How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS

[JamesD]

There's something odd about John Carlsen's LinkedIn profile:

 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncarlsen

 

In that he's got all these things listed but apparently only worked for one company? With regards to 'old technology', considering his vast resume I don't think that would be a problem?

 

Just curious here, especially after 'liking' comments that actually seem sensible yet go against what Mike's putting out.. Maybe there's some in-fighting going on or the blame game has started internally?

 

-Mux

"Aggressive Hands-On Engineering Manager"

 

How many people would bother reading the rest?

[+rdemming]

I have an interview scheduled with Mike and the team tonight. Any questions you all want losed to them?

 

GroovyBee already raised the question but I too am wondering how they see software development for the ARM side of the machine? Their FAQ about software development is awkwardly empty.

 

Developers targeting the ARM side need various game related libraries to port their game to the RetroVGS such as SDL and OpenGL. They never will access the SOC's graphics chip directly and that probably would not even be possible as SOC manufacturers generally do not provide the low level details needed for that. Thus you need to use the graphics drivers provided by the SOC manufacturers meaning the device must probably run Linux or Android. Thus what OS were they planning to use for the RetroVGS and what game related libraries would be available at launch?

 

Robert

[Flojomojo]

There's something odd about John Carlsen's LinkedIn profile:... Just curious here, especially after 'liking' comments that actually seem sensible yet go against what Mike's putting out.. Maybe there's some in-fighting going on or the blame game has started internally?

 

I wouldn't read too much into it ... seems like his company is a work-for-hire contractor that does this kind of thing for many different clients. I assume it's this: http://www.oddgods.com

 

As for "liking" comments, maybe that's just his way of marking the stuff he has seen, since Facebook sometimes nests replies together? I wouldn't necessarily assume that hitting the "like" button necessarily means "I endorse this statement fully."

 

It would be in line for this shitshow to not coordinate their responses to their FB page. Perhaps they are to be commended for getting as much attention as they have received.

[Flojomojo]

I too am wondering how they see software development for the ARM side of the machine? Their FAQ about software development is awkwardly empty.

 

OMG, that's the understatement of the day. It's almost literally the business plan of the South Park underpants gnomes. 1. Steal underpants, 2. ????, 3. Profit!

 

Here's a screen shot for posterity, in case they decide to update or remove it.

 

[Mux]

So, it would really need to get to the 3.1M stretch-goal to get a FPGA chip with enough gates to simulate most of what people would want? If it only reached the minimum funding, it would be limited to probably 8-bit and maybe 16-bit systems, I'm guestimating? Or is more possible? That was a big part of my hesitation - the feeling that to reach a certain margin point it would need to feel somewhat compromised rather than the stretch goals being an icing to the proverbial cake. At that level, it's pushing the need to get about 9 pledges per hour to meet that level - not impossible, but surely slipping away..

 

.I generally like the concept.

 

$3.1M dollar as a stretch goal for adding an FPGA is severe overkill. There's not that much difference between FPGA's, cost wise. A 25k Cyclone 5 costs ~$35 in single quantities whereas a 50k LE and 100k LE roughly come in at around $50 and $80, again in single quantity. Aside from that, there are others (Xilinx, Lattice Semi) who have different models and sizes. So in all, as pointed out here several times, a functional prototype is going to cost around $1000, no IGG/KS required. FWIW, Mist runs numerous 16-bit consoles / computers just fine with (IIRC) ~23K LEs, so around $30-50.

 

-Mux

[Flojomojo]

Unless someone doesn't know what they're doing or are being bamboozled by profit-seeking hardware partners.

 

Still, I can't feel bad for Mike Kennedy since he appears to have terrible judgment. I don't want to give money to someone like that.

[StopDrop&Retro]

I swear that guy on their facebook page, Kevin Bow, must have an extra chromosome or something. Someone just handed his ass to him.

 

 

Edited September 23, 2015 by StopDrop&Retro

[mickcris]

this is pretty funny too:

 

John Carlsen "To clarify: The switch to Indiegogo was never a "last-minute change". We negotiated for months and made the decision weeks in advance, but we dragged our feet in announcing the change. That's why it seemed sudden: We were a little overwhelmed by the amount we've been doing, and slipped up on getting the word out faster."

 

They were making announcements left and right about all kinds of meaningless stuff, but this important tidbit they forgot about somehow.

Edited September 23, 2015 by mickcris

[toiletunes]

Time to change the title of this thread:

 

"How has this not been CANCELLED yet? Retro VGS"

[leods]

this is pretty funny too:

 

John Carlsen To clarify: The switch to Indiegogo was never a "last-minute change". We negotiated for months and made the decision weeks in advance, but we dragged our feet in announcing the change. That's why it seemed sudden: We were a little overwhelmed by the amount we've been doing, and slipped up on getting the word out faster.

