Some good news to start 2023. The AppleSqueezer GS was updated and can now be manufactured again!
As you probably know if you've used an AppleSqueezer GS: it consists of two parts: a green half and a black half. The black half was a more or less standard component that was available from a 3rd party, until I bought most of them to create AppleSqueezers. When they sold out, they were no longer being manufactured. This presented a problem as well as an opportunity. The immediate problem was that I couldn't sell AppleSqueezers anymore. But on the bright side, I had a chance to create a better "black" part. After some PCB designing, I received this in the mail right before Christmas:
Some shiny new gold-plated PCB's. The end result, after placing components on them and doing some testing:
A brand new AppleSqueezer GS. I'm happy to report it's working well, after initial tests at least! Which I'm very happy about, because a previous iteration that I finished a few weeks ago had a reliability issue with its DDR3 RAM - which wasn't entirely unexpected because I was hoping to be able to get away with a (easier to manufacture) 4-layer board. An updated 6-layer board fixed the problem, and now the DRAM is working well (as well as everything else):
I don't have many completed AppleSqueezers in stock for now, so you can't order them just yet, but the hardest part (well, perhaps I should call it, the most interesting part) is now completed! I'll probably place an order soon for some populated PCB's (with parts), since it's quite a chore to place them all by hand :) Please be a little more patient, and hopefully soon the inventory of the store will be updated again!
By the way, functionality is exactly the same right now, although the new board does give me the option to potentially improve things further down the line, and it's always good to be less dependent on 3rd parties. Additionally, it will give me some much needed time again to work on improving existing functionality. Oh, and yes, it's purple now! :)
Happy new year!