from 1541 Ultimate homepage:

About 100 plastic cases have arrived, and they look really great! I am glad that black has become the color eventually, and that the material looks the way it does. And I am sure that everyone who is waiting for their unit will be satisfied with the case as well! The remaining cases of the batch that are ordered will arrive a bit later. I’ll update you as soon as I know more.

There is also a downside on the cases; due to the shrinkage of the material along the long side (not very visible, but when you measure you can see it), the board is a very tight fit inside the case. It is therefore very difficult to close it, and once it is closed, well… good luck with opening it! Unfortunately it will cost me a lot of time to build the units together. Hopefully I will get good at it after the first 10 or so.. ;)

Due to the demand, another 100 units (the hardware boards) have been ordered for production and will be ready in about a month, in the end-of-april time frame.

At the last weeks I have been extremely busy with the software. It turns out that it is a bit more work than initially estimated. The software has been completely rewritten from scratch. This has been done to enable the new features of the new hardware board, but also to create a platform for YOU to develop your own plug-ins and additions more easily. (Version 1.x software was not very expandable at all…) In 2.0, additional file types will automatically be recognized as soon as a class that implements the handler for that file type will be linked with the code, without modification of any other code, including the file browser. The same goes for file systems.

If anyone wants to add NTFS for example, linking the ntfs module will enable NTFS partitions to be read without modifying anything else. The file browser has been changed a bit as well. So far, no more fancy blue bar, but instead there are popup (context-)menus that show the operations that can be done on any entry in the browser. Using this structure, the menu can be completely joystick controlled as well.

I know some of you have been waiting a bit longer than you and I want… Some may even think that they transferred money into a black hole and nothing happens, but I can assure you, that I am working hard to finish everything and deliver a great product!

Another news: If everything goes according to plan, the 1541U-II will be shipped with an IEC cable. After that, IEC cables will be available for purchase seperately as well. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me. Most non-technical questions will be answered by Lili, the technical ones will be answered by me.

source: 1541ultimate.net