Change of product direction, good and bad news!

[rje]

1 hour ago, The 8-Bit Guy said:

...I have been considering doing some sort of crowdfunding where it would literally just be asking for donations to keep this project alive...



...



If everyone just donated $5 that would probably be an incredible help.

That sounds like Patreon to me.

I just doubled my monthly Patreon donation to you... well from $1 to $2, ha! 

Is that the right kind of help?  If it's a matter of "need the money now", I could just bump it up for a month then settle it back down.

 

[Yazwho]

I'm not sure this thread will be helpful to anyone. This is the internet, someone will always be unhappy. As someone else said, should just go with your gut and that be it.

I kinda feel there are two groups, those who want to make and ticker with the hardware so want expansion ports and the like or to be able to build their own machine. And those who are more software focused, so just want an interesting piece of hardware to code against. Personally 'phase 2' is best for me, as I don't own a soldering iron. That said anything is fine. As a developer I'd spend 99% of the time using the emulator anyway.

The X8/X16 question does trouble me a bit. Just to quote the original post:

• 
  VRAM access is fundamentally different.  There is a 256 byte window into the VRAM which is mapped to a section of base RAM.  You can move the window around. This is actually more efficient than what we do with the X16 and is only possible because it is all inside an FPGA. This does mean software written in assembly language will need to be tweaked to be compatible.
  


• 
  The Vera is more or less the same.  All of the same registers.  Same PSG sound features too.  But, programs that use more than 64K VRAM would need to be modified.
  


• 
  There is no Yamaha sound chip.  However, as we've seen already.  The 8-voice sound system in the Vera is pretty darned capable!
  

This is worrying as I'm not sure can say the Vera is more or less the same given it uses a completely different way to address it, as well has having half the voices and who knows what other differences. (Someone said it would only have one layer for example -- this may or may not be true. Only a handful of people would know this.)

My guess is if the X8 is released now, and the Vera isn't 100% compatible, it will mean the X16 is unlikely to happen. You can't change something as fundamental as how you address the VRAM between two machines and expect software to be written so it is compatible. I really like how the X16 accesses VRAM with DATA0/1 with the marching, there is so much fun things that can be done as a developer there. But I also see the advantages of the framed VRAM in the X8. (The reduced RAM\VRAM doesn't bother me, it just makes it all the more challenging and so interesting to develop for. An X8 with the X16's Vera sounds great to me, but that wasn't an option.) 

tldr; Ignore this thread. Do whatever you think is best, everyone wants something different, you can't please us all, and ignore any negative noise when you do decide. Heh, good luck! ?

[Scott Robison]

1 hour ago, The 8-Bit Guy said:

Regardless of whether a crowd funding platform requires something or not, I have a reputation of integrity to uphold.

Absolutely, and sorry if my post read contrary to that. People who think Kickstarter guarantees a "return on investment" are wrong, but I also wrote:

1 hour ago, Scott Robison said:

Which is probably another reason why 8BG doesn't want to go into it and take money unless he's sure he could fulfill it.

I don't know you personally, but I believe you to be an honorable person who would *not* go the Kickstarter route unless you were 100% certain you could deliver whatever was promised. Software is a lot easier to guarantee delivery on than hardware. Software only has to obey rules of logic, hardware was to obey laws of physics.

[x16tial]

@The 8-Bit Guy

Tell you what, in lieu of outright donating:

Sell me an X8 for $100. (This is double your $50 Max you mentioned)

Or whatever the equivalent is in the current circumstances, to a $100 X8 when the market was "normal".

I'm guessing a lot of other people would pay this.

Use the extra cash to wrap up X16 development, and maybe that means scrap the Phase 1 because of the difficulties, and go with a Phase 2 that Kevin can build or outsource, and that can come as a complete computer with 1 or 2 expansion ports (could an expansion plane be developed if someone needed more than 1 or 2 slots?).

Let the chips fall where they may.

No pun intended.

Edit: Maybe keep open the possibility of making the Phase 1 available for the diehard hackers, as a kit only.

[rje]

^ Clever idea.

3 minutes ago, x16tial said:

(could an expansion plane be developed if someone needed more than 1 or 2 slots?).

I seem to remember hearing about a riser-like thing for expanding the expansion ports out, so to speak, way back when.

 

[Fenner Machine]

What a decisions Mr Murray (and his team) has to make.

David and the team have put lots of effort in to Phase 1.

Phase 2 with maybe only 1 expansion port could prove disappointing at some point.

Phase 3 is a hardware emulator.

The X8 has too many missing bits compared to the X16.

Some points to ponder:

Is it a good idea to potentially fracture the user base? Look at what happened to Sega in the 90’s.

The front page of the X16 website uses words such as inexpensive, reliable, real CPU, classic chips.

Do any of the options really match all of these yet?

The current Phase 1 has issues, such as things not working properly, parts availability and so on.

It will also cost too much for most except retro enthusiasts and many in this community.

 

Is there another option not yet considered?

How difficult would it be to do an X8 on a board with a few other nice to haves?

Like the best of X8 and X16 merged.

For example, an X8 (maybe enhanced) replacing the X16 VERA and 65C02S, stuck on a board with extra RAM, YM2151, SNES controller ports and some expansion slots.

Simplify anything can be, such as the RAM bank switching.

Now it’s basically an X16 with a 12MHz CPU and cheaper/easier to make.

[Denisero]

Just upload or email a blueprint of the case for 3d printing, man! You're so obsessed with retro stuff that your totally ignoring the virtues of the present, this is the future of the past, and we need your x16 to avoid y2+2k

[John Chow Seymour]

1 hour ago, The 8-Bit Guy said:

 I have been considering doing some sort of crowdfunding where it would literally just be asking for donations to keep this project alive.  [...]  If everyone just donated $5 that would probably be an incredible help.

Here's an idea:

So, the trick with Kickstarter is setting the price.  If you have a good idea of the eventual price of your product, you can offer it to backers at around that price.  With the uncertainty of the chip market these days, though, it's surely hard to get even a ballpark on what an X16 might cost.  Start a Kickstarter now, and you run the risk of locking backers in at a price that's too low (which hurts the dev team) or too high (which will anger some backers).

So, how about this: take donations in exchange for a discount off of whatever the eventual price of the X16 will be.  A backer donates $5 now, they get $5 off the eventual price of whichever model of X16 they decide to buy.  This way, you're not locking into the wrong price too early, and whatever the price turns out to be, each backer's investment will still count toward their purchase.

It could even be graded: donate $50 now and get only a $40 discount... backers will understand that the extra money is going to support the development, and the amount that their 'overpaying' is fixed ahead of time and not a gamble on the chip market.

[EasyModeGamer]

I would want the phase 2, because it's a cheaper option while still allowing expandibility,

[ZeroByte]

I don't know why everyone keeps talking about 3d printing a case for the phase1 system. It's literally designed to use MicroATX (if I'm getting the right mini/micro prefix correct - the larger of the two) so anyone can already 3d print anything that would work for that form factor. Or, they could just buy a case of that type w/ power supply, and have done.