Commander X16

7 minutes ago, StephenHorn said:

Because then people would get excited and assume the decision had already been made to release the thing as a product.

Judging off 8BITGUY's posts in totality, I sort of feel like the decision was made before the poll went up.   He wants to push out the X8 and is looking for community endorsement of that direction.     With his avowed commitment to X16 I guess I'm OK with it.   Its better than just pulling the damn plug on everything  and pulling the website and repos off the nets.    I get the sense his fatigue with the whole thing is all too real at this point.  

EDITED TO ADD:    I agree, of course, that having the X8 emulator and details of the specs (including the nuts and bolts about how VERA-JR or whatever we are to call the X8 version works in terms of memory accesses etc) would be a real plus at this point.      I want to grab that info, load the "balls.prg" demo from the official REPO and see what it takes to get that working. 

6 minutes ago, Snickers11001001 said:

Judging off 8BITGUY's posts in totality, I sort of feel like the decision was made before the poll went up.   He wants to push out the X8 and is looking for community endorsement of that direction.     With his avowed commitment to X16 I guess I'm OK with it.   Its better than just pulling the damn plug on everything  and pulling the website and repos off the nets.    I get the sense his fatigue with the whole thing is all to real at this point.  

Well, then to reiterate (without @'ing him), hold off. Commit to the X8, but get the CX16p beta out to beta testers ... if it's alpha, then get the CX16p alpha out to alpha testers ... and sort everything out for a simultaneous launch of the CX16p, CX16c and X8 crowdfunding campaigns.

Make the crowdfunding campaigns realistic. CX16p's altogether have a floor, CX16c's have a floor, X8's have a floor, but pre-built CX16p's also have a ceiling.

Set aside the CX16e. Don't get married to last year's product path ... no battle plan survives contact with the enemy intact, and no business plan survives contact with the market intact. Set up the crowdfund campaigns, and let the market say what is what.

Oh, and also, as a professional economist, something about Economies of Scale ... and I guess I better @The 8-Bit Guy after all: build cost recovery for yourself into the crowdfunding floors, along with a modest return on time and money invested for other project members ... and if you want to share any surplus from an oversubscribed crowdfund as a windfall with the other team members, go ahead ... but for post-release pricing of the CX16c and X8, also build a modest per unit profit in for yourself. If either or both earn out into ongoing repeated batch production, then your original dream had market value and the majority of your market would prefer if you at least get some extra vacation money as a result.

16 minutes ago, Snickers11001001 said:

Judging off 8BITGUY's posts in totality, I sort of feel like the decision was made before the poll went up.   He wants to push out the X8 and is looking for community endorsement of that direction.     

I suppose that's where the ambiguity of text comes into play, because I read it as almost the opposite -- he's open to releasing the X8, and it meets many of his programming/experience goals, but he's hesitant because it still falls short of the full X16e he had envisioned and wants to ship.

Edited to add: If bifurcating the community between the two platforms is not a concern, then I think Bruce probably has the right idea. Get crowdfunding going with what can be shipped now (or imminently), and let the market sort itself out.

1 hour ago, Fnord42 said:

Gimme the X8 now! (Maybe only 6 or 8 MHz though)

Never in my wildest 1980s dreams did I ever expect to see any computer user say "eh, not so fast, slow down the computer for me please." ?

4 hours ago, The 8-Bit Guy said:

My main goal was to have my dream computer, and that other people would have it too.



I felt like the X8 with it's super-low price-tag and easy manufacturing could help keep interest in the project much like "The C64 Mini" did, even though everyone was wanting a full-sized machine.

Two points:

1) Is the X8 that dream computer?   If it's "close enough" what you should probably do, is go with X8, full bore.  Scrap the X16 and have Kevin "work backward" and create a surface mount version of it, and perhaps a through-hole version.  Releasing two competing platforms, I think I've come to realize, is foolish.

2) The C64 Mini isn't different other than being smaller, and thus not having a keyboard.

AND, The "maxi" still isn't available in the US.

 

I'm really going to try to step away now, and check back in a few days or more and see what's up.

Cheers.

 

4 hours ago, The 8-Bit Guy said:

And sales of the X8 could even help to fund more development on the X16 surface-mount version and eventual X8-FPGA version.  And for those people that don't want an X8, it seems like the solution is simple.  Just don't buy one.  Buy the X16p instead.  Or wait for phase-2, or whatever.  



 

If you decide to go ahead with the X8, will you open a section to register intention to buy so that we can put our tentative orders in?  I expect it to be very popular.

Goood evening

first of all I would ask : if a commander X8 has been somewhat ready for some months , how are we far from having the fully compatible X16e ready?

As for The commander x8 I think we should decrease the cpu frequency to 8.33 Mhz (25/3) to ensure CX16 is a better machine but i'm in favor of showing the 16 kb of low ram, which will be hidden by ROM, as 2 8 kb banks so people starts to use this feature.

for what concerns the Commander X16 I would make the phase 2 version the main one because I don't think anyone will ever abandon the project because of SMD components while this could happen with an FPGA based system.

 

1 hour ago, Fabio said:

Goood evening



first of all I would ask : if a commander X8 has been somewhat ready for some months , how are we far from having the fully compatible X16e ready?



As for The commander x8 I think we should decrease the cpu frequency to 8.33 Mhz (25/3) to ensure CX16 is a better machine but i'm in favor of showing the 16 kb of low ram, which will be hidden by ROM, as 2 8 kb banks so people starts to use this feature.



for what concerns the Commander X16 I would make the phase 2 version the main one because I don't think anyone will ever abandon the project because of SMD components while this could happen with an FPGA based system.



 

It does seem like a funny idea to decrease the frequency, or to decrease anything else, but I think it makes sense.

On the other hand, it's okay if the video or audio hardware is slightly different I think.  Look at the PC games market as an example.  Most games in the 80s and 90s supported multiple audio and video standards.  Some of 8BG's games also do this, so why can't developers be encouraged to write games that work on both machines?  After all we do have access to an X16 emulator, so even if the X16 isn't available when the X8 is, there's no reason why software can't theoretically be developed for both, and published for both?

2 minutes ago, Carl Gundel said:

It does seem like a funny idea to decrease the frequency, or to decrease anything else, but I think it makes sense.



On the other hand, it's okay if the video or audio hardware is slightly different I think.  Look at the PC games market as an example.  Most games in the 80s and 90s supported multiple audio and video standards.  Some of 8BG's games also do this, so why can't developers be encouraged to write games that work on both machines?  After all we do have access to an X16 emulator, so even if the X16 isn't available when the X8 is, there's no reason why software can't theoretically be developed for both, and published for both?

Yeah, the biggest selling point of the C8, aside from the USB ports and "it's here now" is the faster clock. 

On the RAM thing... I actually am starting to think the banked RAM on the Commander won't be used that much. SD is fast enough that it's simpler and just as fast to load game levels from disk. And with no BASIC support for banking or complex data structures, there's little to no use for banked memory in BASIC, anyway. 

So as a BASIC computer, the C8 is actually a better machine. As a machine language or C computer, the X16 has some benefits... but I'm starting to think those benefits aren't as worthwhile as folks think. The real advantage of the X16 is the expansion and User ports, not so much the expanded RAM.

 

3 minutes ago, Carl Gundel said:

Most games in the 80s and 90s supported multiple audio and video standards.  Some of 8BG's games also do this, so why can't developers be encouraged to write games that work on both machines? 

The PC market was also always much more heavily fragmented than the X16 would ever be. If the X16 were more of an open, customizable platform, with install bases in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, but with multiple competing standards on many subsystems and components, then X16 developers would be incentivized to write software with multiple hardware configurations in mind.

But there will be one X16, and maybe the X8. And the install base will be in the hundreds, maybe (maybe!) the thousands. This is much less incentive for wide support, especially if folks write software to be released for free, as opposed to software they intend to sell. Or, to the extend that wide support is encouraged, it will be by developing to the minimum spec shared between the two machines.