MOTM

a) I will ship a few things tomorrow AM, but will not be able to again until 
the week of Nov. 9th. I am taking vacation that week in order to catch up 
and to get the Euro modules released to production. The code for both is now 
finalized and is entering beta testing. I think the HW is also done but need 
to run a few system-level tests first.

b) MOTM-960s will be out-of-stock (in reality, not shopping cart) until Nov. 
16th.

c) MOTM-19A rails are out-of-stock (reality) until Nov. 9th.

d) The week of Nov. 9th will be focused on shipping remaining assembled 
backlog as much as I can. I will not have time to work on assembled backlog 
again until Dec. I am spending Thanksgiving week on kit backlog. December is 
looking very insane, as I need to get E340s/E350s to Analog Haven and still 
see what I can ship out for 'regular' backlog. I cannot possibly ship 
*everything* to *everybody*. By Dec 1st I will guess that only 5% of the 
*total* backlog will remain from where it was on Jan 1st of this year. But 
that means there will be some people without there modules for yet *another* 
year.

The upside (??!?) is that by the end of Jan. I expect to hit the milestone 
that has not happened in over 10 years: zero backlog (or maybe a few modules 
on order). Of course that in turn means zero income until orders arrive. So 
what will be the next (hopefully) order-driver? The MOTM-520/521/530s of 
course :)

But I will be frank: in order to continue with new 5U modules, I have to 
sell reasonable numbers of the 520/530. And by 'reasonable' I mean at least 
40 of each one in the first 3 months. Remember: these are SMT modules (like 
the '650 and the '730) and when I put them into the cart, I will have 
sufficient pc boards built up to ship orders in < 4 weeks. If I am not 
travelling for my day job that may drop to < 1 week. The solder jockeys out 
there (you know who you are) will have to make due with not being able to 
DIY it but instead actually use it.

Lastly, there are several people that have been waiting a VERY LONG TIME for 
all of their modules, and I *will not* put the new modules up for sale until 
every module is shipped to those folks. I want to start with a completely 
clean slate. Sometimes I think it's too late for that, but I hope enough of 
the ~ 700 people that have been MOTM customers will let me prove it next 
year. I would like to hit 10,000 MOTM 5U modules shipped one day. Let's 
see....as of today I need another 1553 (that's shipped, BTW). I should hit 
module #8500 by Dec 31st.

Paul S.