@cgutjahr

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Maybe somebody could explain to me why new hardware is a good thing?

At least you have some news for your site.

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It's not like the existing hardware is properly supported yet.

I expect Cyrus uses same SouthBridge chip as X1000 - drivers for SATA, USB and LAN can be the same.

@pavlor

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I expect Cyrus uses same SouthBridge chip as X1000 - drivers for SATA, USB and LAN can be the same.

If it's really a SoC most of these would allready be onchip, and supporting those would be much cheaper/easier (on a HW level) then adding a SB.

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@cgutjahr

Every new board sold = 1 new licence of AmigaOS 4.x sold.
Should make Hyperion happy.


Quote:

cgutjahr wrote: @all: Maybe somebody could explain to me why new hardware is a good thing? It's not like the existing hardware is properly supported yet. A-EON and/or the dev team owe at least half decent gfx card support aswell as OS 4.2 to the X1000 owners, and it doesn't look like either is going to happen any time soon. Yay, new hardware. Now, somebody please promise we don't have to wait until summer - that would make my day. Because the one thing we lack most (in addition to more hardware, of course) is premature announcements.

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@Kronos

I can confirm that there's no south bridge on boards.

@Kronos

Quote:

If it's really a SoC most of these would allready be onchip, and supporting those would be much cheaper/easier (on a HW level) then adding a SB.

There are plenty of USB and SATA connectors (I see), I bet it has same SB as X1000.

Used SoC (P3041 or P5020) has only 2x USB2.0 and 2x SATA.

@Rob

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I can confirm that there's no south bridge on boards.

Well, that is interesting information!

@pavlor

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Maybe somebody could explain to me why new hardware is a good thing?

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At least you have some news for your site. .

...and to moan about ;)

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@pavlor

Both boards have a P5020. Trevor said that I P5040 will be an option at some point. The Cyrus, MicroATX board had the SOC mounted on a small carier card so it may be that they have already been using a P5040 in testing on that board.

@Rob

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Both boards have a P5020

Good news!

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MicroATX board had the SOC mounted on a small carier card so it may be that they have already been using a P5040 in testing on that board.

That makes sense. P5040 supports less PCIe controllers than P5020 and micro-ATX Cyrus has only 2 PCIe slots (x16 and x4, third black is Xorro?).

Yay! How can anyone think this is a bad thing? That's ridiculous.
I'm ready to buy both motherboards when they become available.

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Sam460 : X1000 : X5000

How soon can I place my order? :)

New hardware is a good idea because more people want to buy in than were able to. If the price can be kept down, more people will. Go, Trevor and Matt, go!

Last edited by mbrantley on 06-Jul-2013 at 09:17 PM.

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@pavlor

then you have no excuse anymore not to buy one

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Last edited by OlafS25 on 06-Jul-2013 at 10:17 PM.

New hardware = more New hardware = more happy users

Last edited by Kicko on 06-Jul-2013 at 10:19 PM.
Last edited by Kicko on 06-Jul-2013 at 10:19 PM.
Last edited by Kicko on 06-Jul-2013 at 10:18 PM.

@mbrantley

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How soon can I place my order? :)

Trevor and Matt both cautioned me about expcting anything soon. Bear in mind the time between the X1000 first being announced and the X1000 going on sale.

They anticipates that there will likely be another revision before made before it goes into any kind of production. The current hope is to have beta testing programme ready for around the time of Amiwest.

For now X1000 are still being sold and Trevor told us most recent order of PA6T was secured for $600 per chip compared to the $1000 that was mentioned at Amiwest last year. Remember that he was swallowing the extra cost from his pocket so don't expect the X1000 to get any cheaper.

@Rob

No problem -- I'll spend the waiting time enjoying my X1000.

Good to hear A-Eon got a better price on some PA6T's. Thanks for all the information.

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@WolfToTheMoon
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.

You might as well moan at A-Cube for not making cheaper machines... (But you really don't want a machine cheaper than a Sam440, as it'd be way too underpowered.)

You just need to accept that in a small market custom-designed motherboards cost a lot more than an x86 motherboard that they sell hundreds of thousands (millions?) of. The best we can hope is that OS4 sales increase, meaning prices gradually drop.

Last edited by ChrisH on 07-Jul-2013 at 07:01 AM.

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I was going to mention (some of) what I heard from Trevor, but in light of all the moaning (from a predictable few), I shall just to that on www.Amigans.net .

_________________
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@ChrisH

To add on your post, I actually did an interview with Trevor a couple of weeks ago and we discussed thoroughly the subject of pricing. As he kindly explained to me, it isn't that all x86 machines would cost a fraction of our PPC ones and if we ever switched platforms we aren't going to get the cost down that easy. Be it ARM, PPC or even x86 the problem resides on the NRE (Non Recurring Engineering Costs) that follow any small batch production. Imagine having to produce 5 prototypes for hardware stretching beta phase. Each prototype may cost up to 5k euros. Now distribute this amount onto a limited production; for a 500 batch the NRE will 50EUR per system. However, for 5000 it would add only 5. Of course NRE costs do not include only prototypes but it I hope this clarifies the difficulties AEON (and ACube) faces for the production of our hardware.

Last edited by Cool_amigaN on 07-Jul-2013 at 07:23 AM.

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@Cool_amigaN/ChrisH

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You might as well moan at A-Cube for not making cheaper machines... (But you really don't want a machine cheaper than a Sam440, as it'd be way too underpowered.)

The real issue here is why do those lowend motherboards cost so much (and yes all things PPC are pretty much lowend these days) ?

Why doesn't one of the 2 companies atleast try what Genesi/bPlan did back with the Efika ? Or what the various ARM-boards (Rasberry,Panda,Beagle ...) seem to do so easily ?

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.

Instead they insist on adding stuff like "xorro", which hasn't really prooven itself useful sofar ......

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