exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

agranlund wrote: 14 Jul 2025 09:53 Surely they can't be serious expecting a 279 eur delivery fee.

Aparrently, so. (And don't forget, this is on top of the original $40 delivery fee I'd already paid!)

Their reply:

"Additional Line Items: € 8.00 per line from the 6th line

FedEx can provide clearance of shipments containing multiple commodities; however, an Additional Line Item Fee is applied to assign multiple tariff classifications. A shipment may incur this charge if: 1) It includes multiple tariff classifications above the stated Free Lines listed in the charges section; or 2) An identical commodity was manufactured in more than one country; or 3) Multiple Commercial Invoices tendered to customs require an individual Tariff classification for each invoice; or 4) You request a separate line entry for each item in the shipment.

FedEx trust this concludes the matter"

No breakdown, just that. So. I refused the package. Wonder what happens now.

LCSC emailed to ask for my reason for refusing the package. (Despite me emailing them earlier in the week, letting them know I would, in fact, refuse it, if the fees weren't reduced)


My friend asked, what the total cost would be:
For €140 worth of parts, had I paid their fee, and VAT, the full price would be : €497 :o :x     

Sorry to hear your pain on this. Makes ordering from Mouser and using DHL shipping looks cheap in comparison.

kodak80 wrote: 19 Jul 2025 12:09 Sorry to hear your pain on this. Makes ordering from Mouser and using DHL shipping looks cheap in comparison.

Yeah. I'm not loving the whole process, so far.
I normally pick "Global Standard Direct Line" for LCSC orders. I think the weight limit went over, for this order. I should have paid attention.

In their reply, LCSC said "Please pick Global Standard. This is a Chinese company, which won't charge extra fees. If the order exceedes the limit, please make two orders" or words to that effect.

OK! Small update...

The package has arrived back in China.
Another $20 postage fee and $17 import fee.
So far .... I think, if I'm right, I've paid about $60 to LCSC (really to FedEX) ... for $140 worth of stuff. And have ... nothing :P
$20 to post to Ireland. $20 to ship it back to LCSC. $17 to China, to import it back into China.

Looks like they're going to refund me €100 of the original €160

Well. That was a shitty lesson!

That aside!

Does anyone know much about KiCAD ... and BGA!
I think I've got the footprint correct, for this ISSI Pseudo SRAM bga IC.

I shamelessly copied the existing 16MB ram board, but, I think I'm correct so far.

Looking at the price, if it works, it's a much cheaper option than the existing ram. €30 for 48MB, instead of €150 :D
So, worth investigating in my book!

https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ISS ... JeQQ%3D%3D
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/det ... li/6202023
https://lcsc.com/product-detail/PSRAM_I ... EBLL-70BLI

But, now it's down to routing it aaaand ... I'm missing something.
The keepouts around the pads are huge! compared to what I'm seeing people using elsewhere.

Anyone got any suggestions? (I've attached what I've done so far, if you do want to take a peek)

OK! Well, I've started the routing.
Step 1 ... get the bga pins outside the package!

Cool!

I've got to go read some more about KiCAD, and finish the turorials before I finish routing this SIMM board.

How would I use 1x 16MB IC, instead of 2x 8MB IC's @agranlund... I've not looked to see if I can, yet.

In the mean time...
I've (just about) finished my ROM programmers.
The eagle eyed among you will notice I ran out of dual wipe sockets, and used a longer one! :lol:

So, after a short break!

I'm back at it!

Some small progress! But, I've managed to run out of solder! :lol:

Time to start thinking about getting a processor, and video card!

That Pine PCB looks amazing....

I take it, if someone really wanted.... we could build an STFM video shifter, on an ISA card?
Probably better, would be the TT or Falcon, TT especially given it's 31Khz.

But, with the decap and work on the Videl, we may end up with an FPGA Videl in the coming years!!

@Mikerochip anything is possible, all it takes are ideas and time and skill to go it.

PhilC wrote: 04 Oct 2025 15:42 @Mikerochip anything is possible, all it takes are ideas and time and skill to go it.

... Well, one out of three isn't bad!! :lol:
Ideas I have, in abundance... :D