Future H5 buyers & assembly

Information and progress towards the H5 board.

Future H5 build options

Bare PCB only - no parts
2
3%
Generic SMT parts assembled (birdseed)
17
29%
Bulk parts assembled (as they are sold now)
40
68%
 
Total votes: 59

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exxos
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Re: Future H5 buyers & assembly

Post by exxos »

mikro wrote: 03 Apr 2024 18:24 I just wanted to point out that even if it may look like that there's majority of people against you, it is exactly the opposite -- a few vocal ones post stupid things but the silent majority loves your stuff and there's no reason to put them in in the "those people from forum XY" bag. :)
Yeah it's always the same , a few bad apples spoiling the lot. But it is never quite that simple.

The same thing with people's driving on the roads. I mean the vast majority people are "generally okay". But even a 1% minority of bad drivers basically means I'm having to avoid them regularly every day. Certainly gets rather irritating year after year. It is rather difficult when you are bombarded with basically idiots in every aspect of life. Like 1% bad drivers, 1% pedestrians who don't look before crossing the road..I guess 90% of garages who can't do anything right on my van.. It all adds up to being like 50% of the people I have to deal with each day are idiots. I mean the amount of rants I have had in my blog over the years due to constantly ongoing issues with basically every company under the sun.

But anyway, The list is endless and adds up to a phenomenal amount of idiots I basically have to deal with daily basis. But yes you're right I should not classify everyone in the same boat. I know several people here also go on other forums, I of course don't have any problems with those people.
As for the help with testing and progress, yeah, I admit, in this case I was the lazy Atari user waiting for cool stuff to happen. Sometimes one just has to make hard choices what to spend free time on. :(
Yes it is difficult to know what to spend time on. I certainly don't blame people for prioritising. I have to do that all the time. Though it bears the problem if everyone is 100% busy, nothing gets done at the end of the day. Nobody is exactly to blame for this is just how things are. It is going back to my brick wall analogy again, because it is just where things are at now. There is just less and less help as years go on and I am just able to physically do less and less because of my RSI. Plus after 30 years I think I really done enough by now anyway. Keeping the server and the forum running takes up a huge amount of time alone.
Me and a friend of mine put a ton of time and effort into it, it looked cool, it had cool features, we basically loved it. And the rest of the Atari world simply ignored it.
Yeah I can imagine that is incredibly frustrating. I often think I could give someone a bar of gold and they would probably find something to complain about it or just not be interested in it. It then becomes problematical to educate people what of bar of gold actually is in the first place.
And suddenly, I was getting a "ton" of emails from happy Atari users, FireBee users, CT60 users, everybody was so happy to have a player like that! And I was like wtf guys, where had you been for those 8 years? Sometimes it takes time to get noticed and sometimes it is the smallest and dumbest thing which makes it happen.
Good stuff. I guess having the extra processing power of the CT60 helps with software like that. So maybe when the hardware was more mature it just simply attracted more users because people could run more programs more easily. I'm not a software guy myself, I just half remember a mp3 struggling to play on my Falcon 30 years ago and while was cool, I just couldn't do anything else at the same time making it somewhat pointless back then.
I could tell you similar story about Jookie's project (SatanDisk, UltraSatan) -- first it looked like a huge commercial failure barely covering the costs, then Jookie sold the UltraSatan license to Lotharek and now there's thousands (!!!) of units all around the world and everybody knows it was Jookie whom they can thank for it. Ironically same for the SatanDisk -- after UltraSatan and CosmosEx release I would have never imagined that there's a place on market for those devices and then people came with the super-cheap clones and voila, again, Jookie was the guy doing it before it was cool. :)
Yeah I spoke to jookie about such things years ago. I think he did not expect the project to take off like it did. So he basically gave the design away and then it got commercialised. If I remember rightly, jookie kinda regretted the way things went because he honestly thought that nobody would be really interested in it.
So who knows, maybe in a few years, you will be the cool guy with the first recreated ST board or your project will serve as base for another cool project... so do what you like, don't do what you don't like and the rest is history as they say. :)
It's possible in years to come people make take more notice of the project when they realise what it's all about and original machines are just failing to much to be worth repairing. I think it is generally well-known it always takes a while for people to catch up.

But that in itself creates a problem because if loads of people suddenly want a H5 in five years time, I cannot remember much about that project likely by then. IT then creates more work than doing the project sooner rather than later. It's a bit of a ongoing problem when I'm selling multiple kits spanning three decades now. Some things won't sell for literally years, then there will be a small boom of them. People will ask their help and I end up scratching my head because I have not been active in that project for probably a decade, so difficult to remember and support things indefinitely.

