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Coleco Chameleon .... hardware speculations?


phoenixdownita

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Should we tell Mike that his "sean-robinson-checks" page (which I refuse to link) has no checks but just 3 broken img links?

The page seems to be gone again!

 

EDIT: Eh, never mind ... I was refreshing the old page, which had a different URL. The images are indeed broken, though.

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It's funny.

 

I've paid thousands of dollars for stuff and services to people I have never met in person, just over the internet asking around and googling.

 

And every time was Russia and China; both places were you get scammed the most.

 

No problems, ever. Thank God.

 

Believe it or not, hiring people is a skill you got to learn before putting any sort of team together.

Edited by PikoInteractive
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I highly doubt Sean Robinson knows Clay Cowgill more than casually. He also claimed to be a sniper in the Marines and in the band Lit before they were famous. HE may believe those things are true but that doesn't mean they are in the reality that most of us live in.

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I highly doubt Sean Robinson knows Clay Cowgill more than casually. He also claimed to be a sniper in the Marines and in the band Lit before they were famous. HE may believe those things are true but that doesn't mean they are in the reality that most of us live in.

Clay really took this project under his wing from Nov 2014 to January 2015

 

It was also at this time, that another person entered into the mix, Sean “LEE” Robinson. Sean was a “acquaintance or colleague” of Clay’s and it just so happened that he had moved from Washington (state) back to Southern California. He had heard that I was working with Clay on this project and offered to help. Since he and Clay were colleagues

 

Not so as it sounds like Lee was working with Woita and Clay for a year on this project, from Mike's post

 

Both of those guys apparently have strong hardware backgrounds also, so something is off here

Edited by enoofu
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Also I googled The Clay guy and link no 2 is this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/80992-13-dissatisfied-customer-clay-cowgill-multig

 

attachicon.gifClayGoogle.png

 

It must suck if this is what the search engine returns.

 

Yes, that does suck considering that's the first time I've ever read anything negative about him.

 

The Multi-Pac kit that I bought from him 18 years ago is still going strong.

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You are correct, so apparently Cowgill is claiming that Mike and Sean are old friends, which now leads us to Steve Woita, which I'm think will be denouncing both "Lee" and Mike also

I've been content to take a "not my circus, not my monkeys" stance with this whole brouhaha, but since Mike decided to name drop me...

 

* Mike seems to have some facts jumbled up a bit at the beginning of the project. For the record, Sean (whom I had met a couple times before) contacted me directly in early November 2014 to see if I was interested in speaking to Mike about a retro-style hardware game device. I've done that kind of development work commercially for years now, so I agreed to at least explore the possibility and agreed to let Sean give Mike my contact information. Mike and I then spoke directly by phone on Nov. 17th, 2014. Sean was already working with Mike well in advance of my involvement and my understanding during the call with Mike was that he and Sean were actually friends and had known each other for quite some time.

 

* The project was not what I as a hardware designer would consider 'defined'. Mike wanted 'hardware' as quickly as possible, but there was nothing that I would consider a bare minimum to start designing from-- no product requirements documents, no hardware specification, no consideration of the product ecosystem. I provided some example architectures on 12/1/2014 of 'things that could be made to work in a short period of time' based on designs I'd done earlier, but there was still a pretty glaring lack of direction.

 

* By 12/19/2014 I pushed back on putting any additional time in on the hardware until we A) knew what the programmers needed/wanted for features and performance and B) knew the performance of available platforms relative to their costs. That was falling outside of what I was comfortable putting time and effort in on (all my involvement was done without compensation as spec work in return for per unit royalties should the product eventually come to market), so Sean stepped up and did a bunch of work with available generic hardware platforms and existing emulators to evaluate possible candidates. The outcome of that was that the AM3354 (based on the performance of a BeagleBone Black devboard) would probably be sufficient given the back-of-napkin type wish-list we had for features.

 

Over the next couple months there wasn't a lot of progress on nailing down specifications (I don't know if there *ever* was an official requirements document/engineering spec generated)-- even basics like what type of video modes and outputs the device was supposed to have were still up in the air at the end of February. However, there *was* talking up the system in public when it didn't even exist on paper yet-- I took that as an excellent sign that it was time to officially part company at the end of February and "pursue other opportunities".

Edited by enoofu
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Also I googled The Clay guy and link no 2 is this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/80992-13-dissatisfied-customer-clay-cowgill-multig

 

attachicon.gifClayGoogle.png

 

It must suck if this is what the search engine returns.

 

If you're really curious about Clay's work, how about you get on a plane and go visit PDX. There's a little place on Couch St called Ground Kontrol.

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If you're really curious about Clay's work, how about you get on a plane and go visit PDX. There's a little place on Couch St called Ground Kontrol.

 

Little touchy here. I stated what I did and attached a screenshot, I am not passing judgment I actually said it must suck if that is the second link. Period.

I am not implying or hinting anything. I even read the accident described and it seems minor and still if that is so high on the Google list it must suck for him.

 

But you know I AM THE KING OF ALL HATERS .... I started the thread (by accident really) so that qualifies ... happy now?

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Hey, that's my picture from The Polybius Conspiracy! Somehow it seems appropriate here. ;-)

 

My involvement was early on and anything I "know" after February 27th, 2015 is basically just hearsay.

