-------------------------------------------------- From: "Lee Privett" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 10:41 PM To: "Lee Privett" <[email protected]>; <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] Yahoo Groups
Also I don't know if I am giving anything away, but well whatever, there is a schematic of something called GoldFire whatever that is, it looks like a complete computer system. Its from 2000 so over 10 years old now, but still looks good.
I hesitate to join this discussion because it has been a controversial issue in the past. The idea for Goldfire dates from 1998/99 and was to be a replacement for the Super Gold Card. It was to be marketed by Ron Dunnett and he wrote a question and answer article in QL Today (V3i1p16) in which he said he was expecting to go into production in 1998. However it did not come, Ron never talked about it again and eventually he ceased trading.
Sometime between 1998 and 2004 Nasta gave a talk at a North American show and I believe this is how Dave came into contact with him.
At QL2004 in Eindhoven Nasta also gave a talk on GoldFire and both Roy Wood and I used the occasion to look at the production possibilities. Roy was anxious to give QBranch backing and at the time I was on the Quanta committee and wanted to investigate possible Quanta financing.
I had a conversation with Nasta and the problem that he outlined to me was there was a general shortage of chips at the time and the price and availability was fluctuating daily. (Ron Dunnett had also mentioned this as a big problem.) You had to buy chips in large quantities and this meant you could not have the luxury of first building a prototype, because by the time you had got a working prototype the chips would be no longer available. This meant you had to design the card on paper, build it and hope it would work. If it didn't work you might be able to tweak it, but there was also the chance that the money would have gone down the drain.
At the time there was a lot of hysteria - mostly on this list - with people thinking the problem could be solved if there was a Maplins near by and others suggesting that as Croatia was about to join the EU Nasta could be accommodated in the UK to complete the project. In fact Croatia was not joining the EU and Nasta was busy in Croatia holding down two jobs. A scapegoat was needed and that was Quanta for being too mean with its money.
I had quite a few conversations with Roy about the matter and we both concluded that an approach to Quanta was an impossibility mainly because Nasta had no enthusiasm for that route. Reading between the lines I think there was a combination of Nasta no longer being a student, having two busy jobs and probably being unhappy about taking a risk with someone else's money.
From then on the project faded from view.
Can it be revived? I know very little about hardware, but I sense there is a new interest in native hardware and some projects that people thought would never come now seem feasible. It is for you hardware specialists to determine what is possible and what is not,
Best Wishes, Geoff _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
