Now I get to be the subject on an email list ;-) - well, there is always that first time, i suppose ;-)
People monitoring this list will have noteced that my posts are few and far between these days - for two reasons: one, I have two jobs, and two, I have the same problem with emails Jochen seems to have, but even worse. As my ISP seems to be an originator of SPAM, many ohers simply ignore emails sent from it. I am rather delighted to see that the last message got through to the list, since it was changed over, but I have no idea how long this will last. As one would immagine, it is most frustrating to be only able to read emails, AND have 95% of them be SPAM lately (I get >100 emails a day). Regarding a formal business proposal to Quanta, this will be complicated for me without an intermediary. Let me remind you that I live in Croatia now, which is not a part of the EU (and currently regarded far too backward a country to become a member, apparently), which means that proposing any kind of business that has to deal with trans-border stuff is a real problem. If I were to, for instance, detail the channels that I would use to procure parts, most would definitely find them arcane (to put it mildly) but that is how things work here. Let me make it clearer - I _can_ get practically any part I want, assuming I can talk (twist arms and necks etc) of the suppliers to get me these in small quantity, and am willing to wait an indeterminate amount of time - hardly something that would seem sound in a formal business proposal. Secondly, some services have to be procured elsewhere - for instance, there are a gazzilion facilities that can produce quality two-layer PCBs in Croatia at very reasonable prices, but none that do multilayer boards - for that I have to go to Slovenia, which will, sometime in the next 3 months, become an EU member, at which point any arrangements made may become a bit more complex - or simpler, the fact is, I don't know and no-one else seems to, either (list members from countries that use the Euro will no doubt remember the price fluctuations on nearly all markets when the Euro changeover took place - a similar thing will happen in Slovenia). Most of the market for a product such as GoldFire is in the UK, which, even while being a member of the EU has it's own rules of sorts when finances are concerned, and the rest of the market is distributet amongst other EU countries and the US. For me, this means that I have to go through hoops to import parts which will be exported as a product, all while not being a company, but a private individual. In order to do so, I would have to find an intermediary here, which makes things far more complicated. Last but not least, I have two jobs at the moment, which for obvious reasons (such as being able to afford a living at least at the very basic food and lodging level) have to take precedence. Hardly a situation that makes it possible to just sit down and write a formal business proposal, and have it not sound insane... Fortunately, things are not as dark as they may seem. Due to the arrangement I have at work, I can use the resources of my employer with regards to parts and service sourcing, at their cost. Secondly, my employer has a keen interest in ColdFire based single-board computers. In fact, we have done some preliminary discussions on two possible projects, one based on the V4 coldfire, and another, based on the 68VZ328 Dragonball CPU (the latter is fully 68k compatible and runs at 66MHz, and includes a ton of peripherals on-chip, including a LCD/CRT controller). For the people that have suggested giving me room and board as it were, things are a bit more complex than that at the moment. I can do the developement where I am now, however, a modest amount of cash and a rather larger amount of time is necessary for this. >Nasty question number 1 (For Nasta): To what stage of physical hardware >has Goldfire developed, or is it still all on paper? This question is not as nasty as much as it stems from a misconception. The answer comes in two parts: 1) Apart from a set of parts for prototypes (and some parts that I have in sufficient numbers for a 50 piece production run), GoldFire is still only 'on paper' or rather as designs and simulations in relevant CAD programs, plus reference documentation. 2) There is no way to breadboard* this design, so 99.95% of the developement is carried out 'virtually' - it is impossible to produce a true prototype design without it being so close to the final design to be virtually indistinguishable, or, an attempt to make it as a 'breadboard' prototype would result in a non-functional design because of the required technology to insure signal integrity at such speeds. * Breadboarding is the process of completing a design on a 'breadboard', i.e. a 'universal' PCB that is then hand-wired point to point. Chips used on the GoldFire cannot be used in this manner with any reasonable expectations of proper functionality, and before someone asks, no there are no 'old style' alternatives to use instead, which can. This is because the chip cases used today are a direct result of the signal integrity requirements for the speeds used. In other words, once the design complexity, both architectural and technological, reaches a certain point, in order for things to be cost effective, one must get them right first time, or at least 99.95% right. Let me illustrate this with an example: GoldFire requires either a hand-routed 4-layer or an auto-routed 6 layer board (the latter would cost about 2x as much in production but requires less time to design than the former). You can get 3 untested (not very wise!) prototype boards for approximately 1000 Euro. At this point, making a 'prototype' may produce a design