Say I wanted to make new consoles... How Much?

[Blackjack]

The recent auction of the 7800 Nolan Bushnell sig series proto got me wondering. If I, or a group of people, wanted to have a hundred or say 500 clone consoles engineered and produced, how much money we talkin?

 

 

Of course I know the answer will be very dependant on many factors, but give me some idea here.

[jaybird3rd]

This post and this post by Curt in the "7800 Signature Series" thread should give you a good idea.

[Blackjack]

Guess I should have read the very topic I was posting about, eh?

 

Thanks for pointing me to the posts jaybird3rd, and for not rippin me

[jaybird3rd]

Thanks for pointing me to the posts jaybird3rd, and for not rippin me

You're welcome, and I wouldn't think of it.

[Inky]

OK, I'll do it...

 

"I wanted to make new consoles... How Much?"

 

That good?

[supercat]

The recent auction of the 7800 Nolan Bushnell sig series proto got me wondering. If I, or a group of people, wanted to have a hundred or say 500 clone consoles engineered and produced, how much money we talkin?

 

A lot depends upon whether you're trying to do 2600 or 7800, how compatible you're trying to be, what sort of case you want for the thing, and (perhaps most important) whether you want to invest a lot of money so that additional lots of 500 units will be much cheaper, and whether you want to use old chips or current-manufacture ones.

 

If your goal was to produce a 2600 with some modern improvements (e.g. different form factor, MMC reader, composite outputs, etc.) it would probably possible to do something pretty good, pretty cheaply, using old chips. If Ben Heckendorn wanted to do somewhat higher production volumes for his portable 2600's, that would be a good way to go. Using modern CPLDs and FPGAs would probably cost more, but would have the advantage that chips would be easier to get in larger quantities. I would guess (I don't really know) that a set of CPLDs and FPGAs to perform an acceptable 2600 emulation would probably cost somewhere between $5 and $50. There wouldn't be any manufacturer setup costs associated with such chips, though substantial engineering would be required if you couldn't get donated labor (I think someone on AA has worked out an FPGA-based 2600 design, though). The only real application I see for such efforts, though, would be the design of an improved 2600 portable. Otherwise, used 2600s are simply too available to make such efforts worthwhile..

[Atari Dogs]

So, it looks like it would cost a lot to make new consoles. But, how about a new case design contest to get some excitement going? Afterall, look at how many NES clones there are on ebay now.

[+SpiceWare]

While not a clone, you may find XGameStation interesting. It starts at $199

[jaybird3rd]

While not a clone, you may find url=http://www.xgamestation.com/]XGameStation[/url] interesting. It starts at $199

The XGS sounded much more exciting before its release, when it was touted as a system that you can build completely by yourself using loose parts and a blank board. From a quick look at the website, it now seems to have been "dumbed down" considerably: a premade board that you can snap peripherals into and program from a PC. That isn't any more exciting to me than building an inexpensive PC.

 

The Atari hardware was much more interesting, and I'd love to see complete new clones made, but I'm afraid the cost is still too prohibitive. I do like supercat's idea of designing new systems around Atari's original chips, though. More than anything else, I'd really love to see someone design an improved motherboard for the 7800, integrating a POKEY socket and composite video and a standard power supply jack and more onboard RAM. If a new case is too expensive, the board could be sold by itself as an upgrade, which a 7800 owner could install inside the original case and populate with the original 7800 chips.

Edited September 18, 2006 by jaybird3rd

[Bruce Tomlin]

The Atari hardware was much more interesting, and I'd love to see complete new clones made, but I'm afraid the cost is still too prohibitive. I do like supercat's idea of designing new systems around Atari's original chips, though. More than anything else, I'd really love to see someone design an improved motherboard for the 7800, integrating a POKEY socket FPGA and composite video and a standard power supply jack and more onboard RAM. If a new case is too expensive, the board could be sold by itself as an upgrade, which a 7800 owner could install inside the original case and populate with the original 7800 chips.

