As someone with no interest in oldschool computers beyond curiosity, I think this project looks like a great opportunity to see a project collapse in real time due to feature creep and bad decisions.

Buying machinery and trying to assemble THD boards at his garage? I know assembling this board would've been expensive, but there is no way that the best decision is to try doing it at home with no skills.

Also, if the sound chip was so available when he first checked, why didn't he just bought it right then? Even one thousand of them would've been cheaper then trying to redesign now. And not only that, he is now thinking of using ANOTHER not currently in production chip BECAUSE HE THINKS IT HAS ENOUGH STOCK! facepalm, just incredible bad decision making.