Hello! It's time for an update on the manufacturing of the Commander X16. And
then after that, I'm going to address some of the mis-information that has to be going around.
So the fist bit of news is that the keyboards finally showed up. This was the conclusion
of work that was originally started by Perifractic back in 2019. Up to this point,
we've been making our own keybaords by putting stickers on the keys of generic
Perixx keyboards. But the end goal was always to have Perixx manufacture custom keyboards for us.
So this is what 1,000 Commander X16 keybaords looks like. It takes up about the same space
as a car in my garage, which is an interesting coincidence because you could buy a really nice
brand new car for what I paid for these. And that was before we even did the fundraiser.
I was pleasantly surprised that Perixx actually put our logo on the shipping boxes. Each box
contains 20 keyboards. And each keyboard is in its own little X16 branded cardboard box. So this is
how the end user will receive the keyboard. So, let's compare with one of the prototype
keyboards we've been using up to this point. they are remarkably similar,
but the final production version does look better, and certainly a lot less labor on
our end, since there are no stickers to apply. OK, so a lot of people have asked about the
status on the shortage of Yamaha YM2151 chips. I have some updates on that too. First of all,
I'll take this opportunity to say that I have it on good authority that the same guy that is
selling the little Book 8088 laptop that has been taking the community by storm,
is also the same guy that bought up hoards of Yamaha chips, including the YM2151. It's pretty
clear why he wanted the OPL3 chips, but I am not yet sure why he wanted the 2151s.
Anyway, we finally managed to find a supplier who has real chips. And we've already got enough
stock on hand to cover the next year's worth of production. But due to the scaricity of these, I'm
not going to divuldge exaclty where we are getting them. However, I do have some interesting news
related to that. It turns out there is another chip we can use besides the YM2151. And that is
the YM2164. so this chip was used in a number of Yamaha synthesizer products, and it turns
out is is about 99% compatible with the YM2151. There are some minor differences with the two
chips, but it involves features of the chip that so far, nobody has even used. And thus
we tested all existing Commander X16 software and it all worked perfectly. So, that means
some boards will ship with one chip and some with the other, but it shouldn't affect any software.
OK, so now let's talk about the manufacturing of the boards. If you recall, we were working
on streamlining our production process with some better equipment last time.
And despite a number of challenges, we did manage to produce some boards with the new
equipment. But it became apparently obvious that we still likely wouldn't be able to
produce more than two or three boards per day, consuming massive amounts of labor to do this.
So, we reached out to Suntronic, an electronic manufacturing company here in the Dallas area.
We took a tour of the facility and decided to work with them. So we're going to have them manufacture
the main board, but Kevin is still going to produce the Vera boards by hand for the moment.
And today is the big day. I'm on my way to Richardson, which is on the complete
opposite side of town from me, and I'm going to get to see the X16 being manufactured.
And so, this is it. This is the place where the magic is going to happen.
This is their wall of products they are most proud of. I hope the X16 might make it to the
shelf one day. And here's a timeline of the company. Also, for some reason I spotted a
Tesla cyberquad in the hallway. I'm told the employees ride this around sometimes.
Everyone that goes into the manufacturing area has to wear one of these anti-static
jackets. You might be getting a flashback to Doctor Krankenstein. I also had to wear
these special straps on my shoes. And then upon entering the manufacturing area, I have to test
myself with this machine to make sure my feet are properly grounded. And you can see I passed.
Obviously the place is huge and they are working on many different products simultaneously. They
took me around to where the X16 boards were being worked on. They had about 50 of them
being populated, and another 50 or so stacked up over here waiting for their turn. There are
monitors every so often that display the board showing the orientation of all of the parts.
Through hole parts like this, especially at low quantities like the X16, are actually populated by
hand. Typically an employee will take a handfull of a single part, such as these audio capacitors,
and just go down the line putting them in one board after the next, then move to the
next part. A very efficient way of doing it. They finished populating the first board so
that I could witness the wave solder process. The first step is to spray the bottom of the board
with flux. Then it is fed into the wave solder machine, checking one last time to make sure
all parts are standing up straight. This machine has basically a fountain of flowing hot solder.
