I just had a message about wanting to buy assembled ones of these ST536's. So I thought I would do a final post to say
I have abandoned the assembly of the ST536. As mentioned previously, some people are expecting to fit this in a STE. Which there is no way this will fit.
AFAIK only
@PhilC As built and sold the TF536 / ST536 but I don't think he has much time these days. I certainly cannot build "one offs" for anyone. My soldering days are over because of my RSI. I'm only one person and rather poorly one at that. If you want one assembled then YOU look for all the parts to assemble the thing then spend endless hours looking for some soldering company which can build it for you without charging a arm and a leg.
It generally costs around £2,000 to put something into production in a small batch. Certainly 5-10 people interested is just not enough (***). So fully assembled ST536's are simply not going to be done by myself, sorry. The PCBs are available in my store until those stocks run out. I certainly have no objection if people want to buy the PCBs and sell them assembled. The only criteria is that people charge reasonable prices and not rip people off by people selling stuff on evilbay tend to do.
People also have to realise there are
parts shortages which has squatted basically every project development under the sun over the past couple of years. Some chips have been in access of £200 last time I looked. I have spent considerable amount of time trying to track down parts all over the world to keep as many projects going as possible. It soaks up a hell of a lot of time. So even if someone is willing to assemble them, obtaining the parts could well be impossible anyway. As people know, I am dealing with PCB houses and testing all the stuff which arrives every week. Plus keeping stuff in my store is soaking up all my time. I barely have any time for project development or assembly of stuff these days anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to sound like a a$$Hole here. It is not unreasonable for people to ask things of course. But when you have hundreds of those "won't take long jobs".. I generally work on this stuff 15 hours a day with only a short break for dinner. All unpaid hours I might add. So those couple of extra hours for those "won't take long jobs" means one of those days I will be working even longer hours. I'm just not such a young man any more, and I am struggling multitasking with all the current projects without adding more onto it. I have stuff from a few years ago which I got the PCBs made and just lay in a box because I don't have time for those projects either.
I have however started the
STE536 . But I had to temporarily stop work on that because of my RSI again (I hope to get back to this relatively soon though) . I'm sorry to regular readers as I am sounding like a broken record but I really cannot emphasise enough how painful day-to-day living is never mind doing basically repetitive things like soldering. Building up almost 100 STE boosters which involved testing
100's of chips has caused me a great deal of pain. I certainly do not get any enjoyment out of such work.
(***)
I think this thread of
the future of exxos Is also relevant here. I have been working on Atari stuff for the best part of 30 years now. Certainly the Atari user base and Atari activity is not getting any larger.