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NEW Amiga DB23 Female videos connectors will soon be available!

J

Jeff_Birt

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 14, 2016
Messages
116
Location
Rolla, MO
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 will soon be 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.

https://www.retronicdesign.com/en/db23f-amiga-video-connector-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.
 
Thanks for the investment. I know the tooling can't be cheap. And the community will certainly appreciate it!

To bad I'm after the opposite - D-23F and D-23M with RA PTH tails for PCB mounting.
 
A few people have asked about the RA connectors and the straight male connectors. There are a few shared parts between some types but each connector requires some unique tooling which is expensive to have made. If there is enough demand for it later on we may look into it.
 
The excitement of Amiga fans seems to have overloaded Francis' website. The problem is being sorted out now.
 
This is amazing / fantastic / wonderful news! I'm curious: is anyone here already planning to use these to make new cables? I'm going to order a couple connectors 'just in case,' but if anyone is planning to create new monitor cables, I'd totally order a couple - my "DIY cable creation" skills are minimal :)

Huxley
 
I have heard from companies that make cables but I'm not sure what sort of cables they would plan on making, i.e. connector type on monitor ned.
 
I was excited... then I realised these are just the ones for cables, to which many db23 connectors+hoods are on ebay, and are not for soldering to pcb.. ohwell. Im going to have to buy a couple from Jens at Individual Computers for my pcb's :(

I hope you sell through your inventory. I remember reading someone who bought like 10,000 and well... its not a often sought after piece. (DB19, bigmessowires).
 
BloodyCactus said:
I was excited... then I realised these are just the ones for cables, to which many db23 connectors+hoods are on ebay, and are not for soldering to pcb.. ohwell. Im going to have to buy a couple from Jens at Individual Computers for my pcb's :(

I hope you sell through your inventory. I remember reading someone who bought like 10,000 and well... its not a often sought after piece. (DB19, bigmessowires).
Click to expand...

That is the problem the tooling cost is high as is the minimum number of connectors that you have to buy at one time. If there was a demand for hundreds of thousands of them it would not be a big deal.
 
Out of curiosity how much is tooling? I have never done something like this so I am curious as to what the initial investment would be. Also how long are the tools/molds good for? i.e. once you make a tool/mold are we talking 1000s of units, 100000s, or more?
 
The cost of tooling is highly variable. It depends on who makes it, how many cavities (# parts at once), etc. A plastic mold might do 100,000 or more cycles before needing refurbished or replaced if it is treated well. For custom parts the tooling cost per part is higher than a commodity part.
 
I haven't used an Amiga since the mid 2000s; can someone help me understand the need for these connectors? Is it because everyone has lost their 23-pin-to-15-pin VGA adapters?
 
Trixter said:
I haven't used an Amiga since the mid 2000s; can someone help me understand the need for these connectors? Is it because everyone has lost their 23-pin-to-15-pin VGA adapters?
Click to expand...

Let me Google-translate for you... IBM hasn't made a PCjr in 38 years. Yet people (thankfully not me anymore) are still building and selling JR-IDE boards. Clear?
 
The reasons vary but all have to do with folks wanting to hook up their Amigas to a monitor of some sort. Some folks get an Amiga without a monitor or cables, some folks are also making new video adapters so you can hook your Amiga up via component video, SCART, HDMI, etc. Since they are not a standard connector and have not been made for decades there are very few left in circulation.
 
Shadow Lord said:
Out of curiosity how much is tooling? I have never done something like this so I am curious as to what the initial investment would be. Also how long are the tools/molds good for? i.e. once you make a tool/mold are we talking 1000s of units, 100000s, or more?
Click to expand...
Everything you need to know is here:

https://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-an-obsolete-connector/

Wouldn't be surprised if the same factory in China is churning out these DB-23 connectors.
 
eeguru said:
Let me Google-translate for you... IBM hasn't made a PCjr in 38 years. Yet people (thankfully not me anymore) are still building and selling JR-IDE boards. Clear?
Click to expand...

That's apples and oranges. JR-IDE is a new homebrew product that enhances the system, whereas the connectors used to be very common that came with Amigas. Furthermore, since I can't hook up some of my Amigas to an RGB monitor without said connector, I have guarded them like a hawk. So I wasn't trying to be pedantic -- they're very important and I didn't understand how a shortage could ever happen since you can't use the systems with RGB monitors without them.

I'm not saying the project was misguided or unnecessary; I'm saying it felt to me like a new project for creating, say, replacement SNES controllers -- you can't play SNES games without a controller, so why would there be a shortage of controllers at all since the main unit is useless without them... hopefully that makes sense?
 
Trixter said:
Furthermore, since I can't hook up some of my Amigas to an RGB monitor without said connector, I have guarded them like a hawk.
Click to expand...

I think you nailed it. There was only a limited supply before and people up to time <n> had all they needed. Then time advanced to n+1. I'm always amazed how many new comers continually enter the PCjr world. I for one just entered the Amiga world this year. Regardless how I connected video, I need something new I didn't have before that contains a D23. There's always new demand.

Fortunately in the PCjr space, State Electronics had a huge cache of NOS side-car connectors (23K in fact) which they continue to sell. Amiga users aren't so lucky.

As I mentioned before, there is additional demand for RA PTH connectors as those on original machines get scratched, oxidized, and dirty. Some people like the patina. I would rather refresh the connectors on my machines.

Male panel mounts would also be nice for making floppy emulator adapters that just plug into the back.
 
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