Re: Funding

[Lonnie.Reed@xxxxxxxxxxx (Lonnie Reed)]

I was wondering how much it costs, to fab an f21. It looks like $1k per chip
for 25 chips = $25k. How much for say 100 chips? How many does it take before
prices begin to drop? I agree with whoever was saying that the "fixed" version
of the f21 (f21e?) that would run with packed instructions would be very 
helpful in getting the chip more attention. Since was only a few output
transisitors that were too small and overheating it should be trivial to 
fix it and send it back to the fab (except for the cost that is :-(  )

Well, I'm kinda poor, but I am willing to contribute. I will buy newsletters
and t-shirts. even a prototype chip. I am interested in making a "PC" out
of a handful of f21 series chips. i would like a machine like the C64 or
something, that had a specific hardware layout, instead of PC's where you
have to write code to support many different hardwares. If the machine
design is "static" it seems like you can squeeze more out of the hardware
as people write software for it. Look at the early Atari2600 games compared
to the later ones. The originals were blocky and ugly, where the newer games
were better all around. I would like the software to be right up against
the metal of the machine, but today's machines have so many hardware options
it is nearly impossible to optimize the hardware without bloat, software
complexity, unless you optimize for a particular hardware configuration and 
then it won't run on another pc...

One idea is to have a bloated system, that can handle most pc hardware and
it optimzes itself when you first run it, by getting rid of code that supports
hardware you don't have, and creates an image that is stripped down to support
your configuration only. Maybe metacompile a highlevel forth to create optimzed
assembly for the hardware...

Lonnie