It's a bit of an over-simplification to lay the reasoning for my decision to withdraw solely on the lack of interest. It has more to do with simple economics. It costs money to buy the stock to build the units. As I have said before about the Ser-USB, unless the stock can be bought in bulk, it is not possible to obtain worthwhile discounts. This makes the product more expensive and thus reduces the likely number of sales. Add to that a severely depressed economy and the continued mismanagement of the Euro crisis, which further depresses any market from continental Europe, and you have a pretty dire situation. Almost a perfect storm, in fact.
I wish I could afford to do this as a hobby, but I can't. I considered a number of ways of moving it forward, including seeking funding from Quanta (banks in the UK don't lend to small businesses any more, so that route is closed and, anyway, what kind of a business case is it to say "Two or three people have said that they will buy one and then, when other people know they are available, a lot more people will buy them"?). In the end, and to be absolutely blunt about it, it simply wasn't worth the effort required for the small return. But the root cause of this is that there are significantly less QLs in circulation than ZX81s or Spectrums. It always was a niche machine and, even in today's more retro-friendly environment, it is a minor player. This is a great shame but it is a true and unavoidable fact and it will always influence decisions about resourcing new projects for it. Anyway ... sometime back in this thread I remember reading a question about the state of the drivers. As far as I am concerned they are good enough to be released into production, but that is up to Peter, or whoever takes the QL-SD forward. Adrian www.memorylanecomputing.com On 12/06/2012 09:58, Rich Mellor wrote: > It is just a shame that there was not all this enthusiasm and discussion > some months ago when Adrian needed to see some interest in the QL-SD > Interface. _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
