Re: An FPGA card for Apple

[calibrator@freenet.de]

On 3 Jan., 00:57, alex.freed....@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Collectors are not our target audience.

As long as they pay - why not? They may make the project financially
possible.
Do you think the most expensive TV sets with a myriad of inputs and
functions are getting used extensively by people able to afford them
like lawyers, managers, doctors etc. with limited free time?
It's often the hardcore users with a restricted budget but high
creativity
and advanced technical understanding that make the most out of them.
These are the guys that discover the limitations of the hardware and
make them public in forums for example.
While those people aren't targetted by marketing - judging by the
precious brochures and luxurious designs and pictorials - not a
single manufacturer would exclude these customers either!

To soften my usage of the word "collector": I don't see the word as
strict as you - at least not in this group. While there are certainly
"real collectors" out there not actually using the hardware they try
to aquire there is an awful lot of very competent people (well versed
in assembly and system internals) that also collect cards.

Follow some threads and you'll see that they seem to buy any
interesting card on earth - sometimes multiple - to just have them
for the case they *may* eventually have the time to do something
with them. Some may buy several because they know that they may
burn one or two while tinkering with them, of course, but some seem
to really only throw money around.
I often think that some people may be more appropriate to tinker
with exquisite hardware but that's not the way the world works.

> The revenue doesn't remotely justify the time spent on the projects.
> It's the "fame" we are after :)

Now that I can understand! ;-)

> I would like to see people actively using the boards and making their
> own applications.

I would too - some terrific ideas could come up! But:

More cards in the user base would increase the chance of development
as some users may get curious about them and actually do something
on their own.

More cards in the market (= user base) would attract more developers
to support the card for "fame & glory"! ;-)

> The most obvious "killer application" will probably be a VGA
> compatible video board that will display all the Apple video on a
> standard VGA monitor. It can add new video modes and even act
> as an accelerated video processor, but that will be left to the users.

That would be way more interesting, of course, and if I followed the
discussions in this group correctly a lot of people unable or
unwilling
to program the card would buy a one for this function alone.

This is one project I'll definitely follow as the "other VGA card"
still
is silently in development and I haven't heard something in months.

bye
Marcus