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Cartridge board pre-orders!


acadiel

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The new pre-order form is up.

 

Order Form

 

To keep things easy, if we sell <=100 then the price is $15/ea *assembled*. If we sell 250, then the price is $10/ea *assembled*.

 

Pass this along - I want to see all those folks who were watching the CTIUG UStream video back in October (and asking for these) order these. :-)

 

I'm still also looking for volunteers to man the form, keep track of pre-orders, etc.

 

Thanks,

Jon

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi, everyone!

 

We're up to 100 pre-orders for the assembled 64K cartridge board! Thank you! Let's continue to spread the word and see if we can get up to 250. If I order 100, the factory cost is $15/ea, whereas if we order 250, the factory cost is $10/ea. Of course, reasonable shipping/handling is also added to cover overhead (box, postage, handling, tape)

 

Just to clarify about the pre-order form, the current date I will be looking for the totals is 03/01/2010. If we are on the borderline to getting 250 orders, I will extend the deadline so we can get 250. If we are closer to 100, I will have to close the orders at 100. It will be a tough decision, because I will have to chop off the orders after 100.

 

I am also still looking for a few good folks to help with the actual billing/invoicing and shipping of these. Let me know if you are interested.

 

Thanks!!!

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  • 4 weeks later...

OK, folks -

 

I'm assuming (and going to be positive) that we're going to reach the 250 mark. Right now, we have 142 pre-ordered (I bumped up some of the pre-orders that would buy more if we reached the $10/ea tier, to up the count.)

 

So... 108 more need to be pre-ordered to reach the 250 unit mark. If you haven't pre-ordered one yet (28 people have), please use the URL below to do so! This will likely be the last run, so if you want them, grab them now! :-)

 

Pass the word along. $10/ea is a steal to get your own assembled 64K ROM cartridge board. You still supply the EPROM (myself or Bob Carmany can burn you one) and cartridge case. (I still might be able to get some cart cases - still waiting on an e-mail from Mike Dudeck.)

 

These are a great way to play home-brew TI games, such as Never-Lander, Pitfall (when Retroclouds releases the ROM), and future games for the TI in cartridge format. For $10, you can't beat it! These are going to be professionally assembled boards!

 

Pre-order here!!!!!!

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  • 2 weeks later...

<sales pitch>

 

It's a really great time to pre-order a 64K cartridge board if you haven't already!

 

Retroclouds has just released his Pitfall! source and 32K EPROM image here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/158467-pitfall-binaries-and-source-code/ - Wouldn't you love to make your own Pitfall! cartridge?

 

The 64K boards, of which we are trying to get at least 200 orders (minimum), have a pre-order deadline of 03/01/10 that is fast approaching. Right now, we have 177 pre-orders! If we get up to 250, the price is $10/ea! If we only reach 200, you'll be paying $12/ea plus shipping/handling. (Still not a bad cost for an assembled board, ready to go - WITH a cartridge case! All you need is an EPROM.)

 

Speaking of EPROMs, both myself and Bob Carmany can burn EPROMs, including ones such as Arcturus, Never-Lander, RoboTron, SuperStorm, DM2K, CF2K, DU2K, TI Workshop, and Pitfall! We do this simply for time and materials, and are pretty inexpensive. So once you get the board, and figure out what you want, let us know!

 

You can also hack your board into a multicart thanks to Tursi's Multicart program. The stock 64K board can have up to seven 8K programs on a 64K EPROM. Braver souls can hack the multicart into a 128K multicart, giving you fifteen 8K programs, or even a 512K multicart, giving you almost every 8K ROM ever made for the TI on a cartridge.

 

Pre-order here!!!!!!

 

</sales pitch>

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Love it!!! Thanks to Filip, there will be a cart-ready version of "Honeycomb Rapture" finished hopefully by the Faire!!! Would love to make up several of these carts for distribution, so if you're interested, please let it be known here, on the Honeycomb thread, or on one of the list servers. These boards come WITH cartridge case?!?! That's awesome!

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Everyone,

 

We have received almost enough pre-orders to make a run, and I'm comfortable the investment of keeping the extras on hand until requested (or the TI Faire). So, I will start the process of collecting money in the next week to get the run started. The pre-order form has been locked and is no longer available.

 

I still need someone to help with sending out invoices, which we will start sending those out shortly. (Does someone have a mail merge program that will take input from a spreadsheet and send out e-mails?)

 

Most likely, we will just bill everyone for the boards first, and then will bill the shipping/handling fees when it comes time to ship. (Because of the wide variety of shipping addresses, quantities, and locations, it's going to be too hard to estimate shipping weight/cost before we actually get them boxed and weighed.) Both invoices will include a small markup to assist with the fees that Paypal charges, since there really isn't a markup on these boards. The shipping/handling invoice will also include a small charge (a little over a $1) for handling (i.e. box, tape).

