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Guesstimates - COTS component cost of the X16
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2022 7:29 pm
by rje
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?
Guesstimates - COTS component cost of the X16
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2022 6:53 am
by Wavicle
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.
Guesstimates - COTS component cost of the X16
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2022 9:16 am
by Ed Minchau
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.
Guesstimates - COTS component cost of the X16
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2022 8:37 pm
by Wavicle
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 #
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Manufacturer
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Description
|
|
|
652-4607X-1LF-10K
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Bourns
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Resistor Networks & Arrays 7pins 10Kohms Bussed
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$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
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Circular DIN Connectors 6P/6P PC99 GRN/PURPL STACKED GOLD PLATED
|
$2.41
|
$2.41
|
490-SDF-60J
|
CUI Devices
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Circular DIN Connectors 3 13 Positions, Receptacle, Right Angle, Through Hole, Shielded, Standard Circular DIN Connector
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$3.19
|
$3.19
|
520-TCH357-X
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ECS
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Standard Clock Oscillators DIP-8 5V 3.579545MHz
|
$2.90
|
$2.90
|
571-1-1775099-3
|
TE Connectivity
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Power to the Board ATX PWR CONN 1 BDLK 24 POS
|
$0.92
|
$0.92
|
595-TL074ACNE4
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Texas Instruments
|
Operational Amplifiers - Op Amps Low-Noise JFET-Input Op Amp
|
$1.12
|
$2.24
|
579-MCP7940N-I/P
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Microchip
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Real Time Clock I2C GP RTCC,64B SRAM
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$0.94
|
$0.94
|
556-ATTINY861-20PU
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Microchip
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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
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NOR Flash 512K X 8 70ns
|
$2.24
|
$2.24
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913-AS6C1008-55PCN
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Alliance Memory
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SRAM 1Mb, 2.7V-5.5V, 55ns 128K x 8 Asynch SRAM
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$3.99
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$3.99
|
913-AS6C4008-55PCN
|
Alliance Memory
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SRAM 4M, 2.7-5.5V, 55ns 512K x 8 Asynch SRAM
|
$6.38
|
$25.52
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955-W65C22S6TPG-14
|
Western Design Center (WDC)
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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
|
Guesstimates - COTS component cost of the X16
Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2022 4:20 am
by SolidState
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.
Guesstimates - COTS component cost of the X16
Posted: Fri Jun 24, 2022 2:10 pm
by Fabio
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
Guesstimates - COTS component cost of the X16
Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2022 12:02 am
by BruceMcF
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.}
Guesstimates - COTS component cost of the X16
Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2022 12:07 pm
by Johan Kårlin
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.
Guesstimates - COTS component cost of the X16
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 5:09 am
by Cyber
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.
Guesstimates - COTS component cost of the X16
Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2022 7:23 am
by Wavicle
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: