NEW Amiga DB23 Female videos connectors will soon be available!

[Jeff_Birt]

EDIT December 10, 2020: The connectors have arrived so the preorder period is over so I am closing this thread. They will go on general sale soon and I will start a new thread for that. Thanks to everyone for all of your support during this project.

Let us introduce ourselves. We are Francis Gradel from Retronic Design and Jeff Birt from Soigeneris. For months we have been working on getting Amiga DB23 Female video connectors reproduced. We started working separately on this project, but then through a twist of fate we joined forces to bring this much needed connector back to the Amiga community.

This has been an arduous process. We contacted and interviewed many manufacturers. We also did destructive tear downs on many different connectors to find a manufacturer who could build high quality connectors at a reasonable price. With a specialty connector like this the tooling is a significant investment so we wanted to get it right.

The next step in the process is for the custom tooling to be produced and the first DB23F samples to arrive for evaluation. After the new connectors pass quality control tests, we’ll have the full production started. Allowing time for the tooling to be tweaked to get the connectors just right we are aiming to have new stock in hand as early as the end of August but no later than the end of 2020.

We are accepting pre-orders with a promised shipment date no later than December 2020. The pre-orders are offered with special pricing and has Francis set up a dedicated webpage to handle this process. The bottom of the pre-order page has a bit more about our story. We will update the webpage, forums, etc. with the project progress.

UPDATE September, 19, 2020: The tooling is now in production and we should have samples about October 28, 2020. Francis had the great idea to add a 'goalmometer' to the pre-order website & a bonus goal. If we get to $8,000 in pre-sales everyone will get 10% more connectors for free with their order, orders under 10 pieces will get 10% off.

https://www.retronicdesign.com/en/db...tor-pre-order/

Future projects: After getting the production of DB23F connectors taken care of we are looking at potentially having plastic hoods made to fit the connectors.

[seb132]

Great project. Ideally you would want 6 versions of this connector:
- the straight one for cables
- the angled one for PCB and motherboards
- the IDC crimp one to make extension cables inside a PC cased Amiga
And of course Male/Female of these.

[alexh]

Thanks for your hard work.

Iirc You can buy male ones in various versions already. It's just the female ones which are unavailable. Typically female ones are only used in cables. If you buy a new cable today they cut down a 25-pin one.

Question can you use plastic hoods from DB25?

[Jeff_Birt]

Originally Posted by seb132

Great project. Ideally you would want 6 versions of this connector:
- the straight one for cables
- the angled one for PCB and motherboards
- the IDC crimp one to make extension cables inside a PC cased Amiga
And of course Male/Female of these.

Unfortunately the tooling to make one connector is very expensive. There are a few shared parts between some of them but each requires new tooling and there is just not enough demand to for each type to even cover tooling cost.

[Jeff_Birt]

Originally Posted by alexh

Thanks for your hard work.

Iirc You can buy male ones in various versions already. It's just the female ones which are unavailable. Typically female ones are only used in cables. If you buy a new cable today they cut down a 25-pin one.

Question can you use plastic hoods from DB25?

Sort of, you will have to enlarge the holes as the center to center distance of the screws is different on the DB23. The larger hood will also not work on the A600 as the connectors are very closely spaced on the back.

[duga]

Great news!

[Jeff_Birt]

The excitement of Amiga fans seems to have overloaded Francis' website. The problem is being sorted out now.

EDIT: It is now back up...

[Pixelfill]

Originally Posted by Website

There was even a villain who, when realizing that Francis and Jeff were unaware of each other’s quests, devised an evil plan to lure them into a trap.

oooo intrigue - tell us more

[kipper2k]

the only ones i cant find is the right angled versions ? any word on these being tooled

[Jeff_Birt]

Originally Posted by Pixelfill

oooo intrigue - tell us more

Well, I won't get into the details but suffice it to say out of all the people and companies we talked to there was only this one bad apple. While Francis and I did not know at first that we were both working on the same project we found out about each other through a mutual friend. When we compared notes it was clear that this person was up to no good and not being honest with either of us.

[Jeff_Birt]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

the only ones i cant find is the right angled versions ? any word on these being tooled

A few of the parts of the connector are the same with the straight solder cup version and right angle PCB mount. It would still require some new tooling though which is very expensive. It does not seem there is enough demand at this point to justify have many thousands of them produced. We would like to look into having them made if the need grows in the future.

[Jeff_Birt]

Hello everyone. Francis and I wanted to give you an update on the DB23F connectors. We were dealt another setback, but we are persistent, and we are determined to get this accomplished. We ran into another issue regarding ownership of the tooling we were paying for. Someone in Europe seems to be insistent that they get free access to it.

We contacted another manufacturer who was one of our top three choices initially and have worked out a manufacturing agreement with them. We should have the first samples in hand mid-September. That would put the arrival of the first manufacturing run of connectors about the first of December.

While this is later than we hoped for it still gives us a very good chance to get the pre-orders shipped before the end of the year. We want to keep you all informed as to what the progress was on this project and what the struggles are trying to get retro computer parts reproduced.

We will post pictures of the first sample connectors we get from the new tooling as soon as possible.

Jeff Birt and Francis Gradel

[Jeff_Birt]

Hello everyone. Francis and I wanted to give you an update on the DB23F connectors. First, please note that in the previous update on 8/31/2020 I errantly said we would have samples mid-September, of course it takes longer than 2 weeks to get tooling produced, I should have said mid-October.

The production of the tooling is underway, and we expect the first samples about October 28th! This should still give us a very good chance to get the pre-orders shipped before the end of the year. We want to keep you all informed as to what the progress was on this project and what the struggles are trying to get retro computer parts reproduced. It is certainly not as simple as just placing an order for a product that already exists.

We will post pictures of the first sample connectors we get from the new tooling as soon as possible.

Jeff Birt and Francis Gradel

[Jeff_Birt]

Amiga DB23F update - Francis had the great idea to add a 'goalmometer' to the pre-order website & a bonus goal. If we get to $8,000 in pre-sales everyone will get 10% more connectors for free with their order, orders under 10 pieces will get 10% off.

I'll add this information to the first post in this thread as well. The 'goalmometer' is up on the pre-order page: https://www.retronicdesign.com/en/db...tor-pre-order/

[Jeff_Birt]

Just got a sexy 3D model from the manufacturer last evening and had to share pictures with everyone. Just think in a few short weeks we will have the first NEW DB23F connectors manufactured in the last 30 years!

[danko]

Wow this is great news! Will the shell DB23 be produced as well?

[Jeff_Birt]

Originally Posted by danko

Wow this is great news! Will the shell DB23 be produced as well?

That is next on our list. Because of the high cost of tooling we needed to take things one step at a time.

[Jeff_Birt]

Behold the beauty of the first NEW DB23F Amiga video connectors manufactured in decades! We will be testing these over the next few weeks before greenlighting full production. There is still time to pre-order. See the first post in this thread for the details.

Now that we are at this stage with the connectors, we are again turning our attention to the matching DB23 hoods. What would you say to a close replica of the original hood from Commodore in metalized plastic? It would have our logo not C=.

[danko]

Wow! Beautiful cover with Commodore logo!

[Jeff_Birt]

Originally Posted by danko

Wow! Beautiful cover with Commodore logo!

That is an original one made by Commodore. We may reproduce it without the logo of course.