Change of product direction, good and bad news!

[paulscottrobson]

1 hour ago, BruceMcF said:

All of this "raise funds for further development" keeps confusing me. Why do people forget that crowdfunding exists? Crowdfunding raises funds for the product you are trying to build with the fact that there are people out there who want you to build it so they can buy it



 

I seem to remember on one of 8BD's videos, might've been the first PetSCII robots, that crowdfunding had been more hassle than it was worth, or something along those lines ?

I saw an idea that Stefany (I think) had for the Foenix, which is you could Patreon at a sizeable but not absurd level, and that would be discounted off the final product.

[paulscottrobson]

1 hour ago, ZeroByte said:

I made that very point in another thread. I suspect the main hesitancy along this line is the fact that there's a major design decision in flux right now regarding the PS/2 interface. Personally, as long as the board is flashable without special hardware/cables, then I don't see any reason why it couldn't get "firmware updates" to go along with emulator updates. Anyway, I also suspect that the particulars of the "phase 3" design aren't as close to being done as the X8 which is probably why Dave's leaning towards releasing the X8.

Having tinkered with the PS/2 myself, I was always amazed it worked at all. It's not a particularly complicated serial shift register OTOMH, but on a 6502 the problem is actually grabbing it, I presumed the keyboard clock was connected to IRQ or a gated NMI but I don't think it is. I'm guessing here it's moving to Vera as well, doing that in FPGA is sensible.

[BruceMcF]

6 minutes ago, paulscottrobson said:

I seem to remember on one of 8BD's videos, might've been the first PetSCII robots, that crowdfunding had been more hassle than it was worth, or something along those lines ?



I saw an idea that Stefany (I think) had for the Foenix, which is you could Patreon at a sizeable but not absurd level, and that would be discounted off the final product.

I might have missed that, likely from doing something else while it was playing. If someone recalls where that discussion happens, that would be informative.

As with several aspects of the project, the idea to do the crowdfunding here at this site was pretty ambitious ... there are reasons why crowdfunding has coalesced on Kickstarter and Indigogo, rather than the bulk of it fracturing out as the market has grown.

Having tinkered with the PS/2 myself, I was always amazed it worked at all. It's not a particularly complicated serial shift register OTOMH, but on a 6502 the problem is actually grabbing it, I presumed the keyboard clock was connected to IRQ or a gated NMI but I don't think it is. I'm guessing here it's moving to Vera as well, doing that in FPGA is sensible.

It doesn't seem like it could migrate to Vera, with I/O pins already constrained enough that adding two address pins made them cut the UART function out ... but in any event, it is clear from the thread on the topic that it is either going to be with the VIA or with the ATTiny, where the second solution would be in line with how the original PC-AT keyboards were accessed (which IIUC was then eventually followed by the clones all moving to Super-IO chipsets, but that all happened when I was no longer paying any attention to what was happening with PC hardware).

[xcv330]

I built plenty of kits for ham radio stuff when I was younger. I don't have my younger eyes, now. I suspect I am far from alone, and I am in the age range that grew up loving 8 bit computers and is drooling for an actual new one.

While I know i COULD build an X16 from kit, it would not be fun, and I have no interest in doing so. But if it is only released as a kit would there be something preventing third party assemblers from selling "Turn key" units?

That's how I obtained my Color Maximite 2. Seems like there is enough of a market for that computer to have at least 4 assemblers in the US, NZ, UK and Poland.

[paulscottrobson]

Petscii Robots Video # at about 22.30.

"boxed copies could actually go on sale and be shipped out probably sometime in late January. So, a lot of people have asked if I’m  doing a kickstarter. And the answer is no.  The last time a did a kickstarter it  nearly killed me, so what my plan is,  when the game is complete, I’m just going to  discretely put it up for sale on my website and  let the sales start to trickle in a  little bit so that I can fill the sales  "

I don't think 8BD says why. Of course, hardware is different. Software is more time with less up front investment even if you are paying for graphics, sfx, music and even then you can get some sort of demo.

Though I seem to recall 8BD saying he'd already invested a fair amount of cash in CX16 ?

[Carl Gundel]

1 hour ago, BruceMcF said:

If it was a suggestion for an ESP32 expansion slot card or User Port card, it seems clear on Facebook and here over time that there is a substantial amount of interest in that.



(Now, present it as something to be built in, and people might get a bit intent on shooting that suggestion down because they don't want to add anything to the base design to slow development down further, or because they think it's not appropriate to include in the base design, or both.)



But even for the X8, without a slot, without a user port ... since it has SPI input and output lines and clock, and SPI can be bussed, one I/O pin and an ESP32 hat is possible.

