Taking the big picture view

Some folks have been a bit confused by some of the different things going on in the MEGA65 project, and have found it hard to pick out the big picture of what we are doing.  In fairness, we have not been perfect at putting out a clear vision all the time.  In part, this is simply because we are a bunch of volunteers, and don't have the time to do all that we would like, and prepare all the material we would like.  Also, there is a bit of a skewed view of our activity, because this blog is the main source of information, and so whatever I am working at the time is the most obvious.

While this post can't do everything, I figure it is still worth spending a little time to layout our overall plans, and give a bit of an insight in to what is going on at the moment.

The primary goal of the project remains to create the MEGA65, a Commodore 65 compatible home computer, that faithfully recreates the experience of using a Commodore 65.  This means a real floppy drive (mostly done), a real keyboard
(also mostly done), and a real injection moulded case (still being worked on).
We also want to provide a complete delightful experience when you buy one, with a good user manual, and fun packaging.

The injection moulded case is one of the big things that we are slowly grinding away on.  We have partners to help with this, but it is a slow process, precisely because we will not do any kind of pre-sales or crowd-funding until we are 100% certain we have everything in place, and the risks of production have been dealt with.  We have seen some other projects that have failed at this point, and want neither to create such a disaster, nor to be part of any such disaster.  As an idea, I suspect the tooling for the case would cost between 50 and 90 thousand Euro if we went to the normal market of suppliers -- so this really is a big cost. But we hope that, as with the keyboard, we are able to work with our fantastic partners to get it done for much less than that, but again, this means we are turning a money cost into a time cost in many regards.  But don't interpret that as us being idle, or having given up.

We also have to do the 2nd revision of the main board, which is underway at the moment, and depending on the vagueries of hardware design, we might need a 3rd revision or so before that is totally ready.  This is a bit intertwined with the case design, as we need to make sure that everything actually fits.

Otherwise, there is the VHDL to get finished, and the core software, so that you can configure the machine, and easily pick which disk image you want to use at any point in time.  This continues as I have time to attack it, and also in part helped by students who are doing MEGA65-related projects in my lab. 

On the VHDL side, this is quite fiddly in places, in part because we want the machine to be a really nice and powerful 8-bit computer, with all the key peripherals built in.  Also, we don't want to have to issue piles of updates that affect the core function of the machine. This means that in places we have to grind through slowly.  This has been most true for the video display, as we have changed video modes for improved monitor compatibility, and in the process had to refactor quite a few things. This is still an ongoing progress, and we are getting towards the end of it I hope.  Otherwise, getting the SD card rock-solid is a real concern for us, and, again, we have had to refactor that quite a bit to get SDHC cards working, since 2GB SD cards are getting a bit hard to get hold of.  There are a number of these sorts of two steps forward, one step back kind of things that have happened.

Now, talking about the research students, this is actually where some of the other confusion seems to have come from.   This is because the research students are typically not working on critical path items for our primary goal.  This is in part because we can't tell ahead of time how much a student will be able to get done, and at what quality.  The students are often fantastic, and get great stuff done, so don't take it as a form of criticism, but rather a form of contingency and risk management on our part.

Also, a research student has to do, well, research. This means that we have to form a research question, and pursue it.  This means that academically it is not appropriate to give them a project of "finish the MEGA65".  As a result, some of their projects have a specific focus that is somewhat distinct from the primary goal, although almost always supports the primary goal in some way.

An example of this is the intern working on the presentation software for the MEGA65. Is it required for the computer to be released? Probably not. Will it be great for letting us use the MEGA65 as the platform for showing itself off? Absolutely.  Also, just the working on the tools, and being able to shake down various bugs as we write software on it and for it is invaluable. 

Another example is the hand-held version of the MEGA65.  It doesn't make sense to add students to the process of making the new PCB revision for the desktop computer, because that will just complicate matters. But, it doesn't mean that we can't explore alternative complementary form-factors, like a hybrid console/phone device.  Again, there are collatoral benefits for the core project, and just increasing the number of folks working on it in the lab actually helps the whole project along.

Yet another example is a student working on a security framework based on the MEGA65. Basically, the MEGA65 is simple enough to be verifyable in the field, unlike modern phones and computers.  So, we are able to have another project looking into that space, and which, again, provides a bunch of collatoral benefits for the project.  Incidentally, this is where the matrix rain display comes in. It doubles as the transition for the built-in memory monitor (which itself is a product of the security work), as well as the indicator when switching to and from secure mode.  Here is the poster for his project:

What I am trying present here is the means for folks to see how we remain focused on the bigger picture, but are leveraging the activity in the telecommunications research lab that I work in, so that both useful research is being done, and at the same time, the MEGA65 is advanced.  The end result is, even if it doesn't look like it all the time from the outside, is that the MEGA65 will be ready sooner, and in a more mature state, and as an added bonus, we will likely end up with quite a nice hand-held version in due course.

In the meantime, we will keep working towards our primary goal, and, as always, the community is welcome to accelerate things by contributing to the project.  And, like yourselves, we are very much looking forward to completing what we still think will be a very nice and very fun computer for us all to play with for many years to come.