New ppc board by Acube/A-Eon: A1222 "Tabor"

[Iggy]

Yeah, xbox 360 was just bog standard like the ST. While Amiga had copper and blitter that needed special coding skills

Amiga needed more memory too, although you could upgrade the ram a lot easier than a PS3.

You can't add memory to the Cell BE, and it uses a very unusual type of memory.
 
 Further, later STs had blitters, and the ST cost a lot less than an Amiga.
 As far as coding skills, using hardware features is hardly a special skill.
 
 As far as the Xbox360 vs the PS3, both are 'bog standard' AND derived from related technology (which come to think of it, makes your ST vs Amiga comparison somewhat relevant).

[Iggy]

I think there is plenty of evidence that disproves that.

Getting the most out of the Amiga and the PS3 is much harder than getting the most out of the ST and the 360.

Going back further to the c64 and spectrum, you saw the best spectrum games quite early on in the life of the computer and then it reached a peak. The benefit of time and sharing of knowledge has allowed people to create software that would have blown away c64 users in 1983.

With time, people always figure out new tricks to use hardware that produce innovative results.
 The fact is that the PS3 is just a pain in the ass to program, has limited memory, and in time it really hasn't produced that many creative uses of its weird hardware configuration.
 
 And the Amiga and C64 aren't that hard to code for by the standards of their day. In some ways their more advanced hardware makes some functions easier.

[Iggy]

Anyway, I think this is OT enough now.

Agreed. We've spent too much time on something that our opinions aren't that far apart on.
And besides, the thread topic is the A1222.

[Iggy]

I was assuming a clone wouldn't be available immediately and they wouldn't have ordered more board than they could easily sell in six months.

 Not nearly as easy a task as you make it sound.
 Those boards have several layers, and those layers/layouts are not known.
 You aren't going to be able to just 'clone' them.
 Its not like a plant where you can take cuttings.

[Iggy]

This is the only choice left, try to sell an AmigaOne as cheap as possible in the hope that Amigans will buy software. I suppose that their Store is working well, so the more AmigaOne users the more they expect to sell software.
Software will be the driving force here not HW. They could also sell to 68k users being under emulation, Amiga or FPGA.
It is the best thing they can do IMO.
Kamelito

 
 Uh yeah...that is the purpose of having a computer system in the first place, to run software.
 So, not to keep beating that drum, but that is our weak area, availability of software.

[Iggy]

This has been a problem since the eyetech amiga one xe days. They just keep doing it. Project moana should have been the road for os4. Good news is now thanks to Trevor and Aeon there is an affordable NG board in a cool form factor.

Yeah, it just bugs me that its not the best choice of cpus.
Then again, someone else will start chiming in that its not an ARM, or an X86, or yadda yadda yadda.

A micro itx board should be kind of neat.
And $400< - that's a better pricing model.

Of course, being as much of a fanatic as any of the rest of you, you all know what I want to buy.

[Iggy]

What do you want to buy? the x5000? If i didn't have a peg2 id consider it. I have to say again though i love the small form factor of tabor.

Yeah Mag, I want the best, and I don't anticipate buying another PC system after that.
And the only itx case I have sitting around is an aluminum cube that's surprisingly large (its got room for a CD/DVD and at least 2 3.5" hard drives).
It would be overkill for Tabor.

[Iggy]

That is how they hope to make money, but aiming your market at people with a passion for a retro computer means that is an uphill struggle.

I accept that it's cheaper than previous ng amiga boards. When you compare it to the rest of the market, it has a weak price to performance ratio.

The IBM PC only became the defacto standard because of clones.

Pity that too, as it was a pretty lousy standard.
And actually, there were a lot of market factors at play.
For one, the buyers impressions that somehow that platform had some kind of magic (possibly imbued by those three letters I-B-M).

Apple succeeded without clones, then again, in a weird way its become a clone.

And that is the real choice we face, do we accept the defacto standard, or like other alternatives (ie ARM) do we continue to do our own thing.

As we stand no real chance of challenging the current market domination, I'd rather do the latter, as the former would simply be based on boring commodity goods.