Yes that was our idea as well that that be the only real differences. One of the things that was harder than I expected but was made to look easy by the engineers in the Tokyo office was we wanted the DB-25 Right angle connector footprint for the D to also be stuffable as an internal keyboard post header connector. I think it was Mitsumi that supply the header in a DB25 (staggered row) and I believe it cost us or Mitsumi a not-insignificant amount to tool that connector as a custom. I remember them saying it wasn't on any centers/grid they had used before. Nobody complained, we were all there to make money, but I had no idea when we had that "simple" idea to keep compatibility we were spawning a whole new product line. The single highest priced item of the whole C128 line (item not assembly) was the cable for the C128D keyboard. When I heard that one of the middle managers had priced just the 25 wire cable at $5.00USD (1984 dollars) I kind of chastised him in the meeting and said I should be able to get it under $1.00 . A week later I went in to the meeting and said I had been wrong, I couldn't get the price down below ($4.60 I think) which had totally surprised me as I was so used to being able to dictate prices to the vendors to some degree. (Jach Tramiel habits) I took a day to see if I could change the keyboard to some kind of shift register/serial just to get out from under that crazy cable cost. -----Original Message----- From: owner-cbm-hackers@musoftware.de [mailto:owner-cbm-hackers@musoftware.de] On Behalf Of Julian Perry Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2013 11:11 PM To: Bil Herd Subject: Re: C128D Hello Bil, Wednesday, November 27, 2013, 3:07:23 PM, you wrote: > Was a European C128D a standard main PCB with the A10 wire near the > front of the PCB? Yes. The only difference I can surmise between the 128 and 128D boards, is the population of the connectors for the floppy drive controller on the mainboard - on the straight 128 boards I've seen, there are just the solder pads. Julian > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-cbm-hackers@musoftware.de > [mailto:owner-cbm-hackers@musoftware.de] On Behalf Of Jim Brain > Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2013 10:51 PM > To: cbm-hackers@musoftware.de > Subject: Re: C128D > On 11/26/2013 9:45 PM, Steve Gray wrote: >> Yup, it looks like the european c128d. It's a cool design. To me it > seems to make more sense than a single pcb that combined computer and > drive. I bet the plastic 128d would be easier to maintain/fix. > For Bil's benefit: > I concur. The cost reduced 1571, with it's limited 6526 replacement > and special drive ROM was not welcome. > Jim > Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list > Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list -- Best regards, Julian mailto:jp@digitaltapestries.com Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list Message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing listReceived on 2013-11-27 17:00:06
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