You obviously didn't read the dozen emails i had with Bill Mensch at WDC over the course of a couple months, if you are saying i am not an easy customer. I placed an order. Sorry, they didn't want my business, even tho i prefered the 65C02, i bought 200 avrs. I then bought 3 reels (3000 chips) of srams to go with the 600 flash rams and reels of small drams, so the avrs had chips to remember things in.

My steel wholesaler also sold me bits and pieces, then i placed a $12k order and several $8k orders. They are happy. My other chip suppliers are happy.

I guess WDC has the same knack for prejudging people that you do. I've been buying parts for 30 years, and you keep talking down to me about it. I'll say it again: if they write me off over an order for 10 chips, i'll write them off over an order of 100 chips, or 1000 chips.

People like you that give me "advice" keep me irritated, and when a supplier hems and haws around, won't confirm an order, i won't be any nicer to them than to you. WDC was very unbusinesslike. Please quit with the condescension.

aikatt

Hi Aikatt
Sorry for any offence. In part I'm posting for the future: many people and many beginners use this site and it's good for them to have constructive advice about how to proceed. If they see, or if suppliers see, objections and criticisms, it'll be harder in future for us to pursue our hobby.

Cheers
Ed

I'm sorry, go to http://apatco.com/ and enter 65* , and you get 5 pages of google links to their kit forums. Enter "6502" or "6502 price", you again get your choice of google spam.

I guess it's better than before, when the chips weren't linked anywhere, but this thread started because someone else could not find the chips there. I wouldn't look under "replacement parts" for a chip that won't fit anything Commodore made (the 65c02 has different pinouts?), and is going into a new design.

aikatt

Hi Aikatt
I posted the links to their shop to help people find the products. It's not unusual for a website+forum+shop to have 'search' functions which don't search all the pages you might hope. If a supplier is willing to supply small numbers of unpopular parts to hobbiests, I'd like to help that happen.

Cheers
Ed

I understand, you have an admirable quest. When i first found this forum, i also found a list of suppliers here. I couldn't get chips from any of them. I posted in the first header about ordering chips, the "bulk order" one, where there's no bulk ordering going on, and Mike Naberezny didn't reply to my emails.

If you go back and read that thread, the comments aren't any more flattering to anyone here than in this thread, at least until this post of your's that i am currently replying to.

aikatt

OK, I've enough of this bull****.

aikatt, get off the forum if you're going to play the victim every chance you get. I have never had a problem ordering parts from WDC provided I met their minimum ordering requirements. Garth has never had a problem. Mike Nazembary (he who started this site) has never had a problem. Daryl Rictor has never had a problem.

You, it seems, are the only one. Four people who have had positively good experience ordering components from WDC, versus, it seems, just you.

Obviously, we've never read the 200 e-mails between you and Bill Mensch. You're right. But you don't disclose those emails publically, so how can we? And if we did, I bet you a slice of pizza it'd immediately reveal the hypocrisy with which you burden this forum with. I bet you even go on to beat your chest like an ape with your steel orders, threats to switch to the AVR architecture, and the like.

Particularly when you interject your own interpretation of someone else's problem into the thread in an attempt to shanghai it to your own nefarious agenda. The original poster wrote,

Nowhere in this paragraph do I see any mention of problems ordering from WDC. Once again, you are the only one to have brought this up.

If you cannot comprehend the intent behind a single forum post here, how can WDC expect you to comprehend their minimum ordering requirements? No wonder you're having such problems with them.

You demand that we "quit the condescension," and yet you freely offer such condescension every opportunity you can here, if not to Apatco, then to WDC, and also to others on the forum. The very act of demanding we quit the condescension is itself condescension!

You can't have it both ways -- you want us to quit the condescension? Then grow up. You claim you won't treat us any better than your chip suppliers because we tend to prejudge people like you? Then start posting facts instead of dick-waving. We don't give a **** about your $12K purchase orders from some steel supplier, nor do we care about your 600 SRAMs, 200 AVRs etc. If you genuinely are the professional you say you are, and are this unhappy with the 65xx market, you would have dropped it like a hot potato and never looked back.

The key words being, "never looked back."

If you want to contribute productively to this forum and the 65xx community, the best thing you can do is learn to communicate with other people, stop playing the victim without offering hard evidence to support your claims, and stop spreading blame, especially ex post facto.

There was an awesome quote in a Youtube video I watched recently. If one person calls you an ass, that's one man's opinion. If ten people call you an ass, you get fitted for a saddle.

