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Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?


phoenixdownita

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That was his point, once the KS starts you get to see the specs, not before. The KS reveals the specs as part of its working.

 

Oh, I see now. Thanks for the clarification.

I guess I misread Leods' post and thought he was not demanding specs before KS. This was because I knew Mike claimed transparency was one of the issues with the previous campaign; thus there wasn't even a snowball's chance in hell of specs coming out beforehand. Mea culpa.

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Maybe the power led will be of a special design that slowly alters through all the colors of the rainbow, like the colors in the 'coleco chameleon' logo.

That's a thing you can buy, and it's not crazy expensive. It would be a fun way to differentiate this thing from the Atari Jaguar.

 

I'm curious to see what and how much they show for the Kickstarter campaign. I've backed stupider things.

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That image on the old CRT only raises more questions, but that's not surprising at this point. Ideally, the older games that they showed on previous videos would run native 4:3 (even on 16:9 screens), but newer games, like the pack-in, I'd much prefer to be native 16:9. Hopefully it's not locked down to 4:3 gaming exclusively, although I suppose if they've given up on the idea of newer indie games and just going all-in on the classic style 16-bit stuff, then being in 4:3 full-time probably doesn't matter.

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The way the ctrl cables get out of the front makes me believe there's no front panel yet and the USB ctrls connect directly into the inner PCB (which likely has USB connectors already .... beaglebone black maybe?).

The cart seems to be held in place by a black plastic slab in the back .... weird .... Jag red screen of death otherwise ? .... or it is all a gimmick and there's no cart connector yet in place and the game runs from another source for now (SD card reader on the inner PCB?).

 

No HDMI = no thank you .... will see.

Seriously they should have shown the output on a big modern TV, if it sucks buyers would not like it at all, no matter how nice it looks on a 10+Y old CRT TV which prospect buyers would have to collect from a landfill (maybe next to the ET carts).

 

Second the shiny dome meh opinion, not sure I like it but hey .... that's what they have ... I wonder why they couldn't reuse the molds from the Coleco Flashback (controllers included) .... nevermind.

 

EDIT: also the cart seems to ride a little too high, maybe it's an optical illusion or they have a very tall PCB sticking out the bottom, not sure.

Edited by phoenixdownita
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Also not so sure about the one-liner: "Remember When. Play Again."

Say what? At worst they missed a question mark after When, at best it's still horrible so it doesn't really matter.

I actually kinda like the phrase, but that first part is definitely a bit confusing. I believe the first statement is an imperative one as opposed to being a question, but there is no indication of this in the phrase itself. Perhaps if they changed it to "Remember When. Then, Play Again." It would make a bit more sense. Then again, I suppose it doesn't sound quite as catchy that way.

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I keep hoping the chinese group that grabbed up all of SONY's FED tech eventually turns out FED panels. Best of most worlds there. CRT without convergence and true black, no OLED wear issues.

I guess I should be surprised that CRT fans exist, especially in a thread about a retro-style console system. I started to think, were there people like this from decades past, as well? From when a radio console was made of wood, took up a large space in your room, and took several minutes to warm up the tubes? Did some people actively resist the miniaturization transistor radios and yearn for the "warmer" sound of days gone by, despite the advantages of the new technology?

Of course they did, and they're still out there. There are probably people who hate seat belts and air bags, too. They're like the anti-vaxxers of technology. A nice LCD isn't what you grew up with, but isn't it nice to have all the characters on the screen more closely resemble the pictures in the printed manuals that you love so much?

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My understanding from reading their posts and replies to my posts is that it is HDMI only. They eliminated the expansion port and RGB custom out and Composite/Component extras that were costing extra. They explicitly want classic gaming on modern TVs, along with Cart copies of indie games so people don't have to worry about STEAM or other DRM authentication and as such so you can trade with friends and keep selling your game on an open market physically.
They are also not doing endlabels because they are packing in Genesis style clamshells.
They may have snuck in an ethernet port or rear DB9 port for link capability, but it's a rumor I find unlikely. Also, it would be just as easily supported via one of the Joystick/USB ports.

The way the ctrl cables get out of the front makes me believe there's no front panel yet and the USB ctrls connect directly into the inner PCB (which likely has USB connectors already .... beaglebone black maybe?).

The cart seems to be held in place by a black plastic slab in the back .... weird .... Jag red screen of death otherwise ? .... or it is all a gimmick and there's no cart connector yet in place and the game runs from another source for now (SD card reader on the inner PCB?).

 

No HDMI = no thank you .... will see.

Seriously they should have shown the output on a big modern TV, if it sucks buyers would not like it at all, no matter how nice it looks on a 10+Y old CRT TV which prospect buyers would have to collect from a landfill (maybe next to the ET carts).

 

Second the shiny dome meh opinion, not sure I like it but hey .... that's what they have ... I wonder why they couldn't reuse the molds from the Coleco Flashback (controllers included) .... nevermind.

 

EDIT: also the cart seems to ride a little too high, maybe it's an optical illusion or they have a very tall PCB sticking out the bottom, not sure.

Edited by RupanIII
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I keep hoping the chinese group that grabbed up all of SONY's FED tech eventually turns out FED panels. Best of most worlds there. CRT without convergence and true black, no OLED wear issues.

