cheaper
price also opens it up for those who are curious about vintage computing, but may
perhaps otherwise be discouraged by a higher price. The price vs effort vs
perceived reward? Cheers, Ian From: n8vem...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:n8vem...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Lynch Hi!
I placed a PCB manufacturing order for the S-100 4MB SRAM boards! They
should be here in mid-February or so. Now
that the S-100 4MB SRAM boards are ordered, we should discuss and consider the
next round of PCB reorders. The
next board with the highest number of builders on the waiting list is the S-100
buffered prototyping board. That could be next assuming we get enough
builders in the queue to go forward. Currently there are 13 builders for
it in the queue. However,
personally I would like to see the S-100 EPROM (11 builders) and S-100 IO (7
builders) boards get ordered sooner because both of those have minor issues we
could clean up in a PCB respin. I do not think the S-100 buffered
prototyping board needs any changes so it would be a straight reorder of boards
like the S-100 4MB SRAM board. Also the S-100 EPROM and S-100 IO are
really important boards for builders making their own homebrew systems from
scratch. I
have some questions for our S-100 hobbyist community: What
boards would you like to see next in terms of reorders and/or PCB
respins? I normally gauge this by the number of builders in the waiting
list and a bit of subjective preference. The
reorder and PCB respin process is tied to the number of builders in the waiting
list. It normally takes about $500 to do a PCB respin and about $450 for
a PCB reorder. That’s why I need the 20-25 builders in the queue
for a reorder or PCB respin. However we could change this calculation by
increasing unit price. Frankly, I would prefer to keep the unit price as
low as possible and $20 seems to be the “acceptable pain” threshold
however the waits between PCB orders can become excessive. If
we bump up the unit price we can order boards with a lower quantity of PCBs.
Would the builders be open higher prices and smaller quantities of
boards? This would allow more frequent respins and PCB reorders but at
greater cost. The default path is we just wait until the queue grows long
enough to warrant new orders at the current unit price. I believe it will
happen eventually but it may take a few months. This could vary over time
and/or by board depending on builder preferences. I
appreciate very much the tremendous support received from the S-100 hobbyists
and seek more improvements in developing and supplying S-100 boards for our
community! Thanks
and have a nice day! |