Guesstimates - COTS component cost of the X16

rje · Post by **rje** » Mon Jun 20, 2022 7:29 pm

I've seen the X16 proto boards on several videos, but I didn't get full-nerd with the video and try to figure out the parts list and cost.

Lately, talking about the SRAM chips got me wondering what the current parts inventory costs.

Anyone try this?

Wavicle · Post by **Wavicle** » Tue Jun 21, 2022 6:53 am

This is a target that is moving uncomfortably fast in the opposite direction of where they normally go. The FPGA, CPU, and VIAs have shot up ~50% in the last 3 months. The BOM for VERA last month was $30.14 for parts in bulk or $37.73 when buying enough for a single board. I did a pre-price-spike BOM for Breadboard16 back in April; it was $259.72 for everything or $124.92 when costs for things like the solderless protoboards are removed. These prices are for a 512K system and are missing: Mouse, Keyboard, Case, PSU, expansion slots, IEC connector, and SNES sockets.

Accounting for the price increases, parts only, including motherboard (~$20 for a 4-layer mini-ITX form factor board) and VERA, comes to around $160 for a 512MB model. PSU is another $25. Case is maybe another $50-75. Keyboard and mouse depend on your preference, say another $25. COTS total comes in around $250-$275 for a base model system.

Some broke college kid's time to solder everything together is probably another $150 (7.5 hours x $20/hour), or another $300 if you hire your cousin who can do it "for free".

In all honesty, every time I look at the total, I wrinkle my nose and ask "how??", then I look at my BOM with part cost broken out and realize it's just a LOT of parts that cost between $0.50 and $10.00.

Ed Minchau · Post by **Ed Minchau** » Tue Jun 21, 2022 9:16 am

On 6/21/2022 at 12:53 AM, Wavicle said:

This is a target that is moving uncomfortably fast in the opposite direction of where they normally go. The FPGA, CPU, and VIAs have shot up ~50% in the last 3 months. The BOM for VERA last month was $30.14 for parts in bulk or $37.73 when buying enough for a single board. I did a pre-price-spike BOM for Breadboard16 back in April; it was $259.72 for everything or $124.92 when costs for things like the solderless protoboards are removed. These prices are for a 512K system and are missing: Mouse, Keyboard, Case, PSU, expansion slots, IEC connector, and SNES sockets.

Accounting for the price increases, parts only, including motherboard (~$20 for a 4-layer mini-ITX form factor board) and VERA, comes to around $160 for a 512MB model. PSU is another $25. Case is maybe another $50-75. Keyboard and mouse depend on your preference, say another $25. COTS total comes in around $250-$275 for a base model system.

Some broke college kid's time to solder everything together is probably another $150 (7.5 hours x $20/hour), or another $300 if you hire your cousin who can do it "for free".

In all honesty, every time I look at the total, I wrinkle my nose and ask "how??", then I look at my BOM with part cost broken out and realize it's just a LOT of parts that cost between $0.50 and $10.00.

Based on that, I'd say the extra cost of 3 more RAM ICs to make a 2Mb system the base model is worth it. There are PCB production houses that can put together a board, even through hole, for a lot less than that. I know, I used to work at a couple such places doing just that, and operating the SMT production line. And if we get to the point of making a surface mount version, then we're looking at a lot less than I paid for my VIC 20 back in the 80s.

Wavicle · Post by **Wavicle** » Tue Jun 21, 2022 8:37 pm

I created a BOM on Mouser that contained most of the motherboard ICs, and several other big ticket items, hopefully it will paste here correctly. Parts that it does not contain include: YM2151, YM3012, VERA, passive components, PCBs, Mouse, Keyboard, Case, PSU, or SNES sockets. This is for my compatible design which is known to differ from the official design by at least 1 74xx IC.

