Version 1 Postmortem & Proposal for future

[m00dawg]

I get the impression that some of the folks, particularly those that seem to have only a few posts under their belt, are here to otherwise be negative and poop on the pizza as it were.

I respectfully disagree.

The reminder was not directed at any particular person. You don't have to agree to the rules for them to be enforceable. One doesn't have to agree to the speed limit but the officer will still stop and possibly arrest you for going 30 over. I've provided the reminder, folks can absolutely continue the discussion and as long as folks are being thoughtful and respectful, no problem. If we see folks doing otherwise, we'll likely have to step in an take action.

[Ser Olmy]

You don't have to agree to the rules for them to be enforceable.

That's not what I was suggesting at all. I'm starting to think I'm in entirely the wrong place, supporting the wrong project.

[Ed Minchau]

I've thought long and hard about the documentation issues, and have come to the conclusion that one reason for the suboptimal state of affairs might be that git is an extraordinarily ill-fitting tool for that particular job. But that's for another thread.

I think that point is quite relevant to this thread and cuts to the core of the issue. It is very difficult to have a "teaching computer" without the syllabus.

For a middle aged guy who started on the VIC 20, I got spoiled by that user guide. After seeing lots of really bad technical documentation over the years, I now consider that the gold standard. And thus it's a very high standard to try to replicate.

Of course the VIC 20 was a frozen design. There was no changing of the Kernal or expansion of BASIC once the manual was written. The chips on the board were what they were and didn't change.

I think what may happen is one or more people will write books that will be sold separately from the X16.

[encw]

The reminder was not directed at any particular person. You don't have to agree to the rules for them to be enforceable. One doesn't have to agree to the speed limit but the officer will still stop and possibly arrest you for going 30 over. I've provided the reminder, folks can absolutely continue the discussion and as long as folks are being thoughtful and respectful, no problem. If we see folks doing otherwise, we'll likely have to step in an take action.

Then can I have something clarified? Is this website a community site or a company site? It says community forums at the top, but cx16forum.com seems to load the company website.

And furthermore, if the X16 belongs to a for-profit company why is it being treated like a community project? Before there was mention of the poor documentation, and the answer came back, more or less, "if you don't like it, then fix it". I'm assuming that the poster meant for free. But if people are working for a for-profit company, then they should be getting paid.

If the company is a non-profit then I am sorry for the misunderstanding.

My point being that documentation is the responsibility of the company that is trying to sell a $350 product (plus hundreds more for a full working system). I think it is fair to say that the X16 is not a cheap computer. We shouldn't expect any less of David's company than we would any other for-profit company.

[arachnivore]

First of all, I didn't know that voidstar was part of this! Assuming this is Zack Freedman of Voidstar Labs, I'm a huge fan!

With that out of the way, I'll give my full perspective on this:

I thought the original pitch of trying to make an education-focused platform that captured the good parts of the retro experience while minimizing the negatives, was a strong concept.

At some point, the project pivoted to catering to midle-aged nostalgia-junkies who want to relive the "glory days" and don't mind spending $500 to do so. I don't find that very nearly as compelling.

Even the MiSTER project, in my eyes; is more compelling. It allows us to, in a sense, preserve the history of video game design as an art form.

Years ago, I saw this project as an oportunity not only to introduce people to programming in a unique way, but also to put a cheap FPGA in the hands of lots of learners. They are amazing learning tools. I suggested that it's well within the realm of possibility to fit a system quite a bit more powerful than a C64 into a single Lattice Ice40 UP5K, which at the time cost ~$5 (now it's $8-9). This pitch was met with pretty extreme hostility, so I didn't stick arround.

I think the restrictiveness of 64 kB of RAM is pretty esscential to the retro learning experience. It's like a fun puzzle you have to solve. It provides the incentive to write assembly. Every additional byte has diminishing returns which quickly become negative. Trying to squeeze the entire system into the cheapest FPGA possible seems naturally in keeping with that ethos.

It sounds like Phase 3 of the project is actually going in that direction, so that's what I'm interested in.

I think I could be an asset to the community. I have a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering (with a focus on HDL) as well as 15 years of programming experience.

My musings about RISC-V were for a future design (hence the title). They were never meant as a replacement for the current hardware.

[Main Administrator]

The following statement is issued by the X16 Community Steering Committee...

Okay, I'm going to put in my 2¢, and then we'll put this thread to bed.

This is the computer that David built. It may not be exactly what he talked about in 2018, and it might not even be exactly what he wanted when he got serious about building his own computer.

And it's not necessarily what we all see as our dream computer, but none of us actually did anything about it. We all just sat back and talked about it while David, Kevin, Lorin, Michael, and several others actually built a computer.

You're free to go build your own dream computer. No one is stopping you, but that's not what this forum is for. This forum is here to support users of the computer that does exist, here and now.

Thanks for your input, but I think it's time we move on and discuss what we can actually do with the computer we actually have.