@TrevorDick

I know why custom boards in low numbers are more expensive than standard hardware. But people are here always saying that with using this PPC processor and that component you could make a cheap PPC board and I only said it would need a price aggressive and thus risky strategy by all parties involved. I can understand that you are not wanting to risk lots of money (you already do that partly by prefinancing hardware development). Such a strategy is too risky for one person or a small company like Acube.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 23-Jul-2014 at 11:26 AM.

@OlafS25

"it would need a much more aggressive price strategy (including taking more risks)."

You can do an aggressive price strategy if you produce at least 10.000 board per batch.

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@AmigaBlitter

Or even more... but if you sell less you make lots of losses. One of reasons why Commodore went bankrupt (they had lots of A600 they could not sell). And Acube is a small company and a-eon is one person. I understand that they think twice before doing that (or even think about it). And because of that I do not think that there will be ever cheaper PPC hardware than now even if it "could" be done. I do not know if there are PPC boards mass produced but even if propably only for embedded market and not for desktop.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 23-Jul-2014 at 11:40 AM.

@pavlor

Quote:

pavlor wrote: @Nibunnoichi Quote: It makes a big difference when you pay >600€ for the CPU alone. Cost of CPU is not the most expensive factor - small scale manufacturing of dedicated board is. Eg. APM86491 SoC (1 GHz, SATA2, USB3.0, 2x PCIe x1, Gbit LAN) is for 45 USD in small batches (50+) APM86692 (dual core 1.2 GHz) for 110 USD Freescale P2041 (4 cores 1.5 GHz) 250 USD etc.

Yes it is, i'm talking about current products (X1000 with PA6T) not of theoretical/future stuff. Also, if you're creating a custom board you have to take into account the costs of the design+prototype+corrections loop for various iterations, outsourced to an external company.

Last edited by Nibunnoichi on 23-Jul-2014 at 11:48 AM.

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@OlafS25

A-eon is paying for varisys for the design & production etc. of nemo and cyrus boards, it's part of the system price to be able to continue.

And when one compares nemo, cyrus or SAM to this https://www.power.org/solution/p-cubed/ , you get hints of why SAM is 5* more expensive and x1000 is 10* more expensive.

(P-Cuped is not yet officially cancelled, but it will be, I'm pretty sure, because T10xx design makes more sense now etc.)
"A final price has not been revealed, but it’s expected to be less than $200 (€155)"(price estimate)

Last edited by KimmoK on 23-Jul-2014 at 12:39 PM.

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- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

i have found this:
http://www.elma.com/en/products/systems-solutions/embedded-boards/product-pages/single-board-computers/3u-vpx-single-or-dual-core-freescale-sbc-tic-ppc-vpx3a-detail/?sc_lang=de-EU
http://www.embeddedplanet.com/products/single-board-computers/freescale-powerpc
https://www.men.de/products/search,PowerPC®-boards,expertise.powerpc.html

but all for embedded market. If I google powerpc + desktop I find Macs but no new buyable solution.

So there is no off-the-shelf board for desktop available and custom is of course expensiv

@TrevorDick

Quote:

I have publicly stated on numerous occasions why custom build hardware, designed and built from scratch, can not be cheaper than mass produced off-the-shelf hardware. I

Yes you did. But the more interesting question would be: Why use custom hardware at all? For some reason, nobody's ever answering that one.

Why does the 'competition' (for lack of a better word) run on PPC hardware that costs less than ten percent of our custom PPC hardware, is (much) more easily available and as fast (or faster) than what OS4 users get while potential OS4 customers are denied that option?

Last edited by cgutjahr on 23-Jul-2014 at 02:17 PM.

@cgutjahr

Quote:

while potential OS4 customers are denied that option?

Both OS4 and MorphOS choosed their way. It seems dedicated expensive hardware is surprisingly attractive for fair number of users (there is probably around 400 X1000s). Sure, many features (or possible features) of these computers are only in realm of promises or even dreams (Gallium3D, UVD, USB3.0 ...).

@cgutjahr

Quote:

Why does the 'competition' (for lack of a better word) run on PPC hardware that costs less than ten percent of our custom PPC hardware, is (much) more easily available and as fast (or faster) than what OS4 users get while potential OS4 customers are denied that option?

Whats stopping you from doing that yourself ?
Then all you need to do is hire a bunch of developers to port OS4 to it, may take a few years. Then be a nice guy & give them away cheap at a loss.

Some like MorpOS, some like OS4 & will pay the price to run it, some of us know how to save money to get what we want. The X1000 proved that ppl will pay for a faster OS4 system.


@thread

OS4 development is alive & well, anyone who says its not is spreading BS.