 

They were making announcements left and right about all kinds of meaningless stuff, but this important tidbit they forgot about somehow.

Pretty obvious. The Problem is the same happened with almost every single decision they made. They kept everyone in the dark for months, and then in a couple weeks they announce that pretty much everything changed, but they launched the Project anyway. I still can't understand how do they thought that's a good idea.

 

Now I have to sleep, but I'm curious to hear the Podcast tomorrow.

[PlaysWithWolves]

this is pretty funny too:

 

John Carlsen To clarify: The switch to Indiegogo was never a "last-minute change". We negotiated for months and made the decision weeks in advance, but we dragged our feet in announcing the change. That's why it seemed sudden: We were a little overwhelmed by the amount we've been doing, and slipped up on getting the word out faster.

 

They were making announcements left and right about all kinds of meaningless stuff, but this important tidbit they forgot about somehow.

 

Except they forgot to add that on September 9th they changed their minds when NoFaceNico brought to attention Kickstarter's prototype requirement.

That's the post he's referring to in this morning's Facebook explanation about the IGG-move decision..

[Mux]

From the comments on that last link:

 

RETRO VGS Here is another KS campaign that ended in January. Again, nothing showing and these are two of the more recent campaigns. Again, know that KS goes through a real approval process before lighting these up and to see these types of campaigns get through is a bit disturbing. No credible team and NOTHING to show. -https://www.kickstarter.com/.../supergfx-pc-gaming...

 

Sure. It also never got funded and reached a whopping $51 out of the (more reasonable) $25k they wanted.. Not exactly a great example if you ask me...

 

-Mux

[StopDrop&Retro]

Except they forgot to add that on September 9th they changed their minds when NoFaceNico brought to attention Kickstarter's prototype requirement.

That's the post he's referring to in this morning's Facebook explanation about the IGG-move decision..

 

Ahhhhh, after taking so much shit from the pro-RVGS camp on NeoGAF, it was so vindicating when I was proven right just two days before the campaign launched.

 

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=179171267&postcount=1144

 

From 9/8/15:

... I don't know about you guys but based on the way they've conducted themselves so far, I assumed they had a rough working prototype already.

Because of this, I don't think they're even going to be allowed on Kickstarter. Having a working prototype is required for physical hardware projects.

... They've said before that they are considering other crowdfunding sites so I think they'll probably go with IndieGoGo since they have no prototype requirements on that site.

Also, on Kickstarter they would not be able to show their "sizzle" reel or most of the product shots we've seen so far because it's a clear violation of their rules.

If they launch this thing without a working prototype then it's all going exactly as I suspected. I will then buy a pie and eat it. I'll eat it all up. Yum yum yum

It's amazing. We throw so much shit at Kickstarter, saying they let anything fly, they're too creator-friendly, there's no accountability when things go wrong. This might be the first project I'm aware of that couldn't get on Kickstarter because they had too many restrictions on the creator.

 

[kevtris]

 

RETRO VGS Trevor, we don't have the many thousands of dollars to create our prototype. That is why we are here now trying to raise funds. You can't prototype something like this for a few thousand dollars despite what you have read and are lead to believe. Once funded you will see real working prototypes come together relativey soon.

 

You sure can prototype it for a few thousand dollars. Of course, you have to have the skillz to do so. Any hardware person worth their salt shouldn't be afraid of doing a little home brew reflow soldering. To make a prototype of this magnitude on the cheap, the following things need to be done:

 

* Buy your blank circuit boards from china. A 6 layer board of the size they need would cost them around $600-700 for 5-10 pieces. Yeah it's not US made but then again it didn't cost you $3K either.

* Build your own reflow oven using a toaster oven, thermocouple and an industrial heat/soak controller. This cost me around $200 for everything. Omega sells the controller.

* Buy your solder paste stencils from oshstencils.com. They are really really cheap. Figure 10-20 dollars each if you're doing double sided loadout (parts on both sides).

* Get samples of expensive parts if possible. Otherwise, Digikey/Mouser/etc are OK for protos

* Paste your board, place the parts and reflow the board

 

Doing it the way they probably would like to do is simply sending your PCB files and a bill of materials to some dorks that will buy the parts, get the boards made, and solder it together for you. Of course this is going to be brutally expensive. Moreso for smaller runs like prototypes. And again more expensive yet if you have this done in the US.

