Commander X16

On 12/30/2021 at 5:50 PM, Scott Robison said:

I suspect Christian though my evidence is circumstantial. perifractic.com and commanderx16.com are both registered through Public Domain Registry while the8bitguy.com is registered through GoDaddy.

Read the front page of this site; and it say "Copyright © 2021 8-Bit Productions LLC. All rights reserved.".

Checked and it seems that  8-Bit Productions LLC is owned by David:

8-Bit Productions LLC :: Texas (US) :: OpenCorporates

 

On 12/31/2021 at 6:00 AM, Stefan said:

Nice work @Wavicle! 



What strategy did you have to handle PS/2-I2C conflicts? I mean what if PS/2 communication started while you were sending data over I2C. Did you just disable the PS/2 line while sending over I2C?



How did you handle multibyte scan codes? Was there a buffer?



One benefit of a shift register solution is that it might be possible to shift out bits even when receiving PS/2 data during the PS/2 clock inactive state. The inactive state is 30-50 us per bit corresponding to 300-500 processor cycles on the ATTINY @ 10MHz. Is that enough to transfer one byte? I think there's a good change you could make it fit if you look at the instruction set table for the ATTINY.

Both PS/2 and I2C clocks are largely driven by the non-ATTINY device. As I recall there are two independent state machines that handle sending and receiving things at a byte granularity from each interface and loop code that strings bytes together into something meaningful. I did not spend any time checking corner cases and very little time debugging the code. I think I recall hooking up the oscilloscope briefly to make sure the pullups were strong enough that clocks or data weren't lost to stray capacitance. Pretty much the minimum to prove out the basic idea. The prototype sat on the side of my workbench for a few weeks but was disassembled when I needed an Arduino for a quick sketch to show my 11 year old how controlling servos works. The code is still around somewhere; I don't think I ever intentionally delete code.

On 12/31/2021 at 12:38 PM, martinot said:

Read the front page of this site; and it say "Copyright © 2021 8-Bit Productions LLC. All rights reserved.".



Checked and it seems that  8-Bit Productions LLC is owned by David:



8-Bit Productions LLC :: Texas (US) :: OpenCorporates



 

Interesting. It wouldn't be unusual for someone on a team who was working on an aspect of a project to assign copyright to the parent organization. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg probably isn't asked personally about all the copyright notices that are attached to Meta owned properties. Yes, it is a different situation, I just don't know if a copyright notice changes anything about the level of authority. But it is interesting.

As Scott Robison mentioned, I rarely visit this website.  It was originally Perifractic's idea and I told him when he created it that I didn't have time for yet another social media platform.  I come by every now and then to check in.  In fact the entire future of this website is in limbo since Perifractic was paying for it before.  After he left the project, I was asked to start paying for it and I declined.  I'm already in quite a bit of debt on the X16 project, and this website was never my idea.  So if somebody else wants to keep it going, that's totally fine by me.  But I won't be spending any money on it.   It has been discussed possibly replacing the forum with a discord channel or something.  But that won't save the software repository.  So I'm not sure what we'll do about that.  

On 12/31/2021 at 10:52 PM, The 8-Bit Guy said:

So if somebody else wants to keep it going, that's totally fine by me.

I think I could carry the expense of keeping the site running. Let me know what kind of money we are talking.

On 12/31/2021 at 10:52 PM, The 8-Bit Guy said:

I'm already in quite a bit of debt on the X16 project, and this website was never my idea.  So if somebody else wants to keep it going, that's totally fine by me.  But I won't be spending any money on it.   It has been discussed possibly replacing the forum with a discord channel or something. 

Perhaps move it do some free forums? Maybe Discord could provide that.

 

On 1/1/2022 at 8:44 AM, JimmyDansbo said:

I think I could carry the expense of keeping the site running. Let me know what kind of money we are talking.

I also would chip in to help keep the site running.

On 1/1/2022 at 12:49 AM, Justin Baldock said:

I also would chip in to help keep the site running.

Same for me. Let us know how we can help

Edit: By the way, we're going a bit out of topic here ?

Off-topic: Just to clarify a little further, yes I am hosting the site still. The site’s creation came about with the endorsement of the whole X16 dev team on Slack, and indeed everyone seemed quite pleased with it initially. It even allowed David to shut down his own forum Murray2 with his brother and move the archives to this one. The team were all encouraged to post official updates here first, and copy the forum url to Facebook. However I think people just find Facebook quicker, and ultimately I couldn’t force the team to keep updates going here without starting to sound like I was nagging them each time ?

Still I think it’s a wonderful site and @MattGrandisand I are very pleased with it, particularly the software library with built in emulator. Don’t see that very often elsewhere!

That is why, when there were no other offers from the team to keep the site alive, I financed another year of it recently even though I had stepped back from the X16 project itself. There’s a ton of time and work here that would’ve been lost and disappointed hundreds of people  

We’re open to passing the baton to the community as long as it is properly maintained and moderated. Feel free to DM @MattGrandis and I in a group message if you are serious about taking it on. I’m already discussing with one member also but we have about 8 months before we have to make the switch so no rush.

Thanks for your belief in the site as a cool place to be and a useful ecosystem. Happy new year! 

On 12/31/2021 at 6:01 PM, Perifractic said:

... I couldn’t force the team to keep updates going here without starting to sound like I was nagging them each time ?

You say that like it's a bad thing. ?