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Forthcoming XT-IDE Board - Cast Your Vote

Forthcoming XT-IDE Board - Cast Your Vote

  • As original XT-IDE, with a 40-pin header only

    Votes: 4 10.5%

  • With a 44-pin header and board space to mount a 2.5" IDE HDD (i.e. a hard-card)

    Votes: 7 18.4%

  • With an optional Compact Flash socket (as master or slave) and a 40-pin header

    Votes: 26 68.4%

  • With a Compact Flash socket only

    Votes: 1 2.6%
  • Total voters
    38
  • Poll closed .
I'll buy two of these cards...hoping they work for standard IDE drives too, not just CF cards...but either way I will buy two. (hopefully pre-built)
 
I'd like a kit and I'm also really interested in the ROM board kit if they are available.
 
pearce_jj said:
  • Software-configurable (and optional) memory-mapped transfer mode offers high performance - 4.77MHz 8088: 300KB/s, 4.77MHz V20: 450KB/s
  • Can be used in slot 8 of the PC/XT (5155/5160)
Click to expand...

Best stuff I've read all week!! I can't wait to support this project.

Edit: I'm down for at least two as long as they're $60 or less each.
 
pearce_jj said:
...- but I'd need 100 firm orders, hence wanting to give the board a wider audience.

Prototype PCBs are available now from me free-of-charge, V2 PCBs should be available within a month, happy to run those as kits if there's interest...
Click to expand...

Good news! I'm in for 3.
 
I posted this before but just in case you now tabbing things up, I'll take two fully built. Just one question though. twenty pounds of what ? (sorry, a little Yankee humor....)
Thanks again for doing this.
 
Couple of updates - I'm moving to a v2 board to get the PC/XT slot 8 or PC/AT XWS functionality on, and thanks to another VC member testing an assembled board, there are a couple of other refinements to include too. On the downside this will add some development time of course, on the plus side the board will be better. To be clear, I'm talking about a compact-flash only board.

I'm still looking at options for a professionally assembled run, however pricing is looking to be very affordable if we can get to 100 firm orders.

Any suggestions on how to run a group buy would be very much appreciated. We also need to have a defined approach to risk, i.e. what would happen if for some reason the assembled boards didn't work due to some design file problem (since the prototypes are of course hand-assembled). Someone with experience in short runs looking over the files would be a great help.
 
pearce_jj said:
I'm still looking at options for a professionally assembled run, however pricing is looking to be very affordable if we can get to 100 firm orders.
Any suggestions on how to run a group buy would be very much appreciated.
Click to expand...
The way we did this before was that we waited until we had 100 buyers for the original XTIDE, then some poor chump (me) fronted all of the money and purchased everything, then I sold off cards on a case by case basis and recouped my cash. Of course when all was done, paypal ended up with a healthy chunk of change with all the individual payments, and I probably lost a couple hundred bucks because I didn't estimate the fees when I re-sold a card. I did receive some bonus cash on occasion, so I'm not complaining. It was totally worth it.

Depending on how much 100 boards+components+assembly would actually cost would of course sway someone from doing something again. What I do know is that despite how many people say they want to buy a card, there always seemed to be someone else lurking or just found out about the project, so there always seems to be a buyer. By the time the original 100 run of XTIDE cards went out, I could have easily sold 150 of them. Over the course of a couple years we did over 300 cards total, and here we are again just a few months later and there are probably a dozen already in the queue.

I guess what I'm saying is that while you might have to sit on some inventory for awhile, you will absolutely sell off 100 cards eventually, so if there is a nice price break at 100 units, you might as well go for it. Since you're in the UK and a number of your buyers are in the states, you might consider finding someone to redistribute here. Have that person take 50 of them off your hands immediately will help with your supply and be cheaper in postage for all of your buyers.

The really nice thing with projects like this is that we're all a community; I think we're all honest and we support each other, and we all realize the coolness factor of having someone throw time and energy into a product that makes our hobby that much more fun.
Of all the cards I shipped out, not 1 person ever claimed they didn't receive it, forcing me to eat the cost of shipping out a 2nd card. This is a safe project to put money into, barring any design flaw that makes the whole lot bad of course. (had to throw a little bit of reality in my warm fuzzy typing)
 
I read that it was 10%. Honestly, this isn't ebay, so you can set the amount you want to actually receive. If you accepted Paypal and the true price was $50.00, charge $51.80.
 
hargle said:
Of course when all was done, paypal ended up with a healthy chunk of change with all the individual payments, and I probably lost a couple hundred bucks because I didn't estimate the fees when I re-sold a card.
Click to expand...
PayPal does allow for Gift Payments (in some cases) that are commission free. You can always stipulate something like this to the buyer... 'I accept PayPal Gift Payments. If you can't or don't want to do a gift payment please add 4% to price'.
 
Stone said:
PayPal does allow for Gift Payments (in some cases) that are commission free. You can always stipulate something like this to the buyer... 'I accept PayPal Gift Payments. If you can't or don't want to do a gift payment please add 4% to price'.
Click to expand...

Or you could just set a REAL price, as suggested before, and forget the BS. Real Price = [(Actual Cost + S&H + Profit)/board * 1.029] + $0.30. It seems pretty straight forward once you have actual costs in hand. Now as far as risk goes generally that comes out of your profit. I.E. most companies prices their goods so that if they take a loss at some point then the profit from the non-loss sales covers it. So you may want a bigger profit margin to make sure your losses are covered.
 
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Hi
Before you decide on accepting advanced funding or paid pre-orders for your project please consider the following:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.cpm/browse_thread/thread/cc687393d9af8e62/afaaab594d4578b6

Several years ago there was a large project to restart the IMSAI production line. They accepted large quantities of advanced funding and/or paid pre-orders.

Then things went terribly wrong.

It was a spectacular disaster and many people were hurt terribly. To my knowledge none of them were ever made whole and the IMSAI II never shipped. Many bad feelings all around which linger to this day.

Personally, I won't accept advanced funding or paid pre-orders for any of the N8VEM stuff except for very rare exception with people I know well.

If you do accept advanced funding or paid pre-orders *please* make sure everyone clearly understands the speculative nature of hobbyist projects.

I hope this helps. Thanks!

Andrew Lynch
 
Many thanks to everyone for the many replies on this.

For me this is very much a community project - despite the hours and costs met by me already, it nevertheless depends on previous community projects and of course the xtide-universal BIOS to make it work. Therefore the issue of risk, now highlighted by Andrew, really needs some thought.
 
There's risk in any venture, but at least with a kickstarter campaign, you can explicitly define the minimum budget that will allow the boards to be manufactured (note I didn't say "assembled") and can at least guarantee that much. You could also offer higher reward tiers, such as an extra amount for an assembled and tested board -- and you get to choose that amount, as a value for your time spent in assembling and testing.

If it doesn't meet the goals you set, it doesn't get funded, and nobody is out any money.

I think people understand that there is risk in any community hobby project. As long as that's gently reminded, I don't see a problem. I'm still budgeting at LEAST $100 towards the X2 if it happens (a slot-8-compatible board that pumps 300KB/s into an XT is extremely valuable to me as a hobbyist, and I hope to put them in other machines as well, although I don't hold too many hopes for my 6300 :)
 
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