(... send that I/O pin and the existing SD select out for decoding, 2>4, reserve one for SD, and with the other three you can have a multi-I/O hat on the external SPI bus ... just saying ...)



 

Yeah, my idea was for it to be built in.  After all, if you're going to reinvent the 8-bit computer in the Internet age, it makes sense for it to have some sort of network facility, however simple.  The computer itself will have its OS in ROM so (as long as it isn't re-reflashable in situ) security isn't much of an issue.  On the other hand, as much as I like the idea because I think it makes for instant X16 community, it is feature creep to say the least.  ?

[Main Administrator]

Remember to be nice, everyone.

[Robstar]

On 9/1/2021 at 10:53 AM, TomXP411 said:

I've watched the CX16 slowly become less attractive over time, with features disappearing: the clock speed got lower, the UART went away, and the BASIC interpreter still has some really stupid shortcomings. I actually welcome the C8 specifically because it's actually faster, apparently uses a boostrapped OS (meaning I can fix BASIC myself), and it has a UART I should be able to tap into.

I think "hackable from the ground up" is a big deal.

The reason i've been in the "no x8" camp has been the concern that two incompatible products would split the momentum, enthusiasm, and software base.

The reason i've been in the full-x16-with-real-chips camp has been that i think it would be cool to be able to poke at it with a scope to "really see" what's going on between the chips.

Really, though, if anything makes it to production, i'll buy ?

[EMwhite]

2 hours ago, paulscottrobson said:

Petscii Robots Video # at about 22.30.



"boxed copies could actually go on sale and be shipped out probably sometime in late January. So, a lot of people have asked if I’m  doing a kickstarter. And the answer is no.  The last time a did a kickstarter it  nearly killed me, so what my plan is,  when the game is complete, I’m just going to  discretely put it up for sale on my website and  let the sales start to trickle in a  little bit so that I can fill the sales  "



I don't think 8BD says why. Of course, hardware is different. Software is more time with less up front investment even if you are paying for graphics, sfx, music and even then you can get some sort of demo.

Though I seem to recall 8BD saying he'd already invested a fair amount of cash in CX16 ?

Kickstarter is a non-starter : ) when your product is not yet viable aka, show-stopping issues left to be dealt with and/or cost undetermined, etc.  To be successful, some amount of mastery of capabilities, cost-of-goods to manufacture, and unit price must be 'knowns'.  A good guess at demand is the only variable.  I'm not convinced that the crew here is at that point, but I speculate.

When kickstarts blows up, people walk away, far away, disappointed.  And at this point, it's not just a "let's make something cool and recoup our costs", it's "we've got so much invested AND want to deliver something awesome that we've been talking about for 2 yrs" so that makes it tricky.

Robots was a one-man show and I'll guess that 8BG knows what his capabilities are since he had already published a few games..., had boxes and labels produced in the past, sure had some people kick-in music and whatnot but otherwise... different animal.

I honestly thought we would see something 'official' in print by now, pictures, list of features, etc.  Maybe we will all be surprised on Monday or maybe some other Monday months from now?  Every month, I end up spending money on other distractions and I'm enjoying all of them.  Hoping for greatness here, not just something that I play with for a month then set aside.

 

[paulscottrobson]

 

 

On 9/2/2021 at 9:59 PM, EMwhite said:

Kickstarter is a non-starter : ) when your product is not yet viable aka, show-stopping issues left to be dealt with and/or cost undetermined, etc.  To be successful, some amount of mastery of capabilities, cost-of-goods to manufacture, and unit price must be 'knowns'.  A good guess at demand is the only variable.  I'm not convinced that the crew here is at that point, but I speculate.



I honestly thought we would see something 'official' in print by now, pictures, list of features, etc.  Maybe we will all be surprised on Monday or maybe some other Monday months from now?  Every month, I end up spending money on other distractions and I'm enjoying all of them.  Hoping for greatness here, not just something that I play with for a month then set aside.



 

I rather got the impression they were fairly close to this. David is starting to talk about kits becoming available, and more importantly giving actual prices, something they didn't do before (sensibly, if they only had a good guess !)

I think (again, sensibly) they are very careful about confirming specs and the design. You can over promise or under promise. For example, we have, apparently, an 8Mhz 6502 but if the timing makes that impossible it could go back to being a 2Mhz or 4Mhz CPU. So we have a "pretty good idea" what both the X8 and the X16 would be like in behaviour, if not necessarily in physical form perhaps.

In the end it's really down to David, and he's just testing the water, which is a difficult thing to do, because it creates fragmentation by default. If you ask do you want A or B, then some people will want A, and some will want B, but people who would have been happy enough just given A or B may be unhappy about the loss of the alternative.