Commander X16 Proto #2

[Kevin Williams 44]

Hi again! I've been working for quite awhile to get the new layout complete, and I think we are just about ready to run the second prototype! There are quite a number of changes to this board over the previous version, so I do expect a few, ahem, challenges perhaps?  That said, a lot of time has been spent testing on breadboards and optimizing so I think we should be close to the final specs on this system. As mentioned, there are code breaking changes with the system. I will post more for the devs out there in a post below. The VERA has also changed quite a bit. Namely, it now has 32 registers, but I'll let @Frank van den Hoef talk more about that when he is ready to post some updates. Also, I made two proto boards to test the bus and get the alignment right for the final design. Progress is being made, thanks for everyone's patience and have a great day!

[Exabyte 4]

Dude this is thrilling to see! I saw your post on Facebook first and figured I'd poke over here a bit. I did want to know if those prototyping boards were going to be shipped with the system as a bundle or sold separately. If it was considered to be bundled with it, would it just be the S boards? Also, what would the prices be if you decided to sell them?

[JimmyDansbo 74]

This is so much better than reading the same post on FB

[Perifractic 532]

1 hour ago, JimmyDansbo said:

This is so much better than reading the same post on FB

Agreed! In future we'll try to only make announcement posts here, then paste the link into FB (which will generate a preview of the post anyway). The website will be the go-to #1 source.

[troj 74]

This picture gets me very excited!  It's coming together.

And I hope the boards really are a fun color, other than green!

[SlithyMatt 420]

6 hours ago, troj said:

And I hope the boards really are a fun color, other than green!

Does PCBWay charge considerably more for a blue or red board than a green board?

[Perifractic 532]

44 minutes ago, SlithyMatt said:

Does PCBWay charge considerably more for a blue or red board than a green board?

No

[Yuki 124]

Y'all know PCB stands for Potentially Could Be Blue. Or is it?

PCBWAAAAAAYYYYYY

Sorry, had to do it. In any case, it looks pretty cool

[snake 4]

Does the board pose any obstacles to adding a Z80 card?

[TomXP411 215]

@Kevin Williams I'm having a hard time finding User Port info on the FB group. I recall you had planned to make it Centronics compatible. Could you refresh my memory here about the User port pinout? I'm trying to figure out how many pins we'll have available for GPIO. 

 

[Jim Drew 1]

Which of these sockets has the 6502 in it?  I would like to make sure my accelerator will plug into it before going to production.

 

[rje 162]

On 6/12/2020 at 11:22 AM, Juju said:

Y'all know PCB stands for Potentially Could Be Blue. Or is it?

PCBWAAAAAAYYYYYY

Sorry, had to do it. In any case, it looks pretty cool

Pretty Cool Board!  (Has Peri already done that one?)

[Scott Todd 3]

This may be the wrong place but Perifractic and the rest of the team will see it. I just watched David's Mini Pet video. Awesome as usual. He expressed concerns about people assembling a kit and it not working. I'm all in favor of selling the kits expressly WITHOUT a warranty. The person buying one should be capable of basic troubleshooting, just like David did. Maybe offer a warranty on the board BEFORE it gets soldered. Clearly if someone gets one with a scratch across a trace or merged traces, it could get replaced. That would just require an instruction to thoroughly inspect your board before starting assembly. Once assembly starts, its all theirs!

I get wanting it to be a complete computer but I also get that just drives the price, and development time. Like many. I'll buy one no matter what. But there is a certain satisfaction assembling the whole thing and then using it. Heathkit stuff was great! Another consideration, which I'm sure you did, would be to release the boards and a parts list so some 'Beta'  work could be done. Just like that Mini Pet kit. Having a few dozen users build and bench test them breadboard style could yield some interesting stuff. Either way, I can't wait to see one sitting on my desk I

 

Scott

[troj 74]

I agree, that troubleshooting kits could become a huge time consumer for the team behind this project, and that kits could be sold as "No warranty/support provided for kits."  At the same time, I suspect some very knowledgeable folks in this community could help one another in troubleshooting/diagnosing kit assembly issues, without impacting the core team.

Regardless of which way the team decides to go, I definitely plan to make a purchase!

-Kevin

[Perifractic 532]

Yeah don't worry too much about this. We haven't smoothed out final details yet. But if you look at the support forum here, it is set up in such way that it is community driven, whilst also accessible to the team.

[BruceMcF 181]

On 8/27/2020 at 2:30 AM, Scott Todd said:

This may be the wrong place but Perifractic and the rest of the team will see it. I just watched David's Mini Pet video. Awesome as usual. He expressed concerns about people assembling a kit and it not working. I'm all in favor of selling the kits expressly WITHOUT a warranty.

 

I am in favor of kits being sold with an x16e "to verify correct functioning", and the kit being sold without warranty of soldered parts. Obviously the x16e raises the kit price, but that is also useful in indirectly filtering out people pursuing it without the skills to accomplish it. And even those who trash their build have a working system.

[maktos 6]

I am certainly looking forward to buying the kit/DIP and discrete components/hacker version of this board.

[troj 74]

Kevin posted this video on the Facebook page

[dr.diesel 5]

He didn't offer any explanation on the root cause?  Perhaps Adrian will post a video soon.

[Scott Todd 3]

This is SO super awesome! I love Adrian's work. I'm glad he was able to contribute. I can't wait to spend my money