RoHS a major hurdle in getting new Phoenix Motherboards?

[techie]

Hi everyone,
I did a quick Babelfish on the amiga-news.de forum this morning and came across an interesting discussion about RoHS compliance and the Phoenix Motherboard. It seems there was some concern that - should more Phoenix Motherboards be produced it would not be possible to sell them to anyone in a European country affected by RoHS. At least I think that’s what they meant anyway; with babelfish you can never really know for sure  :-)

Now I’m rather ashamed to admit that the whole RoHS thing never really crossed my mind before so I’m not exactly sure how it might affect selling replacement motherboards to a small user base. Would anyone with more knowledge of RoHS care to shed more light on this subject?

[Chain]

RoHS really sux
I once need one chip for dead toccata card, and it was almost impossible to find replacement which was RoHS compliant, and none of the shops from US didnt want to send me old original chip (contains pB?, so it wasnt RoHS.. whatever)
really frustrating situation  :madashell:

[motorollin]

RoHS is a good thing. It stops people from becoming ill through eating electronic equipment.

--
moto

[Doppie1200]

I think in case of the phoenix board Rohs compliance is possible. The IC's that cannot comply (custom chips) should be socketed. That way the PCB can still be produced Rohs. For old type of connectors like the 23 pins stuff you might have a problem there. Other off the shelve components are likely to have rohs equivalents.

[drHirudo]

RoHS is a good thing. It stops people from becoming ill through eating electronic equipment.

It's not only that - RoHS is good for the enviroment and for you too. For example someone wants to dump his Trash80 but if he do it the proper way - he have to pay for the recycling. Instead he just dumps it somewhere in the nearby forest, while nobody is watching and forgets about it. Some months later most of the toxic metals from the Trash80 are drained to the soil by the rains. Some months later some tourist crosses nearby and see some fresh berries grown around. He eats them just to taste if they are good, thinking that pollution is not in the forest, without knowing that he consumes highly toxic metals absorbed from the soil. That's why RoHS is good. Recycle of old electronics is a big problem, since most of the people prefer to buy new stuff, instead of upgrading the old, and dumping all which they don't need, although the recycling costs are already paid when you buy the product.

[Chain]

but almost everything "out of date" which will be "trashed somewhere under teh trees" isnt rohs compliant.

[techie]

@all
Hey everyone,
I've just been going over the UK RoHS.gov website (found here) and under the Decision Tree section it says that
a Sub-assembly (I'm assuming that is the correct category atm) is NOT within the scope of RoHS.

Sub assemblies are packages of components assembled into discrete units. Some may have a discernable function, others may not. These include a range of items such as, but not exclusively:

    * Power supplies
    * Populated boards
    * Control units
    * Monitoring devices
    * Cases
    * Display panels
    * Etc

Sub assemblies are not final products and are therefore outside the scope of RoHS enforcement. However, the products that the sub assemblies form part of will usually need to comply, thus requiring the sub assemblies to be RoHS compliant.

As a sub assembly supplier you are likely to be asked for compliance data from your customers. You in turn may need information from your suppliers. The level of effort and detail you provide is a commercial decision. The product suppliers have a challenging task in ensuring RoHS compliance and they are likely to value your support.

So now I guess the question I have is, is the Phoenix Motherboard a Sub-Assembly or not? Any opinions?

btw I'm all for RoHS environmental protection but I would still like to see that everyone is legally able to buy a Phoenix board that signs up at the Revival 2 website.

[Tomas]

Here they added a tax to electronic equipment called enviromental tax. This tax works so that you can deliver your electronic equipment for free at any of the electronic shops or at the local scrapyard.