On 13/06/2012 10:21, thorsten herbert wrote:
Seems to be too late now, but this really sounds like a perfect case
for Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/
It's a crowd-funding site, people can say "hey, I have this cool
project and if 100 people pledge to spend 50€ on it, it will be built.
If not, no money is lost". Most projects are relatively small, but
recently a computer game even pulled in funds of several million
dollars this way...
Not sure if a QL product can pull it off, but if a "phone-soap"
(that's actually the combination of a phone charger with a UV-lamp for
killing germs) can pull in $63.000 of funds, everything seems possible
;-)
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/588318042/phonesoap-simultaneously-charge-and-sanitize-your?ref=card
Marcel
Why not just test the waters? We could do some research of interest using
Rich's mailing list (e-mail addresses). After that the project should be placed
on Kickstarter in order to collect a certain amount which would may persuade
Adrian to pick it up again and finish the project. Nothing to lose ...
The research mail should be very simple: Interested in buying for the QL: A) SD
Card internal solution B) SD Card ROM Port solution C) nothing.
If the outcome should be, as you have put as an example, about 100 people at 50
Euros than this is may enough to go into production (?)
Would be interesting to find out if this would work as for other projects the
same could be easily done again.
T
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I agree that this is a good idea (although you do have to be careful as
to how much money kickstarter take of the 50 euros or whatever and
ensure that people are well aware of the amount which will be used as a
deposit on their order (ie. not the full 50 euros!)
That said, the other alternative would be to get the information and
then make an approach to Quanta with a well written business case -
Quanta can see the sense of getting a QL-SD interface made in any case,
so the business case does not have to say how many people would buy it
! Quanta gives an interest free loan to develop projects (and the loan
can be repaid as a fixed amount per card sold), but no-one appears to
bother approaching them! This would be cheaper all round than using
Kickstarter, or could be used in conjunction with Kickstarter - I did
offer to write the business proposal to Quanta for Adrian as I have
successfully accessed their funds in the past.
As far as I can see, the internal solution is unfortunately a
non-starter for several reasons:
a) The board needs to use an EPROM on it which contains both the driver
and the QL operating system. So far as Adrian and I understand, the
QDOS license does not allow it to be distributed with new hardware, so
that means either people would have to provide their own QDOS ROMs to be
programmed onto the EPROM (or program them themselves), or would have
to accept that only Minerva is supplied with the device.
Unfortunately, Minerva means that not all of the older software will
work easily and it also uses more memory (which is tight if you only
have just the QL-SD Interface and a standard QL) - particularly so if
you need to use dual screen mode to get the older programs to work!
b) The lead between the board in the QL Internal ROM socket and the SD
card reader board is also an issue - on some QLs, the noise from the
power and TV circuitry behind the microdrives appears to cause
interference and stop the QL-SD interface working. The length of the
lead is also critical ! Certainly this appears to have been Adrian's
experience, where the interface worked on some combinations of QLs and
hardware, but not others.
The external ROM port solution seems a more sensible way to go as it
addresses both issues, but then we are left with someone needing the
time to redesign the whole interface (time is Peter's main issue here)
--
Rich Mellor
RWAP Services
Specialist Enuuk Auction Programming Services
www.rwapservices.co.uk
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