The Sinclair QL Forum

Great.
In any case, I'll be lucky if the Hermes bozos down south find the keyhole and start their van's engine.

'Morning to all.
Just received the package. Two interfaces and a non-switch Epson keyboard. Oh well...
More on the interfaces later.
Mark, have you tried yours yet?

skagon wrote:'Two interfaces and a non-switch Epson keyboard. Oh well...
More on the interfaces later.
Mark, have you tried yours yet?

Do you mean the keyboard or the interface? Or both?
Anyway, at the moment, the answer to all the above questions is "no, not yet".
On Thursday I spent about an hour removing all the key caps ready for cleaning. I vacuumed the dirt and dust from the frame and case. Yesterday I cleaned the key caps. With the dirt and grime washed off, they look a lot nicer
Today I have been looking for my 5 pin DIN to PS2 adaptor cable. Do you think I can find it? No! I had intended to test the keyboard before I try the interface.

Mark

skagon wrote:Great.
In any case, I'll be lucky if the Hermes bozos down south find the keyhole and start their van's engine.

Fellow QLers should know that SuperHermes can do it much faster than Hermes

Tobias
(blushing for the pun)

tofro wrote:

skagon wrote:Great.
In any case, I'll be lucky if the Hermes bozos down south find the keyhole and start their van's engine.

Fellow QLers should know that SuperHermes can do it much faster than Hermes

Tobias
(blushing for the pun)

Excellent !!

Well, if you've got a SuperHermes to spare, I'll be more than happy to use it...

On an untelated subject... I'm getting a premonition. I'm receiving the vibes. If the stars align, I feel we may soon see one (or maybe even two) Minerva boards for sale...
Can you feel it too?

No - I only have 2 brand new Hermes chips - Tony Firshman would need to make some more SuperHERMES - and I know you would only moan at the price anyway!

RWAP wrote:...Tony Firshman would need to make some more SuperHERMES - and I know you would only moan at the price anyway!

It depends. The SuperHermes is a tiny little PCB (cost <£3) with a PIC microcontroller (cost <£2) and a few other bits. Shall we say, total parts cost... a generous £15? Nah, let's say, £20.
So, if mr Fisherman (or anyone else in the food chain) wants to make £80 profit per board, yes, I will moan and whine and scream.
If the price is reasonable, I'll just buy one and be happy.
It is clear that the QL (as basically any retro platform) ecosystem cannot sustain high prices -- not unless you want to keep it to 20 or 25 people that can afford it. Maybe (and I stress the "maybe") if we were talking about a device like a microdrive SD emulator, a price like £50 or so can be justified. Anything else is hubris. If you want the "QL" ecosystem to start growing, you need **cheap** add-ons to bring the QL up to speed.
Prices like £60 for a single ROM or £100 for a tiny board are unrealistic.
Think, if even Miracle Systems bought it, and they were making the Gold Cards, that must surely mean something. And since every original peripheral creator has stopped, maybe the indication is NOT that you need to sell stuff more expensively!!!
Maybe the lesson to be learned is that the QL ecosystem cannot financially support such designers or creators. It needs new devices, sure, but cheaply, so that other people will get interested in the platform. You cannot expect to make a Hermes and a SuperHermes and make a living out of selling them and second-hand spares, for ever.
If you get anyone and tell them that, in order to bring the QL up to speed, they need £60 for the latest ROM, another £60 for a Hermes, another £60-80 for RAM expansion and a floppy disk interface or £120 for a Trump card or £170 for a Gold Card... and that there is no CF or SD storage solution -- and if it ever does, that it costs £100... they'll just go buy a Spectrum and have tons of fun with it too.
Want them to stay? Tell them that for £30 they get the latest Minerva AND a Hermes to fix the platform's shortcomings or £50 for a SuperHermes, another £40 gets then an SD solution and ok, if they want Trumps or Golds or SuperGolds... they cost £60 or 100 or 150, respectively.
Do that and see what happens then.

Note: please note how I avoided making any mention to buying practices, pricing patterns or anything from that old can of worms. And none of what I wrote is directed to any one person; I'm talking generally.

You may not believe it but I agree with your comments to a large extent. I would love to see a QL-SD project on the market for £50 or less - but who knows if it will happen.

That is why I, and others have set up various methods for products to be brought to market.

It is all down to choice, and whether people want to just design hardware, want to build it, or want to deal with the end consumer (or a mixture of these).

Personally, I do not design or build anything - I form relationships with the hardware designers and builders and provide them with access to the user base through various avenues

a) The ZX80/ZX81, and Z88 Forums (which I set up) where they can sell and buy anything they like direct.
b) SellMyRetro - where they can list products for sale at a targeted market for a minimal fee (2.5% and no listing fees) - where most members are retro computer enthusiasts looking to buy or sell, and are generally well known to me.
c) ebay - where they can list products for sale to the general market for a bigger fee (10% plus listing fees).
d) This forum which is run by two QL enthusiasts
e) The QL-users mailing list.

In some cases, as with the ZX80Core and little hardware projects for the ZX81, the person who designed and builds these units has decided to sell them direct through the forums and through sellmyretro.com

In other cases (as with SuperHermes, Minerva, ZXpand etc) then the person who designed and builds these units would rather concentrate their efforts on design and build so have come to an arrangement with me, whereby I invest money in the production and then share profits on sale. In return they get access to my large customer database, I deal with the end users and customer enquiries, sales, listing and everything else.

So, there are lots of options out there. No one is monopolising the market as you seem to suggest - it is just more that in the case of the QL, no-one is coming forward with new designs, or the willingness to produce new hardware. If someone wants to buy the plans to SuperHermes and then sell them for the cost of the parts plus 10%, I am sure Tony Firshman would be more than happy to negotiate with them.

Several people on here have made their own small boards to enable them to run Minerva on their QLs, so why is it that the market is not swamped with several designs and boards ready for sale at £10 each?

I can't answer that for you - but it seems mainly down to lack of time - the QL has never been easy to design for, and there are only a handful of people who have even attempted to write deice drivers.

You seem to think that the QL is a closed market where there is just one trader who makes huge profits on everything. Gone are the days of Digital Precision when the owner and software authors could make huge sums of money.

That is so far from the truth that it is laughable.

There are funds available from Quanta and myself for new projects but no-one ever comes forward with any requirements.

So come on hardware and software designers and producers, step forward and bring your products to market.

skagon wrote:If you get anyone and tell them that, in order to bring the QL up to speed, they need £60 for the latest ROM, another £60 for a Hermes, another £60-80 for RAM expansion and a floppy disk interface or £120 for a Trump card or £170 for a Gold Card... and that there is no CF or SD storage solution -- and if it ever does, that it costs £100... they'll just go buy a Spectrum and have tons of fun with it too.
Want them to stay? Tell them that for £30 they get the latest Minerva AND a Hermes to fix the platform's shortcomings or £50 for a SuperHermes, another £40 gets then an SD solution and ok, if they want Trumps or Golds or SuperGolds... they cost £60 or 100 or 150, respectively.
Do that and see what happens then.

OK - so who is going to reverse engineer and build a Hermes and Minerva for £20 and sell it for £30.

Same question for RAM / disk interfaces....

If you can design them Skagon, and build them, then do so and get them to market!

If not, then find me someone who can !