Furrtek GB-303 (Page 18 of 21)

It's a real shame that this hasn't worked out. My sympathy rests with those who have received goods which are not fit for purpose or have not received anything at all. I suppose one of the two applies to everybody who ordered.

This 'sympathy for the young developer' notion in nonsense. Had the developer positioned this correctly in the first instance then I doubt that they would be facing this stressful situation which they are struggling to deal with. The fact that he is young really makes no difference in my mind.

Essentially, furtek offered for sale a product which was no where near a finished product. Frankly, the product was still within the early development phase. He could have sought donations for research or perhaps sought beta testers who could have helped to meet the cost of development. Had it been made clear that this was the situation then people would not have been in a position to complain. The fact is that his web page did not indicate that they were in an early development phase. Everything suggested that this was a finished product, albeit the first run. It's reasonable to expect that the first run may have bugs but it's not reasonable for them to be unusable or not even sent out, in some cases.

If you launch a business venture you must at least expect to be liable for the cost of setting things up. If the business goes well then you stand to gain through profit. If it doesn't then you can expect to loose your initial investment. That's how business works. If you're not willing to front and potentially loose the start up costs then perhaps it would be more appropriate to seek assistance from investors who could buy a share of your venture or to operate as a charity whereby you can accept donations. I would have happily donated to the development of what I viewed to be an exciting product with great potential.

Going forwards, I would implore any developers, young or old, who wish to sell their product that they have sufficient contingency to ensure that the product at least arrives and is fit for purpose. If you're in a development stage then make it clear that this is the case. If you lack the business acumen to make sufficient contingencies and deal with the most basic of customer requirements then try to collaborate with somebody who can. I'm sure there are established chip tune product developers/shop owners who would have been happy to collaborate on this one.

My post is not meant as an attack on Furtek. I don't think for a second that he intended for the GB303 to end up this way although I must say that he has been incredibly naive and irresponsible in his actions. I congratulate him for finally dragging his head out of the sand in attempting to do what he can to rectify the situation.

As much I doubt it will, I hope that this situation works out for all of those involved.

zii.hrs wrote:

I tried to compile the source code with WLA DX, but there seems to be an error on line 190 of main.s. Compiling with gbdk yields a GB image, but it boots up in a white screen. I don't claim to be an assembly shark though, so it might be full on personal error

Just tried to build it with the latest wla dx (v 9.6), works fine