Australian Winter

GDEMU orders are 50% done and the rest is at least half-assembled. But it’s getting too hot to work in the afternoons as much as I was until now so… still 2-3 weeks, at best, before it’s all moped up. And then I’m probably getting a break.

From now on I will again change the shipping procedures a bit, I have a box of GDEMUs by now that just sit there and wait for payment time-out so that I can sell them to the next person. I’ve said this many times but I will repeat it again: this far in the queue it becomes the number 1 issue that causes further delays. Plus it really kills any motivation to make even more devices. So now I will ask for payment before your device is actually ready (but will be in few days) in order to clear the stock. This approach has a downside – if people actually pay quickly I will end up short until I can catch up so there might be up to a week of waiting between your payment and actual shipping. Keep in mind though that I process the payments in the order of receiving them so if you pay right away chances are you will get next day shipping.

Too Quiet

The good news: I’m going to finish assembly of all the outstanding Rheas this week, though actual shipping might happen after Sunday. Testing, packing, processing payments – these things take time too. Quite a lot actually.

The bad news: GDEMUs are only about 25% done. It’ll take weeks to wrap it up – and this is exactly why I dislike doing long runs, but the whole gmail blunder left me with little choice. I patiently await the next disaster to strike, this would be the most opportune moment to make this mess even worse.

Also, as of now I’m going to silently ignore any questions about the devices being ready yet, next planned batches, and your order status. If it feels like me being a passive-aggressive jerk here then it’s probably the case but I’m tired of having to answer those same questions again and again on top of all the work I have to do. If you want to respond in kind and rage quit / cancel your order, please do. This will actually shorten the queue and speed things up so you’re welcome.

One more thing, since a few months ago some PayPal payments are coming without shipping address and I have to ask for it via email. Seems like it happens mostly when you use the mobile app so if possible please try the usual web interface instead. It’s not a big deal now but if your PP email is on hotmail I might not have an easy way of contacting you if that happens.

Double Cross

You won’t like this but unfortunately I can already tell there will be delays, especially on GDEMU orders. Basically there’s so many that shipping takes a lot more of my free time. So much in fact that I can’t do any assembly on the same day I’m readying the envelopes – which means I’m going to fall behind. Also, very sorry but the one-week-to-pay rule is now very ruthlessly enforced, and I won’t be making any exceptions this time unless you email me first and explain your situation properly. It’s your job to check your email/PayPal to make sure you won’t miss my payment request.

In other news, I got a couple of FPGAs from a different supplier that offered a better price:

Those were supposed to be Cyclone II devices, except as you can see the marking clearly says Cyclone III. Except the chip name is EP2C5. Also, and this is not so obvious unless you take a hi-res photo at a certain angle, the laser-made markings are not very uniform and look like were done in two different steps. The cyclone logo is off too, twice to thick compared to original, although again you can’t tell unless you have the real Cyclone next to it to compare.

So, clearly a counterfeit chip. I do wonder if it’s even actual “chip” or just a piece of plastic – I’m going to experiment a bit on those. Well, so much for sourcing cheaper parts

From Yesterday

Rhea orders are now closed. How the hell did you people manage to fill up the list in less than 48 hours?! This is a new record for Saturn devices.

I should be able to process all remaining Rhea orders in few hours and then I’ll start building GDEMU list. Every time I see the mess Google made out of it I want to just delete the whole thread – I can only work on it for an hour or so at a time before I rage. So the plan is to process the redirected emails first, then Google, and reject any duplicates. And never used gmail again for collecting orders.

This means the list order will be somewhat random but I should be able to fit everyone in. One GDEMU per customer – no exceptions to this rule at this time, or otherwise I would never be able to tell duplicates apart from multiple orders.

Lastly, and this is important, once I’m done with gmail side I will try to send a bulk email answer (with recipients hidden from each other) from my other email – this wil most likely cause that message to be marked as spam on your end. To help you not miss it I will update this post when I send it, so you can be more vigilant.

EDIT: I’ve finally processed all the gmail orders and sent the bulk reply – so please monitor your inbox closely.

The good news is I have accepted all orders, the bad is there was only about 10% overlap between the early orders and the later ones. With the huge gmail delivery delay I ended up with about two times more orders than I had planned on taking before I closed. Very sorry but some of you will have to wait many weeks for your GDEMU . This might also affect Rhea deliveries a bit so consider all the projected wait times to be very inaccurate.

