Re: Let's pay a developer to make a VGA output card

[Tim Haynes <timhaynes@alumni.NO.SPAM.PLEASE.uwaterloo.ca>]

Henry wrote:
...
> Now assume someone delivers a set of schematics and they work 100%.  Who 
> will do what with the schematics?  If you donate money will you get a device 
> at a discount or is your money just a 'gift'?  Who will be willing to put up 
> would could be several more thousand dollars to just start production?  From 
> where will the item be sold?  These are just a few ideas we should think 
> about if someone is going to take us seriously.

The pledge as it stands is strictly for a working, feasible DESIGN and a 
workign prototype to prove the design works.  Giving your $100 gets you 
nothing but a design and proof that it works.  It would be up to someone 
else (GSE-Reactive?  A2RetroSystems?  You?  Me?) to do a production run 
of the boards and sell them.

All the $100 buys you is a working design.  But that is 80% of the work 
of getting a board into your hands and mine, and it's the "hard" part. 
The "easy" part is producing the boards from the instructions in the 
design.  The point of the pledge is to provide incentive for those nutsy 
(meant in the nicest way possible!) tinkerers to get a design put 
together (the "fun" part of hardware work) while not feeling compelled 
to follow-up with sales, production, support, etc... (the "boring" part 
of hardware work).  Most hardware developers enjoy making the stuff but 
don't really enjoy all the follow-up "administrative" work.  So the 
pledge decouples the fun work from the boring work and also provides 
some money as a bonus.

> Don't get me wrong, it sounds like a good idea to me and it's nice to see 
> someone who wants to do something about it.  Maybe we should start a new 
> thread about it so tracking responses and ideas will be easier since this 
> thread is now a bit off topic?

Good idea.  Feel free to start one.  :-)

Tim