Commander X16

On 9/28/2021 at 10:25 PM, rje said:

The X8, on the other hand:  I already want one.  It hits my price point so easily.  Worth it.  Regardless of whether or not I get the X16.

Well, I think this is what many of us thought the Commander X16 would be about in the end. It is just that an incompatible variant is not what we probably had in mind, but a single platform that would get there after an interation or three.

I wonder if the project might not be better off launching the X8 as the Commander X16 and focusing on that only, with possibly an X8 compatible larger memory version down the road, and forgetting about the hardware 6502 version completely. It would seem to me a higher volume X8 could quickly overwhelm any kit-based X16 ecosystem anyway.

I think folks who can get the X16 have already decided to get the X16.  The X8 won't change their minds -- they'll simply pick up one of those, too.

If anything, I think the X8 is a marketing tool -- sending out the X8 to evangelize would bring greater awareness of the X16. 

 

On 9/28/2021 at 11:15 PM, rje said:

I think folks who can get the X16 have already decided to get the X16.  The X8 won't change their minds -- they'll simply pick up one of those, too.

Sure, but I do wonder which would be the development target focus? A slow trickle of more expensive kits being completed or an incompatible consumer-priced volume model being sold alongside it?

I think part of the appeal for the X16 is the idea of a new platform being born. If the volume focus is actually on a different, incompatible platform (the X8), I can see an effect on development focus and interest.

This is why I personally would love to see X8, if it comes, as a clear subset of X16 only and not a partially superior and incompatible platform compared to the X16. It would make the X16 more "worth it", in my view, if it was a "super X8" and not something separate.

Just my personal thoughts.

I posted this in another thread, but the FPGA that Frank has been using (ICE40UP5K-SG48ITR50) has been discontinued by Lattice. They still make plenty of versions of this FPGA in other packaging, but the physical designs for both the VERA and the X8 will probably need to be updated.

 

On 9/28/2021 at 4:27 PM, Janne Sirén said:

Sure, but I do wonder which would be the development target focus? A slow trickle of more expensive kits being completed or an incompatible consumer-priced volume model being sold alongside it?



I think part of the appeal for the X16 is the idea of a new platform being born. If the volume focus is actually on a different, incompatible platform (the X8), I can see an effect on development focus and interest. ...

It's a hobbyist system in either case ... the "volume" model is not volume like a BananaPi, never mind a RPi.

Development is going to be hobbyist development. The people who want to develop for the X16 are going to do so if the system has a release date.

As far as whether it would be ideal for the X8 to be a strict subset of the X16 ... well, yeah, but if it's not a practical option, it's not a practical option.

On 9/29/2021 at 12:53 AM, BruceMcF said:

It's a hobbyist system in either case ... the "volume" model is not volume like a BananaPi, never mind a RPi.



Development is going to be hobbyist development. The people who want to develop for the X16 are going to do so if the system has a release date.



As far as whether it would be ideal for the X8 to be a strict subset of the X16 ... well, yeah, but if it's not a practical option, it's not a practical option.

Certainly my comparison of volume product is the likes of ZX Spectrum Next, also a hobby platform. It is an example of a single coherent target platform I have in mind. It has a couple of models but all are compatible. On the other end of the spectrum are the likes of C256 Foenix that has many low-volume variants and little in terms of clear target platfrom yet.

Personally I would prefer X16 project to resemble the Next in this regard: a single coherent target platform where possible model differences are details surrounding a shared, fully compatible core. On the Next there are even fully compatible clones of it, sanctioned, so it has a thriving software ecosystem.

Even hobby developers like to target an audience and this type of platform would seem to maximize that. Just my two cents on what I would prefer personally.

On 9/28/2021 at 5:23 PM, Janne Sirén said:

Personally I would prefer X16 project to resemble the Next in this regard: a single coherent target platform where possible model differences are details surrounding a shared, fully compatible core.

Agreed... and I think this is where we're at, if you define the core as KERNAL + system RAM + VERA, and of course the KERNAL upgrade has a call for copying memory to VRAM.

From 8BG's post, it seems likely that at least a thousand X16's can be produced.  Is that enough for an ecosystem?  I don't know.  8,000 ZX Nexts were sold, it seems, and I assume that it has a decent ecosystem.

