Update for December

I'm taking a little break today, so I thought I'd give you an update on what has been going on and what I'll be working on this month.

First of all, I just spent the entire day yesterday (from about 10:00am until 10:00pm) packing and shipping the remaining Planet X2 backorders.  What happened is I thought I had enough materials to produce 300 copies here in the USA and I realized a few weeks ago that... Ooops.. I only had 200 of the cassette tapes.  So Anders immediately ordered another 100 more of them for me, and I've been waiting on those to arrive.   Once they showed up, I had to pack and ship the remaining 100 orders.  

A lot of people have been asking if I'm going to get more made. The answer is no.  The minimum order for the boxes was 500 units. I do not believe I could ever sell another 500 boxed sets.  So, instead going forward I'll only be selling the "lite" version which has just the manual, floppy disk, and digital download. On the bright side, it's only $20.  I can produce as many of the disks as I need on demand.  I already had 1,000 labels since that was the minimum order on those.  And the manuals I can get made in lots of 100, which is more reasonable.  

However, I have already started work on the MS-DOS version of Planet X3... that's right, it isn't going to be a direct port. Since it will be so much more advanced and even the screen layout will be different, I decided it would be a sequel instead of a port.   I'm writing the first version in CGA graphics, but don't worry, by the time it is released it will work in all of the popular video modes, including VGA and even Tandy 16-color mode. Unlike Planet X2, I plan to release videos about its progress at various milestones.  I wouldn't expect to see a video on it until at least January or February.

So what videos will I be working on next?  Well, I have one that's partially complete.  It's on a new device known as the OPL2LPT.. Essentially it is an Adlib card that connects to the parallel port.  This is sort of an infuriating situation.  A guy named Serge in Beligum created these. He sent me a sample a few months ago.  I thought it was such a cool product (and you will too, trust me!) I ordered 50 of the things from him to put in my web store to sell here in the USA.   I figured people would be mad if I released the video and they couldn't actually buy the product, so I figured I'd wait until they arrived.  Well, they arrived at US Customs in New York back on October 22 and they're still sitting there.  Serge opened an investigation but they haven't told him anything other than "we're looking into it."  However, he already started selling it over in Europe. So I've decided to finish up that video and release it next whether I have the stock or not.  All I can do is hope those eventually show up, as I sunk a lot of money into those.

After that, I'm planning to do an episode covering the original Commodore 64 "Christmas Demo" and then show some other christmas demos from other platforms and such.  Should be a nicely Christmas themed episode for the season.

A lot of people have been asking when the "Commodore History Part 3 - The Commodore 64" would be released.  Well, the VIC-20 episode was 30 minutes long and took me 2 weeks to make.  I suspect the C64 episode will be the most important episode in the series and I am really concerned as to how long it will take me to produce it.  So I thought I'd put that off until some of these other projects were done first.  In fact, that may end up being a two parter.   Also, for those wondering, I plan to make similar documentaries on all 80s computers, but I think the Commodore ones will be the most extensive because they are the ones I know the best.

As for 8-Bit Keys.  The next episode will be about 3 modern "toy keyboards" and see how they compare to what were considered toys back in the 80s.  Yes, I'll be heavily featuring the cat keyboard I showed at the tail of the last episode.  i hope to start filming that as soon as I'm done with the Adlib thing.

And here is just a list of other random upcoming videos in no particular order that I'll be working on over the next few months:

The Color Maximite single-board computer
The Pi-DP8 (that LGR sent me)
8-bit Keys episodes on those two Yamaha keyboards I recently received.
Restoration of the Compaq Portable 386
The Tandy 1000 series history