• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Cheap China retro-computing knock-offs. Good or bad thing?

eeguru

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 14, 2011
Messages
1,618
Location
Atlanta, GA, USA
There's been some great work lately on retro computing projects meant to preserve and extend the life of existing retro-computing favorites as well as create some new ones. Most of the contributors have graciously open-sourced their hardware and software efforts for the betterment of the community. I'd like to thank James Pearce, Jeff Leyda, Eric Schlaepher, Scott Baker, Tomi Tilli, Sergey Malinov, John Monahan, Jon Chapman, Andrew Lynch, Michael McMaster, Alex Swedenberg, djos, and a lot of others for not getting paid for their work!

But I've noticed a steady upward trend in clone cards on eBay for a great many things. First it was mostly XT-IDE clones, Amiga Vampire clones, and floppy emu clones.. then a lot of Serdashop's closed source projects like the Dreamblaster MIDI boards.. then a lot of Sergey's retro ISA boards and SBCs. Now more and more of James's and Michael's storage boards (Lo-Tech and SCSI2SD respectively) out-side of their approved distribution partners like Texelec, iTead, and Alex Perez. Eric's Snark Barkers are popping up from Russia. Alex's Hard MPUs from Portugal. And Monotech seems to be making a business out of it too in New Zealand.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with building open-source hardware someone else designed - as long as you carry forward copyrights and attribution. Some do. Many don't. Is this trend a good or a bad thing? Does it dampen enthusiasm of potential creators? Does the lower price from SE-Asia translate into a much larger user base? Does that growth cause problems for the authors in support?

I find it a double edged sword. I don't make any money off the jrIDE boards. I resell all materials at cost and charge $20 a board to put a kit together and test it. And I had to bulk-buy a lot of the parts like the un-obtainium side-car connectors. Frankly I wish a clone maker would do it for me. However I find myself currently unemployed and while I am eager to work, I am burning through severance looking for my next opportunity. So I'm deep diving into a project that will either produce one epic result or several small ones. I intend to fully open-source it. I also intend to complete the NetPI-IDE project - an ATA & XTA drive emulator using a Pi-zero that is already open-source, and the RGBI2USB capture project. However I would like to sell a few boards to earn a little bit of that time back spent on the initial IP investment before someone sells them for me without my permission.

Curious on others' thoughts...
 
Perhaps part of it it is about advertising yourself sufficiently. For instance I have no idea what a jrIDE board is, presumably your product. There's no signature on your posts with a URL to your site, nor is there further info about jrIDE in your profile.
Googling 'jrIDE board' I find two seperate sites, both describing and listing the boards for sale. They look the same, but are they? One is 'jrIDE' and the other 'jr-IDE'. Is there a github page for it? Probably, but you're having to make people actively look for all these things rather than just give them something to click through to.
 
The Chinese will clone anything for a buck, hobbyist cards or expensive commercial machines. They will also put their own brand on somebody elses work.

If you just want to get a design out there for the community the best thing is for some Chinese outfit to clone your design and make it available cheap to anyone. People get paid pennies to solder parts onto boards in Asia.

If you made something with the intent of making money then things are not so nice when somebody undercuts you. The best thing to do then is make a decent amount of boards and sell them before posting the open source docs that allow cloning. It takes time for somebody to find your product, clone it, and flood the market so you might have time to sell them off before the clones arrive on Ebay (assuming there is any demand).
 
I'm actually curious what is coming out that's a cheap chinese knockoff? Seems like every vintage retro thing I'm looking for, i find myself thinking 'gee, i sure wish that the chinese would mass produce this thing', but they never do. The only thing I've seen 'mass produced' are the Gotek drives. I actually wish I could have found some cheap XT-IDE cards, but all of them I saw listed, the cheapest was almost always Texelec. I ended up just getting some boards printed and doing it myself. I actually would like to get a floppy emu, but I personally haven't seen any that were really any cheaper than any other one... or maybe I just don't look in the right places.

All that said, i've also seen clone type cards on ebay, but I just haven't seen them done by Chinese manufacturers.. they're usually just some small little one-man outfits (a lot of time in russia/european countries).
 
