9 hours ago, paulscottrobson said:
Well, except now the only thing that is actual CPU is the core itself. The VERA fpga fails entirely on that criteria
I'd suggest you find a viable alternative, but you'd be
years too late on that front. A number of video choices were evaluated and rejected, and in the end an FPGA of some sort was the only real option here.
And part of me does lament the integration of the SD interface, as well as the PSG and PCM audio, into the same FPGA, exactly because those decisions run counter to the "purity" goal of the project. However, once the choice was made to go with an FPGA for video, it's easy to see how the scope of that FPGA's responsibilities grew, not only to keep the final cost of the X16p lower, but especially if the long-term plan would be to eventually release an X16e that might be reduced all the way to something like a single FPGA. I'm sure it also helped to keep the design of the X16's motherboard a little simpler.
But as Elektron points out, there are still plenty of components that are good, old-fashioned silicon. The VERA has not become the be-all, end-all of the X16p.