@ChrisH

Quote:

OK, I'll take your bait (for once). A-Eon apparently just got another batch of X1000s for sale, so they seem to sell well enough at those (extreme) prices they can justify cheaper (but still expensive) machines, and leave the 'cheap' end of the market to A-Cube.

The thing is, I think a lot of people were expecting to see a sort of A500/A1200 to the A3000/A4000 that is X1000.
This really doesn't make sense to me, because how many people that have just put down 3000 $ for the X1000 will be willing to put anothet 2000$ish(estimate based on Sam460 price) for another one?
That is their market with these boards, and it's already been saturated with the X1000.

What OS4 really needed was a nice, cheap mobo with decent performance and expandability.

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@Kronos

Quote:

Why doesn't one of the 2 companies atleast try what Genesi/bPlan did back with the Efika ?

Efika was crippled by design. 128 MB RAM in 2007? Bad joke.

Quote:

That is create a reasonable powerfull minimalistic board that can be produced cheap enough to be sold to tinkerers outside "Amiga", thereby allowing an economy of scale to really kick in.

Some PowerPC SoC would be suitable for that purpose (P1013/P1022), but then these aren´t fully compatible with our current CPUs.

@WolfToTheMoon

Quote:

This really doesn't make sense to me, because how many people that have just put down 3000 $ for the X1000 will be willing to put anothet 2000$ish(estimate based on Sam460 price) for another one?

I think Cyrus is targeted at people who want more powerfull computer than SAM (and with better expansion options), but can´t pay such high price for X1000. 2000 USD would be really temting price for me.

Personally, I don't see the problem.

ACube do the low-end hardware (Sams are hardly overpriced these days, when you consider the low volume of production especially) and A-Eon do the middle-high end systems.

We don't want too many competing fish in the pond, this way nobody steps on anybody else's toes: and in such a small market as this, that can only be a Good Thing.

@pavlor

Quote:

pavlor wrote: Efika was crippled by design. 128 MB RAM in 2007? Bad joke.

Maybe thats why it was discontiued in 2007 ?

Sure RAM was it's Achilles heel, but for what it was supposed to do when it was released in 2005 it was actually sufficient.

Don't forget the RasberryPi was sold in 2012 with just 256MB and noone really complained (mind you noone did when the upped it to 512MB later on).

So, yeah a new PPC-Efika should atleast have 512MB, better 1GB.
Those chips used in the new AEon-board really have everthing needed on board except for a GPU, pretty much like the 5200B used in the Efika, now "all" that needs to be done is creating a mobo that makes those ports accessable and find a way to buy the chips at reasonable rates.

Last edited by Kronos on 07-Jul-2013 at 08:56 AM.

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- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Cool_amigaN

Why small batch production? If one finally goes x86, just decide for one or two ready-made boards from a big volume supplier to be supported by "AmigaOS 5" and you're done.

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amiga-news.de

@Kronos

If you look at the prices you will not be able to create 99$ mobo or even 199$

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=P5020&tab=Buy_Parametric_Tab&nodeId=018rH325E40180&pspll=1&fromSearch=false

It starts from 200$ plus VAT, OS, RAM, GPU, PCB...

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Sam440ep-flex 800MHz 1GB RAM R9250 128MB SB Live!

@Kronos

Quote:

Sure RAM was it's Achilles heel, but for what it was supposed to do when it was released in 2005 it was actually sufficient.

It would be much more useable even with only 256 MB RAM (eg. like uA1), 128 MB is simply too low for NG.

Quote:

So, yeah a new PPC-Efika should atleast have 512MB, better 1GB.

Something like p-cubed with compatible CPU, that would be great.

@mr2

Quote:

If you look at the prices you will not be able to create 99$ mobo or even 199$

As I wrote, SoC like P1013/P1022 are suitable for sub 200 USD design.

However, I will rather buy "powerful" but expensive Cyrus (if ACube doesn´t release something portable).

@pavlor

OK, I was referring to:


Quote:

Those chips used in the new AEon-board really have everthing needed on board except for GPU.....now "all" that needs to be done is creating a mobo that makes those ports accessable and find a way to buy the chips at reasonable rates.

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Sam440ep-flex 800MHz 1GB RAM R9250 128MB SB Live!

@mr2

I doubt the official prices for the 5200B were much better in 2005

So yeah one would have to convince FreeScale that they should be pushing into such markets, and if that doesn't work out one would need to look to other alternatives (like AMCC).

Just buying any CPU/SoC at bulk prices and then building >boring< mobos around it just won't cut. Unless you are satisfied to selling to the same tiny circle of costumers over and over again.