It is certainly possible once the add-ons make it to market with the H5 there may get more interested. But the problem is it is always the more stuff which is added the higher the price goes up and the longer things ultimately take. Certainly very problematical territory to navigate.
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Re: Future H5 buyers & assembly

Post by exxos »

Looks like the last couple of boards have now sold :thumbup:

Thanks to everyone who purchased one of these boards recently or previously. You guys have helped move this project along immensely over the past few years.
:cheers:
:2k2:
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JezC
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Re: Future H5 buyers & assembly

Post by JezC »

exxos wrote: 04 Apr 2024 14:17 Looks like the last couple of boards have now sold :thumbup:

Thanks to everyone who purchased one of these boards recently or previously. You guys have helped move this project along immensely over the past few years.
:cheers:
:2k2:
Glad that some new users will soon be posting a blog of their builds (hint hint) ;)
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Re: Future H5 buyers & assembly

Post by adeb »

Ha! Currently waiting for mine to be delivered :D Big thanks to you, Exxos. You are very much appreciated & maybe you need reminding of that more often. Though it's clear that words aren't enough & more sales would be better. We all live in the real world, after all.

I'm glad I was able to get one before you ran out - I've been looking at them for a few years now, but was concerned about the cost & whether it would be a dead-end. Seriously, if we don't get that double-ST resolution upgrade, I will stick it in the cupboard & forget about it. I feared all the add-on boards wouldn't happen, the FPGA blitter, etc., but I have a bit more faith now, having seen how much Icky is driven to getting these things done in his presentation on YouTube.

I don't spend a lot of time on Atari forums, so I'm not up-to-date - regards the lovely things that you (Exxos) sell, it's always a struggle to know which bits to buy, etc. I'm no ST newbie, but when you aren't knee-deep in the platform anymore, visiting & making friends on forums, etc., it's easy to become out of touch. I can't believe how much I've forgotten about the ST platform since I stopped using it as a daily driver around 1998. Nevertheless, I still love it.

I guess I'm providing some feedback to this thread. Please everyone, I mean no offence - none is intended.

Marketing of the Phoenix platform - I'm going to point out some obvious stuff. If I go on YouTube now & search for 'Phoenix H5', I get a handful of Icky's videos. There's practically nothing there. YouTube is a great platform for spreading retro goodness. I love Badwolf's Technoshed - you are a legend mate. I love watching all the retro stuff, but my love of the ST means I seek it on YouTube. Just before I ordered the board, I was again looking for the video where Icky does his Phoenix presentation & the other where he's explaining the platform to Mr Badwolf.

So we have a massive platform we can use to spread word regards the Phoenix platform, but there's very little info on there. And I mean no disrespect to anyone in saying that - it's just a hole that needs filling with content. How much I've come to appreciate BW's Technoshed, Commodore is not the only fruit, Gadget's ST upgrades - that whole series around the 16MHz accelerator & the way Gadget & Exxos worked together is just some of the best ST viewing ever. It was like watching season 1 of '24' - pure adrenalin rush :D Amiga peeps have this sort of high-quality content coming out of their ears, but we have very little.

OK, so you can say, go make some videos then - but this isn't a challenge to anyone, it's just an observation - I'm just saying there's a massive shortfall which needs to be taken advantage of. If I do a web search for 'Phoenix H5', I will get links to this & a few other ST forums. OK, so for all documentation, or at least threads, this is the best place to come. But what if you haven't been following the Phoenix project for years, knee-deep in it? What if you love the ST, but do not have the time anymore to spend hours digesting forum threads, so you would like something like a more modern ST, but how on earth would you know?

I think the Phoenix platform needs a website of its own. On that website, all & anything to do with Phoenix can be stored. It can be a read-only, bog-standard website from the visitors perspective, not a forum - the forum is here! We need to centralise a more static version of any documentation / information / developments / fixes / errata in some way. A serious-looking website just for Phoenix. There's plenty of content on here, that can be tidied-up & plonked on the site for future reference. If I can try to make a convincing argument... look... we don't refer to the developers notes when we want to fix a piece of commercial software - we refer to the support documentation. For MS that would be TechNet, for example.

I also think Phoenix needs a YouTube channel of its own. All existing Phoenix content from BW, Icky, Exxos, etc., could then be compiled there. If I then make any videos regards building my H5, I'd like to be able to submit a copy to the Phoenix channel, plus post a copy on my own channel. Doubling-up on ST content isn't an issue. This should be the lesser evil to set-up. Central Phoenix website can come later.

