Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Marketplace => Topic started by: Trev on March 03, 2008, 09:55:38 PM
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I bid on an Amiga software tool on eBay, a tool I would have liked to use to do legitimate (perhaps professional) software development. I was outbid by a collector who will no doubt put the box on a shelf and forget about it. That's one less new project from me in the future.
And so there you go: further evidence that so-called collectors are killing the Amiga for legitimate users.
I just felt like griping, and I know at least a few people here can feel my pain.
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What were you after?
I'm selling off 15-20 years of useful Amiga software I've used throught my Amiga career....although if you wanted StormC + Amiga DevKit...they're gone already
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Trev wrote:
I was outbid by a collector who will no doubt put the box on a shelf and forget about it. That's one less new project from me in the future.
I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but that's how I feel about the collectors who buy up all the PPC & 060 boards just to play a game or two, or do nothing with. Those boards could really make a difference to a programmer or artist doing CPU intensive rendering, video, animation, music, etc. (people creating something that might get the Amiga some recognition).
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@JKD
To be honest, it was probably something I can do without, as there are "free" alternatives available; however, most of the alternatives come with vague disclaimers like "this will probably only work with Exec V37 or later."
I'd love to have a complete and clean copy of SAS/C 6.50 if anyone's got one. (That's not what I was bidding on, but it's on my wish list.)
@ral-clan
I agree with you there. If the only ones with PPC hardware are consumers, there's really nothing for producers to do but move to other platforms.
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Trev wrote:
@JKD
I'd love to have a complete and clean copy of SAS/C 6.50 if anyone's got one. (That's not what I was bidding on, but it's on my wish list.)
Join the EAB http://eab.abime.net/index.php and get SASC6.58 for free :angry:
It's currently in 'The Zone' for download.
Dave G 8-)
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Trev wrote:
@JKD
To be honest, it was probably something I can do without, as there are "free" alternatives available; however, most of the alternatives come with vague disclaimers like "this will probably only work with Exec V37 or later."
I'd love to have a complete and clean copy of SAS/C 6.50 if anyone's got one. (That's not what I was bidding on, but it's on my wish list.)
I have a complete set of original floppies *and* manuals for SAS/C that you are welcome to for $15.
The manuals were supplied without binders so I found some.
Steve
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@Trev
I'd love to have a complete and clean copy of SAS/C 6.50 if anyone's got one
My signature is selling that. I haven't tried to use the disks since 1998, though.
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Like it or not the Amiga is now a collectors item. One by one the serious users have moved on as the gap between current technology and Amiga technology gets bigger. Eventually the technology becomes an issue. It's a competitive world. What happens in 2009 when the US abandons NTSC for ATSC? Or the PAL world becomes the DVB-T world? How long will PAL and NTSC be supported before they drop them from the TVs all together?
I don't know about ASTC, but I've seen DVB-T and it is so much better than PAL that it won't be long before people switch once movies are available in it. In 2019 Amiga collectors will be competing with old TV collectors for equipment. It only gets worse as time goes by. Amiga 2000s towers with horribly slow PPC cards go for more money than computers that are 4 to 8 magnitudes of power more powerful. As the electronics become older the supply will contract, forcing prices further up. How much money is a collector willing to spend?
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@persia,
All is not doom and gloom, just look at the possibilities that the Clone-A and Minimig projects provide for the future of Amiga. Yes, the original equipment will still be a collectors world where the prices for working, pristine Amigas will continue to rise, but for those that just want the experience and possibly a project for future advancement, the Minimig and Clone-A may provide inspiration.
By the time NTSC and PAL TVs are hard to find will we really want them anyway??? Any serious work on the Amiga will also include scandoubled and flicker fixed displays. And even video work done on such equipment as the Video Toaster/Flyer and mastered to DVD will be useful for a while.
What we need is a large group of Amiga developers to jump on to the Open Source Video Toaster code and help develop the Minimig or Clone-A into something amazing at the new TV display standards and resolutions. (wishful thinking)
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weirdami wrote:
@Trev
I'd love to have a complete and clean copy of SAS/C 6.50 if anyone's got one
My signature is selling that. I haven't tried to use the disks since 1998, though.
