Good News Is Here (OS 4.1&SAM440 amigakit.com)

[persia]

Interesting.

533 Mhz cpu, 512 MB DDR Ram, ATI Radeon M9 64Mb and Audio 5.1 onboard for € 332, add the OS for ₤99 (€ 125) and you are up to € 457 (₤360) without monitor, enclosure and keyboard.  You'd be hard pressed to keep under ₤500 (€ 635) (unless you want a crap CRT hogging your desk).  Still it's a beginning, more than 3 people will be able to run OS 4.  I'm all for beginnings.  So Hyperion and ACube I salute you.  Thank you, but don't stop now, we've all got G4 MacMinis in our closets waiting!

[persia]

You are missing the point.  Nothing short of Jesus appearing in the clouds surrounded by Amigas will convince someone to come to "amiga" territory.  The best you can hope for is convincing Amigans to buy something.  At this price, there will be Amigans willing to buy.  

Is it overpriced, heck yes, Macs with these specifications would be turned down by most charities as gifts, but given that it's the only thing that will give you an OS4 fix, I'll even consider buying it...

amije wrote:
We need more users. Hans_

at this price, do you believe that anyone real new user, will come to the ''amiga'' territory?

[persia]

PCI Video Toaster

trekiej wrote:
A PCI version of the Video Toaster would be a cool addition.
It would almost be like the good ole days.

[persia]

Quite simply it's economics, a 1.25 GHz G4 MacMini with 512 MB RAM (expandable to 2 GB), video and hard drive will run less than £165/€210/300 dollars.  far less than just the motherboard we are talking about.  And, and, and we are talking about a motherboard that doesn't even have a G3 and runs at half the speed.

Do I want to support people who make Amiga things?  Yes, but coouldn't they get in the same scale of magnitude of a used G4 MacMini?

[persia]

Because we live in the present. the SAM board looks expensive, if we lived in 1999 it would look cheap, but the point is that we all line near the end of 2008 and in 2008 the price v. performance of the SAM board is pretty bad.

It's a difficult decision, if you open up OS4 to run on standard equipment you drive the specialised hardware manufacturers out of business, if you don't open up OS4 it's cost remains high.  In other words the cost of a MacMini OS4 is driving Acube out of business...

[persia]

As to what happens in the court case it's hard to say.  The original contract with Amiga Inc/Amino had an insolvency clause and as Amino was deregistered as a company it would seem to be satisfied.  The only reason Amino didn't completely collapse earlier was because of the questionable tactic of transferring assets to a shell (KMOS).  

It's further complicated by the original Amiga Inc's deal being a license rather than an ownership and that the AMiga name and IP (if any remains) still belongs to Gateway.

Even if KMOS/Amiga Inc win there is a clear argument that Hyperion has a reasonable belief that the Insolvency clause was broken and that will have to be mitigated.

Bottom line, my heart hopes for Hyperion win, my mind says their will be a complicated settlement that will only lead to more court cases until both KMOS and Hyperion have spent their wads on lawyers..

.

[persia]

The sad part is that, for late 2008 it is drastically underpowered and heavily over priced.  There's no getting around it, from an economic perspective it makes no sense.

But..., Amiga buyers are not, by definition, based in reality or at least 2008/9 reality.  I'm sorely tempted, even given the low power/price ratio, to sell off my old Motorola based Amigas and replace them with a single SAM.  It's small, if I buy the psile case I can have Amiga printed on the top and I don't need special monitors to use it, any common dvi one will do!

I can convince the missus that way too.  "Look honey I'm getting rid of the ugly crts and big boxes,  I'll just have the MacPro for work and the Amiga/SAM for fun,  I promise "

[persia]

Yes, the Amiga is a niche market and will always be one. Think of it this way, a successful OS4 debut will be sales in the 100s and lifetime sales won't be much over a thousand.  It's a tiny point compared with Mac or PC.  So I think you are paying for that as much as anything.

[persia]

What is the global Amiga market place?  It's tiny, Hyperion would sell more if Moana would be finished, but how many more?  And the cost would be Acube.  Who'd by Sam when they can get more than twice the power at less than half the cost by getting a used G4 mini?

I would love to not have to buy a Sam board and just go with a cheaper Mac, but nobody is building PPC equipment anymore, so in a way the Sam board is supporting the continued building of Amiga compatible PPC computers.  We are at the end of the line, if ACube goes there will be no-one to take it's place.  Is that worth having a few dozen more users?

[persia]

Oh wow, an Amiga that looks like a dull, I mean Dell...

Nlandas wrote:

NovaCoder wrote:
What would be even better, if it was sold as a complete computer (case/keyboard/mouse & optional monitor).  

I hear you. Vesalia has the following kit and I'm sure AmigaKit will have more of a system as well once it gets rolling.  :-D

Motherboard: SAM440ep Mini ITX Motherboard w/ 440ep/667 MHz, 512 MB RAM,
OS: AmigaOS 4.1 CD-ROM,
Case: Jou Jye 0528i case (black, incl. 220V power supply)
744.89 EURO

As for keyboards, mice, etc. I personally already have a lot of spare components and don't likely need more than the kit above.
 
EDIT: The missus(Love of my life) just said go ahead and get one if I want it.  :-D I so love that lady.

[persia]

TinyGL?  Surely OS4.1 could support the whole OpenGL library?

[persia]

Sam's not a collectable, it's a new machine, comparing a collectable with a new machine is comparing apples with oranges.