Commander X16

I'm not sure whether it's too late to influence the choice of case... but if you could give us a blanking plate on the front (i.e. a 3.5" of 5.25" bay) it would make it easier for people to add custom ports or a cartridge slot at the front.

I'm really interested in making ROM cartridges, but some people may want to plug their SNES controllers into the front... etc.

Was thinking same. There are some pin headers I believe for additional controller ports that could potentially be brought out on the front but it depends on the final case design.

I believe perifractic is the man in the know regarding case design.

What you're saying sounds convenient, but if it brings the price up then I'll put up with the controller ports on the back.

I'm not sure whether it's too late to influence the choice of case... but if you could give us a blanking plate on the front (i.e. a 3.5" of 5.25" bay) it would make it easier for people to add custom ports or a cartridge slot at the front.
I'm really interested in making ROM cartridges, but some people may want to plug their SNES controllers into the front... etc.

I understand the need. The case we are modifying has a pull down spring loaded 5.25" door behind the [emoji1652] logo. Normally behind there is a DVD bay, but we are removing the bay and the eject button hole and more, to save cost and make things look cleaner.

It is feasible to keep the door there, but my preference was to close it off and make it all one molded piece. That's the way we were going.

I'm not convinced enough people would want or need front access for gamepads. Don't you just plug them in the back once then leave them plugged in? To me it would destroy the entire front styling. I can't think of many machines that have joystick ports coming out of the face. Atari 400 maybe, but even they are underneath the front.

I hate to go with form over function, but I was heading that way because the function in this example isn't really needed by 99% of people I think.

Can you clarify why you'd need to plug and unplug the gamepads at the front so frequently as to make putting them at the back or elsewhere less desirable?

Same for the other "custom ports" you reference.

P.S. I ran a poll of who would need to eject their SD card more than once a day or week, and I think 90% or something said they'd never eject it once inserted. Again this meant the back could be all business and the front could just look nice and have the main power and reset buttons.

Weeeeeeelllll... in terms of PCs, you're absolutely right. Nobody puts the majority of that stuff on the front. Laptops will locate them on the sides. PC cases these days, especially for enthusiasts, will plant a pair of USB ports on the front, and maybe headset plugs.

Videogame consoles, on the other hand, have a very long history of locating all the controller ports on the front of the units, starting as early as the Atari 5200, and including the TurboGrafx-16, every Nintendo console until the Wii, every Sega console starting with the Sega Master System, every Sony console ever, and every Microsoft console until the Xbox One.

It's notable that USB ports are starting to disappear from the fronts of game consoles. I'm ambivalent as long as the USB ports are somewhere and the included charging cable is long enough to reach around to the front of the unit, where my controllers are likely to sit.

That's my two cents of input. I suppose if I'd seen a poll on where to locate the controller ports, I would have preferred the front but I completely understand if they're in the back for various reasons. It's not a big deal to me, just an opinion.

Fair enough. I guess I should have stressed the difference here which is the location available to us is at the top of the case. I'm confident the consoles you refer to have them at the bottom. I indicated this when I mentioned the Atari 400 which had them at the bottom.

That can look ok. The top doesn't look good at all IMHO. The cables hang down over the rest of the case, instead of disappearing off the bottom edge.

I'm not sure how much we can change things now unless there was a sudden overwhelming rush of opinions on this. The case design has been out there for a few months now, and I think 2 people have mentioned joystick ports at the front as a desire.

The question is whether that's worth the slightly added cost and the loss of a pleasing design. To me it would be like driving your Porsche around with the bonnet (hood) up and jumper cables hanging out.

But I hear it's not a big deal to you. Just putting a little more of the thinking out there.

I agree - I don't want to plug controllers into the front...

What I'm looking for is space for some of us to add a cartridge slot for farily large ROM cartridges. It may not be a common request in the early years of the X16's release, but it's something that people may become more interested in if X16 cartridges become more available in the future.

I don't think you should leave the entire bay there (because of the cost), but it sounds like leaving the door could increase intrigue and inpire all sorts of unexpected uses? (A key aim of the X16P is hackability/expandability?)

In my case I'd create an expansion card inside the machine with a ribbon cable to a custom cartridge slot panel at the front (there really isn't space for something that big anywhere else).  I can then pop the door down and slot in a nice chunky cartridge.

For me, the argument is whether to weld the Porsche's bonnet shut?

 

 

Fair points. I'll have a further think about this. It may be that you can have a Porsche without a welded bonnet, but it might be a GT4 price instead of a GTS [emoji6] We'll see... The other consideration is there won't be any chassis behind the door to mount anything to. So you'd be looking at 3D printing a mount that attaches to the case floor inside I guess?   

Yes, I'm imagining a 3D printed mount inside.

I suspect this isn't worth driving the cost up, unless the prices are fairly comparable.

But I do think other people will think of other uses.

 

10 hours ago, Perifractic said:

The top doesn't look good at all IMHO

That raises another good point. Most consoles over history have placed the controller ports as close as possible to the bottom edge of the front face. Exceptions are the NES, right locates them to the right, and the Nintendo Gamecube, which locates them above the memory cards on a plate that, itself, is centered on the front of the case.

Personally, I think the renders and drawings of the case look great, especially for being a customization on an existing model so as to keep the price down.

I only wish I had a VGA display in a matching shade of white. All of my displays are flatscreens in matte black. ? So nevermind the welded bonnet, my Porsche is always going to look a bit like someone tore the spoiler off of a complete different car altogether and mounted it anyways.