$100 for something that is available free as a download???
You must be joking if you think those binders are worth $100!
Donate them for free to a needy Amiga programmer that may produce something useful for all Amiga users.
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@davideo
SAS/C is fairly easy to find "in the wild," but I don't recall SAS ever authorizing redistribution....
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persia wrote:
What happens in 2009 when the US abandons NTSC for ATSC? Or the PAL world becomes the DVB-T world? How long will PAL and NTSC be supported before they drop them from the TVs all together?
I don't know about ATSC, but I've seen DVB-T and it is so much better than PAL that it won't be long before people switch once movies are available in it.
You are confusing standards..
NTSC is a transmission and the coding standard. ATSC is a transmission standard. That use mpeg2 coding.
Same for PAL, it's a transmission and coding standard. DVB-T is a transmission standard.
And movies will not be available in DVB/ATSC, just as they won't be available in FM, QPSK, QAM etc.. They will be available in mpeg2 which is used by.. DVD discs.
So TV sets will likely come with DVB-T/ATSC antenna input. But the connector of interest is the DVI/HDMI one. Maybe analog VGA will hang along for a while but don't count on it.
So it's really: DVB/ATSC -> Receiver -> DVI/HDMI -> Display
So any future proofing focus better aim at DVI as any HDMI connector on the display will be backwards compatible.
HDMI allows digital audio interleaved with video aswell.
And it's at least in theory possible to drive a DVI/HDMI connector with Spartan-3E mode "LVDS_25".
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Maybe I will get flamed but here goes. While I have an A1200 with 030/40, 64mb RAM, and an 8 GB CF card sitting on my desk, I collect and do not feel ashamed for it. I work hard to find free or near free Amiga hardware so I think I've got the right to reap the fruits of my labor without guilt.
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plus we have our eyes open and ears to the ground, picking up machines decommissioned from companies, schools, universities, friends and family emptying lofts and basements, moving house etc. as if it weren't for enthusiasts like all of us, most of the machines we cherish, develop and use would have been consigned to the scrap heap long ago like last year's PC's & MAC's.
still not advocating piracy. if i could afford to, i'd pay Hyperion whatever they need to break even on OS4 just so amiga has a development house interested in the platform...
but i appriceate that a lot of software is now only available through "non retail" channels...
:-D
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Trev wrote:
@davideo
SAS/C is fairly easy to find "in the wild," but I don't recall SAS ever authorizing redistribution....
To be honest - I don't know.
All I can say is that the moderators on that particular board are quite keen on stopping piracy and remove anything that is not legal :rtfm:
Which is how it should be :-)
Dave G 8-)
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Trev wrote:
I bid on an Amiga software tool on eBay, a tool I would have liked to use to do legitimate (perhaps professional) software development. I was outbid by a collector who will no doubt put the box on a shelf and forget about it. That's one less new project from me in the future.
How do you know the person who won the auction isn't planning to use it?
--
moto
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Trev wrote:
I bid on an Amiga software tool on eBay, a tool I would have liked to use to do legitimate (perhaps professional) software development.
Can you tell us what the s/w tool is that you're looking to legally purchase & what s/w you're planning to develop. If you told us, some of us might be interested in your project & even help you out. :-)
Inquiring minds want to know! :lol:
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@motorollin
Deduced from their buying history. (Hey, that's another good reason for doing away with buyer feedback. Do buyers really want anyone and everyone to know what they spend their money on? Probably not.)
Re: your sig, has Apple released the iPhone/Touch SDK yet? Haven't seent it, but I haven't been looking.
@Rabbi
It's network related but separate from the uIP and lwIP projects I have going.
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The person that finally won the auction (not the same person that outbid me) also recently purchased a pair of costume bunny ears and a copy of the Xanadu soundtrack on vinyl. That's almost too delicious not to comment, but I happen to like Xanadu, so I'll keep my mouth shut.