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@pavlor

Esp. now that the cloud is being used so much (I personally use OneDrive a lot, but others use whatever cloud storage they use) I don't even see the point USB 3.0 (in general). 2.0 is more than good enough for what it does. In any case, Firewire is a nice alternative but 3.0 is just not worth it IMHO so I don't see the point in driver support for OS4 for that.
If someone wants to do it in their spare time then why not. But the important people behind OS4 shouldn't focus on it IMHO.

_________________
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@OlafS25

You misunderstood what I meant a little bit.

I may be wrong, but I believe the Hyperion-Amiga lawsuit meant that no system could be sold if it was also bundled with an Amiga-like operating system. Hence why CUSA couldn't sell any systems with AROS and had to go with that silly Linux distribution rebranded as Commodore OS.

I was just wondering if a cheap retro system could be bundled with AROS, or no? If such a system got a license to the Amiga name, could they include an Amiga-ish OS, which AROS surely is?

The fact that such a device may not even be considered a full computer exactly, nor even require an OS to be installed (just include an SD card with the OS on it), could be loopholes, but again I don't know what the restrictions were exactly.

@Vistaus

Quote:

Firewire is a nice alternative but 3.0 is just not worth it

No computer with FireWire here in my home, USB3.0 only.

@Nameless

Quote:

but I believe the Hyperion-Amiga lawsuit meant that no system could be sold if it was also bundled with an Amiga-like operating system

Computer with Amiga brand to be more precise.

Quote:

Hence why CUSA couldn't sell any systems with AROS

Exactly.

Quote:

and had to go with that silly Linux distribution rebranded as Commodore OS.

I don´t think they were that much interested in AROS.

Quote:

but again I don't know what the restrictions were exactly.

You can read Settlement Agreement yourself (it is (1. b) on page 3).

@TrevorDick

Quote:

I have publicly stated on numerous occasions why custom build hardware, designed and built from scratch, can not be cheaper than mass produced off-the-shelf hardware. I think you know that but.......

Please correct me if I'm wrong but to me the situation looks somewhat like this:

Lets say assume I would build an AMIGA card.
Lets say a CPU card, or small stand alone device.

Lets say I could produce the card /device for $50 per unit.
Lets say I see that people in the AMIGA market would probably pay up to $400.


Now its a very simple decision : Do I want to make a living from this for me,my family and for my employees ?
Then it makes sense to try to get a good price for the board.
Its very simple this way.. And I understand this.


I think to change the glbal situation for AMIGA many devices need to be sold.
The situation will not change by selling 500 units.
Someone would need to sell 20,000 units or 50,0000 or 100,000 units to start making a change.

What is your opinion to this?
Do you think that its possible to sell that many devices still?

Last edited by BigGun on 23-Jul-2014 at 08:35 PM.

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@BigGun

I do, if marketed properly.

Look at that old C-64 in a joystick device and the Raspberry Pi as examples. 10s of thousands would be very doable, if marketed correctly, at least in my opinion.

Price is key though. I'd say $35 would be a lot better than $50, but $50 may still be cheap enough. You need to be at disposable income levels. People here wouldn't be your main target. You'd be going after former Amiga people/retro gamers, who see an old Amiga for $50, bundled with some games, and figure 'Why not?' At that price level there is nothing to lose, and they'll view it the same as paying for a console game.

Im a bit curious if demo coders or coders in general will find Classic accelerators intresting to use.

Ive gotten the sense from Britelite that hes not overly intrested in NG because being able to create amazing production on quite limited hardware platforms.
With that in mind, I do wonder if Britelite (and other sceners) will take advantage of the Classic boost or not

And to echo what Nameless said; at $35-50 price range, you would probarly find that people buy more than one.

Last edited by Overflow on 23-Jul-2014 at 08:40 PM.

@OlafS25

Quote:

including taking more risks

I think touching the toxic Amiga IP was more than enough risk, but whatever.

#6

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@cgutjahr

Quote:

Yes you did. But the more interesting question would be: Why use custom hardware at all? For some reason, nobody's ever answering that one.

Going back to the documented statement by Trevor that X1000 was not his idea, you are indirectly asking for a response from the wrong party, imo.

#6

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@Nameless

Quote:

You'd be going after former Amiga people/retro gamers, who see an old Amiga for $50, bundled with some games, and figure 'Why not?'

I think you are right.
There must hundreds of thousands of ex-AMIGA owners which could think like this.
And you are absouletely right, it must be an amount of money where people do not think twice about it.

I assume real numbers is the only chance to change the AMIGA fate...

But can this really bre done?
Who could do this?

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@BigGun

What is the price of an FPGA that could hold both CPU + Amiga chipsets? Again, I assumed they were way too pricey to use in a sub $50 device, so figured it'd have to be ASIC. And that would require someone with deep pockets.

Could an FPGA system be put together cheap enough?