On Jun 22, 2010, at 11:33 AM, Tony Duell wrote:
So hang on, if most of the board is SMD and comes
pre-done, just what do
you get to build yourself?
There's a lot of stuff still to assemble in a P112. There's a fairly high
discrete count, as well as a big handful of chips (RAM, Flash, support ICs), more jumper
pins than I care to mention, and the all-important battery holder. When the P112 comes
out of the envelope it comes in it doesn't look anywhere near assembled (see a pic at
http://p112.feedle.net/pics/kit-parts.jpg).
This discussion is now largely irrelevant now, anyway. If you want to buy a P112 kit
bare, I've got bare boards and chips on offer, and it is likely there will be enough
parts in an unassembled state to meet any demand for them. I believe you've already
stated you have no intention of buying one anyway, so I fail to see how further discussion
is fruitful. Buy one of the bare boards or don't.
My opinion is, and remains, that the P112 in the form Dave and I originally packaged the
last production run (and will likely package this one) meets the needs of the people it
was designed for. Both of us have received tons of positive feedback from our customers
(you know, the people we're doing this for), and it is my belief that it is an
excellent bridge between those used to working with modern computer-on-a-chip
microcontrollers (the Stamp, Propeller, and Arduino crowd) and the world of
retrocomputing. You've done nothing to sway that opinion, and likely won't:
further, all the strong talk in this thread of how "SMD as hard is bullshit" and
everything else from people who have outright stated they wouldn't be in the market
for it anyway has just proven to me that we're doing the right thing for those who do
want it.
I'd love to be proven wrong and sell out my inventory of bare boards and parts. I
somehow suspect my post office box will remain empty for some time.