Re: TransWarpGS Clone Preorders open!

[Conrad <conrad.russo@gmail.com>]

How am I 'butthurt' (I never got that one)? How am I 'going off'? How has IUnknown not made accusations? He/she has said that he/she doubts I can produce a product at this pricepoint, which implies that that since I am claiming that I am offering a product at this pricepoint I am either crooked, a moron, or both. Furthermore, they have not based this allegation on any sort of fact, and have instead backed up their attack with information that is not only wrong but can also be disproven by doing a Google Images search for 'TransWarpGS' and looking at the card. I never got upset with anyone else who challenged myself or my products either publicly or privately, here or elsewhere, and there have been several, I have made sure to address their concerns politely and provide reassurance as best as I can. This however has really gotten to me because they haven't shown any sort of care to either research their claims or qualify them with unsurity. They didn't say 'I was under the impresssion that the TWGS made use of custom logic, how did you or your contractor handle that?' but have instead claimed that 1. the card IS based around one or more ASICs, 2. that my contractor surely could not clone this card at this pricepoint, and 3. that 'If cloning the card was easy it would have been done already.' The final one really gets to me because this was by no means easy and its entirely possible that I am the only one who has considered this approach, although I have no way to say that for sure. I have put up a great deal out of pocket for this to be done and I am offering them at 0 profit for the benefit of the community, is it so much to ask that someone research their claims for 5 minutes before making a post that could really turn people away from my product?

Putting all that aside, I am going to now tell you how the card was cloned so that there will be no more doubts or anything like that. I kind of wanted it to be a surprise with some diagrams I was making and planning to include with each order but whatever.

1. I send the company an Apple IIGS ROM01, a spare ROM01 motherboard, and 2 TransWarpGS cards in working order. This was not required, but for the sake of speed I provided them with all the components necessary to assemble a working TWGS card so they could test their work faster.

2. The company desolders all the components from one of the cards and scans the card front and back.

3. The company puts the card in CNC machine and shaves off extremely thin layers of the card one at a time, examining the card after each layer is removed. Once the next copper layer is exposed they stop and scan it, repeating the process until all layers have been scanned.

4. I didn't have to do this step because Henry already had it done, but I'll document it here for the sake of completeness. If the GALs had not already been made available, the company would have decapped them. This involves using an acid to dissolve the package of the GAL and then examining the silicon under a powerful microscope to determine the fusemap of the GAL. Alternatively it is sometimes possible to bruteforce a GAL by running all possible inputs on its pins and recording the output, but depending on the logic mode of the GAL this can be less reliable and as such I would have gone with decapping. Thankfully this was not required and has ensured a good few dollars were shaved off the final cost.

5. They produce a schematic and a GERBER file based on the scans. I will receive both once the full price has been paid.

6. They produce a board from their GERBER file, assemble it and test it in the provided IIGS against the second working original TWGS I provided them by running various tests that I outlined for them. Once it passes, which it did, they produce my initial run of 50 cards and send them out to me as soon as I pay the second half of the fee.

That's it. You can see there is no sorcery here. Its a straight-forward approach to a straight-forward problem. Can somebody please tell me how I have done something wrong by being upset by such a comment. If someone makes a claim that has no basis in fact against something you are doing, and does it in a place that it is possible to influence other peoples opinions of you and your product, don't you have the right to be a little upset? Would it have killed him/her to email me privately and express their concerns before doing what they did? I am new to producing for this community, which is very close knit, and if people start spreading doubt and untruth about me and my product, no one is going to buy anything and I'll be done before I started. Before you go making claims that I'm 'butthurt' and whatever else, put yourself in the same position, if you had a store and were selling a product that you had produced yourself and were selling at cost, and someone stood in front of your store handing out leaflets claiming that it was impossible to produce your product for the cost you are selling it at and that you were a fraud, wouldn't you be a little bit hurt or annoyed?

Thank you so much Erik for your support, I really do appreciate it. Thank you Clay for your kind words and for everything else! Thank you Chris for your point of view. Thank you too Jonas for your comment (and for everything else ;)). Yes I did overreact a little bit with my final comment, I should have let myself cool off a bit before writing my response, but I feel that my other comments were apt. IUnknown could have read the other thread to see the discussion regarding the lack of custom chips on the TWGS or could have contacted me personally before posting what they did. For those who are saying they want to wait for pictures/testimony/whatever else, please do, there's no harm in being cautious. For those who have and continue to preorder cards, thank you so much for your support and your patronage. 

By the way, for those who don't know, since the Drew][ stereo card is out of production I am currently designing a stereo card for the IIGS. Stay tuned for more info on that.