Spaeth SW/ESB kit - interest thread

kiphartzell

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For everyone desiring a new Spaeth SW/ESB kit, Mark recently indicated in another thread posting that he could be potentially motivated to finish testing some more kits if ten people showed him some real $$$.

Heh... if 10 people with $250 mailed me, I'd probably be motivated to dig them out of storage and test them.

I would be in for two kits, so we need eight more serious buyers willing to toss $250 Mark's way for a new kit. Anyone else?? Thanks!

1 - kiphartzell
2 - kiphartzell
3 - fizgig
4 - tron1969
5 - JC Arcade
6 - StrainedSky
7 - Vindog
8 - Jedidentist (if willing to take his $)
9 - TK1072
10 - Smokinfish (if includes shipping)
11 - Mckindy (if includes shipping)
12 - GameyMcGame (if includes shipping)
13 - scottz29
14 - jayleone
15 -
16 - Ghostlyguy (undecided) ????
 
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I already have a Cowgill "no cut" kit (new-uninstalled), but one major selling point for me towards installing one of Mark's kits is that power does not have to be recycled when changing games. Clay's instruction says to power off game, then flip the switch, while Mark uses a momentary switch that can be toggled with power-on. Though Mark does strongly point out other design improvements ;-)
 
So was the reason they were discontinued due to the faulty design? Did people have a lot of problems with them?

There's several archived articles on Usenet of the issues with Cowgills.
And FYI - Cowgill mentioned power cycling it to switch games as a SAFETY measure only. It was my experience that it was completely unnecessary to do so.
 
There's several archived articles on Usenet of the issues with Cowgills.
And FYI - Cowgill mentioned power cycling it to switch games as a SAFETY measure only. It was my experience that it was completely unnecessary to do so.

I bought my machine with clay's kit already installed. I have never powered down to switch games:eek: Kit works perfect!!
 
Add me to the list, though I would be happier with Mark's $200 price point. :)

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Yep, his spreadsheet shows $200 which would be a more desirable price. So I guess the extra $50 is "buying" his motivation to dig out the ten kits and get them tested sooner the later (or never).
 
I stand corrected (my lack of direct experience with Clay's kit). Though suggested in Clay's instruction to power-off, it sounds like his kit will switch between games with power-on too. Anyone know if this is with a on-off toggle switch or a momentary toggle switch?
 
Insert Spaeths rant on Clays terrible design utilizing the crappy NVRAM that he did. Tell me I'm a mind reader Mark lol

He used the same NOVRAM that SW came with, for which the only real issue is a limited number of write cycles.
 
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I stand corrected (my lack of direct experience with Clay's kit). Though suggested in Clay's instruction to power-off, it sounds like his kit will switch between games with power-on too. Anyone know if this is with a on-off toggle switch or a momentary toggle switch?

His uses a hard toggle switch to go between games. Since it doesn't reset the processor, switching games puts the code into an unknown state which can produce unpredictable results... normally when it runs into the weeds it'll eventually watchdog and reset itself, but before it watchdogs, spurious writes to the NOVRAM can corrupt it (which is the biggest complaint people had about the operation of that kit).
 
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