Current 6502 Kits

[floobydust]

Well, based on what Andre is attempting to put into a kit, or pre-assembled system... here's some feedback:

First, I agree that the majority of folks here are not your target audience. Many of us have already designed and built what we wanted to, which includes hardware and software.

Second, looking at his list of features, functions, expansion and the chips used... it's likely much more complex, (uses some old obsolete parts) and likely too much for the average newbie. IOW, you're building something for an advanced hobbyist, but the advanced hobbyist has already (designed and built) their own system(s).

Not to pour too much water on your idea of a kit, you do need to figure out who your target audience is... not an easy task. Ben Eater has sold a bunch of stuff to folks... which is all based on proto boards and a bunch of chips and wires. Perhaps an entry point would be to target those folks with a socketed PCB (kit or assembled) that will allow them to use the majority of the chips they already have and build something that's more flexible and expandable without dealing with multiple proto boards and hundreds of wires. You could offer an option that allows a decent entry level system at a low cost where they take advantage of the chips they already bought. Then you can offer some add-on boards to expand with. One of the key pieces would be some software that allows them to get something working beyond what Ben Eater has done. The CPLD is likely too complex in this scenario, so keeping a simpler approach will likely gain more acceptance for an entry level user.

Just trying to be a bit more constructive here.... but also realize that you (Andre) built a complex system that you want... that doesn't mean others will want to jump in at that level.

[BigEd]

It's not that Andre is targeting the wrong audience by posting on 6502, it's just that negative responses here don't mean much. Positive responses would still be meaningful.

It's also true that one would try to reach as large an audience as possible, which means finding other places to post too.

The few people here who post all the time - and I'm one of them - are not representative of the people here. It's easy to miss that.

[kernelthread]

I personally wouldn't buy the kit, but that's because I like to design and build my own stuff.
If you want to get a view of the market for this stuff you could have a look through this:

https://www.tindie.com/browse/vintagecomputing/

In particular there's this item:

https://www.tindie.com/products/semacht ... puter-kit/

He's charging $225 for that and it seems to have less functionality than your proposal (no video). On the other hand it runs CP/M so there will be loads of software available. There are also a fair number of RC2014 addons available, so it's more of an ecosystem than an isolated product.
Anyway he has 40 product reviews so I guess he must have sold a few units.

[BigEd]

The other thing to note, which a lot of people miss, is that the value of money is very variable. To some people $200 is an impulse buy or a show of support, for others it needs deliberation and planning, for others it's simply out of scope.

[drogon]

BigDumbDinosaur wrote:

For perspective, I’ve got about $100 invested in POC V1.3, which cost includes the SCSI host adapter. V1.3 is 65C816-powered, has 128K of RAM and runs at 16 MHz. Your Ruby system is also 65C816-powered and runs as fast (I think), plus has more RAM. No criticism intended toward anything André is proposing, but $200 plus shipping seems to be a lot to pay for an eight-bit system running at a relatively sedate 5 MHz. I don’t know where all the cost lies, but if it were me, I’d be looking for ways to get that price down.

It's not money that we've invested - it's time, energy and knowledge. How much is our time worth? How long have we spent learning, researching and working on our hobbys? How much are others who simply don't have the time or knowledge to get to that stage willing to pay?

I do think there is a market - and "retro" is till ticking along nicely, even after the covid rush - if anything I think it's made some people appreciate some of the older technologies even more. We just have to find things that fit and the right audience to appreciate it.

Just look at some of the niche food markets? I used to run an artisan bakery that started as a hobby and accidentally grew - people now are paying 3-5x what I was charging a few years ago for hand crafted patisserie and even sweet buns- the worlds gone mad! (Not to mention all those delivery meal in a box schemes!)

... also need to look at the right way to post stuff efficiently which today I suspect is the biggest headache - my bugbear right now is trying to get stuff from the US - I see something on e.g. ebay and think I'd like that - then look at postage - often 10x the price of the article, then there's import duty at 2%, VAT at 20% and the local postage surcharge. (and it may be that the taxes are actually imposed in the opposite order making it even more expensive). It's just not worth it especially for stuff like a Commander X16 or a Foenix board right now.

Even places like Tindie are irritating as they all charge in US dollars - great if you live in the US, but in the UK? I tried to buy some stuff from a UK seller who lived an hour or so away - I could have driven and paid him cash but he said it all had to go via Tindie which required money conversion fees and postage. Bah!

