Microdisc replacement project

This is the right place to discuss on how to implement hardware vsync, adding a VIA or AY chipset, puting multiple roms, or how to design a new flash expansion card.
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barnsey123
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Post by barnsey123 »

Doing something wrong on the link but if you copy and paste the last link into explorer (Capital C on the end...) seems to work :D
Any ideas?
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Dbug
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Post by Dbug »

barnsey123 wrote:Doing something wrong on the link but if you copy and paste the last link into explorer (Capital C on the end...) seems to work :D
Any ideas?
Yes: Don't click on "Disable BBCode in this post" and expect BB code to work ;)
(I fixed the post)
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Symoon
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Post by Symoon »

Not so good news from the web page: http://retromaster.wordpress.com/cumulus/

"Update: Due to unbelievably stupid and unfair new regulations implemented by Turkish Customs, apparently it has become virtually impossible for me to personally import small quantities of the components and parts required to execute a small, non-profit Cumulus manufacturing run. However, I think people interested in obtaining a Cumulus board should still leave a comment here on this page, in case some other party would become interested in organizing production."
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Post by Antiriad2097 »

Would it be possible for us to send the parts and pay the customs fees if needed? Between a bunch of us it may not be overly expensive and would allow him to continue.
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Post by Dbug »

Possibly it could make sense to see if it's possible to get something done by some cooperation between Retromaster and the Club Europe Oric.

There are a number of hardware enthusiasts out there, and there are regular meetings, I could imagine something like a special "hardware building" meeting, where for example the people participating to the building get one Cumulus for free (or at half price, whatever) as a reward for helping building and testing the boards.

So one plan could be:
- We open some kind of "cumulus pre-order" page where people register and say how many devices they want. Let's say this page is open for something like two or three months, the idea is to get the message spread over so everybody who would potentially interested would know about it and sign.
- After this two months delay we already have a clear idea of how many people are interested, and by extension how many components are required, which gives a good idea of the prices at which it could be done.
- The people who registered are informed of the price, and are being asked to confirm firmly their order, by paying upfront (could be a paypal account, or direct bank transfer to the CEO account). Let's say people have one month to do that.
- After one month you actually have a hard number of orders, and you have the money, so you can order the components.
- Then it's a matter of assembling and testing. This could be done in a normal or special CEO Meeting (technically this could be done in various different places at the same time, but that could be a logistic nightmare).


Not sure if it's doable, or even if it's realistic. Opinions anyone ?
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barnsey123
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Post by barnsey123 »

@dbug. I think that sounds good. I live in an area which just happens to have a number of good PCB and Plastics companies. I was thinking of approaching some of them to inquire about low volume manufacturing costs (50,100,200 etc) but to make any real progress we'd need a reasonably accurate idea of how many are LIKELY to be made. Your idea of the "pre-order page" would enable us to get some decent market research.

And of course, we'd need some cash up front (maybe we setup a non-profit company - "Defence-Force Industries" - to hold the dosh until we've accumulated enough for a proper production run).

Case: I'm trying to track down "Kenure Plastics Ltd" who made the original oric1/atmos casings to see if by any chance they still have the drawings and the actual color codes and plastic types. I don't think they exist anymore but if anyone knows otherwise let me know.

I'm thinking of an "Airfix model" type construction procedure for the case and components so maybe we won't have to worry so much about constructing the thing centrally, the "product" would be a bag of parts which you'd assemble yourself. Incidentally, this would make it easier to have different color schemes (e.g. Oric-1 vs Atmos etc so we don't get lumbered with whole units that don't sell). Don't like the orange buttons? Then cannibalise an old TV remote-control and get the buttons/membrane from that before "putting the lid on"... :D

We have to build this thing don't we?
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Post by ibisum »

Thats a real nuisance to hear of Cumulus' troubles, but I am sure we can work together as a group to solve the issue, buying parts in bulk in more tolerant countries, and so on.

For my part, my current concern is that the Cumulus board is so naked in my lab environment, so I'm working on building a little case for it so I can work on it safely - too many little kids fingers in my world to leave the PCB exposed, unattended, alas ..

It would be wonderful if we can use Cumulus' designs and effort to establish a new era of disk-based Oric computing in the near future - if all us enthusiasts had one, we could reliably build huge software collections and maybe do some projects with near-unlimited storage options! Wikipedia browser for Oric, anyone? :)
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Post by Symoon »

I'm afraid the CEO abilities mainly rely on Thierry (and maybe Jean?). He's already spending much of his spare time for various repairs, so the decision of such an organisation would first require his agreement.
And obviously it would be better if there was more than one single man involved in the making, would it be for motivation matters.

So I think the questions to ask now are, CEO or not:
1- who has the abilities and would spend some time building the device?
2- at what conditions?
3- how many would buy it? (ie how many would have to be built)
4- how can we organize this?
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PCB Assembly

Post by barnsey123 »

I'm going to check with these guys on Tuesday (it's a holiday in UK on Monday) they're quite local to me.
http://www.clarydon.com/printed-circuit-assembly
I'll send them the schematics and component requirements from the retromaster website and see what they say.

Motivation: I have a list of things which I want to do on all the old computers I once possessed (and one that I didn't). Project 1 concerns the Atmos...I NEED this damned disk drive! :D

It's no fun if it's easy! :D
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Post by Dbug »

Symoon wrote:I'm afraid the CEO abilities mainly rely on Thierry (and maybe Jean?). He's already spending much of his spare time for various repairs, so the decision of such an organisation would first require his agreement.
And obviously it would be better if there was more than one single man involved in the making, would it be for motivation matters.
That's why I suggest a kind of special CEO meeting with a bunch of people helping, because basically what is necessary is:
- making sure all the components are available
- solder them (both for the cumulus board and the cumulus bus board)
- test on few machines with some test software on a SD card to make sure everything is working.

Symoon wrote:So I think the questions to ask now are, CEO or not:
1- who has the abilities and would spend some time building the device?
2- at what conditions?
3- how many would buy it? (ie how many would have to be built)
4- how can we organize this?
The first point is the important one, typically there are people who have a lot of will, but no skills, a good example is me: When it's about soldering I have two left hands, and the number of things I destroyed when trying to solder... not pretty memories.

I think we should also ask Retromaster how long he thinks he takes to build a whole card.

About organization, what is important I believe is that:
- there is a need for somebody with an existing trust capital
- the whole operation should be as fast as possible, from start to end
- everybody has to be very aware that it's going to be a unique opportunity, it's most probably not going to happen more than once, so if somebody wants a device, they better register :)
- there is no "after sell guarantee", basically the whole schematics are open, the only thing which is provided is a service to buy the components in one batch to reduce the cost, and then an assembly + testing + dispatching. If the device dies in 6 months, not the problem of whoever was in charged.

Possibly we could put Thierry and Retromaster in contact with each other, because some of the things they have been working on is in common already (the amplibus/decoder for the multicoloric board is similar to the cumulus bus board).

When we know how/who can help on the ordering/building side, I think that's the hardest part, the rest should be easy in comparison :)

About the case, some people may want one, some people may not want one, in my particular situation I was planning in putting mine in one of my microdisc units.
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Post by ibisum »

I agree that this challenge is exactly what CEO/Thierry organization is for, or not? The survival of Oric! The platform will survive if we can all set up SD cards for the machine! :)

The Turkish government may not want us to sell Oric products in Turkey, but certainly the Turkish board design and development so far, is a superlative export! :)

If Retromaster wants to make the project entirely open, I see no reason why we can't organize a group buy for boards on this forum, to support the costs? And then we can just send him boards for his uses!
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Post by Chema »

Argh sad to hear such bad news about Cumulus...

I think it should be possible to organize ourselves to make a small production. I have no experience (and, like Debug, I have two left hands when it comes to soldering), but I could ask around at work and see if anybody can give an idea.
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Post by retromaster »

Dbug contacted me personally, and asked if I could give some details about the customs problems. Instead of replying just to him, I thought it would be better to post about the situation here. It will be long, beware :) ...

