[Coco] CoCo Ethernet for $25-$30...

[Joel Ewy]

On 04/11/2013 09:46 PM, Stephen H. Fischer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> $1,800 - $2,800 for a thing that makes plastic that even ordered made 
> in small quantities is < ~ $4.00?
>
> http://store.makerbot.com/3d-printers.html
>
> SHF

Um, yeah.  First of all, the TOM I got cost about half what the current 
models cost.  Second, it would in no way make sense to get it if you 
were intending to build, or even mass-produce a single product.  That's 
not the point at all.  The point is that with a 3D printer you can make 
anything you (or others) can figure out how to make the machine produce, 
in quantities of 1+.  Having a 3D printer means I can make more Open 
Source 3D printers (e.g. RepRap) for significantly less still.  I 
suppose I could be wrong, but I would be pretty surprised to find that I 
could actually have injection molded plastic cases made up for ~$4.00 in 
1s and 2s, but even if I could, the cost of shipping them is going to 
more than double that. Add to that the wait time, not to mention the 
question of how I can get my design files to whoever is going to make 
the molds, plus the problem of iterative design changes with those kinds 
of lead times. No thank you.  You might as well ask why people would 
have wanted to buy a microcomputer in 1979 when they could just rent 
time on a mainframe.

I don't want to get into a big discussion on the merits of desktop 
manufacturing technologies on this list.  Suffice to say that I have a 
3D printer and I intend to use it.

JCE

>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joel Ewy" <jcewy at swbell.net>
> To: <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2013 7:35 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] CoCo Ethernet for $25-$30...
>
>
>> On 04/10/2013 09:44 PM, Allen Huffman wrote:
>>> On Apr 9, 2013, at 8:31 PM, Aaron Wolfe <aawolfe at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> We need to think seriously about a "modern" interface between CoCo and
>>>> (something) where (something) is any of the above, ideally. A
>>>> standard way to connect a Pi, audrino, propeller,  the next big thing,
>>>> and so on.
>>> Here here!
>>>
>>> When looking through the 1983 Rainbow (link posted earlier), I was 
>>> seeing all kinds of ads for ROM PAK enclosures and other hardware 
>>> hacking stuff... I had no interest then, but sure would now.
>>
>> Allen, I've just started laying out a ROM PAK enclosure replacement 
>> in OpenSCAD to make with my 3D printer.  The cool thing about doing 
>> it that way is that it can be customized on an individual basis with 
>> cutouts for controls, connectors, cable outlets, et cetera.  A 
>> game-sized cartridge will just barely fit on the build platform of my 
>> Thing-O-Matic.  In fact, I'll probably have to try several goes 
>> before I get the part positioned just right so that it fits in 
>> between the screw heads that hold the build platform down.  But it 
>> should be doable.
>>
>> When my tax refund comes in I plan to get the parts I'll need to make 
>> a RepRap Mendel, which I think has a bigger build platform. That will 
>> also increase the rate at which I can produce things if I run 2 
>> machines in parallel.
>>
>> JCE
>>
>>> It is real cheap and quick to make a simple circuit board and have 
>>> it in a few weeks... I am hoping I can figure out enough to make a 
>>> cartridge with a port to plug in a Teensy. That, alone, would open 
>>> up a huge door of experimenting.
>>>
>>>> Another possibility is "SPI", as it seems all the boards support it.
>>>> SPI is interesting also because it's what SD cards use and seems to be
>>>> a really common way to make things talk to each other. Probably more
>>>> complex to make a coco->spi interface than a coco->parallel, but
>>>> possibly worth it?
>>> I work with SPI at my day job, and I haven't looked in to it far 
>>> enough yet, but at least one of the things I work with could be 
>>> clocked down slow enough that a CoCo could talk to it... And there 
>>> are WiFi chips, ethernet chips (Wizpro is SPI), digital 
>>> potentiometers, multiplexers, etc. that all communicate over SPI.
>>>
>>> It really looks trivial. Heck, look at how simple the code on the 
>>> Arduino libraries is to talk to SPI. It just needs a clock.
>>>
>>> That's a really good idea.
>>>
>>> -- A
>
>
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