-Gordon

[plasmo]

kernelthread wrote:

He's charging $225 for that and it seems to have less functionality than your proposal (no video). On the other hand it runs CP/M so there will be loads of software available. There are also a fair number of RC2014 addons available, so it's more of an ecosystem than an isolated product.
Anyway he has 40 product reviews so I guess he must have sold a few units.

Spencer (RFC2795 ltd) has publicly stated that he'd sold over 4000 RC2014 products. Yes, he had sold quite a few units at nice chunk of changes.
Bill

[Andre]

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies.

I agree that many here are not the target market. I generally don't buy kits either. I just start a design and go straight to PCB. In many cases the shipping costs more than the PCB. It was always my goal to build my own system from scratch.

I have one more question, If you could build a 6502 SBC for say $50 what do you think is a good price to sell it for....not what you would pay for it....as little as possible obviously.

One faces many problems getting something like this off the ground.
The numbers are low...you're not getting economy of scale.
shipping is expensive.
you don't want to be self assembling...it's very time consuming and your time is more valuable. (been there done that, moved on)
support will consume more time
I've just scratched the surface here.

It's not just the cost of a few parts with some profit margin.
There are a surprising number of parts on my board and the costs add quickly.

Anyway curious to know what people think. The $50 is an arbitrary number.

Regards
Andre

[BigEd]

I've seen 3x bandied around: so, $50 parts makes for a $150 selling price. Some of the reason for that is returns and refunds, I think. If you don't have a generous policy about unhappy users, they spread the news of their unhappiness and it affects the perception of your product.

You'll also ideally want to buy in batches of components, and you will end up with wastage because you won't use all of everything. And you may have some production problems or test fails.

Of course, you could choose to sell for $55 and see what happens, but there's a good chance you'll lose money, and you will find great resistance to raising the price.

Also, people perceive quality in higher prices, and treat the purchase more seriously. That's a benefit.

I would certainly expect to charge shipping at cost, as an addition to the 3x pricing. And personally, any returns or refunds, I'd be inclined to reimburse the price, not the two way shipping as well. But that might be a bad judgement on my part.

Anything which moves internationally might cost more to the end-user in duties, taxes, and fees. You need to figure out what your position is on that: do you wrap these costs into your pricing, or are they the responsibility of the recipient?

Your time is the biggest input that has some cost, and it's not clear how to price it. If you want to quit the day job, your living expenses provide some guide to that. But it's a big variable.

[GARTHWILSON]

BigEd wrote:

I've seen 3x bandied around: so, $50 parts makes for a $150 selling price. Some of the reason for that is returns and refunds, I think.

That seems to be what my employers have gone with, although I don't have any input regarding what our products sell for.

Quote:

If you don't have a generous policy about unhappy users, they spread the news of their unhappiness and it affects the perception of your product.

It's a mystery how that works.  On the one hand, word-of-mouth advertising from happy customers works wonders, albeit very slowly. OTOH, disgruntled customers can be pretty loud, and spread their message quickly, although fortunately some people will realize it when this is just a person who complains about everything without bothering to first see if the problem is their own fault.  When we were selling high-end aircraft intercoms, occasionally I'd get a call from someone doing an installation, and they're having various problems and they're all upset that we sold them a piece of junk and they've spent so many hours on something they're going to have to rip out.  I can tell right away what they probably did wrong, but they're not ready to hear it; so instead, I guide them through the troubleshooting process which eventually brings them to some bonehead thing they did, and then they're super happy that I was patient and took the time with them when the problem wasn't our fault.  Then we've had them come up to the booth at airshows and trade shows and tell other potential customers how great our technical service was when the problem wasn't even our fault.

Quote:

You'll also ideally want to buy in batches of components, and you will end up with wastage because you won't use all of everything.

Yep.  The prices on some things drops precipitously when the quantities rise.  I get the 512Kx8 SRAMs for my 4Mx8 SRAM modules, from legitimate US industry distributors (not UTSource, eBay, etc.), for probably half of what a hobbyist would have to pay; but now orders have tapered off and I have tubes of them sitting here.  At least since I have a resale license, I didn't have to pay sales tax for them.  (I just have to collect sales tax on the completed modules if I sell to someone in California.)

Quote:

Also, people perceive quality in higher prices, and treat the purchase more seriously. That's a benefit.

