Back in 2002 when I paid $300 for a brand new A500 accelerator, everybody thought I was insane and said, "Get a big-box Amiga. Zorro accelerators are far more common and much cheaper." So, still thinking accelerators for big-box Amigas would be "much cheaper than A500 accelerators", I recently got an A2000HD, A3000 and A4000. In the last year of checking prices for accelerators though, I noticed there seems to be a bidding war on every single one! They're not cheap or common.

So, after seeing the amazing Deneb USB card being produced, I thought I'd ask: Can somebody please please start a production run of accelerator cards? A 75Mhz 060 card with 128Mb onboard (to avoid searching for compatible RAM) would be good to start. It must be less complex than creating a USB 2.0 card. Judging from the eBay bidding wars, there's definitely a market. Then, if that's profitable, maybe other cards could be made? Anybody?



(Sadly, this lack of accelerators is actually holding back my Deneb purchases. My stock Amigas are too slow to make USB useful.)

@mr_a500

"Natami" perhaps?

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Amiga 1200 (rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32/RPi CM4/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
Ryzen 9 7950X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@mr_a500

Don't you think that if anyone could design, build and market such a thing AND make money out of it, they would have done so already?

The problem for a designer is that the investment is just too great to ever be repaid by sales.

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cheers
tony

Hyperion Support Forum: http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php

@mr_a500

Amiga accelerators? There's little good reason to research and develop hardware for 10-20 year old machines. I'd rather see efforts into entirely new motherboards which could be used as a stand alone. As hardware ages it's more likely to have problems. The Amigas are dying.

Perhaps a new motherboard could make some sort of sidecar ability to connect to old hardware. To make a dual use sort of machine? But, I want my 2008 Amiga hardware investment to not rely on 20 year old hardware which is likely to die soon.

Quote:

Don't you think that if anyone could design, build and market such a thing AND make money out of it, they would have done so already?

Yes, but I'm sure the same thing could have been said about a USB 2.0 card just six months ago. Before I saw the Deneb and Natami, I probably would have said exactly what you did. Now I'm hoping for another miracle.

Quote:

"Natami" perhaps?

Yes, I'm eagerly awaiting Natami. Even if I get one, I'd still like more RAM and speed in my old Amigas. (By the way, I'm posting here with stock 16Mhz A3000 on dialup.)

@mr_a500

Great idea. Although our classic machines are pushing 20 years old, I seem to spend more time on them than I do with my µA1. I too would buy a Natami if it ever comes to fruition, but I still want to tinker with my classics. I still buy classic hardware and I know many other people do too which is evident with the discussion in the forums surrounding the release of the new Deneb card. What I haven't been able to find though is a Cyberstorm for my A3000 at a reasonable price because of their high demand. Unfortunately, I also can't see someone doing this if they are going to lose their shirt in the process..

@Sandpiper

You're searching for a Cyberstorm for your A3000 AND you're in Mississauga too?! What a coincidence. Are you sure you're not my evil twin separated at birth?

Last edited by mr_a500 on 18-May-2008 at 03:52 PM.

@mr_a500

Must be. That could be the only explanation for having more than 1 Amiga user in this city. I'm near Winston Churchill & Britannia Road. Where are you?

I agree there is a large market when we are bidding and paying near 800 euros in eBay for turboboards.
I tried some months ago to resurrect Cyberstorm g3/g4 with no success, since the only people who got the diagrams rejected my proposal.

What a pitty !

A few buyers. Somebody must make the money if finding the last remaining chips but if not, then it'll be just bad luck. I have two accelerators, not for sale sorry. Thats why they are so expensive. Bye.

Quote:

Must be. That could be the only explanation for having more than 1 Amiga user in this city. I'm near Winston Churchill & Britannia Road. Where are you?

Holy crap! I'm near Winston Churchill & Eglinton. We should have some kind of "retro Amiga get-together".

@puppy

U know who got the designs ?! Can you tell us who ?
The only other person I can think of is Michael from E3B but he's probably not willing to jump into another adventure...

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José

Quote:

mr_a500 wrote: Yes, I'm eagerly awaiting Natami. Even if I get one, I'd still like more RAM and speed in my old Amigas. (By the way, I'm posting here with stock 16Mhz A3000 on dialup.)

Why not use a PC to surf the web instead of an old Amiga on dialup?

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Men who have girlies in their avatars are Girliemen!

@mr_a500

Yes, we should do that since we probably live less than a couple of miles apart. I'll send you a PM.

@Darth_X

Why pick up old Ford Falcons and build them up again ?
Or should I ask, why not ?

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José

@mr_a500

Have you seen the price of a new 68060 CPU?

@Jose

DCE have the rights to the CyberstormPPC/BlizzardPPC designs. I think they wanted ¤10,000 for the outdated non RoHS designs.

I think someone also spoke to B-Plan about designing a brand new PPC card for Amiga's and was quoted ¤50,000.

If I've got these figures wrong feel free to correct me.

@mr_a500

Quote:

Back in 2002 when I paid $300 for a brand new A500 accelerator, everybody thought I was insane and said, "Get a big-box Amiga. Zorro accelerators are far more common and much cheaper."

Well... Good thing you didn't ask any non-amiga users

Quote:

So, still thinking accelerators for big-box Amigas would be "much cheaper than A500 accelerators", I recently got an A2000HD, A3000 and A4000. In the last year of checking prices for accelerators though, I noticed there seems to be a bidding war on every single one! They're not cheap or common.

2007-2002, do the math. Years change, hardware breaks, and surviving boards find their ways to the possession of people who REALLY want them. Ever checked what happened to the prices of comparable A500 accelerators? I might be surprised, if they were lower nowadays.

Blizzard PPC 240MHZ 060/50 ( http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=320252298947&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=011 ) just finished for $949.

Toni Wilen says 'no way' to PPC emulation... But that idea is more aimed at PPC Macs than x86 so I wonder how Rich Drummond feels about it...

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@thread:

This is probably a hair brained idea.
How about hooking a mini-itx board to the Amiga local bus via pci connection?
It is a lot of work I bet.
edit:
I believe an adapter board would be needed.

Last edited by Trekiej on 22-May-2008 at 12:05 AM.

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John 3:16

@Trekiej
I wonder why no one's thought of that before
http://buy.elbox.com/cgibin/shop?show=3PA

Of course, Elbox didn't really 'invent' it either:
http://www.provantage.com/sonnet-eg4-1000-1m-u~7SONT03F.htm

http://msaros.blogspot.com/2006/02/cheap-ppc-alternative.html

However, it being 'an amiga product,' -
1. It isn't released (Elbox).
2. It'll likely cost us 10x what Mac users paid for it if it comes out.

It's still an ok idea, but - someone has to actually do it.

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Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!