On Wed, 12 Jun 2002, Roy Wood wrote:
> Nasta had a lot to say about that in the US and the things he said were
> very optimistic of a good replacement product, fully planned. His
> problems are largely financial due to his situation in the US. Expect
> more news of this later.
He tells me he showed the current state of the GF PCB design, and from
what I have sen it is extremely dense and complex. He also showed a
'mock-up' of the SuperIDE / EtherIDE, which is virtually finished. What's
more, some of the components have already been obtained - the real
stifling expense is PCB manufacture, which to do in economical quantities
requires around $2000 to be comfortable. Those boards are 4-layer, with
SMD, so require quite a lot of very fine limit work.
> Maybe we need to support Nasta somehow. Quanta would be the obvious
> choice for this but, having talked with the, now ex-treasurer, John
> Taylor at length last night I would suppose that would be unlikely.
I am personally supporting Nasta to the best of my ability. It's something
other people can do too. There are a number of ways to help him. Maybe we
should set up a Goldfire fund!
In my case, I have bought components and will contribute to the PCB and
manufacturing costs as and when I can afford (because I think Nasta's work
is more important than the Qeyboard). I think as a wild guesstimate, the
GF is maybe $5000 - $7000 away from actually existing. A small quantity of
samples could exist for a bit less than that. It's >this< close to
existing - it's just money that's in short supply.
Does anyone have any pics of the SuperIDE mockup, or anything else from
the meet that I can put up? If anyone wants to do a writeup of proceedings
I can put that up too.
Dave
ql.spodmail.com