I think more exposure can only help. Videos of the Phoenix showing-off what it can do are going to sell themselves, if things like double-ST resolutions really happen. THAT stuff is what is needed - the Phoenix pushing the ST limits, on video, for all to see.

****ALL of you who make any Phoenix / ST YouTube content, I thank you from my heart****

I'm not done, but I'll shut up for now - I shall prepare myself for a kicking :D

ade.
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Re: Future H5 buyers & assembly

Post by exxos »

Thanks for your thoughts and feedback :)

I think overall, I certainly don't disagree with anything you have said. There are all valid and very good ideas. Unfortunately it always goes back to the same thing off, *who* is going to make YouTube videos and who is going to create better documentation. I don't think anyone has really talked about my stuff much other than maybe @Badwolf doing some bits and bobs.

Almost always it just falls back on myself. If I started doing YouTube videos and making everything all nicely present and show off the platform, I would have absolutely no time for anything else. I would have to stop working on the Phoenix platform and close my workshop to free up enough time to work on videos. There are a few related videos dotted on my channel about add-ons a but certainly nothing correlated.

Same problem with the website. We did consider making one a while ago but it is always a problem of who is going to maintain it. I did start doing draft notes but again just lack of time. https://exxosforum.co.uk/atari/last/REM ... /index.htm

As I said many times before I have been literally working on Atari stuff 15 hours a day. It is just not something I want to continue doing any more. I am getting too old to be multitasking between 20 different things all at once. And again because of my RSI, I can't realistically do much these days. Since Christmas I have started doing considerably less overall. It really just falls down to the community to help support projects and whatnot. But as I have said for a long time, Atari community is just too small.

The blitter project is sort of finished. But the problem is the price of the FPGA would mean the board would end up costing like £100. So unless prices come down it is just not really realistic to produce that kit at the moment.

There is flashy clock and Trudie but unfortunately due to everything under the sun soaking up my time, I'm just not getting enough time to get back to those projects. There are certainly not abandoned. It's just finding the time these days. The HDMI addon is in a bit of a similar boat because of the price of FPGA's. But there is also a few small bugs which need to be ironed out yet.

I'm still wanting to do a new combo addon, which will replace the blitter,MMU,GLUE with a single FPGA. Then this will give was access to a much faster bus, hopefully 32MHz. Of course it goes back to "DoubleST" but I wrote much about that before that it is just not reliable to do on a original machine. But also it is basically a dead-end project because even if it got stable at 16MHz, then what ? Is why I made the difficult decision of just abandoning that project to concentrate on a proper 32MHz bus, and fixing all the problems in the new FPGA cores. Once you have a faster bus, the driver is already out there for the most part for higher resolutions. It makes needing graphics cards and CPU accelerators kind of obsolete.

So while there is certainly a lot going on in the background, I'm only one person at the end of the day. Dealing with server issues and keeping stock in my store pretty much maxes me out these days. And to be honest I'm struggling to even keep up with that.

I have loads of ideas to make the platform better but the Atari users are just not there. I wanted to do a better sound system and one of the demo coders a few years back said he would help adapt popular tracker routines to make use of hardware mixing as opposed to software mixing. But creating such a hardware add-on proves rather complicated and expensive. But again the problem is, who would even make use of the new tracker routines for the platform ?

Even if we had a ultrafast machine with better graphics capabilities, who is going to make use of that functionality and even code games or software ? It just simply isn't going to happen. So it does not make really much sense to invest much time in a lot of things. In particular when it requires a phenomenal amount of time research development and will likely lead in a expensive endproduct which nobody will buy anyway. Again as I have said before every direction I think of just hits the proverbial brick wall.

I think the bottom line is, it is unlikely there will be any more Phoenix motherboards made. But this certainly does not mean the end of the project because I still want to create a true 32MHz machine. It will still be backwards compatible with legacy software, that just simply makes sense because why have a really advanced machine with no one writing software for it ? So my motivation is always to be backwards compatible with legacy software. However as we all know, a 8MHz machine really struggles, in particular if you are running a desktop or multitasking environment. Even a lot of games run terribly slow. I always dreamt of just having a faster machine so I could use STOS and do more with it.

So in terms of pure speed, it enhances the legacy software catalogue for the most part. While we can certainly have higher resolutions and even higher colours, it really does beg the question what is the ultimate point in it, as pretty much all the legacy software isn't going to run on such a system anyway. If changes to the system are severe enough, a lot of legacy software may never run. So then it needs software developers which are just non-existent. So the avenues to go down are just very limited.