Mouser #	Manufacturer	Description
652-4607X-1LF-10K	Bourns	Resistor Networks & Arrays 7pins 10Kohms Bussed	$0.56	$1.12
955-W65C02S6TPG-14	Western Design Center (WDC)	Microprocessors - MPU 8-bit Microprocessor	$10.75	$10.75
806-KMDGX-6SGP-S4N	Kycon	Circular DIN Connectors 6P/6P PC99 GRN/PURPL STACKED GOLD PLATED	$2.41	$2.41
490-SDF-60J	CUI Devices	Circular DIN Connectors 3 13 Positions, Receptacle, Right Angle, Through Hole, Shielded, Standard Circular DIN Connector	$3.19	$3.19
520-TCH357-X	ECS	Standard Clock Oscillators DIP-8 5V 3.579545MHz	$2.90	$2.90
571-1-1775099-3	TE Connectivity	Power to the Board ATX PWR CONN 1 BDLK 24 POS	$0.92	$0.92
595-TL074ACNE4	Texas Instruments	Operational Amplifiers - Op Amps Low-Noise JFET-Input Op Amp	$1.12	$2.24
579-MCP7940N-I/P	Microchip	Real Time Clock I2C GP RTCC,64B SRAM	$0.94	$0.94
556-ATTINY861-20PU	Microchip	8-bit Microcontrollers - MCU 8kB Flash 0.512kB EEPROM 16 I/O Pins	$2.85	$2.85
595-SN74LS06NE4	Texas Instruments	Buffers & Line Drivers Hex inverter Buffer/ Driver	$0.86	$0.86
595-CD74ACT139E	Texas Instruments	Encoders, Decoders, Multiplexers & Demultiplexers Dual Line	$0.93	$0.93
595-SN74AHCT04N	Texas Instruments	Inverters Hex	$0.71	$0.71
595-CD74ACT20E	Texas Instruments	Logic Gates Dual 4-Input	$1.03	$2.06
595-SN74AHCT02N	Texas Instruments	Logic Gates Quad 2-Input	$0.71	$2.13
595-CD74ACT163E	Texas Instruments	Counter ICs Sync Preset Binary w/Sync Reset	$0.99	$0.99
595-SN74AHCT74N	Texas Instruments	Flip Flops Dual w/Clear Preset	$0.73	$0.73
815-ACH-16-EK	ABRACON	Standard Clock Oscillators XTAL OSC XO 16.0000MHZ HCMOS TTL	$2.71	$2.71
595-SN74ACT10N	Texas Instruments	Logic Gates Triple 3-Input Positive-NAND gates	$0.74	$0.74
595-SN74AHCT32N	Texas Instruments	Logic Gates Quad 2-Input Pos	$0.73	$0.73
595-SN74AHCT138N	Texas Instruments	Encoders, Decoders, Multiplexers & Demultiplexers Line Decoder	$1.01	$1.01
595-SN74AHCT273N	Texas Instruments	Flip Flops Octal	$0.81	$1.62
804-39SF0407CPHE	Microchip	NOR Flash 512K X 8 70ns	$2.24	$2.24
913-AS6C1008-55PCN	Alliance Memory	SRAM 1Mb, 2.7V-5.5V, 55ns 128K x 8 Asynch SRAM	$3.99	$3.99
913-AS6C4008-55PCN	Alliance Memory	SRAM 4M, 2.7-5.5V, 55ns 512K x 8 Asynch SRAM	$6.38	$25.52
955-W65C22S6TPG-14	Western Design Center (WDC)	I/O Controller Interface IC Versatile Interface Adapter	$10.15	$20.30
571-1-5530843-8	TE Connectivity	Standard Card Edge Connectors CONN SEC II 60 POS 100C/L	$5.29	$21.16

				$115.75

SolidState · Post by **SolidState** » Wed Jun 22, 2022 4:20 am

This doesn't include all the overheads. A typical "retail" price would be 2.5 to 3x the COGS. If you run it as a one-off Kickstarter project with no after sales support then you could get away with 2x COGS. That puts the price of the base kit at around $500-$550. If you want to assemble and ship a finished product then the costs go way up. You would easily be getting to the $1,000 price point.

Fabio · Post by **Fabio** » Fri Jun 24, 2022 2:10 pm

Should we consider some cost reduction measures?

Maybe the phase 2 which uses cpld and SMT components is the best choice to tackle the chip shortage.

with better times the reference system can be actually produced

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Sat Jun 25, 2022 12:02 am

On 6/24/2022 at 10:10 AM, Fabio said:

Should we consider some cost reduction measures?

Maybe the phase 2 which uses cpld and SMT components is the best choice to tackle the chip shortage.

with better times the reference system can be actually produced

However, going ahead with EITHER the X16p or X16c requires that the FPGA that hosts Vera is readily available in quantity, which implies that the current ship shortage will have eased to SOME extent.

A key -- and in reality not actually knowable part -- is how a shift to a situation where the FPGA that hosts Vera is actually readily available in quantity will be reflected in the price of chips/parts that at present cost substantially more than they did two years ago.

In any event, the X16p design has to be finalized ... which means,among other things, available in sufficient quantity for beta testing ... in order to have the benchmark on whether the X16c CPLD (and possibly etc{+}) presents an identical software platform to the X16p.

______________

{+ Note: For example, moving to SMD chips implies a larger selection of SRAM, so one cost reduction might be to have a single 1MB SRAM with LowRAM selecting the top 40KB and 123 banks of High RAM, and one 1MB SRAM will be cheaper than one 512KB SRAM and one 64KB SRAM.}

Johan Kårlin · Post by **Johan Kårlin** » Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:07 pm

While years are passing and we all wait and hope to see a finished product to a reasonable cost, what if it would be possible to optimize the emulator and see if it could be included with RetroPie? Together with a Raspberry Pi case with some cool X16 stickers and the already finished official keyboard this would at least be a solitary product. I totally understand if many people find this meaningless because so much is about real hardware but we would be better off than now when we only have the emulator. This would open the possibility to for example build an arcade tabletop machine with X16 games.

Cyber · Post by **Cyber** » Tue Jun 28, 2022 5:09 am

On 6/27/2022 at 3:07 PM, Johan Kårlin said:

While years are passing and we all wait and hope to see a finished product to a reasonable cost, what if it would be possible to optimize the emulator and see if it could be included with RetroPie?

I'm sure it is possible to run the emulator on RPi or other SBC (I remeber somebody did or at least tried), but let's not evolve this topic at least on this forum. Let's patiently wait, and use available emulator till then. After finished product release all these possibilities will surely be opened and ecouraged.

Wavicle · Post by **Wavicle** » Tue Jun 28, 2022 7:23 am

On 6/27/2022 at 10:09 PM, Cyber said:

I'm sure it is possible to run the emulator on RPi or other SBC (I remeber somebody did or at least tried), but let's not evolve this topic at least on this forum. Let's patiently wait, and use available emulator till then. After finished product release all these possibilities will surely be opened and ecouraged.

The available emulator runs on RPi. It's a bit slower than a desktop PC, but it runs. I modified it to redirect VERA IO to a GPIO expander for testing my breadboarded VERA: