Change of product direction, good and bad news!

[BruceMcF]

On 10/14/2021 at 10:45 AM, EMwhite said:

I hear (have 'seen' vs. read and understood) so much about VERA and about what it is or isn't.



My fundamental question is... "is it?"  In other words, does it exist in finished form and can it be acquired for use in other projects or was it in the midst of being developed, somehow forked to support this project and was then stricken by malaise, scarcity of supply, or some other problems?  I think I remember reading that somebody thought putting it into a cartridge for a C64 was attractive but also that moving data to/from it over a SCI interface was a nonstarter (too slow).

It was a project idea, with a prototype offered when David put out the call for something that fit the desires of the project better than the FPGA based Gameduino, then developed as part of the project, it went through a couple of changes in feature set, including a UART backed by an input FIFO buffer being added and then stripped out again so the register address space could be expanded from eight to thirty two bytes ... and then the word was passed through from the team that the features were considered locked down, so people could stop posting "how about adding this to Vera!" threads.

So the module that we can see plugged into the most recent prototype boards are, as far as we can tell from the outside without a definitive declaration, finished.

The original Gameduino C64 card used for early prototyping several years ago now was bit banged SPI (not SCI), and, yes, that would be too slow.

If I was guessing, I would that Frank is going to let the Commander project be the initial release of Vera, and releases for other systems ... either the X16p subsystem, or system-specific designs (like my wish-list C64 cartridge with Vera and geoRAM compatible 512KB RAM memory expansion) ... will come after.

[Scott Robison]

On 10/14/2021 at 10:28 AM, EMwhite said:

Replying to @Scott Robison ... Prob only 5% of the fanbase here will be interested but if you look at Day 1 of VCF east (YouTube link), you'll see just that...  Ben Eater's worlds worst video card implemented in FPGA by Stefany of C256 Foenix.  The hour went by quickly but if you start with the basic of what Ben did in hardware and know what an FPGA is and is not, you can see her walk via verilog, and provide a start into what is required in order to make this wonderful fungible hardware behave in any way one desires.



She gets nowhere near what she did with VICKY II (sprites, tiles, various video modes, Gideon SID, and everything else) but it's still interesting.  Probably could have used an 8 hour workshop or a week of training/hands on.  But in the absence of nothing, it was something.

Thanks for pointing that out. I'm a big proponent of FPGA for implementing things like this. It's bespoke artisan ASIC creation. Sure, if you're planning to sell a million of something, or even tens of thousands of something, it *can* be worth it to go the route of ASIC. Especially if you are willing to call all bugs "features" at some point. That's how the VIC II as we know it today came to be, really. There are things the demo scene has discovered about the chip that were not deliberate features, they're just artifacts of the implementation.

The idea though that it is "simply a matter of optimization" to get what Ben Eater created (a cool educational project, to be sure) and transform it into something that checks all the boxes of what David wanted for his dream computer out of nothing but discrete parts seems like a stretch to me. Certainly on anything we'd consider reasonable for a given amount of time or money. The word "simply" seems like a gross understatement in that context.

But I'd love to be wrong! It wouldn't be the first time, and probably wouldn't be the last. I'd love to see it, just like I'd love to see a complete C64 made out of all 7400 series chips as the C74 project is trying to do. But it won't be inexpensive or practical, and both those are at the very least unstated goals of the X16.

[kelli217]

I wouldn't say 'simply' either — the Hi-Toro Amiga/Lorraine dev team made the early Daphne video output unit out of wire-wrapped TTL logic, but there were several boards, and it was prone to failure, as were the Agnus and Portia units that were similarly built. 

And that Daphne had — let's say, "comparable" video output to VERA.

So yes, it can be done. But it definitely isn't as simple as throwing together a few discrete components, unless all you want is the equivalent of a PET display.

And that is not what our gracious host wants.

If he did, he'd be satisfied to leave things to The Future Was 8-Bit and their Mini PET kit.

[Scott Robison]

On 10/14/2021 at 12:06 PM, kelli217 said:

So yes, it can be done. But it definitely isn't as simple as throwing together a few discrete components, unless all you want is the equivalent of a PET display.

Exactly. "Possible" and "practical" are very different. MOnSter 6502 would be awesome to have, but it isn't practical from a "doing things" perspective. And the more parts exist in a design, the more things there are to go wrong and to troubleshoot. You can bet that if Amiga team would have used FPGA to do their design work had it been an option at the time. They used discrete wire wrapped components because they had to, not because they wanted to.

[EMwhite]

When X16 is an FPGA or better said, when all of the capabilities of the virtual X16 is squeezed into something that used to be called VERA, what will it be called relative to the original roadmap?  Was there an X16e or something like that was to originally sell for $99?

If the original X16 is not viable because of unsolvable technical, supply chain, or economics issues and X8 is similarly not happening, is the elephant-in-the-room that the project is going to fast-fwd to what was originally the mass-market, low-cost consumer product but bundled with an inexpensive* keyboard and a robot game? (no snark intended, just being direct)

 

*ref 8BG’s $6,000 kbd video

[Scott Robison]

On 10/14/2021 at 12:58 PM, EMwhite said:

When X16 is an FPGA or better said, when all of the capabilities of the virtual X16 is squeezed into something that used to be called VERA, what will it be called relative to the original roadmap?  Was there an X16e or something like that was to originally sell for $99?



If the original X16 is not viable because of unsolvable technical, supply chain, or economics issues and X8 is similarly not happening, is the elephant-in-the-room that the project is going to fast-fwd to what was originally the mass-market, low-cost consumer product but bundled with an inexpensive* keyboard and a robot game? (no snark intended, just being direct)

 



*ref 8BG’s $6,000 kbd video

I think that seems likely at this point, though we've not been told for a certainty. All in one FPGA solves a number of problems potentially. I think there will still be a less FPGA driven option at some point as well, just that decisions on how and when are still being evaluated.

[Ju+Te]

After thinking to have understood the FPGA thing, I would not mind getting an X16 in FPGA only. I don't have to solder it. IMHO the success of such a project depends on the amount of the community. Getting the price down seems for me the most important part in the equation (having a physical thing instead of just an ARM based emulation).

Could an FPGA for the early adopters have the option to "change the wiring" if it seems necessary to fix something later?

[Scott Robison]

On 10/14/2021 at 1:09 PM, Ju+Te said:

Could an FPGA for the early adopters have the option to "change the wiring" if it seems necessary to fix something later?

Almost definitely. It depends on the exact FPGA part and provisions provided by the team implementing it, but I would be surprised if there wasn't a way to update the FPGA to address potential defects or enhancements after the fact.

[TomXP411]

On 10/14/2021 at 12:09 PM, Ju+Te said:

After thinking to have understood the FPGA thing, I would not mind getting an X16 in FPGA only. I don't have to solder it. IMHO the success of such a project depends on the amount of the community. Getting the price down seems for me the most important part in the equation (having a physical thing instead of just an ARM based emulation).



Could an FPGA for the early adopters have the option to "change the wiring" if it seems necessary to fix something later?

Yes, there would be no reason the FPGA version can't be upgraded down the road. It would also be possible to run this on other multi-system FPGA computers. There are several popular ones out there, including MiST, MiSTer, and Turbo Chameleon, I believe the ZX Next and MEGA 65 hardware will also be able to load alternate cores, so it's possible that the Commander X16 could be widely distributed as a software core, in addition to being hardware only.

I'd happily contribute to a Patreon to develop FPGA cores for these systems, especially if the chip shortage is going to make it difficult or impossible to get the kit version out in 2022.

[Janne Sirén]

On 10/14/2021 at 6:26 PM, Scott Robison said:

Indeed. The proof is in the pudding. If it's easy, go do it and show us the better more enlightened way. I know it is hard for some people to find time to do such things when writing, derailing thread topics, and fighting to keep foreign governments from making us appear foolish take so much otherwise productive time...



It seems it would be a great investment for the world if one could take the Ben Eater world's worst video card and turn it into something comparable to VERA.

In fairness, it was the start of the X16 dream computer that did set the expectations of the project using discrete chips and that being one of the things that set it apart from the rest. I don't think it is unreasonable that people who follow this project might have some preference towards that and did buy the rationale for such a project at inception. The Foenix family of products for example does all this and a lot more already, if FPGA is your thing, yet it also uses discrete chips for CPUs and sound (several options in fact, including the 65816 which X16 was also supposed to have originally), and of course for FPGA-only there a lot of other projects with existing hardware. The idea of a small retro computer with only "real" chips was enticing as an alternative IMO and since then the competition has grown quite a bit too.

I am perfectly fine with VERA (especially as part of a whole that is somehow unique), mind, but just pointing out this history. The potential quite generic X8 path I am bit less interested in, because there are already many boards like that out there. It is certainly a bit less exciting to talk about one more full-FPGA computer, like the existing MISTers, ZX-Unos and the dozens of variants, Next/N-Go, MEGA65 DevKit/Nexys, Ultimate-64, Turbo Chameleon and so forth which have been with us for quite some time. I think it would be beneficial for the X16 to have some unique selling point other than merely the core loaded into an FPGA. Just my two cents of course.

On 10/13/2021 at 6:58 AM, Scott Robison said:

I think this thread has jumped the shark. Perhaps it needs to be locked, too.

Or perhaps it really needs some insider input to put new life into the parts that matter. ?