Huh, I had to look up that stuff, interesting if dead-ended tech. Defeating the dominant LCD world seems unlikely (I say that as a happy owner of a big 2012 Panasonic plasma screen, probably one of the last ones).
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That image on the old CRT only raises more questions, but that's not surprising at this point. Ideally, the older games that they showed on previous videos would run native 4:3 (even on 16:9 screens), but newer games, like the pack-in, I'd much prefer to be native 16:9. Hopefully it's not locked down to 4:3 gaming exclusively, although I suppose if they've given up on the idea of newer indie games and just going all-in on the classic style 16-bit stuff, then being in 4:3 full-time probably doesn't matter.

Considering the game shown is an SNES homebrew, and as far as we can tell the Chameleon isn't even turned on (no power LED), so it might be an empty shell, with an SNES or clone system under the table connected to the TV, running Caverns of Death. If they are serious about releasing a console in 2016 and beyond, they had better have HD outputs as an option. Otherwise they will get laughed off the floor.

 

HDTVs only provide composite for legacy use, shared with the component connection. You get deinterlace artifacts on 240p video and in cases of an improperly formatted signal (Atari for instance with incorrect color clock or scanline count, etc...), you may get grayscale picture or "out of range" errors. In a few more years, the HDTVs will probably axe analog inputs altogether and the coax plug on the back will only be good for ATSC or Qualcom digital tuner (no analog RF).

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My understanding from reading their posts and replies to my posts is that it is HDMI only. They eliminated the expansion port and RGB custom out and Composite/Component extras that were costing extra. They explicitly want classic gaming on modern TVs

Can you post those here? If they really did cut out composite then that's a lot of unnecessary hassle to convert an HDMI signal to composite and lug a CRT all the way from California to New York. Although I do giggle at the thought of other travelers being pissed off that boarding is being held up by some idiot who's trying to stuff a CRT TV into the overhead compartment.

 

A decent LCD monitor can fit in a good sized laptop bag and I can't think of any benefit a 9" CRT has over it, aside from "IT'Z RETRO!!!"

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God lord. They delete SO MUCH STUFF. It's gone again.
They had mentioned that they were eliminating things that added unnecessary expense to the system (the previous engineer) like RGB and Component Out analog ports, Rear USB Ports, and other things (I presume the Type B development port disappears too). This may also be in a video by the guy from Coleco. ...

Aha:

Update: Found it on Arstechnica http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/12/coleco-chameleon-continues-quixotic-quest-for-contemporary-cartridge-console/

 

Can you post those here? If they really did cut out composite then that's a lot of unnecessary hassle to convert an HDMI signal to composite and lug a CRT all the way from California to New York. Although I do giggle at the thought of other travelers being pissed off that boarding is being held up by some idiot who's trying to stuff a CRT TV into the overhead compartment.

 

A decent LCD monitor can fit in a good sized laptop bag and I can't think of any benefit a 9" CRT has over it, aside from "IT'Z RETRO!!!"

Edited by RupanIII
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God lord. They delete SO MUCH STUFF. It's gone again.

They had mentioned that they were eliminating things that added unnecessary expense to the system (the previous engineer) like RGB and Component Out analog ports, Rear USB Ports, and other things (I presume the Type B development port disappears too). This may also be in a video by the guy from Coleco. ...

Aha:

Update: Found it on Arstechnica http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/12/coleco-chameleon-continues-quixotic-quest-for-contemporary-cartridge-console/

 

 

Hmmmmm.. if they delete something, it's usually for a reason.

 

The article just says that they're cutting costs and I interpreted that to mean they were dropping the FPGA.

 

But oh well, I can wait 15 hours to find out what the answer is. I'm sure we have nothing to worry about, or as they say:

 

rvgs_112015_nothing_but_good_news1.png

 

Then again, they've since deleted that too, so who knows.

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No endlabels confirmed? :thumbsdown: :mad: :thumbsdown: Yeah, I knew better, but still disappointed- which surprises me, that this fiasco still has the ability to disappoint.

I got your end labels right here. It was good enough for my N64 collection, which is bigger and better than the wildest best-case scenario than this will ever be! http://m.staples.com/Label-Makers/cat_CL90400
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This is obviously running Emulation. Aynone who thinks otherwise doesn't really understand what the Project is. Which is to be understood, since no actual Information has been put out. My guess is that they are running either an of the shelf or a custom made Mist board or other pre-existing similar System. There is absolutely no way they developed something from the ground up, be it Hardware or Software, to be running their own Emulation.

 

The MIST is the only board I know by Name with open FPGA cores. Does anyone know wether it's Hardware is also completely open source? Is it allowed to be used commertially? I'm not intimate with that, I don't know the licences. What other open FPGA boards are out there?

 

To me all indicates this is straight up an FPGA Emulator that instead of running of an SD Card is going to run out of a proprietary cartridge. Hopefully the cart isn't going to be a plain SD in a Jaguar Shell, but as far as I understand in this prototype it almost certainly is, because to run from something else they'd Need to do some larger changes to Hardware and Software to Support actual ROM cartridges to be read. Does anyone know wether what I just said makes sense?

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