I'm certainly not abandoning the platform. But I think once current add-ons are done than that will probably be all that will be developed for it unless more people get involved. But again, I've been around in the community for the past 30+ years. Certainly people have helped, the Phoenix platform would have never got past initial design stages if it wasn't for the community. However there also has to be a community to continue development and support the platform. The Atari world only ever gets smaller as time goes on.

I mean you only have to look around YouTube to see the entire lack of Atari content on there. I think pretty much @Badwolf has single-handedly done most of the Atari content on YouTube over the past few years. There are of course a few people doing bits and bobs as well. But realistically there is basically nothing. It certainly doesn't make much sense to invest huge amounts of time and effort into a platform which nobody really cares about.

It is pretty common knowledge between developers that it is very difficult to get the money back by sales to cover the cost of development alone. Never mind actually turning a profit to fund future developments. I think I said it before, when I sold the TF536 boards by @terriblefire , I must have sold over a 100 in a few days kinda thing. It allowed me to buy my solder paste printer and some other equipment. But I did not develop it, so it was basically all profit really. But the thing is, I made more profit in a week selling basically Amiga stuff than an entire year selling Atari stuff. I daresay there is been easily thousand TF536 sold in total. In Atari land, I don't think I have sold 10 ST536 boards in about 2 years. That really puts things into perspective. My store only survives because of the sheer amount of different items I sell. But of course it is all a phenomenal amount of work already.

I'm certainly not trying to bash the Atari community in any way. It is just too small to realistically develop any sort of advanced Atari platform. It of course dictates what possible directions I can move in developing the Phoenix platform. Which I have said above, other than creating a stable ST platform which can easily have addons, other than the raw speed aspet, I don't see much else which can be done.

I mean sure, if there was multiple developers working on various add-ons, and there was 100+ H5 selling each year, I would be more motivated to keep the platform moving along. Though like I said, in 30 years, everything has been a struggle. Even going back to the disk magazine days where it was incredibly difficult to get people involved and write content for them.

I think the H5 is a awesome bit of kit personally. As I said right at the start years back, I spent the majority of my time trying to figure out why original machines had died for no reason or trying to find stupid faults with them constantly. The H5 has none of these problems. It has some useful add-ons like 1.44MB floppy support which is useful. Maybe in years to come when more original machines have failed the platform may gain more traction for the replacement of original boards. But like I said earlier, what is the state of the community going to be like in 10 years time anyway.. Again I'm not really wanting to do any more Atari work for the foreseeable future. I have spent a huge chunk of 30 years doing this stuff working long unpaid work hours. It's just not fun anymore.

The only possible thing which may motivate people is when the 32MHz bus addon is done. That could be some years away though. But it is really the same problem of who is going to develop cool stuff with the extra speed ? But there lies the problem of a limited machine base as well. There could possibly be the odd demo coder who may do a demo on such a machine. But I can understand it that they may not want to simply bother because "the masses" do not have a Phoenix board to start with. The market is very limited.

I really could waffle on for hours, but the bottom line is always the same. The Atari world is just small, that is of course fine. We can of course have big dreams for things, but realistically, I don't think producing big dreams for a nonexisting community is a wise direction to go in. For me personally, I just want to make the legacy software catalogue a little less "painful". As to what comes after that.......
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Re: Future H5 buyers & assembly

Post by peters »

I think everyone who builds hardware and software for our platforms deserves an enormous amount of credit and support, wherever possible. I wish I had more money and space to use more Atari stuff.
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Re: Future H5 buyers & assembly

Post by me262 »

So I looked in here to see about plans for a restock of H5, as it appears I just missed out on getting one (I had a tab open prepped to purchase, and refreshed the page a couple days before paycheck time last week, and gone). I wanted to make an account, add my two cents, maybe join in on the community and get some 3D printing going.

I think a birdseed would be the best way (I saw how small those resistor packs are), but also either provide a BOM or -as you order in bulk- provide a kit for the rest of the soldering work. Despite my happiness that I soldered together my bare SidecarT board from parts and it worked first time.

I do understand the frustrations of being overworked and losing interest in projects. And yes, unfortunately the community is just very small, and hasn't really developed much (especially here in the US where IBM outshined all).
Much to that point, I really wish I had time to start up a youtube channel. It's been in the back of my mind for a while, and I have two UK STEs that were sold for parts that I'm trying to resurrect (one I think might be bad crystal or QFP CPU), along with a Jaguar. I've been holding out on these projects simply because I want to record the footage of my doing it. Sadly, I have another channel that I haven't done anything with, but I still record the material (youtube killed a lot of my motivation unfortunately).

