Qommodore

[Scott Robison]

So I've been wanting a name to give my "project computer" and, much as David explained in his video about name selection, I wanted something that evoked Commodore. Of course, it's hard to find a dot com that is "memorable" and "available". After racking my brain for weeks and searching for a ton of variations, I finally thought "what about Q?" "qommodore.com" was available.

If I ever had a dream of it being a Real Company(TM) then picking this would not be ideal. But it's mainly for fun so I can't imagine getting in too much trouble for it. And the investment was minimal.

Now to start designing my bespoke system using only hand made PCBs and free range electrons.

I don't want to pollute my system with too much technology though, so does anyone know who will make a PCB from this PETSCII art file I'm crafting on graph paper? ?

[paulscottrobson]

You should be using tag strip , get with the times.

[SlithyMatt]

I refuse to use PETSCII for designing PCBs. I find BBS-style ANSI art is the only aesthetically acceptable choice, and anything else isn't TRULY retro.

[SlithyMatt]

Here's my latest prototype for a sound card: 

[Strider]

8 hours ago, Scott Robison said:

So I've been wanting a name to give my "project computer" and, much as David explained in his video about name selection, I wanted something that evoked Commodore. Of course, it's hard to find a dot com that is "memorable" and "available". After racking my brain for weeks and searching for a ton of variations, I finally thought "what about Q?" "qommodore.com" was available.



If I ever had a dream of it being a Real Company(TM) then picking this would not be ideal. But it's mainly for fun so I can't imagine getting in too much trouble for it. And the investment was minimal.



Now to start designing my bespoke system using only hand made PCBs and free range electrons.



I don't want to pollute my system with too much technology though, so does anyone know who will make a PCB from this PETSCII art file I'm crafting on graph paper? ?

Best I can come up with... no electrons or technology needed. Can be designed on ANYTHING! Full DIY and you don't get much more retro that wood!

And... it''s even COLOR!

[Scott Robison]

6 hours ago, paulscottrobson said:

You should be using tag strip , get with the times.

That's just crazy enough to work!

[Scott Robison]

1 hour ago, SlithyMatt said:

I refuse to use PETSCII for designing PCBs. I find BBS-style ANSI art is the only aesthetically acceptable choice, and anything else isn't TRULY retro.

I don't know, an extra ANSI.SYS driver seems overly complicated. Graph paper I should be able to give to anyone. Though I was thinking ... I should be socially conscious and find a blind subcontractor to convert my PETSCII graph paper into a PCB.

But seriously, it was always cool that our 8-bit "terminal" (the full screen editor) was so much more functional than a DOS prompt. Yeah, they could use ANSI.SYS to get some of the effect, but it was nice to hit ^1 instead of typing out some escape sequence like $e[1;31;44m (though that also changes background color which we couldn't as easily do).

[SlithyMatt]

10 minutes ago, Scott Robison said:

I should be socially conscious and find a blind subcontractor to convert my PETSCII graph paper into a PCB

I suppose that's OK, as long as they don't sully it by creating a Gerber file in between.

[Edmond D]

9 hours ago, Scott Robison said:

So I've been wanting a name to give my "project computer" and, much as David explained in his video about name selection, I wanted something that evoked Commodore. Of course, it's hard to find a dot com that is "memorable" and "available". After racking my brain for weeks and searching for a ton of variations, I finally thought "what about Q?" "qommodore.com" was available.



 

A real retro computer wouldn't need any online internet presence at all. Look at the VIC 20, Atari 800, or even the Timex Sinclair - non of these devices had the benefit of mass marketing or community in the virtual world and sold millions of units world wide even before PayPal existed.



Also, by avoiding the internet you'll avoid the design being stollen and monetized by a large stubborn corporations that want to muscle you out and subvert the design. You wouldn't want something like this-

 



 

[Scott Robison]

2 minutes ago, Edmond D said:

A real retro computer wouldn't need any online internet presence at all. Look at the VIC 20, Atari 800, or even the Timex Sinclair - non of these devices had the benefit of mass marketing or community in the virtual world and sold millions of units world wide even before PayPal existed.



Also, by avoiding the internet you'll avoid the design being stollen and monetized by a large stubborn corporations that want to muscle you out and subvert the design. You wouldn't want something like this-

Your points are valid, but those computers had the benefit of advertising budgets far in excess of anything I'm going to have to throw at it. My advertising budget is registering a domain and talking about it where people might be interested in reading about it (when and if "it" ever happens).

If David didn't have a 1M+ YouTube following, the odds are good that none of us would be here on this forum today. It is unlikely he could have developed the following he has for the X16 on the five figures he's spent so far, much less put together a team of people who bring different skill sets to the table.

In any case ... I have to believe that if I really wanted to make a company out of this, Qommodore would be a lousy name for a number of reasons. But for a hobby for fun I think it is a "fun" name. And just as "X16" was picked as the machine identity to avoid confusion with "C16", I feel fairly safe calling something I come up with the Q16 (or Q64, or whatever). And part of the hobby will be sharing it with people (when and if there is ever anything to share).