Prototype #3?

m00dawg · Post by **m00dawg** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 3:18 pm

9 hours ago, EMwhite said:

Having said this, my experience with Kevin is that he works extremely hard on this and his other projects, and like Stefany from Foenix, does not spend time putting a social media presence together. He has put a few very good video updates but they are few and far between. We all want more and want to see this thing released.

This is a fair point - I experience this with my band for sure. Marketing is quite nearly a full time job just to be seen and inevitably you have to do so much duplication (tools can only help so much here). But at the same time, I agree, this is indeed the official source and Proto 3 is a pretty darn big announcement well worthy of being posted here. Likewise, all content on FB is owned (and profited by) FB, not the X16 and not the people generating the content and conversations for sure. That is a problem, especially if FB is the first source of truth when it comes to project updates. That's concerning to me.

Stefany is a good point where I have to be somewhat critical of the X16 project. They have such a huge scope and head start with marketing, synergy, "buzz", all that. In some ways I'm envious as that kind of exposure is just incredibly difficult. Sometimes I do feel like the project folks squander that. Harsh words, not meant to be, but just being honest. Stefany is a wonderful engineer (though I think the Foenix could perhaps use some project management as there is just a ton of feature and scope creep) but she doesn't have the audience David does. It frustrates me when I see the X16 team taking this for granted - even more so when I see them defend it.

Again harsh words, and certainly it's easy for me to judge. But is also perhaps the most concerning thing about the success of the project. The X16 can really shake things up in the space and I really do feel will help provide an incredible and renewed interest in bare metal computing in a way that projects before it haven't done. There's just SOOOOOO much good to come from this project. Sometimes I feel like the team just doesn't know what sort of potential they have.

ZeroByte · Post by **ZeroByte** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 3:57 pm

It does seem strange that they didn't post anything here.

StephenHorn · Post by **StephenHorn** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 3:59 pm

On 7/11/2021 at 6:07 PM, EMwhite said:

I had been holding off for awhile as we may yet use a microcontroller for PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard control if using the 6522 doesn't pan out. I had already added an ATTiny84 to control power on/off & reset, so I moved to an ATTINY861 on this board to add enough legs for the PS/2 ports. I then added jumpers so we can select either one for testing.

For my money, this is the most interesting point. Kevin added that there was debate whether going through the microcontroller would be faster or not. I had previously commented on Facebook, but this sounds like the team is experimenting with the difference between having the CPU communicate with PS/2 devices directly, versus communicating with PS/2 devices through I2C. The PS/2 interface requires a fair fewer bits, but the CPU spends a lot of time idling, and queries can take a significant fraction of a screen's scantime. I2C, though a much faster interface, requires a lot more bits. Since both interfaces are bit-banged, the difference may be a wash.

Personally, I'm hoping we learn what the results ended up being. ?

ZeroByte · Post by **ZeroByte** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 4:10 pm

It's a shame that PS/2 doesn't quite lend itself to using the built-in shift register functionality of the VIA 6522 chips. If there could have been a piece of silicon shifting in bits in the background into a parallel register, that would've been pretty awesome. I presume the microcontroller is ONLY accessible via I2C, eh?

StephenHorn · Post by **StephenHorn** » Tue Jul 13, 2021 4:30 pm

13 minutes ago, ZeroByte said:

It's a shame that PS/2 doesn't quite lend itself to using the built-in shift register functionality of the VIA 6522 chips. If there could have been a piece of silicon shifting in bits in the background into a parallel register, that would've been pretty awesome. I presume the microcontroller is ONLY accessible via I2C, eh?

For the time being, that's my assumption, and I assume there are no plans to change that. After all, the project is supposedly close to being finished, the team had even hoped to have something available last year, so I very much doubt there are any plans for a major redesign at this point. If the KB/M interfaces moves to the microcontroller, I expect that means it'll be bit-banged through I2C. I don't know what will become of the VIA bits currently used there, if they'd be left empty or if they'd go to the user port or expansion slots, or what. But I'm guessing that whatever else changes, it'll be small moves.

Kevin Williams · Post by **Kevin Williams** » Wed Jul 14, 2021 12:22 am

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for the delay on an update. It's been a hectic year once again and there never seem to be enough hours in the day. I'm not a huge FB fan either, but the reality is with our business, it's pretty key I keep on top of FB & the even more dreaded Twitter. ? I meant to post the same day, but for the brief second I tried, the site wouldn't let me login, and I just forgot to come back. However, I just posted a video of Attack of the Petscii robots on the X16. It's still the second proto, but I have it wired as the third board is designed. I did this for testing the new design before running it of-course, and David just wanted to make sure the game was still running ok.

I am catching up on the thread and I will answer some questions here in a second. For the moment, the PCBs are 100% complete and should be shipping tomorrow. This means probably Friday or Monday they will be here and I should have all of the parts in-hand too. We're still not done with the Kernal, so this is not the end of the story by any stretch, but it should be pretty close to the end of the HW specs.

Attack of the PETSCII Robots on the Commander X16 Prototype 3 - YouTube

Thanks,

-Kevin

m00dawg · Post by **m00dawg** » Wed Jul 14, 2021 12:44 am

Wonderful news, thank you so much Kevin!!! Super cool to see PETSCII Robots running on real X16 hardware too, awesome!

x16tial · Post by **x16tial** » Wed Jul 14, 2021 1:26 am

Thanks for the post @Kevin Williams! And thanks very much for all your hard work, this project wouldn't be nearly where it is without your talents. And please don't take my questions as a criticism of you personally, I'm just wondering if the mindset of the X16 team as a whole shouldn't shift to this board as the go-to place and everything else secondary, that's just what makes the most sense to me. I'll say no more on that subject ?

Cyber · Post by **Cyber** » Wed Jul 14, 2021 4:18 am

22 hours ago, EMwhite said:

some segment jumped over to Slack for a while.

PETSCII Robots has a Slack workspace? Or is it X16? Either way I know about neither. Please, share.

EMwhite · Post by **EMwhite** » Wed Jul 14, 2021 2:57 pm

10 hours ago, Cyber said:

PETSCII Robots has a Slack workspace? Or is it X16? Either way I know about neither. Please, share.

PETSCII Robots. The Channel is hosted on Apple2Infinitum https://app.slack.com/client/T1J8S1LGH/C01JKQJBYQN/thread/C01JKQJBYQN-1612744612.106300

Try that link... you may need to be on Apple2Infinitum first. I'm not a Slack expert but used Slack in a MERN Stack bootcamp I attended a few years ago and have been viewing the 'forum' through it. The PETSCII Robots channel started as discussion David and the Apple developers (for the Apple port) but has jumped all over the place including many OT posts, as tends to happen.