STE536 BUYERS INTERESTS

[exxos]

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Declare your interest in this thread.


The main development topic is here viewtopic.php?f=94&t=5826


I don't currently have a price estimate on these unfortunately. It could be anywhere around the £200-£250 mark at a guess complete. It also depends on quantity in the batch. I think ideally we need to get around 25 orders minimum to make a batch worthwhile doing.

From factory they should be fully assembled aside from the PGA CPU socket. So the initial run of any boards will be sold "as is". These will be sold as cheap as possible because they are basically unfinished and will not have the CPU / socket or ROM fitted, no firmware flashed and untested. The people who want to do the work themselves and get the board sooner can get one pretty much as soon as the boards arrive to me.

Fully built and tested will take a lot longer, and of course, have a much higher price because of the extra work and parts involved.

[HomeLate]

I'm interested in one. But it depends on when the board is available. I'm going on holiday soon and my wife wants to visit the leather district in Florence :roll:

[cloverskull]

I'm interested - sign me up for one, please.

[coonsgm]

@Exxos

Hey, I was looking at releasing a "few months later with the STE536" video on my YT channel. I wanted to time it with around when they might be available on your store for order to help drive interest (and more folks with STE536's).

I'm having NO issues with mine and I'm totally having a blast with it.

I have been getting some emails to my YT channel asking where to find it and that they don't see them for sale. I'd love to point them here!

[Darklord]

I've also had a couple of people ask about the regular ST versions, which is out of stock.

Will those be available again? Thanks, and thanks for continuing to support the Atari
community. :thanksyellow:

[exxos]

I've also had a couple of people ask about the regular ST versions, which is out of stock.

Will those be available again?

I discontinued the ST536 viewtopic.php?f=90&t=6962 some time ago.

The main complaint was they don't fit in original cases, aside from the H4/H5/mega. I don't plan on supporting the project anymore either and consider it abandoned now. Im working more on the STE536 instead.

I'm not planning on selling them anymore. Not many can build them and there was never much interest in them. But with the chips being EOL and expensive, unless buying likely buggy chips from china, I just see a lot of problems which I don't want to deal with.

But if someone wants to buy a bulk lot then it can be done as birdseed boards. They can build / sell etc

[exxos]

Hey, I was looking at releasing a "few months later with the STE536" video on my YT channel. I wanted to time it with around when they might be available on your store for order to help drive interest (and more folks with STE536's).

Great idea.Thanks.

I'm having NO issues with mine and I'm totally having a blast with it.

Awesome.

I have been getting some emails to my YT channel asking where to find it and that they don't see them for sale. I'd love to point them here!

Only the alpha boards exist at the moment. Problem is I need to do more testing on various motherboard revisions yet which takes time. Which is compounded by the problem that all my STE boards are broken and need new simm sockets and reset switches fitting..

It's finding the time for it all which is the problem. A lot of my time the past weeks has gone into finding parts for the new H5 builds and all the tweaks Ive been doing. This past week I've been building up about 150 diagnostic cartridges.. there's a couple people waiting for me to build more DFB1X... Also various other things on the go soaking my time up. I'm busy with work at the moment as well which isn't helping. I'm also trying to limit my forum time to 2 hours tops each week to try and free up my time. But as usual my RSI isn't helping at all.

So unfortunately I can't say at this point when I will get back the the STE536 project :(

I could get more alpha boards built with birdseed if people can solder the PLD etc and help with testing. But not many can solder them up and I can't makes any guarantees on operation until I've tested all motherboard revisions. There *shouldn't* be any issues, but as you can likely see, I'm not happy about releasing stuff when it's not been properly tested. If people accept that and want to help in testing then sure...

[coonsgm]

If there are any specific tests you’d like me to run, just let me know!

I am 100% happy to help out however I can. Once I got it set up, I’ve literally had no issues beyond what I normally have with a stock ST/STe

Totally understand sunsetting the ST536…1 - ST’s require socketing an unsocketed CPU (a big barrier for many folks) and 2 - Even after socketing the CPU, they are located in some of the worst positions to install an accelerator in.

But seriously, the design of the STe536 is just perfect and is such a great product.

[exxos]

I thought I would post a small update of what the situation is currently.

At the moment I just have not had time to fix my broken STE motherboards (various revisions) in order to try the STE536 on. I am rather reluctant to release anything which has not at least been tested on the various motherboard styles.

I purchased a load of the PLDs a while ago as they were EOL. But I wanted to get them before the price went insanely high. Yes I know you can get them from China, but I really don't want to bother with those because they are generally used parts and it just adds a possible layer of problems which I don't want to deal with.

The next problem is, I want to send them all overseas to China along with the PGA sockets. The main problem I had with China, was the parts were often cheaper than the actual courier in sending them to China! So I basically ended up writing $100+ value of goods (even though they may have only been $20 etc) in order for them not to get stuck in customs. So basically I was paying tax on stuff which I shouldn't really have been doing.. But this is because China Customs is so bad!! It really is sort of organised crime racket. Sending a low value package and you end with a whole load of grief and you can have your package confiscated and destroyed. I really don't want to risk such things with even higher priced parts.

Now it is worse where they actually seem to want "purchase proof" of the value of the parts. If I paid £50 a pop for the PLDs, and had 200 of them, I would get charged £2,000 import tax to China. Then same again which it gets shipped back to the UK. So that's £4K I am giving away to China and UK government for absolutely bugger-all! And this is just one part and I have several I really need to ship to China. So it has caused rather a big problem :(

I have actually emailed last week , a lot of PCB UK companies asking for a quote for a small project to see what they charging in general. As it has got to the point where it is likely more cost-effective to pay a UK company to assemble the boards rather than ship the stuff to China and pay all the taxes involved.

Then it falls back to, I could just assemble the stuff myself and save myself fortune.. But aside from the usual problems, I just don't have the time. But to be honest, I am really tired of soldering stuff these days really don't want to do it any more anyway. It actually takes a lot of time just to test stuff nevermind building it as well.

It is not just the STE536 project, It affects the DFB1X, because I bought the PGA sockets already as they are hard to find. Even RAM upgrades where I purchased genuine new DRAM and need to ship to china for assembly.

So currently I have to add up if it is more cost-effective to pay a UK company a lot more to assemble the stuff, or send stuff to China to assemble and pay a load of pointless tax instead. It could even be more cost-effective to simply "bin" the stuff I already purchased and have China suppliers source the stuff. But that seems not a good idea either as all this stuff isn't cheap to start with.

Of course shipping costs alone, in particular for large orders or large boards like the H5 motherboards cost 100's alone from China. So UK shipping would be a LOT less and not taxes. So it really does beg the question of how much "worse" it would be to simply deal with a UK company.

As people can imagine, this is all keeping me extremely busy lately in trying to come up with a long-term viable and reliable solution to all these problems..

[troupe86]

I'm very sorry to hear of the issues that you've been having.

I've recently just come into possession of a 1040 STE and it's my first ST as I've traditionally been an Amiga user.

On the off chance that you progress with the STE536, I'm declaring my interest in buying one!

Thanks!