[sdiy] Yamaha CS-60 issues

[Jay Schwichtenberg]

EOL (End OF Life) for consumer electronics (yes, that includes synths) 
is a given. Number of reasons for this: market saturation, resources are 
needed for the next product, tech advances, competition.... It just 
doesn't make sense to carry on obsolete products and parts.

There are a number of products out there that manufactures give an end 
of manufacturing and support date for, mainly for government or critical 
function things. If you look at some of the Arduino and Raspberry PI 
products you can see this.

I have worked places where they have 3-5 year design cycle and expect 
the product life to be 10 years. They actually estimate number of units 
they are going to sell and have all the custom and critical parts that 
may go EOL stuck in an environment controlled warehouse or vault. This 
is extremely expensive and can take up a large area. More recently I've 
seen products like this go to more FPGAs and ASICs just because they 
have more control over their functionality and also if they need more 
parts they can have them made.

Jay S.