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Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?

phoenixdownita

By phoenixdownita
in Modern Gaming Discussion

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StoneAgeGamer Stargunner

StoneAgeGamer

Posted
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Yes, I ordered it from you (pretty much your entire line of multicarts) aka car payment for ya ;) and have given them all high marks. We reviewed it on our show and he was certainly aware of it. I will 100% back up your claim about the resetting, that cart is ALLOT more power hungry than a normal cart hence if you try to use it in the hyperkin portable on just batt power it is flakey or no-go, plug in the power and it works. Not a design defect, just the nature of the beast for what ICs it has running.

 

I don't know how I didn't put it together. I actually looked up your order to confirm that I did send one to someone from RGRT. I should have figured out it was you from the name it was you.

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Pipercub Moonsweeper

Pipercub

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Like what, the original plan that they had with the RVGS? Well I figured their BOM costs would be around $200-300 at least which means retail price was north of that- like $400-500ish. That's probably why mike was panicking about it and dropping everything and turning it into a Ouya in a Jag shell at the last second. The actual costs to prototype it aren't that bad if you do all the work yourself. i.e. design the PCB, buy it and then solder the parts on yourself. I'd probably end up spending $5-10K all told for a finalish prototype build of 2 or so boards. That's all inclusive from start to finish and includes 2 or 3 versions of PCB/HW. Of course that is just the sheer hardware costs themselvesm not taking into account the time requirement. For something like this I'd charge $75/hour. I am not sure time requirements but I was banking on spending 2-3 weeks to design the PCB for my Zimba 3000 which would be similar in scope I think.

 

Soldering time would be several hours a board probably. I'd use a stencil for solder paste, manually place the parts and reflow it in my toaster oven I modified. After the soldering, then there is "board bringup" which is the act of attempting to power it up and check everything, hoping it doesn't explode. After bringup then code has to be written to test everything out and make sure it all works. Once this is done then there's a couple paths that can be taken; either design final hardware based on the testing (fix bugs, etc) and roll with it and develop software in parallel, or start on software dev. Doing parallel development is faster (if you have more than 1 person) but can be a bit trickier and more dangerous if something that has to be fixed in hardware is found late in development.

 

I don't buy John's story about how "the first few prototypes never work". I have never had a totally worthless prototype that didn't yield SOME insight and development results. Anyways, that's my take on costs. The lions share of time will be taken up with code development rather than hardware no matter what IMO. I can get HW done in a month but coding always takes 4-5x longer or more. Such is life.

 

Can't remember how much money they wanted just for proto development but it was obnoxious.

A slight correction there, simply due to the many variations of the story.... What your referring to was not the first, but rather the 3rd prototype by the 4th person asked to design this system (with 3 out of 4 participating, Ben declined. The BOM for the original design was much much lower as it was a simple PPC derivative (think super sega genesis) totally unfinished because as I posted I was simply dropped from the project. But I agree with the vast majority of your assessment, just so many people revolving through this story.

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5-11under River Patroller

+5-11under

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That specific picture where you can see the board is no longer on Facebook.

 

Edit: Darn, beaten.

 

 

aaaaaaaaand he pulled the pics

 

If he spent as much time working on a product instead of having to manage his Facebook page, he'd be a lot further along on the project.

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remowilliams Quadrunner

+remowilliams

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O M G

 

 

shame on you Mr. Li!1oneone1!1

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PlaysWithWolves River Patroller

PlaysWithWolves

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03/05 edit:

Here's the timeline for how the the card was discovered (links go to relative posts):

- Kevtris questioned the electronics and thought it may be from an ADC or DAC or something video-related.

- galax looked further into the electronics, including finding likely matches for some chips.

- 5-11under and Albert simultaneously found the match to what galax had suggested.

- I merely re-sized and combined two photos for easier comparison; the true detectives are above.

 

 

***

 

Original post:

 

Great sleuthing!

Quick-n-dirty:

 

post-39941-0-59047800-1456802086_thumb.jpg

 

post-39941-0-19834000-1456802163_thumb.jpg

 

post-39941-0-45102400-1456802208_thumb.jpg

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jaybird3rd Quadrunner

jaybird3rd

Posted
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Here is a close-up view of the capture card, rotated so that the back edge is facing down ...

 

hicap50b.jpg

 

... and here is the non-watermarked version of the photo (thanks, foxglove9!) which shows the "prototype board" oriented in the same way ...

 

post-416-0-68641100-1456552431.jpg

 

So, it looks like Mike's sole contribution to this "prototype" was covering over the card edge with black tape and attaching an LED to the power wires that were already sticking out of the board. Or are we to believe that this was also the work of that dastardly Hardware Guy, "Mr. Lee"?

 

To paraphrase their designated Twitter attack dog spokesperson, David Giltinan, "there you have it, it's not real, it's not a thing!"

 

EDIT: PlaysWithWolves beat me to it! Good work!

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furrtek Space Invader

furrtek

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I'm so angry not having found the board before you :P

Got the ATF1508 right but couldn't identify anything else, great find on the Techwell chips and board size !

At least the ATF1508 is a PLD, they might be able to hack it to program it with a ZX spectrum core with 3 embedded ROMs, and add a mini-itx board with HDMI output.

 

Or... not :D

Edited by furrtek
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galax Dragonstomper

galax

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Amazing, we are 3 for 3 at unmasking the fake prototypes! I did the research earlier today but thought I'd sound like a raving conspiracy nut so didn't post it- Kevtris's speculations tipped me over the edge. At least we know that whoever is updating the Facebook page is monitoring this thread- took less than an hour from my post and 10 minutes from the big reveal to take the clearest photo down at 9:59pm EST.

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shawnphase Chopper Commander

shawnphase

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thanks playswithwolves! so, does anyone want to make a guess as to how he powered that LED in there? im guessing his method of attack was using that hot glue and maybe a cr2032 tucked away somewhere. alls i know is that i want to see the capture card running games with this software fully going before im even going to consider putting money down for this product at this point. its another dark day in retroland as far as im concerned.

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phoenixdownita River Patroller

+phoenixdownita

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I wonder what's the excuse now? :-o

"That's only the video board!"

 

What a bunch of sore looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosers.

 

Now what?

 

 

Coleco Chameleon, the gift that keeps on giving!!!!!

 

There's no way anyone can get himself out of a second fake back to back to the first.

These guys deserve nothing more than what's coming to them and then some.

 

 

I can see another triverse article coming along well :dunce:

Edited by phoenixdownita
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Pipercub Moonsweeper

Pipercub

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Again???

If you do then Pipercub has to make another proto-repro-type :grin: or was repro-proto-type?

I can't keep up with their dev pace, 3 fake prototypes. My neighbour who is a police investigator said the best thing you can do if you commit a crime and want to cover it up is go home and get a good nights sleep then formulate a plan. The mistakes made in a panic is often what gets you caught more than the crime. Does he think he is that clever or were all that stupid?

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phoenixdownita River Patroller

+phoenixdownita

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We got Albert to play the game too.

 

I understand that "stone Mike" is not something we should do but I so much wanna do it.

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Pipercub Moonsweeper

Pipercub

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This gives Coleco bad rap. Not that they care much. And is just damned insulting to gamers everywhere. Shit.. You can even see the black electrical tape covering the PCI edge connector.. Sheesh! I'm tell'n ya..

I hope they run not walk from this, I love Coleco and want to see them do stuff like re-release all their old handhelds, table tops etc. I hope somebody has brought this to their attention.

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