So, A) you hate suggestion or proof you're wrong, and B) when i follow YOUR advice, kc5tja, you can then twist that to being a "threat" to switch to AVR. Yep, YOU said if there was a project that was at risk for lack of 6502, it was stupid not to switch to avr:

"
Did I read this right? You shut down potential revenue-generating projects because you couldn't use a 6502 to drive them? If you're certain of their commercial viability, that would not be a wise choice -- jump ship to another CPU and go to market!! I'm serious -- ARMs are huge (much to the chagrine of MIPS Technologies) and dirt cheap these days;
"



I think it's gone way past getting chips now. The best you could have done was making a sticky thread other than a fake "bulk order" one, with REAL sources for chips. I have mentioned two sources in a recent post. Your choice of action is to attack and demonise me. I thought i was supporting someone else's drive to get real data on sources of chips, in fact the guy who posted here said yet someone else was saying the chip is hard to find. I have no clue what your problem is. I don't feel the need any more to try to understand you, and your unrelenting animosity does tend to cause me to despise you, despite your technical prowess.

You are wrong, and i bet that slice of pizza that you can't resist a target.

aikatt

Vote #2 for Ass. Reason:Too much money, and no idea how to spend it, or design with the things it buys... Even worse, no idea how to properly communicate, and excessive undeserved pride.

PS. I think admin should delete all the off-topic garbage.

_________________
65Org16:https://github.com/ElEctric-EyE/verilog-6502

Yes, what did your post have in relation to 6502?

aikatt

Vote #2 out of 10 or delete.

_________________
65Org16:https://github.com/ElEctric-EyE/verilog-6502

Alright you guys, if everyone can agree to a cease-fire, I would like to discuss with Mike and see if we can make some parts available and make everyone happy, hopefully including those overseas. I don't know if he still has some stock, but I might buy some and then if you buy from me you'll basically just be reimbursing me for having bought parts for you. IOW, I (who don't have a business license or a resale certificate) don't make any profit, but you'll have to pay your portion of the shipping cost from WDC to me in addition to whatever it costs for me to ship your parts to you. With Paypal it should work out more easily than it would have before the days of Paypal, although I would still value input from members like Daryl who sold his SBC boards to forum members before.

This is not an announcement that I'm setting up shop, as I'm not making any promises yet-- I just want to explore the practicality. If you're already interested and have some idea what you would like, let me know. Obviously it will work out better if I can size my orders appropriately, although if someone wants lots of something, then I do want some protection against them changing their mind and leaving me stuck with a lot of money tied up in more product than I can move in a reasonable amount of time. But if I have stock, the minimum order would be one piece (although for one piece, the shipping may cost as much as the part). I normally check the forum as well as my email many, many times every day, and I respond quickly, which will be to your benefit, although I cannot afford to have this new service turn into a big time-consumer for me or a big investment since there will be no ROI.

If Apatco or someone complains that I'm undercutting them, I'll just explain that I'm not advertising, I don't have a website, and I'm just trying to make the modern parts available to some friends who have had trouble finding a dependable source.

We at APATCO are simply trying to be there for anyone who wishes to continue using the 65xx technology. The 6502.ORG website is great, and we have no problem with Garth making chips available to the users. Selling individual chips is not our main focus, but simply provide as a service to our customers. Anyone who is interested in buying from APATCO can simply visit http://www.apatco.com/shop or go to http://www.apatco.com and click on "Online Store"

I'm not sure what more we can do to make our products become more searchable, but aikatt has been unable to find our products for some time now, so to make things easier I thought I would submit this post for any other individuals who have trouble searching. We will strive to make improvements to our website in the future.

Sincerely,
APATCO Technologies

Most of those who committed to buy my boards followed through. Fortunately, others came along and bought up the left-overs so I was not left holding unwanted parts. That is a risk you do need to be careful of. Do not over-buy too much. Its better to have folks wait until the next order than to have a large excess sitting around.

I found paypal works best for foreign purchases as the currency exchange is handled easily.

I used an international priority mail flat rate envelope which offers some security and speed (usually 7-15 business days to most European countries (Germany, England, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, & Holland are some I recall sending to). The cost was ~$12.95 if done online with usps.com (account signup required). At the counter, it was ~$14.95 Those costs are a year old, postal rates may be a little higher now.

Hope that helps Garth!

Daryl

Strange. when I designed my POC unit late last year I had no trouble getting some 65C816s in a PLCC44 package from WDC. I suspect any difficulty you may have experienced may have been in your approach. The folks at WDC are a pretty nice bunch, if you ask me.

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I'd be interested to see what was in those E-mail exchanges. I've exchanged a few messages with Bill Mensch concerning some 65C816 technical matters and in every case, he gave me a prompt and courteous reply.


WDC generates most of their revenue by licensing IP, not by selling actual silicon. They make some MPUs and other support devices available for prototypers and small production runs. You can't expect to show up at their front door, metaphorically speaking, and expect them to deflect attention from their primary focus (IP licenses to custom ASIC houses) just to satisfy a onesie or twosie sale.


Not sure what a steel distributor has to do with microprocessors. Last I checked, silicon is the primary ingredient in MPUs and iron in steel.


Then go with them and quit complaining here. As I said above, I've found my dealings with WDC to be pleasant. Perhaps it was because I didn't act like the south end of a north-bound horse when I contacted them.

_________________
x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!