Frankly, I think everyone's missing the boat here :-). It
would certainly be a nightmare to support software for a wide
variety of existing platforms, GUIs, etc, for CAT. Why not
just build and sell the hardware? For around $50-$100 retail
one can build a small plastic box with 10 or 20 buttons, an LCD
screen, a microprocessor, and 64K or so of SRAM + EEPROM!
Sounds like a lot of money? Well, subtract what you'd charge
for the software anyway -- you're already at $10-$60 extra for
the box. Still not convinced? Consider the very popular FRP
game TORG(TM). My initial estimates are that it would cost me
about $100 just to buy all the manuals I would need to play the
game reasonably. Add another $50/yr to get the gee-whiz extras
and keep up with it. And I don't even get a fun pushbutton
toy! Add in the fact that everybody has to buy the manuals,
while only Referees would really need to own the box, and I
think you could market it fine...
Bart Massey
[email removed]