Mike's PCjr Page

We can find out.

As part of my relocation I have new neighbors. One has access to several 3D printers in his shop, and he's already volunteered to do cartridge blanks for giggles. A sidecar might be a little long, but if done in two halves it might not be bad. And we don't have to choose the standard sidecar width either; something a little wider might be useful, for example.

Hopefully that hit on the connectors turns up good. I tried to purchase from the same people that Alan got the initial batch from. After charging my card for close to $300 they did nothing, and when I finally called to ask what was going on a month later they said they could not find the parts. Not cool.

Brutman wrote:

alanh wrote:Another issue I have is the board limits me to 50 PMs in and out bound. Even holds outgoing messages till I free up space. Makes it hard to communicate through PMs

I'll see if I can do something about that ... seems like the easier item.


Mike

Fixed. 250 should hold for a while ...

Brutman wrote:Hopefully that hit on the connectors turns up good. I tried to purchase from the same people that Alan got the initial batch from. After charging my card for close to $300 they did nothing, and when I finally called to ask what was going on a month later they said they could not find the parts. Not cool.

Not cool at all!

The bad news is that the rep emailed me today that he found the AMP 532771-2 part, but not the AMP 532773-2 when he went looking for the samples to mail. Rats! Guess it's off looking for more.

As far as the 3D printing stuff, I've never even seen a machine, but the idea makes me drool. First things I thought of were custom connector shells for the jr.

My university has a decent ABS rapid-prototype machine that works kind of like a 3D printer. It takes a really long time to run, though, and I'm not sure how you would book time on it. Probably wouldn't be worth it if you needed more than one case out of it.

jharre wrote: First things I thought of were custom connector shells for the jr.

End panels too. Most of mine have several tabs broken off so they only barely hang on to the last sidecar.

Trixter wrote:

jharre wrote: First things I thought of were custom connector shells for the jr.

End panels too. Most of mine have several tabs broken off so they only barely hang on to the last sidecar.

Mine has all the tabs intact in the front and all broken off in the back, haha. I just glued the eraser from one of those BIC mechanical pencils to the spot where the tabs broke off, and it actually does a fairly good job holding the thing in place.

Back on the hunt for sidecar connectors, I sent out an RFQ from a different service. (HoBid - sounds like I'm looking for ... uh, never mind.)

Anyway, two suppliers came back with prices of about $10.75 for the two parts. But, neither could furnish samples so I could be sure they are the correct parts. Does anyone have spec sheets, preferably with a picture or line drawing of the parts for the AMP 532771-2 and AMP 532773-2 parts?

I'd like to be reasonably sure before shelling out nearly $300 for 25 part pairs that these are the sidecar connectors and not some other parts that just happen to have the same numbers.

Edit: UPDATE - another supplier responded that they can get samples. So, should know by Monday 10/21 if they actually have the parts and later next week if they are the right ones!

It took a while, but I finally do have samples of each of the PC jr sidecar connectors. Here's a picture of them: The price is $10.12 for the connector and $1.71 for the shroud, plus shipping. The quoted price is for quantity 25. Does this still sound like a good number?

Is these still enough interest in the jrIDE to justify buying a minimum of $300 worth of connectors?

<*> Jim

Not to me. I'd rather just cannibalize a power or memory sidecar to get its connectors.

The quoted price was per 25; is there an individual price?

Trixter wrote:Not to me. I'd rather just cannibalize a power or memory sidecar to get its connectors.

That made me cringe. If people don't step up to preserve these things, they get harder and harder to find. I don't think sidecars are growing on trees like they used to.

Jim - I was going to buy my own set this past summer but that supplier had lost them. If you want to split an order I can do that easily - I have a few sidecars where the connector is damaged, so to make the sidecar usable again I need direct replacements.


Mike