which works, or does not - the latter may be because of an error in the design, or an error in PCB manufacturing. In any case, if it does not work, a new, corrected, or properly manufactured board set will be needed, to the tune of the next 1000 Euro. Alternatively, the design can be simulated and verified 'virtually' to a point where one can be quite certain of it's validity, and make a whole batch of production boards (say 50) for 2000 Euro - and evere other 50 board batch would then be quite a lot cheaper (nearly half price). Procuring parts for a production batch may also be a problem as there are minimum quantities involved. At this moment, however, my employer can be of help with their supply channels, but this does not ultimately reduce the price for a set of parts for, say 50 boards - approximately 5000 Euro. I also need to add that the current GoldFire hardware is based on the 68060 CPU (any variant), in fact, two of them (one is necessary, the other optional), not on the ColdFire chip. It would be possible to produce something like it using a ColdFire V4 (assuming 68k compatibility can be sorted out, which is admittedly very close to being there by default, but not as easy as one would expect due to a few special cases where things are different between 68k and Coldfire). It should be noted that ColdFire is an extension to the 68k family, and as each new generation of this chip is designed, it comes closer and closer to being a full 68k+ with added facilities. The crux of the matter here is in adapting the operating system to this new hardware. With the 68060 (as 'obsolete' and slow as it is) this has already been done - it is a 68k CPU after all, and one needs to address the speciffics of the ancillary hardware. With a ColdFire, which is potentially signifficantly faster, making the CPU work as a 68k in the first place is where a lot of programming effort will go. So, even though it may be simpler to design a piece of hardware with a ColdFire, savings in hardware developement will be balanced by the cost of software needed to get the CPU to work in a compatible manner - if we are lucky. Since it seems to be impossible to come to a concensus as to what of 'the QL' has to survive and what has to be abbandoned in order to get some progress, it came down to me as the hardware designer to cut the Gordian Knot and say 'it's going to be a 68060, because it's compatible, and because I can get these (cheaply). However, GoldFire is not the only project. Super/EtherIDE is practically complete - 50 production boards would probably cost about 2000 Euro or so, depending on what exact variant of the board (there are several options) is to be made. If all were made with the full set of features, the price could be as high as 3000 Euro for 50 boards, depending on parts procurement. The software modifications to make it work (albeit not with all features enabled) are minimal - in fact, patching an existing version of Qubide may do the trick. Other possibilities are also open, all based on pre-existing solutions and source code which is available (such as the Q40 IDE driver, the CD ROM driver by T. Godefroy, the Qubide source, etc). A project which is in it's infancy but requires relatively little time to complete, BUT requires the extra features of GoldFire is Aurora II. Crytical parts are already available at effective 0 cost, all other parts and boards would probably come to a 2000-3000 Euro sum. A possible project being investigated is a board that would in essence be a QL replacement, that could fit into the old case (or a much cmaller one), would include extra frills and in essence be a all-in-one machine, is a board based on the aforementioned 68VZ328 Dragonball. There was talk of this on the list before, but at that time there was no source for the CPUs. Note that this board would be far less powerfull than a GoldFire (or Q60) - think of it as a 66MHz GoldCard with loads more RAM and Aurora+ style graphics, but would be a simple and quite cheap solution for a replacement QL for non-power users ;-) especially if I can find a market for it elsewhere and sell it under the guise of something else (which I think I may be able to do). So much for projects. And now for an extra dose of reality: Anyone considering production of any type of QL hardware should start with the assumption that any money invested will effectively be thrown away, with no guarantee of anything actually being done at all. This is the fate of most research and developemet funds, BTW. If one gets lucky, the investment in parts and services that have to be procured with real money and cannot be transmuted into the designer man-hours, will be returned. The cost of the designer man-hours will most certainly not be reimbursed at all - no-one could afford it anyway. In such situation, it is an absolute certainly that I will get no Euro for the 1000 or so hours spent on GoldFire so far, which even by the lowes OEM hourly rate would be 25000 Euro in _THIS_ country (try the calculation for the UK, for instance, if you dare). Therefore, making this a true business proposal where the business would make money for the investor of money, but none for the investor of time, would be rather... unfair? Fortunately, I don't do this for profit, and IMHO Quanta would be well advised to use the same policy, if they already aren't. As such, it can hardly be called a business, therefore a proposal could hardly be called a business proposal. We should be talking of an agreement of some sort. It's only if this ever generates a profit (which I doubt) where one may get problems in it's distribution, and I can pretty much guarantee they will not come from me. Regrads, Nasta _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List
