I'm pretty sure you've all waited for news from me - especially as I said I will post pictures as soon as I have them (which should've been last Monday).

So... what happened? Oh well... it was all very annoying. And I had some serious déjà vu, but this time, I'm prepared.

Okay, let's start the story with...

Monday ------

Not much to say here. My contact didn't manage to find the time to visit the case company. That's not really their fault ;) He did make an appointment with them for Tuesday, where the CEO will have the time to answer all his questions, he can thoroughly check the new cases, etc.

So, let's move over to...

Tuesday -------

This is where the annoyance did start. My contact arrived at the company - but they didn't really have time for him. No time for discussion, no real time to look at the cases. He did get a quick view into the production hall, so he could at least confirm they ARE producing the Pyra cases.

However, he did notice that some parts share one mould. This is normal, and nothing special or something to be concerned about But: They did invoice that as two moulds - so I actually paid more than I should have. Both me and my contact don't think they did this intentionally - their whole bookings and invoicing is quite a bit of chaos... I didn't even receive all invoices yet (even though I paid them already), so this probably accidentally did happen. But that's still something unacceptable... especially in combination with the slowness they showed so far.

If you followed the news, you might remember that I said back in August that we will move the moulds and the production to another company if they will not have any new cases soon. While we never told that to them so far, we were preparing that in the background, so we can move everything quickly if need be. The new company is not unknown to us. I already produced over 5000 NES, MegaDrive, SNES and N64-shells with them. I never had to wait longer than 1 week. :)

So... time to share that information with them, right?

Wednesday ---------

My contact did pay them another visit to confront them with the issues.

The deal is simple: Until Monday, we want to have:

* The final 3D data files * The produced cases using the new material, properly produced * Corrected bookings and all invoices

If that doesn't happen, we'll move the moulds to the new company. We made that pretty clear.

Thursday --------

I think I mentioned that the new company has a pretty awesome material mixture (that is about 5x as strong as other plastic materials). They produced some samples for us on Thursday (as they had a production running that used that material). As they don't have the Pyra moulds yet, they used some of ours. So I'll probably receive the most sturdy SNES / N64 / NES or MegadDrive cartridge shell of all time!

My contact plans to pick those up on Monday and will then ship them to me. Hopefully with the new Pyra case samples as well.. but we'll see.

What's the déjà vu? -------------------

This whole story reminded me of the Pandora a long, long time ago. Remember the PCB production run in Texas? Where the CEO always told us how the production is running already, but we never received any pictures? Then we sent one community member, who happened to live there, to them. To check on the production and make some pictures.

We even made an appointment... and guess what: When he arrived, the CEO didn't really have time. And while he did see some PCBs, it were only a few and they weren't really producing any right now...

It's almost the same story!

I also had to move the production away from them to Germany... THAT was quite an act, moving all the parts over the seas and through customs, etc. But: It did work out fine!

We've walked through hell and back to get the Pandora production running smoothly - and I'm prepared to do the same thing for the Pyra as well!

Though moving moulds from one company to another one (which is only 5km away) is definitely a LOT easier than moving the parts back then.

Some 4GB RAM news -----------------

We're now 99% sure that the issue with the RAM is a too high voltage drop on our PCB, which means it needs some improved vias and ground plane. This is what tests have shown.

While it WAS possible to modify the software to make the 4GB RAM PCBs I have here boot and run properly, it's unknown whether that setup will work reliable in all working conditions and with all PCBs produced. But that means that even a little bit of improvement will make things work properly.

We'll work on that - and it shouldn't take too long (depending on Nikolaus' free time though).

Some really sad news - and our condolences ------------------------------------------

While the news about the cases are very annoying, this is something we can (and will fix), so nothing too bad.

However, the news I have now are very sad ones - they are linked with aboves déjà vu as well.

Part of the halt in the Pandora production back then was because the nubs broke very easily and needed to be redesigned a bit, which took 4 or 5 months alltogether. During the wait, to keep you all entertained, one of our trainees back then created the Nub song: https://youtu.be/rvHJbmO9I04

Mardt has really improved since then and became a really good musician (just check some of his songs in the channel... nice instrumental ones).

However, due to an accident, Mardt has died on September 30th, at the young age of 28.

He was really an astounding guy! Quite a bit crazy, always motivated. This part of the newspost is dedicated to him, to keep him in good memories.

And with that, I want to end the post for today.

Thanks (as always) for your support. As usual, feel free to ask questions and discuss at the boards here: https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/threads/the-tale-of-the-cases.81813/