First Internet message and ...

[Liam Proven]

On Wed, 27 Nov 2019 at 15:47, Chuck Guzis via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> No, I meant "commercially viable" computers.

[1] You didn't say that, though.

[2] If it sells enough units for someone to make a living off it, that
is the _definition_ of "commercially viable".

As such, my first link qualifies. See:
https://rc2014.co.uk/history/

«
By May 2016 things were getting busy enough that I had to quit my full
time network infrastructure engineer job to dedicate my time to
RC2014…
»

>  Hobbyist stuff is
> interesting

My last link, the CB2, it based on an ATmega644. The AVR series had
sold 500 million units by 2003, and vendor Atmel was sold to Microchip
Technology for US$3.6 billion, 3 years ago. Microchip make the PIC32
used in the MaxiMite which I also linked to.

These devices sell, today, in the *billions* of units. Many have 8-bit
architectures.

Is that "commercially viable" enough for you? E.g. is outselling all
Intel x86 products annually significant enough?

Zilog still sells derivatives of the Z80 such as the Z180 and eZ80,
today. Modern Z80s run at up to 50MHz.

This is *not* a hobbyist business. It is a very large, profitable,
commercial, mainstream market.

The fact that hobbyists built little educational standalone computers
around them is really neither here nor there. It's a rounding error.
To think that because people build such stuff with them, or because
the Z80 once powered the Micro-Professor MPF-I, is to say that DEC was
a vendor of home and hobbyist toy computers because most of the
machines running today are maintained by hobbyists.

> I have zero interest in computer games.

Well, I have _slightly_ more than that -- in fact I actually bought a
new video game this year, for the first time in about 18 years -- but
really very little.

But you don't get kids interested in programming by telling them that
they can implement VisiCalc.

Most of us got interested in this stuff as kids, I suspect. I
certainly did. If we don't get more kids interested, then the field
will die.

So I suggest that you are trying (and, incidentally, failing) to be
too selective and judgemental and are failing to notice the forest
we're all standing in because you've found a beetle on the bark of the
nearest tree.

-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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