New S100 mini front panel project

Fellow vintage computing hobbyists -- Don Caprio and I have been working for a few months on a project that's an S-100 card size front panel. Styled after common front panels from the day, it's scaled to fit a standard S-100 card format (5.3" x 10") and includes the usual switches and blinkenlights. Eventually we will open-up the project page (http://fpmini.pbworks.com/w/page/39529866/FP%20Mini) once we clean it up a bit. We just received the latest prototype boards and are going to be building and testing them shortly. We're planning on selling boards and possibly a "switch package" that are miniaturized versions of IMSAI-style paddle switches from NKK. Our goal is to get enough orders to get the board cost down to the $20-25 range. We're also trying to work a deal on switch sets. Although the base of the required switches are pretty common, the bat handle colors aren't (blue and red) and require large minimum order quantities. This is something we're trying to work through with the vendor. In volume, we expect that a full switch set will be in the [$100] range or possibly lower. More info to come on this. So that we can get an idea as to how many boards we may need to make during the initial production run, we'd like to gauge people's interest. There is no commitment at this point ? only an expression of general interest so we can gauge demand and board order quantities. If anyone is interested, please contact me off-list and I'll keep your emails handy. You can also check out the project page (shown above) to get updates. Rich -- Rich Cini Collector of Classic Computers Build Master and lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator http://www.classiccmp.org/cini http://www.classiccmp.org/altair32