 

On 9/28/2021 at 6:23 PM, Janne Sirén said:

Certainly my comparison of volume product is the likes of ZX Spectrum Next, also a hobby platform. It is an example of a single coherent target platform I have in mind. It has a couple of models but all are compatible. On the other end of the spectrum are the likes of C256 Foenix that has many low-volume variants and little in terms of clear target platfrom yet.



Personally I would prefer X16 project to resemble the Next in this regard: a single coherent target platform where possible model differences are details surrounding a shared, fully compatible core. On the Next there are even fully compatible clones of it, sanctioned, so it has a thriving software ecosystem.



Even hobby developers like to target an audience and this type of platform would seem to maximize that. Just my two cents on what I would prefer personally.

Yeah, the X16p and X16c would be that .the models around a single coherent target platform ... once a X16p crowdfund has launched successfully and then been shipped, and assuming that chip logistics issues have calmed down, a Quantity 1,000 and up X16c crowdfund campaign would be a natural next step. I expect with the X16p already in people's hands, a X16c with keyboard and case will fund at the minimum level to hit the keyboard minimum order without breaking much of a sweat.

Ideally, the X8 would be a pure subset of the X16, but the X16 is designed to run with distinct ASIC chips selected by chip select circuits made from glue logic, and the X8 is designed to fit into the FPGA that Vera was designed to run on, and they are a pretty different set of design constraints.

Going with the X8 makes the X16e redundant, unless the X16e is the board that is designed to be compatible with both the X16p and the X8 ... say, specify that the high bit of ALL ROMbank selections must be 0, and specify that X8 programs must never touch RAM locations $0000/$0001, and make the high bit of $0001 set the switch to select X8 mode in the X16e. The X16e will require an FPGA that is more capable than the Vera FPGA, so at worst that means that an extra step up is required than just to make an FPGA version of an X16p. Just as with the original three phase development path, that makes the X16e something that only happens if the success of the preceding phases justifies it.

In other words, that would make the X16e the One System to Rule Them All, One System to Find Them, One System to Bring Them All, and In The Darkness Bind Them.

 

TL;DR: I'm new here and catching up on things, but wanted to share some preliminary thoughts in different areas in detail. Mostly about the cases, the X8, and the VERA.

Perifractic should make a case for the Raspberry Pis that's like the X16 case and has space for a decent fan like those RGB cooler tower ones. I definitely want a few. I've got one of these Argon AR2 cases for my RPi4B/8GB that has a noisy little tiny fan that doesn't cool much, and I'm just not so happy with the case design-wise for various reasons. Here's the thing. It hides your CSI ports. It hides your USB-C OTG port by going through the 5V and then through a non-OTG USB-C port so you lose data capability if you wanted to emulate a USB device through the USB-C port. So it then tempts you to leave your case unscrewed, and if you do, the way it's designed it wants very badly to bend your microSD if you just wiggled the bottom of the case just a tad, a little dab'll do ya, and if you do that, well, you could be looking at a potential fire hazard too because I found out one time on a RPi3B with an accidentally bent card it can heat up the unit very fast. I've got another NUC7i7BNH that has the little leaf blower fan that couldn't, that leaves the case hot, and it's noisy and might scare children and adults when it changes fan levels automatically at 3am, it sounds like a failing small jet engine. I took it out of the case, then found that the only alternative option for sale was a fan-less case, which is not something I care to do.

So I'm just simply saying, there's market potential here for better cases, and I rather liked the X16 case design.

I'm trying to like the X8, but don't know a whole lot about it, and how it differentiates itself from the C64 Mini. I've got one of those here too. If you start saying Raspberry Pi-sized FPGA, I start thinking IoT. The C64 Mini I found is not so good on the USB drivers. I finally got my Raspberry Pi Zero W to work with it as a USB boot protocol keyboard HID on the C64 Mini with some work, but the C64 Mini still doesn't work with my Arduino Nano 33 IoT with basically the same boot keyboard HID descriptor, it's a fiddly mess. I might get around that by changing the VID/PID, but I don't know what that's going to do yet in the Arduino IDE, as in screwing things up to reprogram it later. The more IoT-friendly the X8 gets the better. I start thinking IoT though and some words suddenly come to mind like UART/I2C/SPI, GPIO pins, Analog pins, PWM pins, 3.3V or 5V... I don't know what's all on the X8.

