[sdiy] reissue parts

[Tom Arnold]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 12:38:35PM -0700, Scott Gravenhorst wrote:
> I admire and respect your hopeful nature, but that's just not realistic. 
> It is, after all, about profit, staying in business, and nothing else.  The
> industry, even for music electronics, has moved beyond analog and into
> digital, (and I don't wish to debate the merits of either).  We are the
> few, the brave, the proud, and all we can do is make lifetime purchases of
> those beloved components that have been flagged as obsolete.

We are the few, the brave, the proud, and in my case the slightly insane :-)

http://www.arraydesign.com/

Semi-Custom chips.  The pricing isnt even that horrible.
http://www.arraydesign.com/700series.html for the manual for the process.
$3000/week if they do the design work, but for simple-ish devices usable for
us I think we could skip that.
"...and  the charge for mask and prototype wafer is $5000. A small quantity
of chips  (e.g. 25-100) can be assembled within a week (an additional
charge) and there  are enough die left on the 6" wafer to make an initial
production lot."

Is it a lot of money?  Well, yes and no.  In a few years how much will
SSM2040's be worth to someone fixing an old Synth?  If packaging the initial
100 batch runs $2k, that still only puts the initial Prototype batch at
$70each, with probably a few hundred dies left on the wafer that could
further lower the cost.

I honestly think this will be SynthDIY at the next level.  Sure, perhaps I'm
nuts, but I really see a custom chip as the next ASM1, the only thing
stopping it is agreeing on what it should be...  I rather doubt we'd be
making something as simple as the CA3080, when that chip is simple enough
internally do be done as a surfacemount hybrid module.  With the new
processes being developed like Seiko's ink-jet printed ICs...  imagining the
possibilities makes me giddy...  a service like emachineshop.com or
frontpanelexpress.com except for custom ICs.

-- 
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 - Tom Arnold       -  Free Synth DIY webspace http://www.sdiy.org 
 - SynthGeek        -
 - BBD Fanatic      -  "...is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" 
 - echo evho wjxo   -    Juanita Shrugs. "What's the difference?" 
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