Change of product direction, good and bad news!

[BruceMcF]

On 9/11/2021 at 1:11 AM, Scott Robison said:

I've actually never used or looked at SWEET16, I just knew that it over a page (though not by much; I had to look it up to confirm that much). But elegant solution. Now I want to write a DOS text mode emulator entirely in VRAM. ?

Yeah, and it's massively tangly spaghetti code. My Swift16 65c02 uses a faster JMP (a,X) execution loop and  no spaghetti code it's around 3 pages. I am pretty sure it can be ported to the X8 VRAM bank.

https://github.com/BruceMcF/Sweeter16

[cabiv]

The question has always been a matter of feature creep and not building a perfect machine.  People still write programs for the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and other vintage machines because of the limitations they have and working around them.  A better basic and faster basic helps get programmers started.  Perfect hardware does not lead to innovations and tricks.  It will never stop you in your tracks as your try to figure out how something was done.   

Some expansion capability (IC2?) is needed to interface lights, motors, and sensors that are so cheaply available.  People are sometimes more impressed with a servo, sensor, and leds than a high resolution photorealistic display.  Not sure what the solution is. 

cabiv

[BruceMcF]

20 hours ago, cabiv said:

The question has always been a matter of feature creep and not building a perfect machine.  People still write programs for the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and other vintage machines because of the limitations they have and working around them.  A better basic and faster basic helps get programmers started.  Perfect hardware does not lead to innovations and tricks.  It will never stop you in your tracks as your try to figure out how something was done.  

I keep hearing about feature creep, but I rarely hear about what features were supposed to have crept. The most recent change in the Vera reduced the bottleneck of the two data ports while cutting, not adding, a feature. That was a feature replacing the 65xx family serial interface chip, which was in turn replaced by a decision to bit bang the serial on the User port. That is, if anything, the opposite of feature creep ... feature pruning.

Maybe because the design team has a wise policy of not discussing some features at the "we'd like it but it's not clear if it's feasible" stage, and then when it's described some people imagine it the feature had never been on any internal feature target list?

 

20 hours ago, cabiv said:

Some expansion capability (IC2?) is needed to interface lights, motors, and sensors that are so cheaply available.  People are sometimes more impressed with a servo, sensor, and leds than a high resolution photorealistic display.  Not sure what the solution is.

There is already an SPI interface, for the SD card, and an SPI interface can be bussed. There are SPI to GPIO chips, SPI to serial chips, SPI to I2C bus master chips, SPI serial RAM chips, etc., so reusing the existing SPI bus seems like the likeliest to fit if the X8 doesn't have many unused logic resources to spare.

 

 

[Luckarusky]

It seams to me you have an architecture at this point. A slightly bloated one, but feature rich as a result. So the question now is production. With so much behind it, I think the best focus for now it releasing the system in Kit form first and just starting to make a profit, along with getting kits in people's hands. You can use a part of those profits to help get pre-built units made if enough are sold. But really, it's kind of important to turn all this effort into an end result.

[BruceMcF]

On 9/19/2021 at 2:57 PM, Luckarusky said:

It seams to me you have an architecture at this point. A slightly bloated one, but feature rich as a result. So the question now is production. With so much behind it, I think the best focus for now it releasing the system in Kit form first and just starting to make a profit, along with getting kits in people's hands. You can use a part of those profits to help get pre-built units made if enough are sold. But really, it's kind of important to turn all this effort into an end result.

That's the point of crowdfunding ... if the crowdfund hits its target, you have your orders and can go into production without the risk of the units that you order failing to sell, because they are pre-sold. If the crowdfund is far enough over its target, you may have enough profit to shift from crowdfunding to the traditional entrepreneurial production that Dave is used to.

One challenge in this particular case is that the scale for the keyboard and the scale for a minimum successful DIY launch may be out of sync ... "support" tiers with the emulator and a ladder of bonuses plus the keyboard could bridge that gap ... add that K8 tiers including a keyboard option, that could well bridge the gap completely.

[EMwhite]

What keyboard?  Have they (or you) cobbled together different packaging options and costs?

I know Halloween is coming to the U.S., but it’s been eerily quiet, if not spooky ? around here.

[BruceMcF]

10 minutes ago, EMwhite said:

What keyboard?  Have they (or you) cobbled together different packaging options and costs?



I know Halloween is coming to the U.S., but it’s been eerily quiet, if not spooky ? around here.

The youtube from former member of the team Perifractic is down, but the picture from May shows what the base keyboard was supposed to look like:


 

[EMwhite]

Ah yes, I remember that kbd. but figured it left the building when then case did (and apparently, the video??).

 

[Scott Robison]

40 minutes ago, EMwhite said:

Ah yes, I remember that kbd. but figured it left the building when then case did (and apparently, the video??).

I think a large amount was spent on the keyboards in advance so it is worth keeping them. The cases hadn't required any up front money to this point in time and thus they are not a sunk cost.

[paulscottrobson]

5 hours ago, Scott Robison said:

I think a large amount was spent on the keyboards in advance so it is worth keeping them. The cases hadn't required any up front money to this point in time and thus they are not a sunk cost.

I wondered how much of the deficit went into keyboards. I never could fathom out the compulsory keyboard, I mean what about non US people ? I find US keyboards (@/" swapped round compared to the UK the main difference) irritating, so a French person with their AZERTY layout would probably end up throwing it out of the window.

And personally, if I was going to use the thing rather than look at it, I'd swap the keyboard anyway, just so it didn't get damaged, I'm fairly rough on keyboards and I also like the split arced ones that I think Microsoft did first.

I do wonder about how that affects the price. If the price of the kit is $250-$300ish a custom case and keyboard would probably do a large chunk of that on its own, and at the X8 price you are probably bare board level. Which is fine, screw it to a bit of perspex or something.