There's someone who keeps emailing me about this or that Arduino or RPi or other module that's super cheap, and I think, "What's the point?" because if I'm serious about using it, the time I'll put into it will dwarf the up-front cost, and otherwise I have one more thing sitting around collecting dust.  I know that full well, so a really cheap price doesn't motivate me.

If the purpose is just to support the interest, it might be different from actually expecting to make money.  The things I sell on the front page of my site are really for the former, although if someone wanted to place a huge order that actually made some money, I wouldn't complain.  When I make a lot of something, I get a system going that results in less time spent on each one.  I find however that I put quite a bit of time into communicating with potential customers before they actually order, particularly with the 4Mx8 memory module, to make sure they understand the connector options and I put the right one on, in addition to the pointers in making sure they understand the pinout right (since it's easy to mess up) and the obvious things like address to send it to and method of payment.  Then there are the ones who take a lot of time and then don't order.  I'll be friendly to all of them; but if I had to count my time, including to the ones who are just figuring out what they want to do and then go a different direction with their project and don't order...well, you get the idea.  Since I'm not really in it for the money, I have taken the risk of sending things even overseas without insurance, and so far I have not had any problems.  The postal service to the few non-US countries I've sent them to has not caused any problems, nor has anyone taken advantage and lied and said they didn't receive it when they actually did and just want another one, free.  My impression is that the reason US-shipped things are so horribly expensive in other countries is that the insurance is expensive, or the shipper insists on using a service that's supposedly more dependable than those countries' postal services...so you have to get a second mortgage to pay for it.  I test everything before it goes out and am careful to avoid ESD damage, and I package the parts in anti-static bags with the ESD warning stickers, and fortunately there have not been any warranty claims so far.

I know my employers could not operate this way though, since they're in business for money and paying for the costs of life and also have to pay the employees.

I expect the greater market would be schools.  There however, there's a lot of competition, and the bean counters at the schools may go with what appears to be cheap and "high-tech" (whatever that means to non-technical people), regardless of whether or not it's the best way for the students to learn low-level computer basics.  They may not even know what a 6502 is.  Regardless, it would probably be important to have some very well written curriculum.  If I knew how to get into such a field of computer education, I would probably be in it right now.  I have imagined it for the last 36 years.  I would very much like to see a successful 6502 entry into that field, whether I'm involved or not.

[plasmo]

BigEd wrote:

I've seen 3x bandied around: so, $50 parts makes for a $150 selling price.

Talking to the owner of small local factory producing PC-compatible boards many many years, I have also learned that end product price is 2.5X to 3X of material cost. 2.5X for PC-compatible boards because testing, supports and documentations are simpler; 3X for custom-built because of additional production support and testings. This is for production-ready design with designer supplies all drawings, tester, diagnostics and camera-ready packaging information. I remembered walking away from that conversation vowing to simplify my designs brutally to save every gates, resistors, screws and pared away any jumper options.

I should point out that 3X rule is for assembled & tested product, ready to ship. I will also point out that kits are no cheaper than assembled/tested boards; you either have to pay an assembler/tester or pay people to kit up board. You will have more returns and need greater support for kits. I'll go with assembled/tested board when possible.
Bill

[BigEd]

Quite interesting that 3x is a figure for commercial businesses: they have premises and staff and capital costs, which the hobbyist producer does not. Although, the hobbyist might need to buy fancy electronic kit, and consumables, and might be heating a space which they don't normally heat. (Or cool.)

I've read that restaurant food pricing matches three roughly equal costs: premises, staff, and ingredients. Of course restaurant food pricing covers a very wide range. Anyhow, it's another example of 3x.

[kernelthread]

I reckon the biggest problem with selling a kit would be the amount of support required (or at least requested) by your customers. Trying to figure out why what they've built doesn't work and explaining that they can't have their money back because they broke something by not following the instructions.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

FWIW, Ben Eater’s kit runs around $90 plus shipping.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

kernelthread wrote:

I reckon the biggest problem with selling a kit would be the amount of support required (or at least requested) by your customers. Trying to figure out why what they've built doesn't work and explaining that they can't have their money back because they broke something by not following the instructions.

In the case of a certain, well-known Youtube hawker of 6502 kits, support is minimal. That’s why we have people signing up here and posting, “I built Ben Eater’s 6502 kit and it isn’t working. Help!”

[BigEd]

It's great that those people with a new 6502 interest have found this forum and we can help them!

Of course, anyone who doesn't want to help can let others go first... no need even to declare disgruntlement.