Re: Apple II VGA Video Generator Card Project

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Mark McDougall wrote:
> Michael J. Mahon wrote:
>
> > Just out of curiosity, how much would it cost to "get your money
> > back"? (I'm glad to hear it's OK not to get your time back.)
>
>
> Well, that's going to depend on the product of course.
>
> There's two big killers - getting the PCBs made in prototype quantities 
> (anything more than a few layers) - and getting 'major' components in 
> quantities smaller than 50, or in some cases, 1000. Sometimes you simply 
> *can't* get them (eg. video encoders) - others you pay a hefty premium.
>
> Then there's the assembly - if you have parts with large pinouts you 
> really don't want to do them by hand, for time and quality reasons. BGA 
> etc you *can't* do by hand. So that adds big $$$ as well.
>
> An example, a colleague & I designed a PCB with FPGA to emulate 
> cartridges for classic Nintendo consoles (still WIP). We got 6 PCBs 
> made, and bought only 2 FPGAs. Most other parts we scrounged for free, 
> but still paid over AUD$1K. And that's only 2! Not to mention many hours 
> of development.

All good points.  With newer, higher-density packaging, it's almost
a requirement to go at least 4-layer.  I hadn't considered the "small
lot" problem for chips, but it certainly makes sense.  And manually
soldering high-density surface-mount chips is a losing proposition.

> There's absolutely no way such a niche, hobbyist market is going to 
> allow you to get your time back. Which is why you have to do it for the 
> love of it.

Totally agree.

-michael

Music synthesis for 8-bit Apple II's!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

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