I made some stuff available on OSHPark and no where else, and it turns up on ebay, so someone has pulled the gerbers, removed the opesource logo from the silk layer, printed their own pcbs and sell it on ebay for like 8$ (its a postage stamp size pcb thats meaningless). it was more an eye opener that someone did all that work for it and maybe sold 1.

so not surprised that china pumps out all the stuffs.
 
I think the #1 problem with these knockoffs (and let's be absolutely clear here, when you take something and remove someone's name to put your own on, without giving any attribution, it is a knockoff) is that they are invariably of lesser quality than the originals. I've replaced many knockoff cards for folks, from all of the popular knockoff suppliers. In addition to wasting hobbyists' money, I think it probably helps give the impression that the original designs aren't reliable, when people don't know that they're buying a knockoff.

The proliferation of knockoffs has gotten me out of selling XT-IDEs. I doubt any of the current knockoff folks are going to put real development effort into the design, though it *is* pretty stable at this point. I'm not running my XT-IDE CF mezzanine boards due to knockoffs, there's no way I'm investing in a run of 500 custom Keystone ISA brackets when someone is just going to undercut me with Chinesium garbage.

I'm considering licensing everything under the Creative Commons from now on, share-alike, attribution, NON-COMMERCIAL. I know the knockoff folks will still ignore it, but at least then they're definitely in the legal wrong if they're trying to sell it to make money. I release projects as open source to the community because I think it's the right thing to do -- I've benefited greatly from open source hardware and software, and giving back is what I see as the best way to say "thank you" for that. I provide kits because I think it's fun and I want to get other people hacking on stuff, learning that they too can assemble things and get a reliable product out. But I can't afford to do runs of kits and then lose money when some knockoff person runs cheapest-possible boards and stuffs them with components of questionable origin. I can't and won't compete with that.
 
When they say "dog eat dog" they aren't kidding. Contrary to popular belief, at least in my own part of the world, it really is a cut-throat world out there. I'm sorry that Glitch is getting out of the business, and I would even suggest perhaps doing pre-pay, but who would wait for you to get pre-pays on the quantity that you need. :( The whole thing really is sour grapes and not to turn the thread into a political tirade but intellectual property respect is a big concern with a certain asian nation.
 
Ironically, the biggest three knockoff sellers at least for rev 4 XT-IDEs are *not* in China.

I'm working with Henry Courbis (reactivemicro.com) to see if he wants to get going on XT-IDE stuff, the assembled boards won't be put together in the USA anymore but I trust Henry to keep the quality up.

I will still keep doing kits for some of my other projects as long as I'm not losing money at it. I've got a real job that pays the bills, and there's overlap in inventory between my kit stuff and day-job work, so that does help keep the cost down on the kits. Maybe if I sent free stuff to YouTubers to buy some advertising share... :p
 
I guess the thing is to not make something that everyone wants, at least if you want to make a living. I'd hate to be in the position of making something that someone in China found lucrative. I'm now making my second PC design. The first was my 6532 to 6530 adapter for the KIM-1. There were a couple of others out there but they were not pleasing to me. I know Ruud made a large board design but it was not what I had in mind. I'm still expecting to put the design out there for anyone to copy but haven't taken the time. I made kits and sold 10. I found it interesting that of the 10 most found the problem with their KIM-1s was just bad RAM and not the 6530 chip. I think only one reported back that the 6530 was the real problem. Mine was the 6530 chip and a blown 6502. I probably should sell the diagnostic board separately as that is what most gotten use out of.
There really isn't a big market for KIM-1 repair stuff.
The board I'm working on now is even more of a restricted in use. It isn't even something that was ever sold ( at least not that I know of ). It was mainly to recover software that was written for the 4004. It was written by a couple students under Gary Kildall. They'd obviously made at least a prototype. I had to design my own board from scratch. I only had the software and a basic description of the unit. The 4004 was obsolete within just a couple years of it first being sold yet is was an inflection point in time, like the Apple-1 was. I'm not planning of making 10 of these as kits. It is a dedicated machine to be what was called a 'maneuver board' used for ship navigation. I have a run of 3 boards waiting to get fabbed, at OSHPark. It clearly isn't something that many would want to build. It would require one to get many expensive ICs that are rare and expensive collector items. It wouldn't be vary useful. After all, how may need to steer large ships with old 1970's electronics to miss other ships.
For me it is bringing back that time when things were changing.
In any case, I guess it is a mind set when going into making something. I think it is a mind set when starting such a project. I am lucky in that I also can make a living and get payed well. Most of it is being in the right location at the right time. Anything I do for my hobby is just extra.
I know that anything that has a large market will find someone that can make it cheaper than I can. It is frustrating that such things go on. Still, I wonder how much those that are copying things like the XT-IDE cards are making. It is a limited market that gets smaller as time goes by. Glitch has done a fine job in creating something that is desired but maybe just a little too desired. I suspect, he like me started it because he wanted one.
I was thinking, there was one other thing I started that I'm glad that someone made better the second time. I originally set out to make a hole punch for 10 hard sectored disk out of 360K disk. My original design was too expensive for the market as I thought it was (actually it wasn't ). The first run were not as good as I thought they'd be because they were redesigned to be in the price range I thought the market could take. Since then it was redesigned that seems to be better It was priced about the range it should have been in the first place. Still, it was for a market that is getting smaller with time. It did work though but tended to dull the punch because of slight misalignment.
Dwight
 