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why would anyone want to buy Lattice just to "collect" it? lol. I have Lattice and Manx C yet prefer Storm C.
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@trev
Piracy NEVER makes sense!!!
I just recently could not afford a new AmigaOne. (sigh)
So, let other folks know it was available.
No complaints.
YOU don't really know what the winners will do with their winnings.
So, if you can't or won't (real reason?) afford to bid...
Please don't gripe or complain. Collectors are legit!!!
I've been an amiga person since 1986. I bought most on my stuff new. Sometimes I passed things up I thought were too expensive. Little did I KNOW that stuff would go for even more cash as used items years later.
I remember you said once, You got started late in the amiga world. If you find good stuff, at your price, great.
Best enjoy your amigas!
Michael(proud collector of amiga)
(edit) if you really need sas-c 6.5...You can have one of my collected copies (free)
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@TheMagicM
I have StormC 3 and have been considering buying 4. I'm really doing most of my development with vbcc, but I want to compare output and verify source compatibility with multiple compilers.
@SACC-guy
The piracy comment was a joke, to be sure. Collectors just make it difficult to do legitimate work on an aging plaform, and apart from the profit associated with sales of said collectables, the collectors underscore the fact that the consumer market for new Amiga-based goods is almost dead. I'm not complaining about that, though, since I really don't plan on profiting by anything I do, even if it were a possibility.
It's true I don't know what people do with their loot, but it's much more fun to make light of it than it is to truly get upset over it. ;-)
I didn't start late (around 1988--I was 13 and upgraded to an A500 from a C64), but I did take a long break from around the time I discovered the opposite sex until the time I had enough disposable income to buy expensive toys.
Your offer of a free copy of SAS/C is awesome; however, I already agreed to buy a copy, and I think I should honor that.
Edit: One could make an argument for copyright infringement as a form of civil disobedience, particularly by individual artists under the yoke of an oppressive publisher, but that sort of discourse is discouraged on this forum, unfortunately.
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The amiga is now a retro machine and nothing else. Yes i know people dont like the newer OS's and i think about 80% of people are in the same boat, but you just got to put up with it i guess and make the most out of what you got.
The Amiga was a very good thing when it was out with all the software being made for it and it paved the way for other systems, but developing for it now is a lost cause.
You might as well learn something on the PC and develop for that or if your really going to make anything on the Amiga go for it but dont expect it to rise the Amiga from the dead.
Only this week i was thinking about learning all over again to make games on the ZX Spectrum 128 and the C64 as i used too, but i know even if i do write games for it they wont be main stream.
Oh and by the way as i was a big amiga fan i bought a 600 and a 1200 with cards for extra memory,FPU and so on just to play games which i have to say is far better than running WinUAE.
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Working with an Amiga is a much better exercise in programming for a constrained system. I do quite a bit of Windows programming at work (mostly administrative tools), and it's really not as rewarding.
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@Trev
Hang on a sec. how do you know he will just stick it on a shelf and forget about it?
Maybe the winner will use it.
Do I detect a sour loser here?
or do we all assume that just because we lose a win on eBay that the other side will just stick it on a shelf and forget about it.
I think its called you win some, you lose some.
For all you know the winner could be a person who will make good use of what he/she has won and put something into the Amiga community.
Such negativity when some one loses.
Mike.
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It seems to me that learning games and graphics on an old-hand set like C64/128 or Amiga (or anything else with limited hardware compared to today's big boxes) would be good practice and exercise for programming tomorrow's hand-helds.
Granted, within the next several years we'll see hand-helds with much greater power than today. We already have 400MHz and greater mobile processors like X-Scale and ARM, but many of these machines, while strong in the CPU area, lack large amounts of RAM and GPU capabilities.
Expand upon that. Making good icons for the Amiga could mean good money licensing those icons to Symbian, Palm, et al.
Make a good MOD and SID player which will run on a hand-held (J2ME, please, somebody?!) and you have a place for all these obsolete tracker skills.
Really, nothing's new in this world. We just have different ways of doing the same things.
Okay, that doesn't address the collector/buyer/loser issue. So I will say that collectors in ALL markets drive up the prices of remaining items. It's simple supply and demand, unfortunately. Cars, Happy Meals, Amiga, trading cards, comics, etc. We all know this, and even if we don't say so, somewhere deep inside we hates it, My Precious.
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SACC-guy wrote:
@trev
Piracy NEVER makes sense!!!
Bandage never makes sense either.. ;-)
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You know as a collector of Amiga I can't really see where your coming from. I have outbid and been outbid before on Amiga items, it just depends on how bad you want it. As far as collectors just putting the items pn display, well... some do and some use the stuff. As a collector I love new things, but I always use what I bid on. Most amiga collectors are people who have a long history of Amiga use and not only have always wanted certain things but are always wanting more to to find and use. To say $&%^ Ebay is fine, but dont get upset for being outbid on someything that maybe someone else wanted more and might also use. I prefer selling/trading from amiga user to amiga user but Ebay does open the door to a whole new world of finding rare Amiga stuff. Hopefully you wont resort to pirating and just keep your eyes open for the product or maybe see if someone here on A.org might be willing to sell the same item to you.
Cheers!!!
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Contrary to popular belief, eBay is not *the* place to find Amiga gear. I have acquired over 30 Amigas in two years. Not ONE has come from eBay. If you are resourceful enough, you will find Amigas and related hardware and pay 1/5 of what you would pay at an auction.
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Dude, it's fine with me...it's only $10 after all..I thought there was some value in getting the manuals and disks together is all..if Mike can get you it for free, more power to him and you :D
Personally, I don't condone piracy hence my huge CD, DVD and software collection. I have been given copied games i the past but found I didn't value them *at all*...there's no enjoyment in stealing something for me...
I am still a hypocrite though...I do have a few 'stolen' Blu-Ray DVDs...but now the format war is over I'll be fixing that by buying a player and the disks :D
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I think everyone missed my point. It wasn't about losing an auction--I bid what I was willing to pay, didn't win, end of story. It's about supply and demand, as noted, and the lack of any other determining factors. The point would be moot if companies like SAS would make legacy, largely unprofitable software freely available and distributable. Also note that it doesn't take a genius in deductive reasoning to see that the person that initially outbid me was a collector/hoarder (or possibly a reseller).
On another note, did anyone read the new Amiga Anywhere SDK terms? Sure, they've "waived" the fee (no one would actually pay $400 for it, after all, even if they were given the opportunity), but you have to grant Amiga, Inc. permanent, nonnegotiable, nonrevocable, exclusive distribution rights to your software, without knowing to whom, what, or where your software will be distributed. Ummm, no, thank you. And from what I hear, the SDK lacks supports for any kind of network connectivity, so it's really not good for anything other than yet another Bejeweled clone. (That's a gross generalization, I know. But come on. When you're competing with Apple, RIM, and Microsoft's in house products, lack of network connectivity just isn't going to cut it.)
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I was outbid by a collector who will no doubt put the box on a shelf and forget about it. That's one less new project from me in the future.
And so there you go: further evidence that so-called collectors are killing the Amiga for legitimate users.
I just felt like griping, and I know at least a few people here can feel my pain.
In the narrow psychological sense of the word, a collector is someone who tries to move away the perspective of death by becoming absorbed in an activity that unlike life has no temporal limit, and consists in amassing objects which like the human body are of a same "genetic" nature, but unlike the human body may be infinite and not limited in space. This definition may be blunt, but I can tell from experience that it is sometimes close to reality. When it comes to collecting video games or other works of art or mind output, one consequence of this behaviour is that the same collector's shelf may mix the best and the worse - a masterpiece and some vulgar product. By letting this happen, such a typical collector isn't aware of his items' intrinsic value, or he would have made choices and would no be a typical collector. For such a collector, an item's monetary value is first associated to the rarity rather than intrinsic value. If this item is not produced anymore, on every marketplace, whatever the pricing heights, the one who's looking for this item out of love and interest for the work and intrinsic value will always compete with the collector that doesn't care much about the work but just want one nice item to complete a collection. If the latter wins, I think too that griping is legitimate.
