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[That's not true for everything. My pinball machine for example came with a complete set of drawings for almost every part on the machine, let alone the PCB's.


Schematics for brown goods (TV's and VCR's) are widely available too. Of course, this is largely borne out of necessity - for one; the logistics of return-to-base repairs on these products is prohibitive to say the least. Not so with the empeg.

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What exactly is the harm in releasing them anyway? I'm guessing if a car mp3 player were to be manufactured again it would never take the form of the empeg due to the expense and the move forward in technology. If it helps out a few long term users, what's the problem?


I can't see any harm in releasing them either. The hardware technology is a good few years old and any company looking to steal hardware design secrets from the empeg would surely have done so by now, just by buzzing-out a sample player? Presumably releasing the schematics for hobbyist/repair use doesn't necessarily put the designs into the public domain (if that's the correct term here)?

That said, what's in it for DNNA to do this? The product's defunct and presumably isn't contributing to the balance sheet in any way. I bet we'd be lucky if a discussion between one of the Cambridge guys and a DNNA suit about releasing this material lasted for more than 30 seconds!