I can see that there are folks adamantly commenting in here that want things cut for cost to hit their ideal price point. The question then becomes, what is your ideal price point, and what can you do with it if you cut down cost too much, will you be able to do what you want to do with it? I'd like to know from those who want the X8 to be at a very low price point what that price point is and what they want to do with it. Make sure to test for feasibility, that's why that emulator is there. It maybe needs an update with an X8 mode for testing.

I was personally drawn to the X16 because of the YM2151+PSG and early on it sounded like it was going to have a 65C816, but I know today that's not the case. It all sounded kind of like a Sharp X68000 but in the U.S., which sounded way cool. I'm very much into some of the 16-bit era gaming console things like FM synthesis, graphical effects of the SNES like scaling and rotation, multi-layer parallax scrolling, and so on. The X16 was checking maybe not 100% of my check marks at first, but enough that it got my interest.

When I got into 65C02 ASM on the X16 I realized that on the X16 even though there was a 640x480x256 you couldn't do a full screen bitmap because that's 307,200 bytes. You could do that at 320x240x256 as that's 76,800 bytes, but now if you move the goalpost on VRAM to 65,536 bytes, now you suddenly can't do that again. You'd have to either scale down to 160x120x256, or use tiled mode afaik. Tile mode is fine if you have enough repeating sections of a screen. If you wanted to do text in a graphics mode, and had a 256-character font set, at 8x8x8bpp that's 16kb, and at 16x16x8bpp that's 64kb already. If the VRAM could go up to 76,800 bytes on the X8 and the RAM lowered to 54,272 bytes, or if that's somehow user configurable, which I would be surprised to see, that would be better in my opinion, because on the X8 you have faster file system I/O just from having microSD.

So, the 64kb VRAM on the X8 is a squeeze, and for some of the things I would want to do, that sounds like trying to squeeze a big orange through a small straw, and I want a bigger straw. Send me an X16 FPGA.

Should the X16 still be called the X16 since it's on a 65C02 as is? I remember those early 90s 16-bit console wars, I had a TG-16 back then and a neighbor of mine had a Genesis, and on the bus to school I'd have to hear, "well your TG-16 isn't a real 16-bit because it's an 8-bit processor with 2 16-bit graphics processors it doesn't have Toe Jam n' Earl in your face Blast Processing." Pepperidge Farm remembers. Later I got a Genesis and a SNES, the SNES was the best tech specs-wise and had some very good games. The TG-16 had a few good games too btw, and it at least had 8bpp color unlike the Genesis, but not that Mode 7 scaling and rotation from the SNES, or its SuperFX chip too from "muh-muh-muh jammen" Starfox, because according to Falco every English sentence is pronounced "muh-muh-muh jammen", anyway put that on a higher end VERA for a real X16, then sell it as a lower cost alternative to the Gameduino 3X Dazzler for breadboarding projects if that's feasible. Something that works with 65C02, 65C816, and 68000 chips for breadboarding projects perhaps, I'm not sure how feasible that is.

I think that both the through-hole kit and FPGA should be released. After all the Commodore had the Pet, the VIC-20, the C64, the Amiga...

I wouldn't care much about a case. Design a board's form factor, bring that board to the market and if there are enough boards sold, cases will occur on the market on their own. The RaspPi also came without case and it didn't hurt it.

Regarding RaspPi, I think a lot of these are lying forgotten in some drawers, because people don't really know what to do with them. It's not powerful enough to use as a PC replacement (except from some nerds), programming is not easy to see some cool results for beginners, not much people have use cases where a server is needed.

What can an X16/X8 make better?

- it works out-of-the-box - no need to prepare an SD card first

- it comes with some primitive programming environment to do the first steps in programming, hence IMHO it might be more appealing as a school hardware

- programming it is much closer to the hardware than having Linux around it - similar to Arduino

What makes the Arduino successful?

- it can be easily programmed - simple plug and play to a standard PC

- good enough IDE software for the PC

- it is close to the hardware, e.g. not hard to connect certain other devices

What could make the X16/X8 superior to Arduino?

- you can play graphical games on a standard monitor (TV?)

- you can run different programs without the need to flash them from a PC

- you can program/learn programming on the device itself