No more new ACA1230/56 ever?

[Digiman]

Yes/No?

Also if no then why?

[runequester]

my understanding was that the processors are hard to get.

[zipper]

Not necessarily hard to get but vastly overpriced, by a big margin what I've read.

[runequester]

yeah, you're undoubtedly correct

[4pLaY]

A new 060 card would be better and im sure it would sell a few... hard to get NOS cpus? use used ones! they have been used in everything from computers to dish washers.

[Digiman]

I think they should sell blank ACA1230/56 boards without CPU then really. 28 is not enough of a boost but good value sure.

[ognix]

I think they should sell blank ACA1230/56 boards without CPU then really. 28 is not enough of a boost but good value sure.

I think it's a good idea IMHO, but I don't know if Jens would approve...

BY!

[Duce]

Problem with having the customer supply the CPU is the user error factor.

No company wants to have to field support calls when some guy buys their bare card and is trying to cram a supposedly "working" second hand pull '0x0 onto it.  No matter how many times you can put in bold text on the warranty sheet "Installation of a working CPU chip is up to the user, and we do not support anything but the basic, bare board" there will always be some support issues.

Selling the full card allows for QC and avoids the above, but I'd certainly welcome bare cards if it got accels into more peoples hands.

[bbond007]

A new 060 card would be better and im sure it would sell a few... hard to get NOS cpus? use used ones! they have been used in everything from computers to dish washers.

I like the 060 idea. I also like the idea of a large FPGA that could run an emulated CPU core.

[bbond007]

Problem with having the customer supply the CPU is the user error factor.

No company wants to have to field support calls when some guy buys their bare card and is trying to cram a supposedly "working" second hand pull '0x0 onto it.  No matter how many times you can put in bold text on the warranty sheet "Installation of a working CPU chip is up to the user, and we do not support anything but the basic, bare board" there will always be some support issues.

Selling the full card allows for QC and avoids the above, but I'd certainly welcome bare cards if it got accels into more peoples hands.

but in the PC world you can buy your own CPU, Motherboard and FAN... whats the big deal?

[NovaCoder]

I think the story is that Jens managed to get a batch of 50Mhz chips (that would clock to 56Mhz) at a good price and that batch is now all gone.   To buy more chips would cost him a lot more so the price of the cards would obviously have to go up.

There's still a chance that more 56Mhz cards will be made but I wouldn't hold your breath.

[Duce]

The difference being bbond is people building new commodity hardware PC's are not generally having to buy second hand "pulls" for CPU's.  I need an i7 or AM3, I can buy one new in box at the store 1 mile from my house.

What happens when some guy buys a supposedly "working" '030 off ebay to slap in a theoretical "bare" ACA card, and said chip is DOA, or worse yet, could be mangled to the point it may cause damage to said ACA card?

From a business standpoint, I understand fully why they would not ever offer a "bare" board.  Quality Control.

[Tension]

The difference being bbond is people building new commodity hardware PC's are not generally having to buy second hand "pulls" for CPU's.  I need an i7 or AM3, I can buy one new in box at the store 1 mile from my house.

What happens when some guy buys a supposedly "working" '030 off ebay to slap in a theoretical "bare" ACA card, and said chip is DOA, or worse yet, could be mangled to the point it may cause damage to said ACA card?

From a business standpoint, I understand fully why they would not ever offer a "bare" board.  Quality Control.

Quality control my arse.  They won't be made because they would have to priced cheaply. Nobody wants that.

[runequester]

considered the aca cards are pretty low priced compared to what people flog this stuff for on ebay, I dont think anyone can reasonably accuse Jens of being a price gouger.

[stefcep2]

Quality control my arse.  They won't be made because they would have to priced cheaply. Nobody wants that.

OK then.  Say a cpu is installed and the card doesn't work.  You can bet that the user will want to blame the board, no doubt citing that it was pulled off another working device.  IC will then have to deal with having the board sent back to them, possibly-damaged, and then testing it (again), finding the board is fine or maybe has been damaged by the user.  Then what?  I wouldn't want that hassle, who would?

Also when I was installing a different 68040 to replace a faulty one on an Apollo 1240, I bent one of the pins.  Thankfully I didn't power it up and I was able to straighten the pin without breaking it, but it just goes to show what can go wrong.