Email I've sent to WDC inquiring about a student price on 65XX development software has gone unanswered. Not even a "no". If enough people wanted to order a dev. kit do you think they'd cut us a deal? IIRC, the regular price was $320, student $240 or so.

-Dave

Hi Dave,

I've had a lot of complaints about them not responding to queries. This is one of the reasons that the original bulk order was started. I'll ask them and see what they say.

Regards,
Mike

_________________
- Mike Naberezny (mike@naberezny.com) http://6502.org

> Email I've sent to WDC inquiring about a student price on 65XX
> development software has gone unanswered. Not even a "no". If
> enough people wanted to order a dev. kit do you think they'd cut
> us a deal? IIRC, the regular price was $320, student $240 or so.

WDC is not very good at staying on top of their E-mail. I don't think I've ever gotten a response on my first try with E-mail, or with faxes before I had E-mail, but I always got immediate service when I phoned.

As I said on the Yahoo forum however, I would ask everyone to keep one thing in mind. WDC's primary business is licensing IP. They do have some actual hardware so companies can evaluate the technology and develop applications before they have their custom ICs ready; but WDC does not need hobbyists' business, and I doubt that they're making much (any?) money off the hardware when they get such small quantities made. They're friendly with us, be let's not abuse that and take up more of their time than our business is worth so they're sorry they let us buy directly from them.

If you can't get the info you need on the website and E-mail gets no response, call, but try not to take a lot of their time. If you think you have an order ready that will meet the $100 minimum, call with credit card ready so the conversation goes quickly. Of course, just a very few of the people who use 65-family parts in hobby will eventually use them in their work too, which is what happened to me. (If the student price on a board is less, that might be partly why.) Without counting the development cost, software prices should be mostly profit. But if you're talking about the developer boards, I can tell you from having gotten many boards into production myself that low volumes come with very high per-piece price tags, especially on multi-layer boards. So if they don't give much of a discount there, please understand.

Again, if you want an answer from WDC, make a quick phone call. I've had no trouble at all with them when I did it that way.

Garth

Maybe another bulkorder will do ?????.Count me for one !!

René.