The XTIDE project has been a huge success IMO, Like any successful project, The trouble is the "Copy cats" who think they are onto a winner without doing the hard work, They churn out garbage PCB's and build them with inferior components, Amazes me that people buy them but they do Personally i wouldn't touch em with a barge pole.
 
The XTIDE project has been a huge success IMO, Like any successful project, The trouble is the "Copy cats" who think they are onto a winner without doing the hard work, They churn out garbage PCB's and build them with inferior components, Amazes me that people buy them but they do Personally i wouldn't touch em with a barge pole.

I think a lot of people have no clue they're getting a lesser item -- it's not like the sellers advertise them as "cheap knockoff made with relabeled/used parts we found on AliExpress!" I don't know how to get that information out to the community. I think a lot of new hobbyists are dismissive as, "oh, they're just mad someone else is making money." And now you've got some of the knockoff folks sending their boards to YouTubers to review, which adds legitimacy for whatever reason.
 
I mentioned this in IRC during the discussion there and will throw it out here as more food for thought.

Part of the problem is the quality of the derivative products. If we want people to know what's good and what's bad, we need to mark it - almost like the way UL does.

It sounds heavy handed, but think about a licensing type scheme for vintage computer projects. Something that indicates that the work is blessed by the original creators and generally passes a reasonable quality bar. Anybody can forge a graphic or mark on a board, but making people aware that there are "blessed" and "non-blessed" versions and giving them a central place to look up specific projects/vendors would give people a tool they can use to choose better. It's not about limiting access or even guaranteeing quality, but being able to point out which projects derive from other projects and whether they are attributing their work or not is useful.


Mike
 
To that end, marking the foil (not just silk screen) of your PCBs might be a good way to indicate to folks that they're getting the Real Thing.

Just a suggestion...
 
I mentioned this in IRC during the discussion there and will throw it out here as more food for thought.

Part of the problem is the quality of the derivative products. If we want people to know what's good and what's bad, we need to mark it - almost like the way UL does.

It sounds heavy handed, but think about a licensing type scheme for vintage computer projects. Something that indicates that the work is blessed by the original creators and generally passes a reasonable quality bar. Anybody can forge a graphic or mark on a board, but making people aware that there are "blessed" and "non-blessed" versions and giving them a central place to look up specific projects/vendors would give people a tool they can use to choose better. It's not about limiting access or even guaranteeing quality, but being able to point out which projects derive from other projects and whether they are attributing their work or not is useful.


Mike

Is this something VCFed could do? I think that'd be a major service to the hobby!

To that end, marking the foil (not just silk screen) of your PCBs might be a good way to indicate to folks that they're getting the Real Thing.

Just a suggestion...

I do on mine, but I also provide the KiCAD source files. It's no harder to manipulate than the silkscreen layers.
 
To that end, marking the foil (not just silk screen) of your PCBs might be a good way to indicate to folks that they're getting the Real Thing.

I'm not sure that matters. If you're buying it from eBay (Which, honestly, is where you're buying something cheap), you're probably not thinking it's the creators product that you're buying cheaper but rather that it's a "knockoff" product that you're saving money on.

