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 🙂