Commander X16

Glad to see that a highly desirable community computer is about to be born.

I would like to buy one (or a kit) once its finished.

The big problem is that I'm in Europe (Germany).

That means everything worth more about 25$ that comes from overseas must pass the customs.

Everything electrical must have a CE-label otherwise the customs will either send it back or destroy it.

Are there any thoughts on getting a CE-label?

Basically it is a self declaration of the manufacturer/seller that the item meets all rules that apply in the EU. There are no really ways to circumvent this, but one trick is to find an importer in a EU country. So the end user buys it from there, thus passes no customs.

The next thing is that the video out seems to be NTSC only.

A PAL version would be great, this would let the EU users use their old CRTs.

Are there thoughts on other character sets other than us?

I don't bother about the power supply, that is something one can buy here or DIY.

I actually had similar thoughts - I'm from Switzerland where the situation sometimes is in other ways complicated. But - for Switzerland a CE label is not required for customs. So at least I could get it in here, although customs and taxes (VAT) will likely cost around 100€ in total. My brother is working at customs - he for sure can help to "optimize" the declaration.

So - if you live not too far from the border... you could pick it up here. Sending a parcel would not work - because of the missing CE label.

I briefly thought about being an importer to provide the CE label, but for this you need to be registered with a so-called "notified body". I'm working in the medical device industry - I know about this stuff. A quick check showed, that this would be impractical, we are talking thousands of € just to get started. Then there is the risk with the German "Fernabgabegesetz" (online purchases), "Produkthaftung" (product liability) and "Gewährleistung" (2 year warranty) one would take to establish a business.

No wonder very few do this...

A second option would be a kit version or a pre-assembled motherboard. I think CE labelling is not required for those as it would be components, not products.

On 1/19/2021 at 4:11 AM, edrive said:

Are there thoughts on other character sets other than us?

I have heard there are no plans for keyboards other than the US, I would assume for economies of scale reasons.

However, it's a user definable character set with up to 1024 characters, so ISO-8859-1 (Latin1) would be straightforward to support. The legacy PETSCII character set isn't so much "US" as a "Norristown, Pennsylvania, US" character set, but it's not strictly limited to PETSCII.

Just found this in the faq, what I have overlooked before:

"What we are doing here is highly customizing existing, high quality, already FCC & CE certified products, into a bespoke, unique case/keyboard/mouse package, ..."

Also in the faq is written:

"...aspects of the product that depend on China such as the keyboard, case, and more..."

This means that some if not most parts are coming from China and the Chinese are experts in CE labeling (sic).

Sounds good. That calms down my concerns and lets my excitement rise

@BruceMcF:

I highly understand that there won't be a keyboard layout for every European country.

For my self I can deal with an US layout (unlike with a French layout which drives you crazy). And it is nice to hear that it is at least possible to have user definable characters. On the other hand at least the Euro sign € is a must have.

 

16 hours ago, edrive said:

@BruceMcF:



I highly understand that there won't be a keyboard layout for every European country.

For my self I can deal with an US layout (unlike with a French layout which drives you crazy). And it is nice to hear that it is at least possible to have user definable characters. On the other hand at least the Euro sign € is a must have.

Good point. ISO8859-15 replaces the general currency symbol at $A4 with the Euro symbol. With $ £ ¥ and € that covers most of the more critical currency symbols.

On 1/18/2021 at 10:11 PM, edrive said:

 



The next thing is that the video out seems to be NTSC only.

A PAL version would be great, this would let the EU users use their old CRTs.



 

Most late 1980s-onwards PAL TVs have native support for NTSC. If you have one, no need to buy a seperate TV set  just for NTSC.

On 1/18/2021 at 12:11 PM, edrive said:

The next thing is that the video out seems to be NTSC only.

A PAL version would be great, this would let the EU users use their old CRTs.

The video out is VGA (although there is an optional CVBS output.) VGA is neither PAL nor NTSC... it's just VGA. It's not even XVGA; it's just 640x480 at 60Hz. 

So you should have no problem using it with any VGA monitor. 

4 hours ago, TomXP411 said:

The video out is VGA (although there is an optional CVBS output.) VGA is neither PAL nor NTSC... it's just VGA. It's not even XVGA; it's just 640x480 at 60Hz. 



So you should have no problem using it with any VGA monitor. 

I was guessing that the desire for PAL was "because retro", not "because the best display quality", which is where @xanthrou's interesting advice comes in (this was news to me, but I haven't lived in PAL land since the early 2000's and didn't have any NTSC video sources when I did - the only issue I ran across was my wife wanting to watch a PAL-SECAM video tape when Oz was a PAL-1 country).

But, yeah, if the idea was NTSC was the ONLY video out ... VGA does seem like the go unless the issue is scratching some particular retro itch.

6 minutes ago, BruceMcF said:

I was guessing that the desire for PAL was "because retro", not "because the best display quality", which is where @xanthrou's interesting advice comes in (this was news to me, but I haven't lived in PAL land since the early 2000's and didn't have any NTSC video sources when I did).



But, yeah, if the idea was NTSC was the ONLY video out ... VGA does seem like the go unless the issue is scratching some particular retro itch.

Some people will undoubtedly try to use the composite output, but it's not going to be readable on a color screen. Even if you turn off the colorburst, text will still be interlaced, and that's awful to look at for more than a few minutes. 

 

1 hour ago, TomXP411 said:

Some people will undoubtedly try to use the composite output, but it's not going to be readable on a color screen. Even if you turn off the colorburst, text will still be interlaced, and that's awful to look at for more than a few minutes. 

Aha, the classic composite displays often avoided that with the "don't output the second frame" trick.