Project described is very cool! Kudoz to Mike, the author. Personally I'd never do a clone of an obscure system like that. Why? Clone a (once) popular system,

Project described is very cool! Kudoz to Mike, the author. Personally I'd never do a clone of an obscure system like that. Why? Clone a (once) popular system, and when it works, you've got a wealth of software to run on it day 0. Including software useful during development like test ROMs, debuggers, assemblers, stuff that doesn't need keyboard input to show something (as mentioned in article), etc. And if that software comes as a known-good cartridge (or ROM), then if it doesn't work you know the problem is in the hardware. When clone works, project could be interesting to many others. Much value of any system is the library of software for it. Obscure system limits your options a great deal here. Custom design means doing everything from scratch. Exception would be a tweaked version of popular system. Where eg. you could 'correct historical mistakes', simplify design, aid programming in some way, add modern type video output, etc. Then existing software would either work, or be easy to port. Like between systems with same CPU and same video chip. Either that, or use a similar concept as historic system, but then go all-in with modern features (much faster cpu, many MB's of RAM, high-res graphics, flash storage, modern OS, etc). If done right, such a system can still have that nostalgic, tinker-friendly feel to it.