 

Outsourcing to china is the best way to save money on prototypes and even production. It's kinda sad but time moved on and 20 years later, china's the place where high tech is made. I tried getting my HDMI adapter circuit boards made (4 layers) here in the US and it was a joke. It was going to cost $900+ for 5 boards. They ended up not doing it because I had too many cutouts (they would only allow 4 and I had 6- two of the cutouts were unplated mounting holes) and the tolerances on the inner layers were laughably bad. My board would never work even if they made it. I would've had to move up to the $1500-2000 tier to get them made there. I sent the files to china and had boards in my hand within 5 days, and it only cost around $250!!!

 

That tells me that getting stuff like this made in the US is a friggin' joke today. It sucks but I have faced reality. I had 500 HDMI NES adapter boards made in china, via a contract manufacturer (I sent over the PCB files and bill of materials) and they returned 500 boards. The quality and workmanship were top notch- easily as good as anything I could've gotten in the states and the cost was incredible.

 

If they come back about how it's got lots of BGA parts and high density surface mount, it's absolutely no excuse. I have no less than three friends who reflow their own BGAs all the time for home/work/freelance projects. In fact, reflowing a BGA is actually fairly simple, it works better in most cases than even reflowing a QFP.

[atm94404]

 

I think misleading is a bit strong. It seems like this group is naive to modern innovation, and are relying on decades-old, out of date processes. KevTris has illustrated this fairly well. When they've been advised, hey, nobody does it that way anymore, there are cheaper ways, they've seemed to stonewall. From day one, even I couldn't understand the need to reuse 20 year old molds? I think it's commendable on one side that RVGS would choose utmost quality, but we're talking plastics here. Why increase the price of the system so much? This is not nor will ever be as widespread a release as a corporate system (PS4, XBONE, Wii U).

 

Raise your hand if you would take a working circuit board that you could put in your own case.

I'm not enamored with the Jaguar case, and I would definitely be up for printing my own. A mini Atari 5200 would look quite snazzy in glossy black.

Edited September 23, 2015 by atm94404

[rob_ocelot]

I understand 5-11, but I doubt Kevtris has the time or inclination to take care of all the other business that would go along with getting a new console out as a marketable product that could feasibly end up on store shelves. That stuff would seem to be Mike's forte. If these 2 do team up and put out a console, they both stand to make a lot of money imo. A win-win for them and for us gamers who want to just play some darn games.

 

A little insight about Kevin. I've known him for more than twenty years and it's been my observation he's primarily motivated by curiousity rather than money for a lot of his projects, the FPGA console included. Sure, everyone would like more money and Kev deserves to be compensated for his (quite often pioneering) work but he really didn't start the project with the end goal of giving the finger to his day job boss. I'd say he's shelved a good 90% of the hundreds of projects he's done over the years (sometimes he's gracious enough to show us a few morsels on IRC) -- by shelved I mean completed and works but details not released because he felt he could do it better, or incorporate more functionality or better ergonomics. Many such projects would have been commercially viable and would have been 'good enough' for an Asian manufacturer to produce as products intended for game piracy. He would rather use his own funds to finish a project than take money from others upfront with a promise of completed work sometime in the future. On a few occasions I've had to really pull his ears and motivate him into commercially releasing a product he felt wasn't ready for prime time but there was enough demand from the gaming community -- the Vectrex 3D game adaptor for LCD shutter goggles springs to mind.

 

 

I don't know Mike very well but my cold reading of how he presents himself and in particular his behavior and attitude on these forums and facebook leads me to believe his motivations are the polar opposite of Kevin's. The absurd amount of money being asked for in the fundraising campaign essentially (and boldly) requests that you enable him and his co-founders to quit their day jobs and work full time on this for approximately three years. That's going well beyond merely asking for help in bringing a product to market especially when they've already burned through the money they could have used for a prototype on other more esthetic things. Those Jag moulds might as well be Groundskeeper Willy's retirement grease. I have no idea why they didn't extend a full partnership to Kevin in this venture, but it looks to me like splitting things three ways was more important than bringing Kevin into the fold as a fourth and potentially key partner. The antics and the finger pointing of the last few days only serves to highlight just how misguided the underlying philosophy was for this project.

 

I wonder if things would have been different if they had asked for $50k or $100k and maybe an initial batch of 500 consoles?

Edited September 23, 2015 by rob_ocelot

[Amstari]

 

Raise your hand if you would take a working circuit board that you could put in your own case.

I'm not enamored with the Jaguar case, and I would definitely be up for printing my own. A mini Atari 5200 would look quite snazzy in glossy black.

A working circuit board is the part they don't have. They seem to think it is the least important part.