I think there are a few things at play here. There are the folks who want the best quality and the support of the products creator. Then there are the DIY folks who just want the board and are willing to take all the risk to make it themselves. Then there is the third group who can't make something themselves but have limited funds so are willing to buy a possibly inferior product that is cheaper than the original. If it works when they bought it, that's all that really matters. The only group this masking or foil or whatever is going to help is group one who might accidently stumble across the "fake" product and think it's the same as the original product with the same support, but just at this surprisingly cheaper price.

I think the best option is the list like Mike suggested that is posted on the creators website that lists vendors or outlets that these "authentic" products can be purchased from. Anything on the actual card doesn't help because first, you don't really see the card until it shows up and second, that is easily reproducible (for instance, glitch's xt-ide cards can be made directly from pcbway, stencil and all).
 
I've always been one to encourage others to redistribute or copy other people's designs, where the original product is crafted/manufactured/sold in a malicious manner. This can range from simple designs that result in firmware that only one person will distribute if you exclusively pay them for a complete product (Wifi232 or the Rhinoview SDI ECU adapter (beta release)) to products that are blatent copies of other products, parts or software which the seller has the dubious claim of saying it's legit. For the latter I got the boot from 68KMLA because the inner moderator circle didn't like me pointing out that a (later hidden, then reduced) $900 pricetag for replica Apple Lisa CPU and I/O boards (in PURPLE no less, so it had a big sticker price and cheap build quality) was nearly three times the cost of an Apple OEM board, but was clearly priced to profit from the insecurity and ineptitude of a lot of mac people, who will pay just about anything to get a machine working. Flooding the market with clones either forces them to reduce their own markup or pull out of the market entirely.

But this is a double-edged sword. Glitch is a great example of what happens when you release a great product and everyone takes it and runs. Copyrights and licensing be damned, China is a place with a good reputation for cloning and fabbing anything you tell them to. You can really only restrict copying/counterfeiting if you are either a large company with a legal push, or the product is being made where legal rule can still be applied. I for example was asked to stop work reverse engineering the QuickBoot ROM for the Sun Remarketing SCSI card. I fully complied and went my own way.
 
So similar to what NeXT was saying, there's one that I'm curious on. What if the original product isn't made anymore, does that open the door for others to make the product even if it's not open source? What if you made some minor changes to it, do you then have the right to sell it? I think many people might say no, but what if i threw some context in there..

In one example, someone replicates some original hardware with some modern improvements (or maybe no improvements, but he's created new Gerber files).. something like the mockingboard for example. Is there anything wrong with copying that? The new guy didn't necessarily create it either, he just made it available or did some improvements. The original creater wasn't selling it anymore.

In another example, there is a guy on the atari forums who has made some modern improvements to the Atari ST TOS and is now charging for that new TOS. he doesn't own the original work, but at the same time, he maybe should get paid for the efforts he has put into it. But, then what if someone takes his custom TOS and redistributes that with or without some minor changes... You could complain that the new person is stealing or unethical, but technically so was that other guy who originally modded the TOS and is reselling it... as he didn't have rights to it either.

I dunno, It's pretty easy to see everyone's side in this.
 
So similar to what NeXT was saying, there's one that I'm curious on. What if the original product isn't made anymore, does that open the door for others to make the product even if it's not open source? What if you made some minor changes to it, do you then have the right to sell it? I think many people might say no, but what if i threw some context in there..

With the OSI preservation/reproduction project, we've taken the tact that there's no ethical problem in reproducing boards that no one sells, supports, or profits from. It's probably legally dubious at best since copyright is effectively perpetual in this country, but no one has asked us to stop, either.
 
With the OSI preservation/reproduction project, we've taken the tact that there's no ethical problem in reproducing boards that no one sells, supports, or profits from. It's probably legally dubious at best since copyright is effectively perpetual in this country, but no one has asked us to stop, either.

Yeah, I think that was more my point. None of this is black and white really, it's just all shades of grey. If some Chinese company is reproducing your work, but you're reproducing someone elses work (even with some minor changes), i'm not sure if we can be angry at any one group is all. They may be more blatant about their 'ripping off', but no-one is totally innocent in this either. It's like the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs scene in 'pirates of silicon valley' over the Xerox stuff. :)
 
Back
Top