Re: Don't buy into pre-orders for Apple II products

[osgeld <kevin@hackaday.com>]

On Sunday, May 19, 2013 5:35:17 AM UTC-5, Apple2Steward wrote:
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> 99f40b1b-8391-4875-b3d1-f1b0930e033a@googlegroups.com">news:99f40b1b-8391-4875-b3d1-f1b0930e033a@googlegroups.com...
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> On Saturday, May 18, 2013 11:47:52 PM UTC-5, IUnknown wrote:
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> > > What amazes me the most isn't that Conrad is failing to give 
> 
> > > us regular updates as promised, but the fact that he couldn't 
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> > > produce one single piece of concrete evidence. Not a 
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> > > document, not a picture, absolutely nothing, but only scarce 
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> > > and vague words.
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> >
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> > >
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> >
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> >
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> >
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> > ^^ THIS. +++++
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> >
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> >
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> >
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> > What COMPLETELY amazes me is how he accepted shipment of the 
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> > cards
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> >
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> > without verifying that a single one of them actually worked.
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> >
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> >
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> >
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> > Fedex handles airbills in nearly every industrial center of the 
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> > world.
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> >
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> > If this were my build, I would have requested that they 
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> > 3-day-air a
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> >
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> > single card/engineering sample to me for verification and 
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> > validation.
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> >
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> > In the worst case, he would be out the money, but at least he 
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> > would
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> >
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> > have had some proof that working cards were inbound.... along 
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> > with
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> >
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> > pictures, videos, etc.
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> >
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> >
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> >
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> > It is comical to think that any reputable manufacturer would 
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> > have
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> >
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> > taken offense to this. Engineering samples are commonplace in 
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> > the
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> >
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> > electronics manufacturing world.
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> 
> 
> I think you may be overstating this a tad bit. Engineering 
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> samples usually come out of the engineering department, you whip 
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> up a board, have 10 made at a kick in the balls price, and 
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> proceed to make them up yourself.
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> 
> 
> you just dont send something off to some random fab and expect 
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> them to verify every functional detail, especially on a machine 
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> that is at best a niche hobby market in 2013 using custom 
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> software generated logic chips
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> But isn't that what Conrad says his friends in China did for him?
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> 
> 
> 
> 
> " I send the company an Apple IIGS ROM01, a spare ROM01 
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> motherboard, and 2 TransWarpGS cards in working order. This was 
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> not required, but for the sake of speed I provided them with all 
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> the components necessary to assemble a working TWGS card so they 
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> could test their work faster.
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> 
> 
> *  *  *
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> 
> 
> They produce a board from their GERBER file, assemble it and test 
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> it in the provided IIGS against the second working original TWGS 
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> I provided them by running various tests that I outlined for 
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> them. Once it passes, which it did, they produce my initial run 
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> of 50 cards and send them out to me as soon as I pay the second 
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> half of the fee."
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> 
> 
> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.apple2/WQS9qFjfrF0/09O8koz47iIJ
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> 
> 
> Since you do this for a living, does this sound credible?
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> 
> 
> I'm amused that the same company that booted up a GS (how? - 
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> floppy, CFFA, microdrive) and ran "various tests," couldn't be 
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> troubled to send Conrad a few cellphone pictures.

I dunno, I have never sent anything over to be cloned, but sending stuff via boat is not that cost prohibitive, and if I have learned one thing about Chinese fab's, its that they will do almost anything for the biz