Introduction

Exxos, a prominent figure in the Atari community recognised for his expertise in computer hardware design and programming, is based in England and has been active since the 1990s. He has created various upgrades for Atari ST computers, including memory enhancements, CPU accelerators, and custom power supplies, as well as modifications to address common hardware issues. Exxos hosts the Exxos Forum, the rescued Atari Wiki, and his website, The Last Upgrade, which includes install guides, fixes, public domain software, cover disks, STOS, Time Tunnel, and more. Additionally, he has undertaken significant efforts to preserve Atari heritage, such as resurrecting the Floppyshop PDL as an online searchable database and maintaining the STOS Time Tunnel, both of which were core to the Atari ST community but rarely receive attention today. While he currently remains an active member of the Atari community, contributing through his online platforms and store, where he sells his hardware creations and shares technical knowledge to support enthusiasts of vintage Atari systems, Exxos is focusing more towards retirement after a three-decade-long slog of supporting the community. He aims to complete outstanding projects before transitioning to retirement. For more information, visit his main site.

Overview

Exxos announced in April 2025 that he is downsizing his store's inventory from approximately 230 items to about 50, discontinuing around 90 items. The store offers products like floppy kits, PSU upgrades, motherboard remakes (e.g., Phoenix motherboards), and CPU boosters. The Phoenix motherboards are not being discontinued, and more expensive, high-value items are likely to remain in the store. The decision stems from a barrage of issues from multiple directions that continue to grow, exacerbating ongoing problems and the time required to keep operations running smoothly, reaching a point where it becomes overwhelming and no longer enjoyable to manage. The constant grind of restarting the business multiple times due to platform issues has further compounded these challenges. Overall, Exxos has trouble finding time for any actual Atari work due to this barrage of challenges from all directions.

Personal Factors

After three decades in the retro computing scene, Exxos, fast approaching 50 years old, cites reduced energy and physical capacity, worsened by severe repetitive strain injury (RSI). This causes constant pain and limits tasks like soldering, testing, packing, shipping, driving to the post office, or prolonged computer use. He no longer has the energy to multitask between 20 different projects and multiple problems every single day, despite working 14 hours a day straight with only a short break for lunch, trying to keep on top of everything. The hole keeps getting deeper regardless of the time and effort invested, making the workload unsustainable and frustrating, leading to further cutbacks to free up time. Due to these time constraints, more drastic measures or cutthroat decisions, such as potentially taking his website offline, which would remove over 40GB of information and downloads, may have to be undertaken to limit services in whatever form necessary to make the workload more bearable and realistic. Maintenance of the website, particularly PHP-related pages that frequently break, also soaks up significant time in fixing, further straining his limited resources.

Writing articles, fix guides, and conducting research takes significant time and has been done for free to support the Atari community, but this work is no longer sustainable due to time constraints and lack of financial return. Managing another business and life demands further reduces time for Atari projects or passion-driven work like design and innovation.

The emotional toll from constant community expectations and demands for support, often without appreciation or compensation, has led to burnout, with Exxos feeling worn out from relentless challenges and limited time for personal recovery. To address this, he has adjusted the terms of sale to clarify that support is limited to basic installation issues and does not include in-depth troubleshooting. It is frustrating that many users lack technical expertise, and issues are often caused by poor soldering work. Troubleshooting these problems remotely is constantly frustrating for both Exxos and buyers. Even more frustrating, some buyers assume Exxos sells faulty products, despite every item being relentlessly tested before dispatch. These accusations feel like a constant insult, as faulty items are almost never the case, adding further frustration and making Exxos question if it's all ultimately worth it.

Financial Factors

Out of full-time work since 2019, Exxos lacks a financial buffer to sustain inventory or fund new projects. Approximately £50,000 is tied up in listed stock, likely doubling to £100,000 when including unfinished items or general items not currently in the store, all of which he needs to liquidate to cover personal expenses.

Sales have dropped tenfold, with March being the quietest peak season on record due to cost-of-living pressures reducing demand for non-essential retro items.

The store's commercial model relies on sales to fund development, but low cash flow makes sustaining a wide product range impossible. Development projects cost hundreds of pounds, while production batches (e.g., for memory expansions, PSUs, SIMMs, accelerators, motherboards) range from £1,000 to several thousand pounds each, requiring significant upfront investment.

Exxos finds it disheartening that other retro platforms can raise thousands of pounds virtually overnight for projects, while in the Atari community such fundraisers would likely never happen. This forces him to conduct all research and development work for free, which feels somewhat unfair given the time and effort invested.

Operational Factors

Managing ~230 items solo is overwhelming, involving sourcing, stocking, testing, assembling, packaging, and shipping. Producing and testing batches, such as 500 ST2VGA adapters, is time-intensive, especially with RSI slowing tasks to multi-day efforts.