Like it or not the Amiga is now a collectors item. One by one the serious users have moved on as the gap between current technology and Amiga technology gets bigger.
The amiga is now a retro machine and nothing else.
I can't agree with that, as I suppose that everyone will agree that the power of a computer is not technical specifications, but performance. To my knowledge, no more recent system produces perfect mouse pointer animation or allow any user to understand the role of every system file, therefore on such regards even an Amiga 500 is still more powerful than any newer system.
In addition I still haven't managed to display Amiga animation decently in emulators, so that using a real Amiga is still for me (as well as most people I suppose) the only way to play some of the only interesting video games I have seen in my life, therefore the only way to meet some works of art and even masterpieces : such an observation goes far beyond the narrow world of mere computing, as it makes of the physical Amiga computer the condition of these works preservation.
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Rabbi wrote:
Can you tell us what the s/w tool is that you're looking to legally purchase & what s/w you're planning to develop. If you told us, some of us might be interested in your project & even help you out. :-)
Inquiring minds want to know! :lol:
I have to agree with Rabbi on this. I don't like to see Amiga things go into a landfill, so I sometimes have more than one legal copy (hardware and software:). Come to think of it, I shipped (at my expense :-/ ) a OS 3.5 developer an A4000 to develop on.
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@JKD
Sorry, Didn't mean to un-do your very fair deal/sale.
but since Trev said he will honor your deal.
Everything's fine.
Michael,
just rather give it away then let him pirate!!!
BTW @Trev
What was the item you bid on? Maybe I have it and can let you have that instead?
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hardlink wrote:
Come to think of it, I shipped (at my expense :-/ ) a OS 3.5 developer an A4000 to develop on.
Thank you and bless you. If we had more like you in the Amiga community, the Amiga would rise again.
@all
I use a real Amiga and for more than just games and nostalgia. The hardware is expensive but retains it's value well and there is some very good productive software for the Amiga that is cheap. I don't see using abandoned ware as pirating but I try to support the Amiga software developers that still support the Amiga. I don't see Amiga developers as wasting their time as most developed software can or could be run on AmigaOS4 with minimal changes. I keep investing in the Amiga and what I invest in has a habit of becoming very valuable. Don't give up on the Amiga.
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For all that I have collected for free, I have tried to give back to the community as well. I gave good friend of mine a CyberStorm MkIII for his 3000T because he uses it on a pretty regular basis. I also gave a full loaded mint condition A2000 68040 to a friend of mine who used to work for Amiga, Inc... he got rid of everything out of anger when Gateway screwed Amiga over but saw my stuff and wanted to get back into the scene. You give a little and get a little. And do not fault those whose desire is to restore and collect.
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gdanko wrote:
...I gave good friend of mine a CyberStorm MkIII for his 3000T because he uses it on a pretty regular basis...
That's Amiga saint hood right there! Most Amigans would give their left arm for one. I just clocked mine up to 80 MHz tonight. The 68060 is a pretty nice processor after it gets up to speed.
I also gave a fully loaded mint condition A2000 68040 to a friend of mine who used to work for Amiga, Inc... he got rid of everything out of anger when Gateway screwed Amiga over but saw my stuff and wanted to get back into the scene.
Too many good people and developers have been screwed over and lost money with the Amiga. It's too bad because if we all worked together we would all benefit.
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That's Amiga saint hood right there! Most Amigans would give their left arm for one. I just clocked mine up to 80 MHz tonight. The 68060 is a pretty nice processor after it gets up to speed.
Thank you. I feel that if someone shows me an act of kindness (give me free Amiga gear) then I should return that act of kindness to the community.
Unfortunately most people are out to make a profit. The love of money is the root of all evil, they say.. and I believe this to be true. Very few folks in the community are willing to share from their overflow. On the other hand there are a few who do and I find that most commendable. If we all practiced this sort of kindness we'd have a much more fulfilling community.