HEY JENS!!! Clone-A Progress Report?

[takemehomegrandma]

With all the chatter about X-1000's lets not forget one of the coolest projects out there. The clone A. Is Jens out there...? Can you give us an update?

Safe to say THIS is the product I think many of us would buy in a heartbeat.

IIRC he wasn't able to get a license from Amiga Inc to go ahead with the plans he had in mind, so I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing got shelved...

[takemehomegrandma]

The Denise from Clone-A project is inside the Indivision ECS product.

He shouldn't need a license from Amiga Inc. for the hardware because any patents covering both ECS & AGA have lapsed. It is more than 17 years since they would have been filed.

I guess he needed the license to use the name Amiga

AFAIK the end goal was a single chip product in silicon, and I guess he didn't think it would be complete without the name, kickstart and OS?

[takemehomegrandma]

I seriously do not understand why people are leaving or are thinking of....
Why guys ? What is the problem with the new owners ? nothing have changed

It's not about whether anything changed or not. I think Jens and the others has raised very good points. Keeping ownership a secret is strange and ridiculous.

[takemehomegrandma]

Back to topic:

I dont see what is the issue with licensing, Jens can sell his product under Clone-A name and put empty sockets for kickstart rom/s, or even a flash solutions that somehow allows Amiga Forever owners to move their legal rom file to flash media. In that way he doesnt require any licence, and he is not doing anything illegal stuff.
Of course, this means the user will have to purchase a legally valid rom.
If what he wanted was the "Amiga" name, really that isnt important. If he really cares that much about names, then it maybe easier for him to contact actual Commodore brandname owners and cut a deal with them. But i fail to see the licensing issue.

Yeah OK, what I was referring to came from a video recording from the Clone-A presentation at Breakpoint 2007, and it turned out I didn't recall it quite correctly. While Jens had tried to get an official license, he also mentioned two possible options he had for kickstart substitution (of which none would be able to boot WB however). He obviously had great problems in getting a license, and he wasn't even entirely sure who was the legitimate IP owner. But there were indeed ways around it.

Anyway, if anyone haven't seen the presentation, here it is:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7945941150233337270#

All in all a very interesting presentation, and here are a few highlights:
At 25:30 min he mentions the kind of device he plans for Clone-A
At 29:30 and 36:00 he talks about turning the FPGA VHDL program into a single ASIC chip for mass volume production at really low costs.
At 37:00 he talks about the financial obstacles and the requirement of investors
At 42:30 he mentions the IP situation, licensing problems, and the replacement options.

He was obviously estimating an end user release at the end of 2007, and since I am fairly sure that this time estimation was from a technological point of view (things had progressed quite far and was kind of ready, as seen from demonstrations), I guess what *really* stopped the show, was a lack of investors and/or commercial soundness for a low cost, mass volume ASIC based Clone-A.

[takemehomegrandma]

Wow... that video was from 2007?

Time flies! :-)

[takemehomegrandma]

@takemehomegrandma

Thank you for the information.
So at the end, the problem is most probably, the lack of funding to build an ASIC and/or the size of the potential market size required for such a product.

It is a pitty though!
Isnt low volume production (of course, not using an ASIC) of the Clone-A still viable comercially speaking?

I don't think low volume FPGA stuff ever matched his ambitions and goals, that stuff was merely the prototyping path towards a real product, and it would definitely not make *commercial sense* (at least IMHO).

Could a high volume ASIC thing still be done today? Who knows. Maybe?

For the kind of product he had in mind back then, I would today like to see a truly working HDMI output connector, to be used in some generally acceptable modern TV resolution, and some way to handle the 16:9 aspect in a plasma friendly way (pixel shifting or whatever they call it, as well as an *option* for grey/light bars on the sides instead of black bars).

And we should reflect over the fact that *a prerequisite* for this product is that it will be a *mass market, high volume* thing, and as such it would *live or die* by the "Amiga" trademark (unlike some NG clone OS's, where the trademark is kind of pointless). It won't be some general STB or a HTPC (or some other general "Multi Media" thing), it won't have the specs, no, this will specifically be a ultra cheap **AMIGA gaming device** (at least primarily, although one probably could think up quite a few more areas of use) for the "retro/nostalgia crowd" that once knew and still recognize the Amiga and its games...

[takemehomegrandma]

They only ways I can think of selling it are:

1) Something like the MiniMig but packaged in a cute 'mini' 1200 case (and maybe mini 4000T cases) with the Amiga brand name, running loads of pre-installed WHDLOAD games.  I think loads of people (ex-Amigans + some existing classic users) would buy into this but only if it was idiot-proof and cheap (<$200).

2) Replacement classic motherboards for classic cases (I can see only limited sales).

3) Replacement classic motherboards (with cases?) and some modern updates (think Natami), again I think they would sell but only in limited amounts.

Basically any classic upgade (OS3.9) will start to compete with SAM and the X1000 (OS4.x) if it's too expensive.

I think a $39 "joystick" with some built in games and a SD memory card reader for the option of playing additional games from ADF images would sell.

:-)

[takemehomegrandma]

Nah, you could build the Minimig into a cheap $10 keyboard (like I've done with mine), add a cheap mouse and a cheap joystick to the package.  Sure it will up the cost a little, but at least it will be a "real" Amiga and not a crippled joystick-gaming device.  I bought one of those C64-in-a-joystick things and it lasted less than an hour before it was thrown into a dark corner.

Wow, nothing like reviving old threads, right?

I could of course be wrong in this, but I think the long term goal was never to make "real" Amiga's (meaning a full computer within a keyboard), but exactly those kind of gaming devices.

If you look at that old presentation he held at one Amiga convention some years ago (forgot the link, but can probably find it), he gets lots of questions on whether the thing will be improved and hotted up (added features, better performance, etc), but he categorically rejects this, saying that the point is a 100% HW compatible solution. It makes sense. A "gaming joystick" would be a real product (just like the C64 joystick), with a real market. Especially if it has the Amiga brand. A new "real" Amiga 500 could never be a product in 2010, at least not in comparison to the joystick.

Heck, the last months events surrounding Amiga Inc and Commodore USA might put new hopes to this project? The only place where the Amiga brand makes sense today (at least where it makes best sense), is for this kind of product. Amiga is retro, and it was about gaming for 90%+ of the customers. And I mean, if Commodore USA can get a license to the Amiga brand, why would it be impossible for Jens?