Mark Martin wrote: >> The Q68 is a functional system on a finished PCB, actually running QDOS >> Classic and Minerva. > > Do you have an estimate of a price range?
The potential person who builds the Q68 should have the freedom to define a profit margin for his/her work. So I can not discuss this in public, but I know the prices of course. > You're obviously more than entitled to recuperate your R&D and production > costs and make a little for yourself. I just suspect this tiny market may > not bear much. From my perspective, Spartan 3E "equivalent" dev boards are > less than $100 nowadays, and you have boards like Papilon and the > fore-mentioned ArcadeFPGA. That stuff is ubiquitous. I have no doubt your > board is better in many respects, but I'm personally not interested in a > 200 euro board. Maybe others might be. I read that ArcadeFPGA is 199 to 229 Euro, while you are not interested in a 200 Euro board. Ahem? As for development boards: 1) You never find just the memory/peripherals you want, and which have a real chance to be supported by QL software. Native QL requires simplicity, or will never be finished. 2) In the rare case you find a board which includes almost what you want, it is big or expensive or does not fit into an existing case. 3) Development kits tend to disappear from one day to another. If I had used a development board at the time I started the Q68 development, it would long be obsolete. In addition to that, I'm not talking a start at zero, looking for a board. I do have a finished board design. The bigger challenges are elsewhere. Moving to a different board would cost lots of additional time. Different memory, different connectors, different support chips, new pin mapping, different timings, different bugs to work around, different tools. The goal is to save time, not to spend even more ;-) Peter _______________________________________________ QL-Users Mailing List http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