 

I confess that I haven't followed this whole tale-- today's really the first day I'm paying much attention to it because Mike emailed me this thread (I assume to try to get my support on it?) I see that I'm now 'unfriended' by Mike today on Facebook, so I assume my commentary earlier today was not appreciated... *shrugs*

 

I do kinda sympathize with whoever did work on it after I left. It's tough to design the right thing when the boss can't define what that actually *is* and you don't have any specifications to work from. It's also easy to burn through money while spinning your wheels with very little to show for it if you're constantly switching design directions and don't have appropriate project management support and industry experience to keep you from making every "Product Development 101" mistake possible.

 

My advice to Mike at first was to bootstrap development himself-- buy the Jag tooling, shoot some cases and sell them to recoup the acquisition cost, put subsequent 'profits' towards developing something and use crowdfunding essentially as a fulfillment channel for the product once it was ready to ship. Almost immediately the emphasis of the project shifted to 'how soon can we get this on Kickstarter' with a "smoke & mirrors" demo system for a video (well before a complete system architecture had even been settled on) and that 'cart before the horse' mentality combined with my past experiences in the toy/gaming industry set off my "this isn't going to end well" alarms and accelerated my urge to exit-- I already had another client I was splitting time with and just went exclusive with them instead. My total calendar time advising on the RETROvision hardware was basically ~three months.

 

Before I left I provided a SWAG'd hardware budget for developing something of this size and complexity-- I had things broken out in to four phases (initial prototypes, 2nd prototypes, production pilot, production) the first two of which needed to be completed to really have a 'working' system and high confidence you have a sell-able product. That came out to be about $70K USD just for the hardware portion (including design time, schematic capture, PCB layout engineer time, bill of materials management, FCC scans, debug and bring-up, prototype fabs and components, and about 14 weeks of full time equivalent effort). System software, mechanical design, tooling, supply chain/component engineering, manufacturing engineering, packaging, marketing, etc. was not included in that budget. How you would go from someone that's done this dozens of times telling you "14 weeks, $70K" to "30 days, $7K" and expect to have any significant chance of success... I dunno. I think enthusiasm and eagerness to get to the finish line trumped rationale thought and prudence.

 

-Clay

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Little touchy here. I stated what I did and attached a screenshot, I am not passing judgment I actually said it must suck if that is the second link. Period.

I am not implying or hinting anything. I even read the accident described and it seems minor and still if that is so high on the Google list it must suck for him.

 

But you know I AM THE KING OF ALL HATERS .... I started the thread (by accident really) so that qualifies ... happy now?

You planning on posting random google searches for everyone Mike name drops? Sure hope he doesn't mention his grocer. God forbid the poor dude has a speeding ticket.

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Clay responded earlier in a post I didn't see until now saying basically that he doesn't know Sean.

 

To be clear, at the start of the project I had met Sean in person a couple times-- but yeah, we didn't really *know* each other at the time. An acquaintance. I know him a little better now as a result of the few months of overlap we had on the RETROvision and he kept in touch after I left the project, but he was down in California near Mike so we didn't cross paths in person for a long time.

 

I knew Sean and Mike still talked, but (like I mentioned before) my impression was that they had known each other for quite some time before the RETROvision stuff, so I didn't think anything of it (nor was it my business to question it).

 

-Clay

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From what I understand both Clay Cowgill and Steve Woita have very Positive Reputations from the community

Both have strong backgrounds in hardware and Steve Woita also have a strong background in software

 

Which is very odd that Mike Kennedy name dropped them hard in his post for this mess with "Lee"

 

Sad, point right now both Mike and "Lee" are the only ones with Poor Reputations that were on this project, maybe +1 if you add

John Carlsen, but that could just be that he is a poor public speaker and likes to resume bluff a lot

Edited by enoofu
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If this Sean guy actually is a hardware guy at all, even an incompetent one. and he told Mike not to show the back of the "prototype", either the guy is incredibly lazy, or he could have done a much better job.

 

I mean, instead of telling mike not to show the back of the system he could have rewired stuff. He could have taken 15 minutes to wire in an LED and make the power switch work. That SNES in a jag shell was one of the most ridiculous hackjobs ever. Not to mention Mike knew about the SNES controller extensions comming out of the unit. We didin't see that in any pictures because he was tucking them away, but he could see that. Damn, with a bit of light you would probably see somehting through vents and ports. Mike didn't even need to open up the unit to closely inslect the cartridge slot and compare that with an SNES mini. He knew the flashcart.

 

One thing is clear. Mike has a perception that just because he's a "CEO" and lead of the project, that he's not responsible for what the hardware guy does.

 

If the hardware guy gives him an SNES and says it's an FPGA system, he's not at fault for for not knowing better is he? I mean, it's not like he's responsible for the project his leading rigt? Would you hold the lead director of a project responsible for it's failures?

 

Please, let's forget this. Retro Magazine will come up soon, and it's going to be even better for all this we all went throgh together. Please let's not allow small mistakes of the past destroy this great thing we are building here. See you on Kickstarter.

 

And in case someone really needs it written down and spelled out, I am being sarcastic here in the last two previos paragraphs.

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