Exxos has had to switch PCB suppliers regularly over the past three decades, often using a new supplier every year or two due to persistent issues with ordering otherwise simple PCB assemblies. The cost of sourcing and shipping parts to China, combined with import taxes, return shipping, and high postage costs, makes manufacturing in China no longer feasible to keep costs down, prompting a shift to more expensive UK-based PCB assembly.

Downsizing to ~50 core items (e.g., Phoenix motherboards) aims to reduce workload and recover funds, with ~90 items discontinued as stock clears. Unlisted stock (e.g., chips, components, unfinished items) could be sold in bulk if buyers take entire lines. Price adjustments were made, with some items raised to cover costs and others lowered to clear stock.

Motherboard repairs and upgrades were abandoned around 2019 due to time constraints and insufficient demand at sustainable pricing. These repairs, a time-consuming endeavour where "simple" fixes can take several to over 50 hours to diagnose and repair, are often expected by customers to be done for free or at an unreasonably low cost. Working for an effective rate of £1 per hour is not viable. While diagnosing machines used to be enjoyable, it has become a constant, unrewarding slog with no fun, payments, or rewards, leading Exxos to question why he should continue.

Maintaining product quality through meticulous testing of each item adds significant time and cost, as Exxos prioritises reliability, which is labour-intensive given his health limitations.

Time spent on customer communication and post-sale support, including responding to inquiries and troubleshooting, is often unpaid and further reduces time for core Atari work.

Sourcing reliable parts is further complicated by the prevalence of counterfeit or substandard components, requiring additional time to vet suppliers and verify quality, which increases costs and delays.

Handling Charges and Logistics

Starting in 2026, a handling charge of approximately £5 will be introduced for low-value orders under £25 to cover processing costs, including time, packaging, and postage. This addresses the unsustainability of low-profit items (e.g., resistor packs, connectors) that yield less than £1 profit.

Processing such orders takes 1 to 1.5 hours each, including a 2-mile round trip to the post office, resulting in an effective hourly rate of 50p to 70p, far below viable levels. This time commitment limits availability for repairs, upgrades, and personal well-being, compounded by RSI.

Storage for bulk items (e.g., boxes for 500 units) is challenging due to space limitations, and the retro market's difficulties (cost of living, competition, open-source) slow sales further, making low-value orders particularly burdensome.

Platform and Business Challenges

Exxos faced significant setbacks selling on eBay, where competitors bought items and left negative feedback, leading to low ratings and eBay shutting down his account. He began selling before eBay became popular, but its rise effectively put him out of business early on. Later, he rebuilt a new store from scratch using PayPal, only for PayPal to shut him down for no apparent reason, forcing him to restart the company multiple times. This constant grind has added to the operational and emotional toll.

It is difficult for customers to find Exxos's products, as most gravitate towards eBay, where prices have often been massively inflated compared to the Exxos store. In some cases, Exxos has priced items lower than eBay to encourage sales, but the dominance of eBay makes advertising his store challenging. Exxos spent significant time creating stock lists to get products listed on Google, but constant changes make maintenance difficult, and these efforts have not driven much traffic to the store. The store largely relies on word of mouth, but with fewer people discussing products in recent times, this further reduces sales and complicates matters.

Exxos has struggled to find alternative, scalable distribution channels for his niche products, exacerbating visibility and sales issues.

Exxos finds it frustrating that, despite a wealth of comprehensive information on his website, users rarely visit his pages, instead finding information buried in other websites. This suggests his pages are ranked poorly on search engines, further questioning the value of continuing to update and host over 40GB of information and downloads when so few utilise it.

Regulatory and Logistical Factors

EU shipping challenges stem from regulations like the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR), which apply to both non-EU and EU-to-EU shipping. These require an EU-based responsible person for compliance, liability, and potential fines, alongside Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) taxes for packaging/recycling, VAT via Import One Stop Shop (IOSS), and proposed £2 fees on small parcels under £150. These create prohibitive costs, licensing needs, and risks (e.g., fines of £200+ per infraction, customs delays, rejected packages), making the EU market, about 40% of Exxos's customer base, unsustainable overnight. It is also unsustainable for a single person to keep on top of all the rules and regulatory changes within the European Union and worldwide markets. Exxos spent three months alone trying to find workarounds or solutions, but it turned into an endless slog of impossible scenarios to deal with, leading him, like many others, to ditch the European market completely, as it was not worth the time and expense for low-value items. This has been a significant blow to the Atari community, who can no longer purchase their favourite retro items from his UK store.

Additional issues with USA shipping further highlight how unsustainable shipping low-value items is, particularly when overseas shipping is already incredibly expensive, putting financial strain on buyers to afford such products.

Third-party EU resellers were considered but deemed impractical for low-cost, low-volume items due to markups and logistical complexity.

