Continuing the long reply tradition: I wanted to join this discussion earlier but had another distraction. This is my take on this as actual maker of a flux imager except for MFM hard drives and a user of floppy imager. I don't see the issue as being the inexpensive hardware I see that as an advantage. I've seen a number of people say they can't justify getting my reader because its too expensive to for reading one drive. I suspect some people aren't going to shell out 99 euro for the Kryoflux to image some floppies but might get a $10-$20 board. The Kryoflux is the long term supported imager (around at least 10 years). It has some licensing issues that encouraged people to make alternatives. The blue pill problem you discussed is a separate issue. My time is too important to save a couple $ if I'm going to waste time on poor hardware. Simple to use would be nice but its a lot of effort for the creator and the real world variability makes it hard. I'm sure users of my tool mutter what was I thinking at times. I liked the FluxEngine simplicity of only needing a connector soldered to it. No custom board needed. I got a KryoFlux since I had a bunch of M2FM disks to read and had 8" drives but no Intel MDS to image them. Still processing them but they will get to Bitsavers and anywhere else that wants them. I see the real issue as that the projects don't cooperate. Each one implements their own set of decoding tools and image formats with limited ability to convert between image formats. I got the Kryoflux because I found a decoder for it for Intel M2FM. It had some issues and I fixed some then found out that their was another project that I didn't know about that had a decoder with the issues I spend time fixing already fixed. I have only looked at them a little but it looks like the Fluxengine and Greaseweasel are doing the same separate development with limited ability to capture flux files on one and use the decoder from the other if it has the format you need. I think most of the value is in the decoding code. If it was properly isolated from the hardware specifics then when the one inexpensive board goes away and the next person creates an imager around the next board it wouldn't matter. I've spend a lot of time adding support for the 50+ disk formats my tool can deal with. And that's only the low level disk format. I'm not touching the file system formats. So far I'm the only tool that reads MFM hard drives so no ability to cooperate with others. I did make some attempt to allow the format to be useful for other boards such as putting the sample rate in the header of the flux transition file and not just assuming the rate my board uses. I will admit my decoder will just print an error if the file rate isn't what I use but that could be fixed if needed. I also image with real hardware when I have it and I distribute software for the PDP-8 to allow people to image various media on the PDP-8. A selection of tools allows people to pick the one that is best for them. Its only a problem when the accessories (decoders & file formats) are tied to the tool that you care if one particular tool is discontinued.