Now that it’s been discontinued, what options are there for obtaining <100 pcs of the ALFAT F40 (ALF2X-SC-512) chips at a reasonable price for product maintenance? I have received a quote from Ann Marie Deych which basically doubled the original price and requires 100pc minimum. We are a small company and cannot afford to put out $3K US for excess chips when we only need 30 or 40. I don’t understand why the price is so high and why the minimum quantity is so high.
Are there any other current options to replace the ALFAT F40? Is a copy of the ALFAT F40 bootloader available for to just program our own chips?
I’m not affiliated with GHI. But why the prices are high is because people no longer stock them - GHI or anyone. This is the same for any commercial product, not GHI specific. GHI would need to buy a MOQ of the raw components necessary to produce these. They would need to do a special run to create them. They would need to do a special run of packaging them to you. As a small business I am sure you understand that there’s a minimum total cost for doing a job. With a high number of parts to divide that total cost by, you get the per-unit price down (that’s what “volume” does, right?) Now, with a smaller number of parts to sell to you, sure, GHI could offer you a lower MOQ - but the total cost to them is still going to be the same, and they will have the remainder of the MOQ they had to buy sitting on the shelves, costing them money. So either way, you’re going to pay the same total price, unless they think they have some reason for putting another 50+ units on their shelves (doubtful - that’s why they’re discontinued!) as GHI has costs too. So as much as I feel for your situation, I can only suggest you’re going to have to make a call some where in your product’s lifetime what replacement parts you’re going to use - and for your ALFAT, that might be now.
The reason we push for you to buy more is that the price will keep going up on any discontinued product. It is a LOT cheaper for you to buy the extra 50 chips today and not pay 4x the price in the future.
Still, MOQ 100pc is not a lot. I wish we can buy discontinued parts at MOQ. We usually buy 1000 in best case and most cases 5000!!! And 100 pcs is really not a lot for a business typically.
Thanks for your reply Gus and I understand that you probably deal with much larger quantities if you usually sell through distribution which is where I previously purchased parts.
But all I need is 50pcs period for my product lifetime. I won’t need any more so the extra 50 pcs are wasted money.
And the 32F205 processors are not discontinued and less than $10 in quantity 1. Yes, I understand you have overhead too, but I can’t see it costing $20/part to program them.
The price will be higher for 50 and will be higher in the future. I personally think it is a mistake to buy 50 now but if you really want that then talk to Ann Marie to give you the higher price for 50pcs.
This is a technical discussion forum, not fpr pricing anyways. So please continue to work with our team on your needs.
Yes, I will be following up with her when she’s back in the office.
On the technical side, I was also asking if there was any updated/current replacement parts that implement a stand alone SDcard/USB file system with serial Tx/Rx or SPI microcontroller command interface?
What current GHI products offer this functionality?
We need to examine options. We designed the ALFAT into one of our systems, and surprised to learn a few weeks ago that the supply status has changed, especially since your website STILL says the product is active at $15 ea.! A little more advance notice would have been helpful, like “not recommended for new designs” going up for at least 6 months before you pull the plug, since it takes a lot of time for OEMs like us to redesign a PCB, do prototype run/testing, modify and test application code, deal with the risk of new bugs / problems due to changes, etc. Getting hit like this stings since we are now boxed in.
Do you guys have any level of commitment to making 100-unit lots available at $28 ea. before price/availability status changes again?
Can you point me to the chipset details, cost, C# code / tools we will need if we want to migrate over?
We have been communication this for a while but seem like the only way to get everyone’s attention is when we raise the price and put a last time buy!
While we do not want to make these anymore, we are still here and making them as necessary so you are not stuck. Can you imagine how difficult this will be to our customers if we said we can’t make them at all?
The alternative is to use one of our TinyCLR-OS-powered-chipsets, that does everything, including file system. This is a powerful chipset, not just file system like ALFAT. Actually, you can write C# code to run on our chips that make the chip seem like it is ALFAT! Your system will know the difference. However, it is better to take advantage of all the great things we have.
As for what product question, we are going to make some major announcements this month, fingers crossed. Corona virus has slowed us down by 2 months! If you need info sooner, contact us directly please.
We are always here to help and sorry about any inconvenience.