audio-talk

what's going on?

I was recommending a pi4 as a music server to a chum recently and found that they're unobtanium....
every vendor shows a large lead time and the pihut website seems to have disappeared...

meantime I see that there are a number of internet radio players appearing for reasonable prices..

is there a connection?

Try this.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply ... -increase/

I thought this may have provoked a conversation...seems I was wide of the mark.

The answer seems to be the global chip shortage brought about by a mix of situations, principal being the pandemic, panic in the market place and shipping fluctuations....there are others.

In the research I discovered the history of chips...uk first with an experiment by Dummer, rejected by the uk establishment and finally championed by the usa(TI and Motorola)...moving on to Thatcher's era of selling enterprise and most of the chip manufacturers in the uk being sold to foreign investment.....Our(uk) chip plausability seems to need saving/regenerating...

there is a telling precis in the new statesman:

https://www.newstatesman.com/business/2 ... -liz-truss

On Amazon, you can buy a Pi 4 for £170.
I suspect that price gougers buy up any that become available, for resale at inflated prices.
I further suspect that this has become a widespread business model, targeting anything from electronics to concert and football tickets.

Yep, and in the case of some of the electronics parts they are available at 10-100 times the price with little confidence they are the actual parts until you get them. Manufactures delivery quoted between 6 and 18 months.