Pre-order on track for December 2021 delivery?

There are two posts from team members here and here.

I throw the German one from Paul throw DeepL for translation:

Zitat

Hello everyone,

first of all, please forgive us, because we are just over busy with everything at the moment.

We currently get little time and even more, energy that we could use to be here in the forum. The current unfortunate truth is that every time we do so, it shifts the skill of the machine. It has not helped much that I and others among the team have taken new jobs lately. For my part, for example, it means that I have to wake up at 5.30 in the morning, that I arrive at my work before 8.00, that I find myself 32km on the other side of the city center. Then backwards in the afternoon to be back home about 12 hours later. Then there's Chippageddon and Christmas preparations on top of that (even here in Australia we stupidly have Christmas _and_ summer at the same time, which makes them both more stressful than convenient until January arrives) and also everyone has a family that feels somewhat sacrificed....

Chippageddon is such a bad thing, because you could easily think that you have collected all the parts because orders and money were accepted to it but then just the next day (or after a few weeks or so) that the goods dealers have moved their delivery dates 12 months right because a larger customer complained louder. We would even have to find spare parts even for spare parts, all while trying to hold on to the price. There are endless amounts of commodity speculators who have all bought out of some type of parts simply because they want to keep buying them -- just unfortunately at 4x to 10x the price. Even _cardboard_ has become quite scarce and we have to wait _months_ long to have the boxes manufactured.

I would still like to do more live streams and blog posts, but right now it's like open warfare to just get everything done that the timeline doesn't get extended. If I can, you can be sure I will.

By doing this I am not complaining but simply explaining why you have seen little of us. We do the MEGA65 because it is fun, not only for us but for you too and still do. After all, I try to visit here every few days -- unfortunately without enough time to read all the messages. If a message references me, I try to give an answer as soon as possible. This is what I advise you to do: If you want to get an answer from me, please include mega65.

Otherwise from the updates, a few short notes:

1. I got the letze some weeks with the larger flash chip. It is really great, because you could store 8 cores instead of 4 (in fact 6 instead of 2 free, because 0 is Factory Core and 1 is MEGA65 Updated Core). Unfortunately it is more complicated to control and the first board here has a problem that made as if this chip was still annoying. Even 2 weeks was thrown away while I simply discovered this condition. This process is hopefully just about over but not for sure yet until I can get my hands on the replacement board and try everything out. In the end everything will be fine no doubt but nerves are a bit frayed at the moment!

2. I am also making improvements in the Freezer. There was, for example, a problem that the memory map was not always rebuilt correctly when a program is unfrozen. But is now corrected.

3. the other guys are doing a lot of packing and a bunch of little things that have to be done before the machine can get into their hands. Even I don't know all these details, because we don't have enough time at the moment to tell each other everything that is happening.

Otherwise, what would always be helpful to us, and also to pass the time faster, would be to sign up even more volunteers on Discord, which types of help are able and willing to provide. Especially with programming utilities etc. there are many who would be helpful. I recognize that many of you are already doing this and I thank you for it.

LG

Paul.

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Maybe adtbm or mega65 could answer and help?

Beauvais

As I understood the team, all 1400 Mega65 should be ready in March/April 2022.

They didn‘t get the colored boxes in time.

Beauvais

We've had the last couple of weeks lots of hurdles to tackle due to the worldwide economic delivery crisis.

This together with bringing the MEGA65 out was extremly much work.

We planned making an update video, but we just did not find the time.

A project of this scale is immense and requires lots of work.

We've announced the delay on our discord server as well, in english.

If you're interested to take the part of the media manager, please feel free to hop in.

Our priority is the release of the MEGA5 and if we fall short on official announcements lately, then we feel sorry

and all we can say is that we are working hard to get the MEGA65 into all your hands and not writing huge posts with exuses.

PS: It is the worldwide shortage of paper, that's the reason why we will not be able to ship the first batch now, as it was planned.

Please remember, we are a small team of volunteers, not a profit orientated company.

I just want to clarify here: Every preorderer has concluded a contract with the company Trenz.

Strictly speaking, the team members have nothing to do with the pre-orders of the MEGA65. The order was placed with Trenz and Trenz also received the money.

If, then Trenz would be responsible to pass on delivery delays to their customers. Because they have a contract with them. And they also earn their money with it. The team members don't get a cent, on the contrary, they even pre-fund the first MEGA65.

Apart from that, it has already been discussed here that it would of course have been nice if a little more communication had come from the team. They have now written something about this and also explained what the problem was.

Beauvais I‘d like to give you 10 more thumbs up.

Snoopy We should not start to find the guilty one!

That does lead us nowhere.

(in German: Es ist keine gute Idee einen Schuldigen oder Verantwortlichen zu suchen.

Das führt zu nichts!)

I think the problem is not the delay.

It is the lack of information.

Administrators should start a thread that is only readable for users.

Team members should post something at least every two weeks about project status.

No big reports, just a few sentences.

I'm not interested in finding someone to blame either. I just wanted to make it clear that Trenz is the first point of contact for pre-order customers. Pre-orderers have a contract with them and not with the team.

That more information from the team is desirable has already been discussed. And the team has already responded with explanations.

Ok, customer has a contract with Trenz. There you are right.

But in my opinion it‘s not a good idea to refer people with questions about Mega65 production state to Trenz.

That communication with all customers would be very much efford for Trenz.

A statement in an exclusive information thread about Mega65 production will reach all customers at once.

(Ok, all who are online here from time to time).

And so much easier for all, customers, the team and also Trenz.

Just my two cents.

Howdy,

Zitat von Beauvais

Zitat von Snoopy

There are two posts from team members here and here.

I throw the German one from Paul throw DeepL for translation:

Hmm... this raises even more questions and I don't see a clear answer in the referenced German threads.

My questions (beside my original post):

• Why is this being announced in the German section only? How about the biggest part of the world, actually not speaking German and not following the German threads?
• I see a couple of quotes..."dealers have moved their delivery dates 12 months" and "Even _cardboard_ has become quite scarce and we have to wait _months_ long to have the boxes manufactured" ... but does that equal that the delivery will be postponed (as it looks now) at least 12 months?

Some real answers would be appreciated... even in the right forume, so everyone can be kept updated.

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1. I was replying to some questions in the german section, not making an announcement. For added irony, I'm an native English speaker from Australia who was happens to be able to speak (hopefully) passable german who was trying to make sure that the response was readily digestable by posting in the same language as the question had been asked of me (as I am also doing now). Noone is trying to exclude anyone, but do also realise that the MEGA65 effectively started out with the most attention from the German speaking community, so is not purely English-centric. But we don't always have the time or energy to write everything in two languages while we strive to get the machine shipped.

2. The dates moved to the right referenced here in my post refer to the dates that suppliers are quoting for all manner of components -- not that the MEGA65 has been delayed by 12 months.

TL;DR - The laminated cardboard shortage in Europe has delayed the initial shipments until around March. Everything else is on track, and there's nothing to worry about. I have one of the R3A production PCBs here that I have been using for the shake-down, and have it basically doing everything it should right now.

Paul