i'd say that in a time and age where 'christmascards with leds that play songs' contain custom ic's (or at least the dies with a plob of epoxy over them

, if you pay more than 50k for a custom asic production of anywhere between 10k and 100k numbers, you are getting completely ripped off. lol. tramiel bought ALL of mos semiconductor company for less than you say it would cost to have a few chips produced by one of their competitors

if you could buy the entire -factory- for a couple of million bucks in the 1970s you definately can build an entire factory for -less- now. unless technology has moved -back- in time instead of forward. i also think we are getting ripped off out of our asses by pcb manufacturers btw. it's impossible that consumer **** retails for less than 20 bucks and still makes a profit when we pay simular amounts just for the pcb. so someone is scamming the whole lot of us

things on the to-do list: get our own chip factory and get our own pcb factory. pronto. let's file this under the 'how many nerds does it take to screw in a lightbulb' but actually i would have expected 3d printers to make pcbs and ic's nowadays. for 'at home' sold at best-buy. but things got kinda 'retarded' in the end-user segment anyway.