And here comes the board, after going through the preheat stage. The
board does not noticeably warp since only a portion of it is being heated at a time,
and it's being held with clamps on the sides. Once the board is finished soldering,
it is removed from the machine and placed inside this special grating. Then it is run through,
for lack of a better term, a giant washing machine the size of a 1970s American sedan. Once
it emerges from that, it goes into a dryer. And here I am, taking the first board off
the production line. For me, this is almost like seeing a child being born. I'm definitely quite
happy with the appearance. Of course, this isn't the end yet. Now the board is taken over to have
some final work done. In this case, an employee removes any masks, which are basically stickers
put on there to prevent certain areas from being soldered to, such as the screw holes. And then she
proceeds to cut any leads that are too long. next, the board goes over to another station,
this time for quality control. This employee looks to make sure all of the parts are placed
correctly, and then looks on the back for any solder bridges, or any joints that didn't get
soldered correctly. And, she actually spots not one, but two solder bridges,
as you can see here. So, she flags them with little arrow stickers pointing to the problem.
Then the board moves over to another station. Here, another employee removes the solder bridges.
Of course, it doesn't end here. Even after Suntronic delivers the boards to us,
there's a lot more work to be done. Unfortunately, we have to swap out a capacitor to a different
value. This was our fault, not Suntronics, by the way. Then we have to cut a trace and
install a single bodge wire. This affects the way the IRQs behave and although it works without
this bodge, this addresses some fringe use-cases. Then, of course, we have to program 100 ROM chips.
And since the VERA is an FPGA, these all have to be programmed manually the first time,
as well as our microcontroller that handles the keyboard and power management.
Then it's time to start populating the chips. Kevin uses a special tool to bend the leads to
the right angle to go into the sockets. Then it's time to put all of the chips in place.
And next comes the Vera. Since it has actual connectors and stuff on the daughterboard,
it needs to be anchored in place well, so we use these standoffs and bolts.
Oh, and since we want to ship each unit with an SD-card full of demo programs and games,
we have to pull all of those out of their packages, format, and copy stuff over to each one.
And last, it's time for testing. We need to test both composite and VGA output, as well as sound,
and the controller ports. One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is just by playing a
game. Although at some point we hope to develop an all-inclusive test program just for this purpose.
And the last thing to do is box it all up and place it on the pile of ones ready to ship out.
OK, now I’m going to address some of the mis-information. So,
You know, first of all, it’s okay if you don’t like the computer. I mean,
it’s not going to be for everybody obviously, but if you’re going to hate on the Commander X16,
I would rather you at least hate on it for real reasons and not made up ones.
So, one thing I’ve seen repeated over and over again. There’s this narrative that “The 8-Bit guy
promised it would be $50” and now we’re selling it for $500. And so, none of that is true. But
I can see why some people might think that. If you go to the very first video I did on
my dream computer back in early 2019, I posed a list of requirements that I wanted to aim for.
And $50 was the target. But at the time, there was literally nothing designed. it was just a goal.
And then if you skip forward just a few months later, also in 2019,
once the computer was starting to take shape, I presented this plan, where the first generation
would be all DIP package, and be as much as $300. And, of course that was before the pandemic, parts
shortages, and inflation. And all of that sort of thing. So then, a few months ago I released
this video where me and Kevin said that the first 82-ish boards would be sold for $500. And I think
a lot of people might have just stopped watching after that. But just a few minutes later in
the same video, we said that subsequent runs of the product would be $350. And so that has been
the officially stated price for quite some time. And so, that’s really only like $50 more than our
originally stated goal for the first generation product. And so some people have asked, “well,
David, if you can sell the board for $350 then why is this first batch, why was it $500?” And maybe
a lot of people didn’t understand that, but the reason was because we gave away about 30 boards
to various developers that were helping develop software for the platform. And so the first set
of buyers that paid $500, they were not only paying for their board, but for one of the
free ones that we gave out. That’s really the reason we charged so much for the first batch.
