So today I decided to take the plunge into the 65816 land, and purchased an SBC-4 from 8BIT. I sent the payment via PayPal, using funds sitting in the account. The transaction was immediately suspended till further review due to 'regulatory reasons'. The notice indicated that only that transaction was an issue and the rest of my account was unaffected.

[SPOILER: the word 'SBC' seems to automatically trigger a compliance review process! Apparently, bad guys buying bad things on the internets meticulously tag their purchases with keywords, and clever AI scans the shopping cart 'memo' fields to catch them and put them away. Another technological success story.]

A few hours later I received an email from Paypal:



My account in the meantime now shows:
"Your account access is limited. To view and resolve the limitations that have been applied on your account, you can visit the account imitations page." That in turn shows:


To that I composed a (perhaps too snarky) reply, detailing my purchase, providing specifications of the SBC in kilobytes and megaherz, and pointing out in no uncertain terms that the total computing power in question is on the order of one millionth of a typical desktop PC.

Given that 8BIT and I are both in the US (in adjoining states, I think!), this makes me very annoyed/upset/horrified. Perhaps SBC is an abbreviation of some horrible weapon? Or are these people complete morons with infinite funding and nothing better to do?

My last encounter with 6502 police

Approximately 7 years ago, I purchased a few 65C02 chips from Mouser Electronics, a large US distributor. Given the size of the purchase ($30 or so, most of it shipping cost), the uninterrupted availability of the 6502 for more than 40 years, and the fact that it was not my first purchase, I did not expect any issues.

I was therefore surprised to receive several calls from Mouser in my voicemail, and eventually reaching me. A very concerned lady proceeded to grill me about my purchase, the nature of my business (which for some reason she insisted was a trucking company, and far be it for me to object), and the detailed reason for purchasing the chips. She seemed satisfied with my explanation - I made up some bullshit story about prototyping GPS tracking devices to put on my all my trucks to make sure my drivers are safe (don't ask - it felt like the right answer at the time).

After alternating between amusement, annoyance and paranoia for a while, I forgot all about it...

WTF?

To put things in perspective, I've ordered all kinds of electronic parts from many large and small distributors and resellers in and out of the US, on EBAY, from AliExpress and other Chinese sources. 6502/65816 chips are nothing compared to, say, thousands of xilinx FPGAs of various sizes in my inventory.

I really don't know what to make of this.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this, or am I cursed somehow?

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In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. ...Jan van de Snepscheut

I ordered a speed controller once, the paypal transaction had "vesc" in it. PayPal flagged the purchase the same as yours. Vesc is shortfor vertical escape, it flagged for being a possible terrorist weapon. I'm sure sbc is flagged for a like reason.

All these third parties that are supposed to 'grease the wheels of commerce' are more like pouring sand into said wheels. I am thoroughly sick of it. My goal is computing like it's 1984, not living in Orwell's Oceania.

Note to self: when dealing with paypal, do not provide any 'helpful' information about the transaction that is not numeric.
When possible, use the 'send money to friends' option. All of us here are friends, and I doubt that anyone makes any money selling 6502 devices, after all.

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In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. ...Jan van de Snepscheut

Others have had trouble when buying WDC stuff from Mouser -- see this thread. I'm pretty sure at least one of the people is in the US.

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In 1988 my 65C02 got six new registers and 44 new full-speed instructions!
https://laughtonelectronics.com/Arcana/ ... mmary.html

I'm probably picking up on the wrong thing here, but... are the SBC-4s available for purchase now?

When I first offered them for sale, I only had requests for 5 boards. I bought 8 and Enso's was the last one from that group. The CPLD that was on that board is no longer being made, so the SBC-4 is dead in the water. I have had no time to devote to 6502 development and do not foresee that changing in the next few years.

The only 2 projects I have in the works are a 65c02 emulator for the Raspberry PI 2 & 3, which is about 50% complete, and the 65816 big brother on the same platforms, which has not been started yet.

Daryl

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Please visit my website -> https://sbc.rictor.org/

Payment went through as of today. The moral of the story:

Do not put the word SBC in the 'notes' field when using paypal.

Do not put anything in any field that is not absolutely required. Payee email, and the amount.

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In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. ...Jan van de Snepscheut

FWIW, SBC-4 could conceivably refer to:

- Curtiss SBC Helldiver, a late 1930s biplane that was obsolete before WW2 reached the US. There was an SBC-4 variant.
- SCSI Block Commands 4, a specification which appears to have been first published in 2014 and revised many times since. The spec itself seems to be behind a paywall.
- A VoIP Session Border Controller, basically a specialised firewall, which apparently can theoretically be used for wiretapping.

Most likely the latter possibility is what gets the spooks triggered.

I wonder how big you have to be before you get a knock on your door from nice gentlemen who insist on connecting a black box to your network hub. I suppose they can do that without a visit these days; your compliance officer starts getting alerts about your suspicious customers.

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In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. ...Jan van de Snepscheut

I would not worry too much, there must be so many computer generated false positives from searches.
The intelligence agencies always use the ever increasing levels of electronic data as justification for more money. But I very much doubt that they manage more than the occasional random spot check on messages or payments flagged with abbreviations that may or may not be relevant to what they are interested in.

I often put strange abbreviations in my PayPal payment comments, and have not had a problem (yet).

Mark

How about everyone putting ‘SBC’ in the notes fields of all their transactions. PayPal may stop bugging us once they realise that SBC is a VERY common abbreviation for single board computer.

Mark

The last few times I've ordered from Digikey (I'm in the UK) I've had to answer impertinent questions about the end usage of the products. The questions appear at the end of Digikey's order form, not as some after-the-event followup courtesy of one of the three-letter-agencies.

Since it's far more likely that I'll be ordering parts for development here at work - a UK subsidiary of a major (i.e. tens of billions market cap) US company, this seems overly cautious.

Curiously, when I order PCBs from JLC or parts from their associated suppliers, I get no such questions...

Neil

There are tons of people having trouble with PayPal. Just search for "PayPal is not a bank" stories online. I hate PP. But, I use them.

Some pointers for those that are curious:

1) Never treat PP as a bank.

2) Never keep a balance with them. They can tie up your "money" for any reason they see fit. I realize banks can actually do the same thing. Which is why we use more than one bank (credit unions too).

3) Never link PP with your primary bank. It's best to have a "dummy" account with a bank you don't normally use. Only keep the bare minimum in there that you need. That way, if PP gets hacked or someone hacks your PP account, they can't swipe money from your primary income.

I think I know why it was flagged:

SBC-4 could mean "Secret Bomb Company #4". 6502 could be used as a detonator. (LMAO)

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Cat; the other white meat.

I once ordered an electronic drum kit from out of country. The seller conveniently declared the 2 packages as just "shells" and "hardware", common terms in the musical realm. Customs didn't seem too happy about it and gave me a call, wondering if I was buying artillery or something.

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WFDis Interactive 6502 Disassembler
AcheronVM: A Reconfigurable 16-bit Virtual CPU for the 6502 Microprocessor

A colleague got a phone call from work while standing in a check-in queue in an airport. Turns out that talking about bills of material using the common abbreviation in such a place is not a wise idea... "yeah, I've got the boms, they're in my bag..."

Neil