 

Please keep in mind it will take 4-6 weeks for the board house to manufacture and assemble these for us. They will be providing them to us ready to ship in ESD bags. So, if I get them the order (at the earliest) next week, it might be mid April before we start shipping the boards out.

 

Just for some metrics - we have 43 orders. 33 are from the US, and 10 are foreign orders (Germany, Denmark, Italy, and the United Kingdom).

 

Stay tuned! :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

StarshipUK, I'm pretty close to the order number, so please give me a bit and let everything shake out (I still have six folks who haven't paid, three who haven't contacted me yet). Send me an e-mail (e-mail address is at the bottom of www.hexbus.com) with how many you want, etc, and I'll put you on the waiting list.

 

Thanks :)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Akator, I don't plan on making another run of them myself. I've so far had over 450 of them made (not including prototypes), and I've reached the limit of my wife's patience. The board tooling charge had been paid at the board house, so future runs are available if someone wants to take them on. They will just simply charge you the per-board cost plus shipping for the whole batch, and you will need to procure the 74LS379 chips as well.

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I've so far had over 450 of them made (not including prototypes), and I've reached the limit of my wife's patience.

 

I completely understand. I test my wife's patience at least monthly with my collecting and gaming habits :D

 

The board tooling charge had been paid at the board house, so future runs are available if someone wants to take them on. They will just simply charge you the per-board cost plus shipping for the whole batch, and you will need to procure the 74LS379 chips as well.

 

Wow, good to know, and thanks for being generous with the design and tooling. Maybe when my wife has built more patience for my latest expenditures...

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Hopefully, the 64K cartridge board orders will start shipping soon. I'm trying to figure out what kind of box that we will be using to ship most of the orders. The ones from the last batch won't fit (6x4x2), because cartridge cases will be included this time. I'm thinking of moving up to 6x6x4 boxes. Bear with me, as we have over 40 orders that we will need to pack, weigh, invoice, and ship out. I have one person who might be helping me (thank you!!). We will also need to order the boxes, pick up packing tape, etc.

 

The boards were finished today - in order to have them certified RoHS compliant, I had to personally put in the 250 74LS379 chips myself, and helped to bag them in ASD bags, then ASD bubble wrap. I tried one of the boards in my /4A and it works great!

 

Please see the pictures here (There's eight in total that I took today): http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3681926&l=e578878710&id=571432449

 

The boards are constructed with a lead-free finish, and any re-work on them (hacking, etc) needs to be completed with SN100C or any other RoHS compliant solder. Please do not use lead/tin type solder on these, as you will likely have issues later down the road. These boards were certified RoHS compliant (except the 74LS379), so our fellows over in Europe shouldn't have any issues with them. They were all wave soldered, and all exposed joints were covered :-)

 

I will likely have some blank boards (without components) that I will put up for sale after the dust is settled. I will also know how many assembled spares I have for people on the waiting list.

 

Thanks for everyone's patience. I might move a little slowly on this, but it's to keep my sanity and to keep my wife from being too upset with me. (She's already upset I did a third batch.. <g>)

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Thanks go to Larry Correa and Bob Kaspar from the Yahoo TI-99/4A OLUG for helping with the cartridge board

shipments.

 

Here's how we're doing it... look at the bottom table for the quantity you

ordered. This will tell you who is going to be sending you an e-mail about your

shipping costs, and who will be invoicing you for postage/handling. (We don't

make money on this, so you will be billed actual postage, plus a small handling

charge that will cover packing tape, box, and e-commerce fees). You will pay

the person sending you the invoice, and they will ship the boards to you. :)

 

Qty - Person shipping

--- ---------------

2 - Larry Correa (14 orders)

3 - Bob Kaspar (15 orders)

5 - Bob Kaspar

15 - Bob Kaspar

1 - Jon Guidry (14 orders)

4 - Jon Guidry

10 - Jon Guidry

50 - Jon Guidry

 

I will ship the boards either Monday or Tuesday to Bob and Larry, and then will

start sending out my invoices. If you ordered extras from me (i.e. an EPROM,

etc), then whomever has your order (myself, Bob, or Larry) will ship them to you

with your order, and you will pay me directly for the EPROMs themselves.

 

Please wait until you receive your invoice - Bob and Larry do not have the

boards in their hands yet, do not yet know how much they weigh, etc, so they

can't tell you how much you owe for postage/handling until they get those and

separate them out into the actual orders. Likewise, I still need to box and

weigh my 14 orders.

 

Thanks, all!

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