On Mon., Sep. 16, 2019, 12:30 D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk, <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:
... I just assumed that it was some surplus board that was
being blown out.  Maybe it is.

It is. It's from a home server thing that bankrupted the developer before they got to market. Once they're gone, they're gone. 

While it may not be as fast as eMMC, the Raspberry Pi 4 does have a faster connection to microSD (with the right card). It also has DDR4 which makes it fairly quick. 

I wrote a preso last week on a 4 GB Raspberry Pi 4 (over VNC, even) and it didn't feel like an SBC at all.  I hear that the Raspberry Pi 4 is somewhat unexpectedly picking up corporate sales as a cheap dual-screen thin client. 

Cheers
 Stewart