funkward-tech on eBay is what a lot of pinball people seem to use for old chips (6821 PIAs, old cpus, etc). If you're buying in bulk you'll get the best prices from any of those sellers, you usually have to contact them directly.

Aliexpress is another source.. looks like about $1.50ea if buying 10x or more there. Of course the usual should be assumed -- remarked recycled chips and possibility of counterfeit from any eBay/Aliexpress/HK/China sellers. In reality though, enough of the time nowadays it's the same thing you're buying from pinball distributors or people selling the chips.. they're just doing the importing for you and making a few bucks for their efforts.

Here's a 6802 from Aliexpress that's "Best Quality" so you know it's good All joking aside, typically it's best to look for anything with reviews there and just buy what got good reviews.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-shipping-10pcs-lot-MC6802P-MC6802-Microprocessor-With-Clock-and-Oprtional-RAM-DIP40-Best-quality/32679140333.html

Why not just sell them without the eproms or work the deal with Rick and add it into the costs / final price? Even if licensing amounted to $5-10 per set of chips, it's not much in the grand scheme of things when material costs are probably $25-35 for this or the Alltek MPU and the market bears a $200 price-point. To be fair, that includes ability to make distributor deals at 40-50% off retail... allows for PCB assembly options or makes it worthwhile to hand-assemble a large number of components. But the point is, it's something that can sell in volume, so the licensing costs become insignificant. What you're trying to skirt around with the eproms sounds like it's just going to set you up for future headaches. IMHO let the buyer decide if they want to buy licensed roms from you or someone else, or burn their own. Simple as that.

Sometimes the high road is the easier traveled one. Could work out better in the long-run and open more doors instead of creating more road blocks. Regardless, seems enough people want to help you find a way around. Hey do what you see fit If it was me I'd not be opposed to the idea of just offering licensed ROMs at an additional [optional] cost.

That's a good bare board price, half of what the Two-Bit one sells for. I built half a dozen of the Two-Bit ones 5yrs ago and figured I was about $45-50 in materials per board. I'd sourced some parts from eBay, PIAs from Jameco, bunch of passives from GPE. Long before days of Aliexpress & tons of China/HK sellers competing on eBay though. I bet with today's prices someone wanting to build out 5-10x boards could hit $20 in material cost (not counting the PCB) if you don't mind taking a gamble on China/HK sellers. So if you're doing enough boards you could probably be in the $50-60 range for total costs per MPU. Of course someone just wanting to build one out is going to end up at a much higher cost -- or probably be better off buying a kit if it's offered.

On that note, I'm sure you'd agree.. what's hard these days is not having to go the import route with components. There's enough competition out there doing just that and as much as you'd like to be using parts from Mouser, etc so there's more consistency in them.. the guy who doesn't gets to price cheaper -- and cheap is what ultimately sells.

There's a ton of boards I'd love to have thrown into Kicad over the years and recreated from the schematics. SB-100 was one of them.. obviously has had appeal because of the price working ones go for. Looks like I need to finally get my current stock of them fixed up like I planned to do when I wrote that Techdose SB-100 repair article years ago, before there's a new board on the market

Out of curiosity, is there anyone that can explain what the deal is with PCBs, copyrights and ability to recreate if schematics are public? Is it pretty much anything goes unless you get into software/firmware?

Yeah I think barakandl will find that was a very good move on this product & for the future. No bad voodoo with PPS, you start a relationship that could work very much in your favor (ie. other products like Bally sound boards that require eproms). If you shut a door by pissing off the wrong person, it might be shut forever. The $3 fee Andrew would be passing along sounds like it might be the exact cost to him for licensing, which if so.. is a good move too because it's nominal compared to the market price of these boards & there's then no limit to how many of any eprom you can sell.

I get the whole PPS licensing thing bothers some people. When you're selling products though, things like that become necessary evils and it'll probably open up more doors (ie. sound board eproms, etc) by working with the licensing on higher volume products than pissing someone off and closing doors forever.