[sdiy] reissue parts

[Scott Gravenhorst]

xyzzy at sysabend.org wrote:
>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 :-)

Color me "slightly" insane too, I'm one of the 4069UB & 4007 devotees.  

>
>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.  

There's that possibility, but as we old farts die off, there will be less and
less interest in that.  Younger folks (for the most part I am guessing) are
driving the virtual thing.  We're still seeing general purpose CPU chips get
faster and faster.  Sooner or later, they will be more than fast enough to put
together a virtual that can rival a huge analog in terms of module function
and module count.  Personally, I think virtual is where SDIY will end up.  I'm
not saying that's good, or bad, or right or wrong, just that it's where I
believe we will be going when analog stuff isn't available anymore.  That's
still a long way off though (so I hope).

>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...  

Right.  That's already been the demise of more than one "group project".  The
beauty of having general purpose functional blocks like OpAmps and OTAs is
that we can make whatever weird thing we want.  Virtuals allow any programmer
to dream up whatever they want without regard for what anyone else wants.  And
costwise, it will be merely the cost of a PC which we will have anyway and we
aren't locked in, as long as we know how to program.  Programming, however,
isn't everyone's cup of tea, but then neither is analog design or soldering
for that matter.

>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.


Long live the 4069UB and 4007.


> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> - 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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-- Scott Gravenhorst | LegoManiac / Lego Trains / RIS 1.5
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