Emax

Niklas-

To address your statements---

Well- I can tell you that a turnkey kit with a drive would cost money.

And I can also tell you that plenty of people have sent me many an email over the years complaining about costs related to drives, parts, etc.

The reason I never made a turnkey kit including the drive are mostly cost and availability, not even accounting for the fact that someone who is going to build this up then has to sit on the stuff until it sells.

There's a lot of overhead involved.

When I did have used drives for sale it was more than six months before I sold the last one, in the meantime, it cost me hundreds of dollars to purchase them...out of pocket. I'm not an actual business, just a hobbyist, like so many other people in these communities.

Point of fact- I have had several instances where people didn't want to buy the $52.50 kit, they only wanted the TIM PAL and I should just sell them that....Then send me email later saying they couldn't find the correct EEPROM or SCSI controller or asking me what they needed to buy to program it, etc!!!

Of note-

Materials cost me about 50% of the cost of the kit- not allowing for any TIME involved in providing this (programming, testing, packaging, driving to the post office or ups to ship), etc.

it's why I stopped selling slim floppy adapters- because people wouldn't pay $20 for a $10 item that I had to modify for Emax which took about 20 minutes to modify and another 10 or 15 minutes to fully test.
I couldn't even make my money back for the time required to mod it.

So I published the detail on the web....

SCSI chipset kit I sell IS install yourself (or for the not technically inclined you can have a local electronic repair shop do it, or I do install for $50 flat fee US + ship).

The instructions are available: http://djtbs1.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/emax-plus-scsi-retro-instructions.pdf

Technical ability to install the kit due to board mod requirements is something that you would have to blame EMU for.

With that said-

These are the SAME binaries given by the factory, and programmed into ICs by myself as Emu no longer sells it.

I test every IC in my testbed Emax before shipping them out.

The SCSI chipset itself does work, it's tested with a well known track record.

I have sold over 60 kits between here, vintagesynth, my wordpress site and ebay.

There is a database of known working drives here on the group in the "Database" section.

If you are worried about buying a particular drive- ASK!!!
Plenty of people here have tried many things out and can give guidance to buy or not to buy, or UNKNOWN.

The only thing left up to chance is what drive you want.
And that is also why the kit I sell isn't a "turnkey" solution.
But then- that makes sense for a couple of reasons:

1) Some people want external not internal

2) Some people want Zip or SyQuest, some want flash, and some (scarily) want to stick with the good old fashioned HD.

3) Drive prices and availability vary and cannot be guaranteed.

4) Some people want one drive, but may want to switch to a different drive later

5) Some people will buy the chipset kit, and save to get exactly the drive they want later, so they can do the upgrade in parts...

Hopefully this gives you some insight...

Regards,
Ted

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 12:55 PM, Niklas Ehrlin niklas.ehrlin@gmail.com [emax] <emax@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Well the point of getting the emulator would be that it is ONE kit, and its available, and comes with installation guides.

No need to try to find suitable stuff that might or might not work.

I would love if there was a decent SCSI-kit that was available and confirmed working and that you could install yourself.

Niklas