[glazball]

Understood, but Kevtris said in an earlier post he politely declined to make a prototype because he didn't think he would get paid. And I don't blame him. I'm glad Kevin isn't motivated by money in these projects, that's exactly why he'd be the best person to engineer a new console. I know Mike is more motivated by the money, and if by chance the RVGS were to take off, you'd see him making Special Limited Edition Only 10 Copies Ultra Rare versions of anything and everything.

 

Perhaps I'd better step back out of this thread - after all I have minimal tech knowledge and would just love to see all of this somehow gel together to everyone's benefit.

[tcdev]

Just a couple of points.

 

Decades of experience in an industry says absolutely nothing about your competence. I personally know a programmer who has been working for almost 30 years in the same industry; at uni he was a terrible coder and I last saw his code a few years ago and it is still absolutely horrible. I also had the misfortune to work with another programmer a few years back and 'incompetent' is an understatement. I know for a fact that he still works in the same position. These people slips through the cracks and somehow manage to bungle their way along under the radar for years!

 

Being involved in also says absolutely nothing about the significance of the role you played.

 

Lastly, as someone else pointed out, a 25KLE Cyclone part is definitely adequate to emulate most of the classic systems. The DE1, for example, has a mere EP2C20 and runs Minimig just fine. I'd even venture to say that a 50KLE device is actually overkill unless you're targeting more advanced systems, and a 100KLE device is simply unnecessary expense. 2D tilemap-and-sprite engines are trivial and are composed of little more than registers, counters and muxes, with some on-chip RAM for line caches and (optionally) tilemap memory.

 

I am working on a prototype design (for my own projects) with a 144KLE Cyclone V and my crude experiment suggested it would fit no less than 32 TG68 (68K) cores - imagine how many 6502 cores would fit! It's clear if they're touting those devices that they have no idea what they're designing or the hardware required to achieve it. Then again, I don't have any professional video game industry experience, so what would I know?

[CGQuarterly]

Understood, but Kevtris said in an earlier post he politely declined to make a prototype because he didn't think he would get paid. And I don't blame him. I'm glad Kevin isn't motivated by money in these projects, that's exactly why he'd be the best person to engineer a new console. I know Mike is more motivated by the money, and if by chance the RVGS were to take off, you'd see him making Special Limited Edition Only 10 Copies Ultra Rare versions of anything and everything.

 

Perhaps I'd better step back out of this thread - after all I have minimal tech knowledge and would just love to see all of this somehow gel together to everyone's benefit.

 

Just because Kevin isn't motivated by money, that doesn't mean that he's going to build a prototype for someone else. Guys like Kevin work on projects that THEY find interesting. For example, I like to do my own mod work, but that doesn't mean that I have any interest in selling modded consoles, or taking on contract mod work, because it isn't about money. But that also doesn't mean that I am going to mod someone else's console for free.

 

And the idea of the VGS folks selling a bare board goes against the entire idea behind the project. That's a ridiculous thought.

[PikoInteractive]

I was thinking right now and I think I've figured out what went wrong with this project.

 

It is because the team is split in 3 and there is 2 hardware guys and a business guys all having the same weight in their decision votes.

 

So the project started going towards a hardware oriented goal instead a business goal.

 

I think Mike right now has to just make business (Financials) oriented decisions to make sales rather than to have a super console with the ultimate hardware.

Edited September 24, 2015 by PikoInteractive

[Keatah]

I did 3 protos of universal pre-amps for working with hard drives. Think of them as signal conditioners with stupid-high sensitivity and no tolerance for ESD. Look at them the wrong way and they saturate. Each one cost us only $1800. All we had to was layout the boards and specify the parts. In a month's time we had them and they worked above and beyond what I specified. I did up the traces to account for crosstalk. But they were so precisely done and resonance-free we had to turn down the gain to avoid picking up data from other adjacent tracks.

 

So getting working samples of one-off electronic assemblies isn't rocket science anymore.

[glazball]

 

Just because Kevin isn't motivated by money, that doesn't mean that he's going to build a prototype for someone else.

 

I'm not sure if you're agreeing or not, as I was saying the same.

 

Let's just say that Kevin had been brought onboard, and the RVGS team showed Kevin's "possibly sellable" board (his words from page 60 of this thread) on Kickstarter - it would have been a home run. A statement of "this is what we are starting with, and we want to re-engineer things to fit happily in the Jag case and this is what our console will do..." That's what we all hoped to see, but instead we got Gogogate.

[boxpressed]

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

OMG, that's the understatement of the day. It's almost literally the business plan of the South Park underpants gnomes. 1. Steal underpants, 2. ????, 3. Profit!

 

Here's a screen shot for posterity, in case they decide to update or remove it.

 

Did they intentionally leave the third bullet black, or is that on the next "slide"?