Fixed. The best way to go about this, unless Best or O'Shea's has a large stockpile of assorted 7800 chips, would be to do the whole thing as a single FPGA or ASIC, plus a RAM chip. As for POKEY support, there is no official way to have a POKEY always wired up to the 7800, though there is the watchamacallit board for which newer homebrews can know how to enable the POKEY.

[Dino]

The recent auction of the 7800 Nolan Bushnell sig series proto got me wondering. If I, or a group of people, wanted to have a hundred or say 500 clone consoles engineered and produced, how much money we talkin?

 

A lot depends upon whether you're trying to do 2600 or 7800, how compatible you're trying to be, what sort of case you want for the thing, and (perhaps most important) whether you want to invest a lot of money so that additional lots of 500 units will be much cheaper, and whether you want to use old chips or current-manufacture ones.

 

If your goal was to produce a 2600 with some modern improvements (e.g. different form factor, MMC reader, composite outputs, etc.) it would probably possible to do something pretty good, pretty cheaply, using old chips. If Ben Heckendorn wanted to do somewhat higher production volumes for his portable 2600's, that would be a good way to go. Using modern CPLDs and FPGAs would probably cost more, but would have the advantage that chips would be easier to get in larger quantities. I would guess (I don't really know) that a set of CPLDs and FPGAs to perform an acceptable 2600 emulation would probably cost somewhere between $5 and $50. There wouldn't be any manufacturer setup costs associated with such chips, though substantial engineering would be required if you couldn't get donated labor (I think someone on AA has worked out an FPGA-based 2600 design, though). The only real application I see for such efforts, though, would be the design of an improved 2600 portable. Otherwise, used 2600s are simply too available to make such efforts worthwhile..

 

Exactly - there are way too many 2600 available for only a couple of bucks. a portable 2600 though may be worthwhile. sone have sold on e-bay for a couple of hundred bucks. however, that is because they are very rare. If you are planning on making 500 of these you would probably wouldn't get much more than $150 for them.

[jaybird3rd]

The Atari hardware was much more interesting, and I'd love to see complete new clones made, but I'm afraid the cost is still too prohibitive. I do like supercat's idea of designing new systems around Atari's original chips, though. More than anything else, I'd really love to see someone design an improved motherboard for the 7800, integrating a POKEY socket FPGA and composite video and a standard power supply jack and more onboard RAM. If a new case is too expensive, the board could be sold by itself as an upgrade, which a 7800 owner could install inside the original case and populate with the original 7800 chips.

Fixed. The best way to go about this, unless Best or O'Shea's has a large stockpile of assorted 7800 chips, would be to do the whole thing as a single FPGA or ASIC, plus a RAM chip. As for POKEY support, there is no official way to have a POKEY always wired up to the 7800, though there is the watchamacallit board for which newer homebrews can know how to enable the POKEY.

An FPGA would be even better, of course; I was concerned that it might cost too much.

 

Regarding the POKEY/RAM upgrade, I'm assuming that the XBoard is the board you're referring to. I wasn't aware of it before today, but it looks to be a quality upgrade that I'd be interested in getting (assuming they're still available).

[jbanes]

An FPGA would be even better, of course; I was concerned that it might cost too much.

FPGA's are pretty cheap these days. Search AVNet and I think you'll find that they're pretty affordable, even in small quantities. A Spartan 3 goes as low as $11.11(1+)/$9.63(25+)/$8.42(100+) for an XC3S50-4VQ100C with 50,000 system gates. Obviously, you'd want to keep the design small, or you'll end up needed a rather expensive FPGA. Thankfully, a 6502 + TIA is the definition of small, but useful. A 6502 + TIA + MARIA + POKEY is a big question mark, though.

 

Building a board out of an FPGA and RAM chip would probably be the cheapest way to do a small-run board. The PCB and parts shouldn't be all that much, but custom-manufacturing the shell is not going to be pretty.