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https://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-an-obsolete-connector/
This is a happy story about the power of global communication and manufacturing resources in today's world. If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, then you've certainly heard me whine and moan about how impossible it is to find the obscure DB-19 disk connector used on vintage Macintosh and Apple II computers (and some NeXT and Atari computers too). Nobody has made these connectors for decades.
I've got a disk emulator product called Floppy Emu that attaches to an Apple DB-19 port, so I need a steady supply of these connectors to build my hardware, and that's a problem. Over the past couple of years, I've scrounged what seems like every warehouse and basement on the planet, and bought up nearly the entire world's remaining supply of new-old-stock DB-19 connectors. My last few product batches included DB-19s from some very obscure international sources. It was clear I'd reached the end of the road.
This wasn't a surprise. The DB-19 shortage first became obvious to me about a year and a half ago, when a manufacturing error forced me to replace all the DB-19 connectors in a batch of boards, and replacements couldn't be readily found. Since then I've written a dozen times about the impending DB-19 doomsday. I also made severalattempts to design a DB-19 substitute using a small PCB and suitably-arranged header pins, but while they more-or-less worked, I wasn't satisfied with the result.
[...] But just as I was getting discouraged, good luck arrived in the form of several other people who were also interested in DB-19 connectors! The NeXT and Atari communities were also suffering from a DB-19 shortage, as well as others in the vintage Apple community, and at least one electronics parts supplier too. After more than a year of struggling to make manufacturing work economically, I was able to arrange a "group buy" in less than a week. Now let's do this thing!
[...] Two months passed, and a round of prototyping. Progress was slow but steady, and I received updates from the manufacturer every few days. I kept waiting, eagerly anticipating this DB-19 bounty. At the end of May the product finally shipped, only to disappear into a US Customs black hole somewhere for a couple of days. Then at long last, after what felt like an infinite wait, I came home to find 10000 of these beauties stacked on my doorstep[!]
(Score: 3, Funny) by EJ on Wednesday October 23 2019, @05:11PM (2 children)
Get the lawyers on the phone, STAT! We have somebody to SUE!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @05:47PM (1 child)
Apple can't as they are cozy with China. Maybe now they would not jump on the Twapple][ makers? 30 years too late.
NOTE please: these had to be ordered from China as nobody in the USA could even start making them today. Contrast to when Apple started and these parts were 100% USA. Slowly rewind through the past 30 years and see where the seed was sown... [clue: blue dress Bill]
Sad. Self-desctruct has been engaged.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @05:55PM
OTOH... while the USA advances to making new tech, someone picks up re-making all the old tech (and their own new tech).
Example: the Hindustan Ambassador was a copy of the Morris Oxford, little changed during the production years 1958-2014. Article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindustan_Ambassador [wikipedia.org] Obsolete, maybe. Functional, yes. As the saying goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."