Of course, the more I think about it, there's also a chance that the Melco units that are out there are all pushing 30+ years old and the components have surely all drifted in value. They have three electrolytic caps on the board and those things age as gracefully as milk. So, maybe the one's I'm making with fresh parts might be just enough to work again..... Can't hurt to try.
One thing I haven't sorted out is packaging. It's just the bare board and a short piece of cat5. I could drill the corners, and with some standoffs you could just screw the thing to a backboard. My next iteration of these, I'll find some cost effective cases and design the board to fit them so it can be enclosed and pretty. The other thing I'd really like to do is find a board mounted 8P8C jack and design that into it so you can just plug it in. Dressing the cable and soldering it in is tedious.
Another thought I was having was making multiple adapters on one board. That way if you needed more than one it wouldn't eat up a bunch of real estate on the backboard.