Well, it's like this. The Turkish Customs has a rule that says, if you buy something over the internet personally, it's valued below 150 euros, and it's non-commercial, then it is free of any customs tax. I've ordered electronic components, PCBs, small equipment, even retro hardware this way and I've (almost) never had any problems, the packages reached me directly, without any need to deal with bureaucracy.

Now, due to abuse (they claim), they have changed this rule. The new rule says that, a person can only benefit from this tax exemption rule a maximum of only five times a year (or once every two months). Once you exceed the limit, the packages will always be regarded as commercial at customs.

I think the trouble should be becoming clear now. The yearly/monthly limit apparently applies to pretty much everything (even books) and it would not even be enough for my own personal shopping, let alone the parts, PCBs, etc. that I would need to procure for manufacturing Cumulus.

Now obviously, you may think, one could simply get away with just paying the customs tax. It's not so simple. The customs taxes in Turkey, just by themselves, are not very heavy, but in some cases, there are some ridiculous surcharges that cost even more than the actual value of the merchandise, especially in small orders like mine. Even more important is the bureaucracy involved, which can be very time-consuming. Both factors can be amplified greatly if they actually handle the packages as "commercial" as they claim.

At the moment, it's not clear how strictly the rule will be applied. Obviously, there are technical challenges. Some people say, they will be strict for just a couple of months, than all will be as before. Others say, even stricter rules are on the way, and they will go even as far as tracking credit card payments to foreign countries. One thing is certain; this is all very unfair.

So, what can be done? Dbug suggested that this could perhaps be bypassed by somebody ordering instead of me and forwarding as a "gift". This could work, as customs tax does not apply to gifts, but it's a gamble. Because, if the customs inspection officer somehow decides the package looks suspect (basically it's a matter of luck) it could still be subject to the customs procedure. And at that time, the officer will not have any access to the actual commercial invoice for the parts, so who knows what will happen?

Another possibility is to order from local distributors. For example, in the case of Cumulus, I could order from the local Farnell distributor. One problem is cost. Farnell can be expensive with certain parts and the distributor does have a tax surcharge, so the cost goes up again at least by 30-40%. With PCBs this could even be more, as there are simply no local manufacturers that can come even close to China in terms of price, and they usually do not accept small orders from individuals.

So, the bottom-line is, every problem may be solved, if one is willing to pay the price. Obviously, the cost of manufacturing Cumulus has gone up significantly for me, and I've thought that it would be unfair to reflect this to the prospective Cumulus users, since this could probably be done cheaply elsewhere, which we should pursue foremost. If a production run cannot be organized by someone else, I will probably do it, but it's likely to be at a significantly higher cost than I previously estimated.

One other problem that comes to mind is that, if due to whatever reason, something goes wrong, and you want to return your Cumulus, I may not be able to receive it. Hopefully, this will never happen :).

There is also another issue unrelated to bureaucracy that I should mention. Ibisum tested Cumulus with his machines and reported that there were no apparent problems. However, an Oric enthuiast friend of mine here in İstanbul tested with his machines and found out that the board I gave him only worked with one of his three machines (that makes 2 failures out of 9 machines tested in total) So I need to figure out what went wrong with those two (he will ship the machines to me soon). I am guessing that it might be a timing issue that could be solved on the CPLD side, but I need to make sure first, before any manufacturing effort starts. It may even be a problem with the machines themselves. We will see.
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Post by ibisum »

retromaster: we will find a solution. I think its important for you to know that there are a whole bunch of Oric fans out here who will happily contribute to the effort to get the boards working and made, so that we can all benefit from further Oric hacking with superlative storage! It will be the end of the "No-MicroDisc" era and the start of the "every single game in the entire Oric history on one SD card" Age! :)
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barnsey123
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Post by barnsey123 »

How about emailing all members of Defence Force and CEO with an inquiry form? There's possibly a whole bunch of people who just don't know about this and don't check these pages regularly. Getting the numbers right is absolutely key to the whole adventure.

I've sent some details to Clarydon (they provide a parts sourcing service as well as board assembly) From what I've read about PCB production it look slike a perilous exercise (but I'm no expert).
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