from 1541 Ultimate homepage:

Finally, you might think! An update on the 1541U-II… As time is going fast, the moment that all the hardware parts for the 1541U-II will be ready is drawing near. It all was not too easy, but things are going now the way they should.

The major difficulty showed to be the plastic case. Finally I have found a contractor who is willing to make the plastic case exactly as I wanted it, for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, the mould for plastic injection is quite expensive; in fact about double of what I expected initially, based on an unrealistic quote that I got a few months ago. Because of the large interest in the 1541U-II, I decided to just continue with it, and leave the selling price of the total product intact.

Earlier this week, I received the first pictures of the first try-outs of the injection mould tool. The result shows a little problem in the design, with the planned material (ABS). Due to the thick and sturdy plastic constuction on the inside, sink marks are visible on the outside.

The manufacturer has tried to run the case with a different material (PA), which looks a lot better. However, due to different shrinkage characteristics, the mould tool needs to be adapted to adjust for the difference in material. (You can see this, that the matte version does not close perfectly…) They will do this, but it will take one week extra before the cases are ready. The final color won’t be black (unless I am getting a lot of angry E-mails now.. ;-), but light cream color, to match the C64C better.

The bare boards were manufactured in China this time, and had been delivered to the assembly company, which is currently working on the first 100 pieces of 1541U-II boards. I am expecting the hardware boards within 2 weeks! Then I can start testing and programming them.

And then the software… I am very busy porting and reordering the existing code base to the “Ultimate V2.0”. Actually, most of the code is being rewritten from the base up, to give it more structure and better maintainability. As announced on the website, the 1541U-II will have a USB port. Although it was quite some work to write the host-controller for the FPGA and the software stack to access the port, it is now starting to work quite well. At this point, USB pen-drives are recognized.

The directory and files can be read from it, just like the 1541U-I could do on the SD-card. Further fine-tuning is necessary and integration with the existing software still needs to be done. The first release, 1541U-II V2.0 (alpha), will be functional, but sober… Updates will follow to add the “sauce” to the cartridge.

Hopefully I will have some help by mid-February to pack and ship the finalized units, and answer the non-technical E-mails.  With the delay incurred in the project, I want to be able to ship out as efficiently as possible.

As for the financial aspect, I am accepting payments now. If everything worked as it should, you saw the total amount due when you ordered. Payment instructions can be found on the website under “Ordering Info”.

source: 1541ultimate.net