And finally, apparently some of you have entered incorrect emails into the ordering form because I got a few bounces. If your email contains any of these words: bumblejmper, caspermurks, mikesharp – your order will be cancelled if I don’t hear from you in the next few days.

EDIT2: If you haven’t heard from me at all, and especially if your email is in the hotmail.com or att.com domains, you can use comments system here to ask about your order status. Put your email only in the email field and not the text box, and in the text box simply write “Order check GDEMU” and I will answer when I see it.

Keep it simple and DO NOT abuse this or I will ignore such comments.

Synchronised

You might have noticed there was no April Fools event this year. The short version is I had something prepared but last year some people raged hard so I’ve changed my mind. Thanks to that though I actually came up with some alternatives so hopefully next April will be more fun😛

Anyway, I’ll be opening Rhea and GDEMU orders next weekend. I hate to combine those but that’s the best solution – I’ll try to make the batches smaller, like with Phoebe, I was actually able to wrap it in a month starting from zero. There’s probably going to be more angry people that couldn’t get on the list but on the bright side the next batch will come sooner. Even with that you’ll have to wait perhaps up to 6 weeks to get your device.

Oh, and this apparently needs to be repeated each and every time: I do not take money up front. No, I will not put you on the list before I open it for everybody, and no, I will not email you to let you know it’s time to order.

EDIT: Orders are open.

EDIT2: There was some sort of problem with GDEMU ordering form (or maybe with gmail again), I haven’t gotten a single order and decided to investigate. It’s rerouted to my other email now but orders placed before 19:30 Central European Summer Time are probably lost. Very sorry but please try again now. Also, as usual, my inbox is overflowing so I’ll need some time to process all of it, be patient.

EDIT3: GDEMU orders are temporarily closed due to flood of emails. Gmail finally delivered but dumped everything into one thread (because of identical message subject) and it will take me days to sort it out.

Also, do note you’re getting an inferior device: http://3do-renovation.ru/comparation.htm

Two Years

It’s been 2 years since I’ve started making GDEMU – the project itself is much older but there were a lot of trials and errors before I got something small and cheap enough to consider making it available.

The plan was to finally show the PCE CD-ROM replacement prototype at this point but that got delayed, again. It took way more time to figure out the problem with Type-4 Saturns than I expected, and the reason why it didn’t work in the first place actually threw a huge wrench into PCE project. Plus, kinda by accident, I discovered that AVRs are pretty lousy at being SPI slaves and that pretty much killed my lastest idea. But I’m not giving up on that yet, looking for some workaround. I might actually order the PCB anyway just to test some other stuff. Next target is end of summer or so. Let’s see what happens to make me miss that one too

Phoebe assembly and testing is going slower than Rhea, I started doing it in smaller batches that target specific Saturn type rather than configure and test each board last minute. That means I will be shipping them a bit out of order, plus there might be longer delay between your payment and the actual shipping taking place but no more than a few days. Hopefully I won’t mix up the orders. I expect to have 2/3 of the list done (though maybe not shipped) by the end of this week and the rest should be ready before April.

You might have noticed I’ve stopped responding to all the “when’s the next batch of …” questions. Frankly there’s no point, I answer one person and three other turn up and ask the very same qustion a day later. Plus if I actually had a specific date in mind I would’ve posted about it, so obviously I don’t know myself (yet). I’d say next Rhea/GDEMU runs will happen around April/May but possibly not at the same time and this is all guesswork at this point. So please be patient.

Lastly, a reminder that Phoebe flat cable connector is not ZIF (neither on the ODE nor on Saturn motherboard) and you should take extra care when installing the device. Actually the cable insertion is rather easy, removal can be a bitch though. Unless you really need to move the device between Saturns (not recommended in the long run) please install it once and leave it there. There haven’t been any accidents yet but I’ve managed to kill one connector already by not being careful enough during testing.

Doubtful Atmosphere

FYI people I did reply to all Phoebe orders and that was days ago.

It seems some of you didn’t get my confirmation email and as far as I can tell this is only affects hotmail.com accounts – it probably landed in a spam folder as nothing was bounced back to me. Do note that “free” emails with automatic spam filtering usually don’t deliver spam (as opposed to a proper way to do it – mark and deliver anyway) but keep it in internal folder that’s only accessible via web/browser interface. And that folder is pruned after some time passes as to not waste space.

So, rather than bother me, please check your email accounts and do it properly this time, don’t just assume I didn’t reply.