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News
Delivery delay of the new series - the whole truth
2016-07-26:
The new FireBee series should already be delivered by now. Today we will ruthlessly uncover why this isn't the case yet. Read here exclusively what ACP has to fight with. Some already had a hunch; others were informed in personal mails about it. Now, the whole world will come to know. The new series of FireBee computers has a delivery delay.

It all began with the fact that the orders for the new series were processed in the new year - after the holidays. Unfortunately, the Swiss manufacturer could not meet the production period of 12 weeks that was agreed upon in 2015. Therefore, the new agreement was that the computers would arrive at MCS around the end of May 2016. But then there was another delay at the manufacturer, and the end of June was communicated to MSC as the new delivery date (including an apology for the delay). So far, everything was still just about OK, especially since we had decided to also produce the LED-/speaker-clips, which would have delayed the production by a few more weeks anyway.

In the meantime, a new problem also arose in Vienna (sounds almost like a global enterprise...). The producer of the cases, with whom it had been a pleasure to work with so far, suddenly wanted to increase the prices of the mini-cases by 24% for the final order. Our hint that this would represent a 100% inflation was countered by a minimal "price reduction" and a brief explanation. The price increase was explained with, among other things, "that all screws would be included now..." At that point, all our trust had vanished, since the cases contain exactly one single screw - the black knurled screw on the lid. And those were always provided by ourselves in the previous series. Since we were not willing to accept an increased price (which we would have had to pass that on to you by a 100%) for inexistent screws, we started looking for a new producer for our cases, as we were convinced that you would prefer waiting for another 4-5 weeks to increased costs.

We now have the new producer, and we also can keep the price of the mini-cases. As soon as we had that, and (thanks to Milan Tirnanic) also a new, perfectly constructed 3D-model of the mini-case, the new computers arrived at Medusa on July 1st. And: none of them work! Most of the boards wouldn't even start. A few would boot, but then suck so much power that the 45W PSU failed.... so, more a heating device than an Atari clone.

Fredi Aschwanden has spent the last three weeks trying to find the reason, which is proving to be anything but trivial. To this date we don't know what is wrong with the computers. It could be a short-circuit anywhere in the system. Or some parts were badly soldered to the boards, or the boards themselves might even be defective, or defective parts were used. As of now, the manufacturer has received one of the boards from us, and is removing all the parts and soldering new ones on it. Hopefully this will result in an indication of the source of the problem.

Despite these problems we are really glad to work with a Swiss manufacturer, who is accessible and trustworthy. The bad production will be fixed without additional costs. We're please not least because aside from the Medusa and the Hades, the first FireBees were also produced there. Had we chosen to let them be produced somewhere in Asia, we would now have a truly serious problem and could probably write off the money, or file a lawsuit in China (haha).

So we are confident that we will eliminate the problems by the end of August, but we don't want to make any specific delivery promises here, except that you will receive 100% working FireBees, including two years warranty, for your money. As soon as there is more news, we will inform you here.


2 Comments

[Back to News]
JoeIron :: 2016-07-27 09:04:35

Just want to say thank you for your efforts!
Swe :: 2016-07-27 18:11:51

Agree With JoeIron, dont give up! :)
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