>> A few years ago there's were scores of them on Ebay for $30 - $40. >> Now it is difficult to find one for under $150. It's just two chips >> and a few connectors on a tiny circuit board. I don't know why it's >> so darned expensive. > > The law of electronics supply and demand: things that are out of > production tend to get very expensive if there's any demand, and it's > hugely expensive to start up making something once you've stopped for any > length of time, costing nearly as much as bringing up new devices.
ACARD apparently decided to get into the system business, forsaking the SCSIDE business. Besides, Firmtek, having grossly mis-estimating the licensing income from Promise, and others, on its Mac-oriented firmware, decided to abandon the IDE converter business it actually started, and get into the by then emerging SATA converter business, in which it controlled BOTH the hardware AND the firmware, thereby maximizing its income. Anyway, CHANGE is always a moving target, and ACARD eventually priced itself out of the converter business. But, the market had long before dried up. > Back when Apple stopped making the original Airport card, there were still > a LOT of Macs in use that had a slot for one but didn't have a card, the > price shot up to nearly $200. Pretty much. Now, anyone, anywhere, can get a "third-party Airport-compatible" card by going to Hong Kong, via eBay, and buying a Broadcom 4111 and a mini-PCI converter, or a 4318 or 4322 and a mini-PCI-e converter, all for under $10, complete. The 4322 is immediately "AirDrop compaible", too. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
