Yeah! News server back up!

["Ronin Hyde" <ronin@inna.shove.your.spam.up.your.net>]

    3 or 4 days without news.. my hands are shaking from reading messages
for the past 4 hours to catch up.. caffeine is my god.. bzzzt.. bzzzt..

    I've seen "kits" for sale in electronics magazine ranging from
electronic doorbells to shortwave radios to strobe lights. Wouldn't it be
nice if you could get new hardware for the Apple II series that way? Think
about it:
  You hit a website and see a spiffo new card that adds some new feature to
your computer. The site displays three possible choices for getting this
card.. either as a completed product (with schematics and whatever is needed
to hook it up) for a good fee, as a kit (containing everything you'd need to
solder onto the board, schematics and some advice), or just the bare board
and schematics. The board could be copyrighted and sold by itself to people
who want to tinker around with it.. or as a finished product to someone who
just wants to plug it in and have it work.
  Maybe you could also find schematics for a card in the public domain with
an ongoing development group.. think of it as tinkerers constantly modifying
a product and having it evolve. Somewhat like the group with Linux (dodging
tomato) but with hardware.
  It seems that what allowed the Apple II series to flourish the most were
people who weren't afraid to delve into the guts of the system. Now what
seems to exist is a scavenger state.. nobody really wants to develop a
product for a "dead" platform as they won't make the money they
need/desire.. consumers don't want to pay through the nose to add "standard"
(by todays computers) features to an older computer..
  The argument I've seen most is that an emulator will give better
performance. While true in most circumstances, if given the choice between
an Altair simulator and a real Altair.. I'd chose the hardware *every* time.
I like having my GS physically in front of me, where I can pop the lid off
and see how it works, do the infamous floppy shuffle or just play around
with it. Unfortunately, it just sits there with 1.25 meg of memory and two
800k floppies (Focus drive, here I come).
  Basically, I seem to have meandered off the point.. excuse me for that.
How much money would it take to set up an organization (*not* company) to
copyright board designs and sell them as one of the above mentioned
packages? Are there better ideas on how to proceed with a low-cost (from the
consumer's viewpoint) solution for new hardware with somewhat minimum
support from the developer (not to stress minimum, but people should get a
product design that is proven to work.. but not need their hands held
constantly nor expect support on the day to day operations of the computer)?