Amiga PCI busboards - Why so expensive?

[sheepz]

Hi

As the title really, why are PCI bus boards so expensive, £3-400, they don't seems too complicated  , is it just cause its a small niche market in an very niche market plus Amiga tax?

Regards

Barry

[faki]

Yes.

[Boing-ball]

Yep. Who is selling them? Elbox! Considering they charge £70 for a £5 USB card. Then that will be your answer.
Okay you can get other fan made cards. But I’m guessing CPLD programming is a contributing factor?

[F0LLETT]

Elbox! Considering they charge £70 for a £5 USB card.

You would be right, closed source firmware. Have to get their development costs back some how.
So its obviously built into price, like alot of mainstream products.

[Rob]

The original 4 slot version sold for £129.99 and the first 6 slot version was £179.99 IIRC.  The first batch of the 4 slot version was 1000 boards so I'd imagine smaller production runs and inflation largely account for current prices.

They do at least continue to develope their products.  Their pci.library got two version bumps earlier this year and the busboards were updated in 2021.  The 1200 TX gained a pair of fan headers and according to dealers (no mention from Elbox) all busboards are now capable of supporting PCI to PCIe bridges pending the release of pci.library 14.0 and presumably some drivers.

[Boing-ball]

The original 4 slot version sold for £129.99 and the first 6 slot version was £179.99 IIRC.  The first batch of the 4 slot version was 1000 boards so I'd imagine smaller production runs and inflation largely account for current prices.

They do at least continue to develope their products.  Their pci.library got two version bumps earlier this year and the busboards were updated in 2021.  The 1200 TX gained a pair of fan headers and according to dealers (no mention from Elbox) all busboards are now capable of supporting PCI to PCIe bridges pending the release of pci.library 14.0 and presumably some drivers.

The thing is with Elbox. They are not very reactive enough with their software updates. The PCI.library V14.0 pledge came out in 2021! Since then we have had 13.14 for 060 memory speed improvement and 13.15 for 040 2 years after that pledge. But the V14 pledge has quietly disappeared now…
The Voodoo 3 driver has been updated since, but not the Radeon. From what I can gather they don’t do their own coding and awaiting others to bring something out to then be reversed engineered for the Elbox products. Even Thor complains about them when he is attempting to update and fix P96 for iComp. Where he even had to fix something of Elbox’s drivers to work properly with it…

[sheepz]

Hi

Thanks for all the reply's, I am rebuilding my old Power tower A1200 and was thinking about a Mediator PCI board, as I used to have one back when they first came out, but I didn't remember them being so expensive. 

Thanks to Rob for pointing out the original price, that make more sense!

Thanks

Barry

[F0LLETT]

The thing is with Elbox. They are not very reactive enough with their software updates. The PCI.library V14.0 pledge came out in 2021! Since then we have had 13.14 for 060 memory speed improvement and 13.15 for 040 2 years after that pledge. But the V14 pledge has quietly disappeared now…

I don't know, I found a major issue in E-IDE99 on A600. They fixed it instantly.

[Boing-ball]

I don't know, I found a major issue in E-IDE99 on A600. They fixed it instantly.

Maybe then for some of the products they have in house coders. But for the Mediator PCI boards, there seems to be coincidence when something gets done on a Prometheus PCI board that then filters over to the Mediator. 🤔 Either way, Elbox for some reason haven’t updated a lot of their Mediator drivers for over 10 years now… They were rumoured to have upset people, a few developers of Poseidon and the original Picasso96. It’s a shame that more co-operation between people would mean better software to hardware support. I suppose money talks… 🙄

[F0LLETT]

They were rumoured to have upset people, a few developers of Poseidon and the original Picasso96. It’s a shame that more co-operation between people would mean better software to hardware support. I suppose money talks… 🙄

Really, first I have heard of this, besides Individual computers owns both Poseidon and Picasso96.

[Boing-ball]

Really, first I have heard of this, besides Individual computers owns both Poseidon and Picasso96.

Yep. From what I’ve heard, Elbox Pissed off Chris Hodges by using the Posiedon Stack without paying licensing costs for their Spider USB cards (Why do you have to run rings to get the spider.device installed and setup, with a proviso you don’t contact Chris Hodges for support). For Picasso96 (When owned NOT by Icomp), they pretty much did the same for the Mediator RTG.  The latter was information Shared by Thomas Richter (Who now does all the updates for iComp, since they took ownership).

Truth or not, you make your own mind up with the information given.

[Retronaut]

Economics, I've been thinking about making X card for my Amiga 2000, its an open source 68030 card. Thing is this, if I order 1x of the PCB, and then 1x of all the parts needed, its going to cost me close to 50% of the price I can buy one for, and thats IF anyone is making it. Which I'm not sure they are...

Now, lets say I ordered 10 or 20 of the PCB and then ALL the parts, and then made them all. Well, Id be making maybe £150 profit on each card after costs, and lets say at a push I could make and test one card every 2 days. So Id only be making £75 profit, on ALL those cards and id have to spend close to a month doing that, full time!

It looks like IF people are making stuff and selling it for £350 then BUY it to support them. Because god knows its hard work making this stuff. Or, if it is open source and you can make it yourself, then do so. I have to say, considering the cost, and the effort, I think £350 for an antique card makes sense. The production runs are so small, there is no real economy of scale, and some chips these days are VERY expensive in their own right. Sadly, it is what it is....

[Boing-ball]

Economics, I've been thinking about making X card for my Amiga 2000, its an open source 68030 card. Thing is this, if I order 1x of the PCB, and then 1x of all the parts needed, its going to cost me close to 50% of the price I can buy one for, and thats IF anyone is making it. Which I'm not sure they are...

Now, lets say I ordered 10 or 20 of the PCB and then ALL the parts, and then made them all. Well, Id be making maybe £150 profit on each card after costs, and lets say at a push I could make and test one card every 2 days. So Id only be making £75 profit, on ALL those cards and id have to spend close to a month doing that, full time!

It looks like IF people are making stuff and selling it for £350 then BUY it to support them. Because god knows its hard work making this stuff. Or, if it is open source and you can make it yourself, then do so. I have to say, considering the cost, and the effort, I think £350 for an antique card makes sense. The production runs are so small, there is no real economy of scale, and some chips these days are VERY expensive in their own right. Sadly, it is what it is....

But you forget. Accelerators that are currently made, have a team of people behind them to make them. Such as the TerribleFire ones.
Don’t forget Elbox is a fully fledged company with a team of people. So what you say is true. But for one person it will be a lot.