Market Factors

The small Atari community cannot sustain multiple sellers. Competitors copying designs (e.g., PSU upgrades, CPU boosters) and open-source alternatives have reduced demand for Exxos's commercial products, which rely on sales to fund further development.

Component shortages and obsolescence post-COVID have made parts harder to source and more expensive, with prices not reverting to 2018 levels. Lockdown spiked sales via panic buying, depleting stock, but production struggled amid rising costs and supply issues.

Items that once sold steadily (e.g., 100 units/year) are now slow-movers due to economic pressures and market saturation.

Community Engagement Challenges

The Atari community has seen a decline in active users, with difficulty attracting new, younger members to sustain engagement. Forums like Exxos's do not receive as much attention as platforms like Facebook, but even Facebook engagement has dwindled. Younger people gravitate towards platforms like YouTube and TikTok, and managing multiple platforms is unsustainable for one person.

While there is a steady flow of younger individuals attempting upgrades or repairs in retro computing, many lack basic soldering skills or expertise in electronics. This often results in community members spending countless hours diagnosing what these newcomers have broken, turning into a tireless, endless slog of educating them on basic electronics and soldering. Older community members, who grew up with these skills as second nature, found such tasks straightforward, but the younger generation lacks the hands-on skillset for diagnosing faults and working at the component level. Although the enthusiasm of younger members is admirable, the constant need to troubleshoot their mistakes, often on a daily or weekly basis, becomes frustrating and unrewarding. Many abandon projects halfway due to difficulty or loss of interest, leaving community efforts to assist them feeling repetitive and futile.

Historically, the Exxos Forum and server costs were funded by store sales, which became unsustainable due to declining revenue, prompting Exxos to seek sponsorships from the community. Alternatives like advertising on the forum were considered but met with resistance, though they may become necessary to maintain operations, further complicating efforts to sustain the community. Contributions can be made via the donation page.

Forum and Wiki Management

Hosting the Exxos Forum, Atari Wiki, and The Last Upgrade website is time-consuming, with constant server attacks requiring ongoing maintenance to keep the server online and updated. Not only do these incur costs, but constant server updates, fixes, and fighting off floods of traffic from DDoS attacks and hacking attempts have become a significant time sink for Exxos, who does this work for free. This has turned into an endless grind, diverting time from store operations and core Atari work.

The forum and wiki are now community-funded to alleviate financial strain, ensuring they remain operational without relying solely on Exxos's resources. Contributions can be made via the donation page.

Community Responses

Key contributors like terriblefire, viking272, kohli79, stephen_usher, stween, Andrew Chapman, szeremiocki, and other members express support, acknowledging Exxos's contributions and citing similar challenges with their own projects. Exxos emphasises that downsizing is a survival move to avoid complete closure. He intended the store to be a one-stop shop for the Atari community but finds the current scope unsustainable, hoping for community understanding.

Future Focus

While winding down the electronics and support side of the Atari community, Exxos is unsure what he will fill his time with moving forward. He has more recently found enjoyment and relaxation in creating AI music, a stark contrast to the constant slog of dealing with suppliers, supply chain issues, EU and USA shipping challenges, and logistical problems every day, compounded by the ever-increasing variety of rules and regulations that soak up time, effort, and energy.

As he approaches retirement, Exxos expresses concern about the legacy and preservation of his contributions, such as the forum, wiki, and store knowledge base, given the community's declining engagement and lack of new experts to take over maintenance.

Conclusion

This downsizing reflects a strategic pivot to a manageable, high-value product range (e.g., motherboard remakes, CPU boosters), with Phoenix motherboards and other expensive items likely to remain, to cope with Exxos's health limitations, financial pressures, regulatory hurdles, market challenges, unsustainable unpaid work like articles and guides, persistent manufacturing issues like frequent PCB supplier switches and prohibitive China-based production costs, the difficulty of advertising products against eBay's dominance, and the repeated setbacks from platform closures like eBay and PayPal.

Exxos wonders where the enjoyment and relaxation are in what was once a hobby, given the never-ending barrage of problems that only increase over time, feeling like "death by a thousand cuts." As a single person in a bedroom with a soldering iron, he lacks the capacity to handle the multitude of issues faced in recent years, from supplier challenges, EU and USA shipping issues, to community support demands. Things used to be simple, efficient, and enjoyable, but now the constant grind feels unsustainable. While Exxos recognises that community members are trying to assist as much as they can, which is welcome, their support addresses only one aspect of the daily challenges he faces, making it clear that the current scope of operations is unsustainable for a single person. Due to these time constraints, more drastic measures or cutthroat decisions, such as potentially taking his website offline, may have to be undertaken to limit services in whatever form necessary, in order to make the workload more bearable and realistic.