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- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Senex

We (I and Trevor on the interview :P) hypothesize on the above example that although x86, the motherboard will be (again) custom, thus leading to a small production batch.

Of course, any Amiga company/retailer can purchase a thousand already available MSI/ASUS/whatever motherboards from a Thai/Chinese factory, built a complete system around them with psu, gfx, hd, ssd, case etc., get in contact with Hyperion and/or MorhpOS and start porting the OS.

Still, that would lead to different implications (software wise) that extent the scope of my original post. I just wanted to point out that be it PPC, ARM or x86, custom mobos equals to limited batches and that consequently rise substantially the NRE costs.

Last edited by Cool_amigaN on 07-Jul-2013 at 09:33 AM.

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@Kronos

Quote:

So yeah one would have to convince FreeScale that they should be pushing into such markets, and if that doesn't work out one would need to look to other alternatives (like AMCC).

Sure, if one could do that I'm all in but it sounds like a kind of magic ;) "We" are much smaller than in 2005. For the sake of the healthy expectations in the future I'd rather talk about 400$/500$ mobo.
We have to add taxes, profits, OS.. Come on guys, lets forget 99$/199$ mobos

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Sam440ep-flex 800MHz 1GB RAM R9250 128MB SB Live!

Trying to get back on topic which is Silicon Dreams.


Any chance of asking AmigaKit to sponsor a run of Catweasel PCI to help fill some PCI slots on all these OS 4 boards?

I know ANT (hello) are there any other Amiga and retro groups there? Names please.

@Senex

Quote:

Why small batch production? If one finally goes x86, just decide for one or two ready-made boards from a big volume supplier to be supported by "AmigaOS 5" and you're done.

I think any true Amigan should design and build his own motherboard
based on his own preference and then make it in 100 pieces
quantity and try and sell it to the world ... It's the only
reasonable thing to do ...

Last edited by blizz1220 on 07-Jul-2013 at 09:39 AM.

@Cool_amigaN

Great summary of why custom motherboards for a low-volume market are something to avoid if at all possible. Sadly on PPC these days there isn't a great deal of choice.

Moving to x86 and retaining this 'belief' (I can think of no more suitable word) that custom motherboards offer some kind of advantage, would be ridiculous.

----------

I do wish congratulations to Trevor, I am at least pleased to see that A-Eon are following up the X1000 with another product.

The P5020 has some attractive features, and might even outperform the X1000 (I wonder in fact if Cyrus is what the X1000 should-have-been).

10 year long-term production guaranteeed by Freescale on the P5020 also, so I'd expect to see Cyrus around for a long while, and without the price fluctuations that have affected the sustainability of the X1000.

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Troll - n., A disenfranchised former potential customer who remains interested enough to stay informed and express critical opinions.
opp., the vast majority who voted silently with their feet.

@Boot_WB

Quote:

The P5020 has some attractive features, and might even outperform the X1000 (I wonder in fact if Cyrus is what the X1000 should-have-been).

Freescale promises 3 DMIPS/MHz (in comparison to 2.3 DMIPS/MHz in case of G4 or 2.2 DMIPS/MHz of PA6T), but e5500 core lacks AltiVec. Only application benchmarks can show, how powerfull this CPU really is.

@Trevor & Team

Very nice news indeed, well done! hope it all went well!

Looking forward to the updated Blog!

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~Yes I am a Kiwi, No, I did not appear as an extra in 'Lord of the Rings'~
1x AmigaOne X5000 2.0GHz 2gM RadeonR9280X AOS4.x
3x AmigaOne X1000 1.8GHz 2gM RadeonHD7970 AOS4.x

@Dirk-B

Quote:

Dirk-B wrote: @Boot_WB Hmm, acube = litle socs and a-eon = big socs?

Reminds me of one of my favourite Engineering adages:

"Bigger whorls have little whorls that feed on their velocity;
Little whorls have smaller whorls, and so on to viscosity."

A beautifully succint summary of the behaviour of fluids.

/OT

Last edited by Boot_WB on 07-Jul-2013 at 10:02 AM.

_________________
Troll - n., A disenfranchised former potential customer who remains interested enough to stay informed and express critical opinions.
opp., the vast majority who voted silently with their feet.

@Cool_amigaN

seriously for what doing a custom X86 board? There are tons of options sold in millions and everywhere available. No "custom board" could be better than these boards and it would be much more expensive. "Custom" is only ok if you develop something that is better suited than the existing choices (f.e. for a certain purpose), just doing something "custom" without any real benefit is completely senseless.