7800 XM! Is it possible to buy one?

[mike99mccarthy]

I know its been like a decade... I remember when Curt first announced it! I was SO close to plunking down the $100 or so bucks but it was alot of money to me at the time. I'm not very active on here obviously. I chime in once or twice a year. I heard of Curt's passing and was very shocked. He was an awesome guy. there are sooooo many 7800 XM threads and its very confusing. my question;

 

Are there any plans to continue the project? I'd love to buy the XM!!

[+groundtrooper]

Really? Come on man. It’s barely been a year since his passing and there is still a pandemic going on.

I have read that there are some small wheels turning in regards to possibly Marty getting to Curt’s place to start sorting things out. The first item of business is to get things and projects that were left open ended at his passing resolved and returned to people. Then I am guessing something might happen with figuring out what is gonna happen or can happen with the XM.

I would show a little more patience. My guess get prepared for some more comments to your questions that might be a little more harsh than mine. It’s happened before. Just sayin’.


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[mike99mccarthy]

thanks for the warning and the info. I was reading the previous threads from a year ago and saw the discussion devolve with lots of hostility.

I just figured since I'm not really an insider in this community then I'll survive the heat. It's just a question. Hopefully because of the pandemic this can be turned into a money making venture for Curt's family through some type of royalty.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

9 hours ago, mike99mccarthy said:

thanks for the warning and the info. I was reading the previous threads from a year ago and saw the discussion devolve with lots of hostility.

I just figured since I'm not really an insider in this community then I'll survive the heat. It's just a question. Hopefully because of the pandemic this can be turned into a money making venture for Curt's family through some type of royalty.

The closet device to the XM that you could have gotten within the past couple of months would have been the Dragonfly flash/expansion cartridge. With the exception of the peripheral interface and built in HSC, it had most of the other features that the XM was to have but housed in a cartridge. Sadly the DF isn't currently being offered now and it isn't known when or if it will be in the future. I would hope that it will once chip shortages allow the pokeyMax chips to be made again.

 

[mike99mccarthy]

1 hour ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

The closet device to the XM that you could have gotten within the past couple of months would have been the Dragonfly flash/expansion cartridge. With the exception of the peripheral interface and built in HSC, it had most of the other features that the XM was to have but housed in a cartridge. Sadly the DF isn't currently being offered now and it isn't known when or if it will be in the future. I would hope that it will once chip shortages allow the pokeyMax chips to be made again.

 

Omg Thank you! I’ll definitely look into the dragonfly. All of these XM games are so intriguing. I appreciate the info

[john_q_atari]

5 hours ago, mike99mccarthy said:

Omg Thank you! I’ll definitely look into the dragonfly. All of these XM games are so intriguing. I appreciate the info

Look into it as far as reading about it but remember it's unavailable at the moment so please avoid making any "I'd like to order one!" posts in the thread. I am sure the creator will let people know if and when it is available without people having to ask all the time.

[Swami]

9 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

The closet device to the XM that you could have gotten within the past couple of months would have been the Dragonfly flash/expansion cartridge. With the exception of the peripheral interface and built in HSC, it had most of the other features that the XM was to have but housed in a cartridge. Sadly the DF isn't currently being offered now and it isn't known when or if it will be in the future. I would hope that it will once chip shortages allow the pokeyMax chips to be made again.

 

I was actually wondering if the XM, which last I heard from a couple devs, still had a lot of work to be done, might be salvaged by incorporating cart usage into the Dragonfly and just putting that in the case. A lot of work for negative income is unlikely to be done.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

10 minutes ago, Swami said:

I was actually wondering if the XM, which last I heard from a couple devs, still had a lot of work to be done, might be salvaged by incorporating cart usage into the Dragonfly and just putting that in the case. A lot of work for negative income is unlikely to be done.

I don't know the full specifics of what the XM was to have. But I know that it was designed to have the POKEY or an FPGA solution installed, the YM2151 for FM synth sound, I think the SIO interface port but I could be wrong on that one. I know it was to also have built in high score cart saving as well. Additional RAM I believe was also part of it for games that might need a little more.

 

The DF has all of these features built into minus the keyboard or SIO interface and no built in high score saving. But the parts for games to really have added features are present with pokey/pokeymax or eventually the Hokey, it has the YM2151 module on it and has support to enable extra RAM if needed. Only @PacManPlus's Pac-Man 40th that was developed for use with the XM has been tweaked to work on the DF. And it is an amazing collection of Pac-Man games!

 

[+batari]

I disagree with the assessment that any flashcart is like the XM regardless of its features. The entire point of the XM is to expand the console for cartridge-based games, and expand it so cartridge-based games do not need to have the hardware inside the cartridges themselves.

 

Not even when Concerto with a Hokey supports nearly all XM functions (HSC, dual Pokey, YM and RAM) would I say it’s anything like a XM, because no flashcart can possibly do the fundamental function of the XM: expand the console for cartridge-based games.

 

The only device I can think of that is remotely like an XM is the Xboard: http://www.x-game.se/products/xboard.htm

And indeed the XM is based on this device. 

 

 

[Swami]

2 hours ago, batari said:

I disagree with the assessment that any flashcart is like the XM regardless of its features. The entire point of the XM is to expand the console for cartridge-based games, and expand it so cartridge-based games do not need to have the hardware inside the cartridges themselves.

 

Not even when Concerto with a Hokey supports nearly all XM functions (HSC, dual Pokey, YM and RAM) would I say it’s anything like a XM, because no flashcart can possibly do the fundamental function of the XM: expand the console for cartridge-based games.

 

The only device I can think of that is remotely like an XM is the Xboard: http://www.x-game.se/products/xboard.htm

And indeed the XM is based on this device. 

 

 

That's why I said to expand the Dragonfly to take cartridge input (if possible) and use its hardware in the xm shell. Maybe a firmware update could add the SIO and keyboard support. Otherwise, the XM devs would be losing money continuing on the XM, as they say an awful lot of work is left on the XM hardware. The people who ordered them already paid for them, so I don't know how feasible it would be for them to ask for more money on that project to continue development.

[+batari]

23 minutes ago, Swami said:

That's why I said to expand the Dragonfly to take cartridge input (if possible) and use its hardware in the xm shell. Maybe a firmware update could add the SIO and keyboard support. Otherwise, the XM devs would be losing money continuing on the XM, as they say an awful lot of work is left on the XM hardware. The people who ordered them already paid for them, so I don't know how feasible it would be for them to ask for more money on that project to continue development.

Actually, the most difficult part of designing the XM is the casing, I think. If someone gets access to the casing I hope they don't just shove a modified flashcart inside. I would like to see them actually do the thing justice, the way the designers intended.

[Swami]

3 hours ago, batari said:

Actually, the most difficult part of designing the XM is the casing, I think. If someone gets access to the casing I hope they don't just shove a modified flashcart inside. I would like to see them actually do the thing justice, the way the designers intended.

Where do the development cost funds come from?

 

[mike99mccarthy]

In a perfect world we’d love to see the XM released in all of its glory but the dragonfly seems like a nice consolation so we can actually play the awesome XM games. Lots of positive ideas going on in this thread. Thank you to everyone who’s chimed in so far.