So a couple of alternatives are still here, maybe open this board and/or other projects up to the community (put them on github)? I have on my desk the Raemixx500 bare board, which hosts the KiCad files on github. People could either order a board through you, or they could take the files and get a board fabricated themselves (or minimum order of three in the case of my favored fabber).
Another I've seen is to offer the board from the fabber themselves. It looks like PCBWay can host the files and can fab when someone wants a board printed, complete with BOM and even assembly., and you get some kickback from the orders!
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Re: Future H5 buyers & assembly

Post by mikro »

@me262 I had literally the same idea this morning, ask @exxos to put this board on github or similar, so anyone can benefit from his work.
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Re: Future H5 buyers & assembly

Post by exxos »

So in terms of releasing the design, I have thought about releasing the H4 for a few years now already. There was some discussions in the background about it. On the surface it makes sense. But it's not so simple. It opens the door to people "putting their own spin" on things and screwing it up like centuriontech tried to do on @terriblefire boards. He thought he knew better than @terriblefire who designed and developed the boards. Then when these modified boards get produced.. who ends up dealing with the fallout in all that ? Same with him changing the CT60 in multiple ways and then farming off support onto the community when it doesn't work right and not dealing with it all himself. It's all ultimately why the TF536 got closed source because of abuse by such people who really have no idea what they are doing. Why should @terriblefire or myself, offer support for such clones ? As we found, some people don't even care about licences at all. But anyway, there's huge threads on all that already. You basically have to assume you are going to lose complete control over the project and what people do with it with or without your permission.

Then those claiming it's their own work and it basically opens the floodgates to all sorts of abuse to the design. While this will be only likely be "that one person"', it can still end up causing a lot of damage. I just don't want hassle. It's why I mentioned more about licences for anyone who wanted to sell boards overseas etc instead. But overall I don't know what the solution is. Open source always has a lot of implications unfortunately. So I have to say, its unlikely to ever happen. But also, the boards are not being produced due to lack of demand, so does it even make sense to release the files anyway if nobody wants it?

I was looking more closely at the H5 SMT parts. The birdseed idea for small SMT parts makes sense. But a lot struggled to fit the DAC. So other SMT chips would have to be fitted. But there's only the DIP and PLCC and headers which are through hole left. It isn't that many parts. So I'm not sure a birdseed board is even a good idea now. There's been a few who couldn't solder the SIMM socket without ending in trouble.So I think as the votes show, they would need to be as assembled as possible. As prices go up, they will be even more expensive to produce next time around. I mean £150 for 50 boards is £7,500. While smaller batches can be done, the price per board starts rapidly going up. If I got 5 made, they could be more like £200 a board for example.

The legacy board would be smaller and cheaper to produce. However it's more work for me and I don't think the Atari scene really needs another ST clone in the world right now. There are still plans for a FPGA based H-series board in the future. But as when/if that will happen..
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Re: Future H5 buyers & assembly

Post by exxos »

Forgot to reply to this..
me262 wrote: 17 Apr 2024 02:48 Another I've seen is to offer the board from the fabber themselves. It looks like PCBWay can host the files and can fab when someone wants a board printed, complete with BOM and even assembly., and you get some kickback from the orders!
It could be an option for the PCB at least. But I thought PCBWAY will let you download the PCB files as well ? I think it has been discussed before somewhere. But I don't think anyone would realistically spend the time in soldering up the entire board. While I could do a BOM for assembly.. It would be rather a lot of work to do and indeed even maintain. I'm trying to avoid creating myself more work in particular doing more work "for free".

My new PCB house can produce and even ship boards to save me the hassle. But I wrote about this previously that I ship them in a way to keep the postage costs down to a minimum. As soon as the company gets involved, they will use larger box on the postage will be incredibly higher. Plus as these companies are in China, again I am not sure if they can even be imported into the USA from China anymore. Buying a single board could easily end up costing 50% more with shipping and charges. Again I don't think realistically people going to pay even more for a board. I'm not ruling it out but I just don't think it is worth all the hassle.

But even so, if people wanted just PCB only (going by the votes they don't) I could get them made and sell them again anyway. With the difficulty in assembling the SMT stuff.. It brings me full circle back to it would make more sense to just sell PCBs for the H4 series as its all through-hole parts. But I've already asked about that multiple times over the years and nobody wants the H4 again. There is certainly nothing wrong with the H4. It's a updated replacement for the original STF/M boards..

There isn't really a good solution to all this. The most likely scenario is someone in EU/USA puts in a order for 25 H5s minimum and sells them themselves. I will get 25 for my store for UK /EU customers. But of course someone is going to have two be trustworthy for starters, and have something like £5,000 lay around for the order.

But anyway I think I'm probably repeating myself again at this point..

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