So, remember, $50 was always the end goal. And actually, I think we can still get there.
A little side tangent here. But my VIC-20 repair workshop was a few weeks ago at VCF here in the
Dallas area and we had a pretty decent turnout for it. We repaired a number of VIC-20 boards.
Jeri Ellsworth was one of those that attended, and after she finished repairing a VIC-20 board
she picked up out of the pile, we got to talking about the Commander X16. And one
of the questions I posed to her, knowing her previous experience in the field,
is whether or not she thought we could condense this down to a product that
could sell for under a hundred dollars, and she felt that was totally doable.
So, don't pay any attention to those naysayers who are saying it is impossible for us to do
what we’re saying that we’re going to do. They’re also the same naysayers who said that we would
never get this product to work, or that we would never get the production of it going,
or that we would never sell any, or that anyone would ever even want to buy one.
So, don’t pay a lot of attention to them. And so just so we're clear on that,
the product did go on sale on June 21st. And it completely sold out in just about 3 hours time.
We've already shipped most of them, and they are showing up at people's doorsteps already!
Another person to come by and check out the X16 was Amir Husain. He's the CEO of SparkCognition,
and a long-time friend and supporter of the channel. We were discussing X16 and
he spontaneously offered to help fund the next production run. So,
Kevin and I took a machine over to his house and better explained what it can do, and what
our long term plans are for it. And so he's also going to help us with funding the development of
our second generation system. As a result, the X16 project has a bright future ahead of it.
So where are we going from here? Well, right now we're gearing up to produce those thousand boards,
and we’re hoping to have those done in the next few months. It’s going to be more or less the same
board that we’ve already been selling. It’s going to have a few minor changes, like the elimination
of a bodge wire on the bottom and the cartridge port is going to be turned sideways. But other
than that, it’s basically the exact same board. Hey guys, I’ve got just a few more announcements
before the end of the video. One thing I wanted to just mention is that it seems like a lot of
my last videos have been about my personal pet projects, whether it be Petscii Robots,
or the Commander X16, and believe it or not the next video is also going to be about one
of my pet projects, which is going to be the big solar test I’m going to be doing here.
It was not planned that way. It’s just kind of a coincidence that all of these things ended up
coming together around the same time. So, the rest of the year after that should be back to ordinary
videos. I’ve got a lot of history videos and stuff I’m planning to do. So stick around for those. I
did want to mention, though, I didn’t produce any videos last month. In the month of June. And the
reason is because in May I released that Petscii Robots video, and I had made this announcement
that I wasn’t going to be doing merchandise sales for much longer. And everybody in the world
decided to order something from me. So, I’ve had thousands of orders. And while that may sound like
a great thing, it also took a month to ship them all. And it wasn’t just me. I actually had to hire
multiple temporary employees to help me box and make the disks, and put all of this stuff together
and ship it all. So, I mean, I worked like 12 hours a day for a month just to get all of that
merchandise shipped. And there’s still 430 orders in the queue, but I can’t ship those yet. Those
are all Super Nintendo versions. So I wanted to have a little update on that. I had only made 300
of those Super Nintendo cartridges. And all 300 of them sold out within a few hours of releasing
that video. But I did allow backorders on there, so hundreds more orders came in for Super Nintendo
Petscii Robots, and so I had do order more shells, more PCBs, and it’s just going to take a while for
those to come in. And I know people keep emailing me saying “hey David, you know, I made this order,
where’s my product?” So I just wanted to make an announcement, that I haven’t forgotten about
you. If you ordered a Super Nintendo thing, and it was backordered, it’s just going to be a few
more weeks. Maybe even a few more months because I think I’m going to have to do
a 3rd run of the cartridges. So anyway. But that wraps it up. So, as always, thanks for watching!