howdy all - I have a design decision question. Reading through the specs I see there is
* no built-in ethernet or wifi
* an sd card slot in the back
* a disk drive port there more for nostalgia than mass everyday use
I further see in the FAQ that:
Quote
Will a floppy or CD-ROM drive be included?
Whilst they are not included, Phase 1 at the least does include an IEC compatible Commodore-style floppy disk drive port for those who wish to use it. A drive is not included as both technologies are largely obsolete. The X16 will use standard SD Cards, with a slot located at the back of the machine (because most people when polled stated they rarely switch out the card once inserted.) Part of David's vision is that the X16 is made with still-available parts, and this extends to the storage media availability. Floppy disks are rarely if at all made any more. We do understand the nostalgic importance of those media, however they can still be enjoyed with 80s hardware or our IEC port.
It seems as though the intention is to use the SD card to get stuff on and off the machine - so why place it in the back? I see their statement 'most people when polled stated they rarely switch out the card once inserted' but I still don't see how that makes sense. I'm thinking the people they polled were using the sd card in a different context - for an effectively dead platform - vs one that - hopefully - will be dynamic and alive for many years to come. In the case of the former the corpus of software is largely static and take up very little room on modern storage media. As such I can totally see how someone could load up the entire library (or a healthy portion of it) onto an sd card, insert it in their retro-rig, and leave it there because they already have 99% of anything that ever was or will be for the machine. In the case of the latter, the library of software is growing so is it not more likely that an x16 user would need to remove the sd card regularly to either pull down new software or upload a new build of their project?
In other words, if the designers intend the SD card to be the primary method for getting software on and off the x16, and the only way to get new software (that you didn't write yourself) is to
* remove the SD card
* put it in another internet connected device
* pull down the whatever and store it on the SD card
* put the SD card back in the x16
then isn't it unnecessarily a PiTA to have the slot be in the back instead of the front?
what am I missing here? ?