Order your A1 motherboard

[System]

This clearly a pre-order with unknown delievery date.

Not necessarily. We know a number of people have ordered the dev boards (Coder, for example) and are waiting on them, but that doesnt necessarily mean that they recieved an order for every board made on the first production run.

Alan explained why the dev boards hadnt been released, in an email a while ago, but again that doesnt necessarily prove that Eyetech didnt already have the boards in their possession.

Add this to the fact that the A1 is supposed to have a 686B on it when released but it is  clearly stated on Eyetech's website that the boards we can order now have a 686A.....

Just my thoughts.

Ps. Another thought...
There is no mention on the Eyetech website that this is a preorder comes with OS4. We all know how much they have been going on about how the final release board will only be shipped with OS4

[jumpship]

I thought I read somewhere that Eyetech were going to release the A1 with Linux/UAE and then give out OS4 to those people "when it is ready"© (;-))

JS

[System]

I thought I read somewhere that Eyetech were going to release the A1 with Linux/UAE

You did, but......

This from an email to the A1 Mailing list by Alan Redhouse of Eyetech

We are not shipping the remainder of the dev boards (or any of the user boards) until this(boot ROM) code is complete because of the expense of
shipping update ROMs and chip changing tools. This is anticipated to be towards the end of August.

(snip)

Finally several people have asked us why we are not delivering the A1 board to Linux users in advance of the release of OS4. Well there are two main reasons:

1 - This is a product we are producing for the Amiga market and IMO it is proper that the Amiga community get their hands on it first.

2 - I still cannot see why there would be a significant market for Linux on the A1 given that the main focus of Linux is the x86 platform, which - because of sheer sales volumes - will always be an order of magnitude cheaper than a ppc-based product.

They changed their stance on Linux a while ago.

Also the mail above mentions they are hanging on to the remaining dev boards until the Bios is ready, which is why i think they are taking orders now for the remaining (unsold) dev boards.

Hyperion must have finished the boot ROM(?)

[Tomas]

not only does 686b have problems with sb live cards, but also corrupts data, memory leaks, pci bw probs and such.

I have a pc mobo with that chipset.... it truly sucks!

[Tomas]

Uh?? since you can order amigaone, dosent that mean os4 is ready?? im sure i read that you couldnt order amigaone board before os4 was ready....

Or am i totally wrong here?

[System]

since you can order amigaone, dosent that mean os4 is ready??

If it was im sure it would have been announced on Amiga Inc's web site. (I know they are very slow when it comes to updating the site, but im certain that announcement would have made it). The latest executive update doesnt say its ready, either

These boards on Eyetech's site IMO are either the remainder of the devboards, or, as Kronos says, are preorders for the final production board.

The fact the site mentions 686A and doesnt mention OS4 being bundled with it suggests (to me) they are the remaining devboards. Weather they will hold onto these until OS4 is ready, i dont know.

[DaveP]

Agreed. But the current "rumour" has it that only
a few bits of tidyup is required and integration ( plus
testing ) so it may or may not be shipped early.

Depends on which rumour you believe.

I heard one the other day that an A1200 was going
to be the first solar powered computer to sail across
the pacific ocean.

Or something.

[System]

I simply have to say here, $411 is a getting a lot more like it, but there's still a bit to go.  I simply wish at this point that I had $411 to buy one with.  The question is, is that Euro?  Is that US?  Is that Lyra?  What official currency is that?

$411 with the processor is -- I suppose -- not so bad, and if this were several months ago would be no problem, but now it's kinda difficult to save up for me personally.

[bhoggett]

That's 411 UKP, including local tax.

Purchasers from outside the UK buy at 350 UKP, but will have to add on shipment costs and any local/import taxes.

[System]

Well if these are developer boards, that's the same price as before  :-D Sorry wayne there no cheaper.
It would be nice if the regular board was that price though! A bit cheaper of course is nicer

If they Mai boards are $500 US though (havn't read that item yet), then the price does need to go down a bit

[System]

@bhoggett

Thanks for the clarification...  In that case, Eyetech is still clearly delusional.  $550 is still rediculous for a 600 mhz machine.  I might have given them $400 for one (if I had it) but $550 is just unreasonable.

[Elektro]

Tomas i have a 686b pc mobo works fine.  Maybe I can help you?

edit: if so come to #amiga.org

[KennyR]

And what are you comparing it to, Wayne? A mass-produced PC motherboard, no doubt. You don't want to pay that, fine. But Eyetech are not delusional. They want to be able to profit by selling this, which is generally what most sales expect.

Let's not forget that CyberPPC and BlizzardPPC boards were up to £750 when first sold - over a thousand dollars. Many bought them and still use them today. In fact, its the dominant model of Amiga accelerator board in use today, excepting emulations.

I've said this once, and I'll say it again: Amiga is now a niche market, and an expensive hobby. The only alternative to this cost it is another operating system, or an emulator. I'll have neither, thanks.

[System]

And what are you comparing it to, Wayne? A mass-produced PC motherboard, no doubt.

You're telling me that you think "1000" motherboards is not "mass produced"?   I can name to you probably two dozen new PC motherboards a year which dont sell 1000 boards each, and they all go for around $125 USD or less.  

If Eyetech HONESTLY cannot produce this already antiquated board -- with processor -- for under $300, then they are incompetent.  I don't think they are incompetent, so $250 or more must be profit.

But Eyetech are not delusional.

That's your opinion.  It's wrong, but it's all yours.

They want to be able to profit by selling this, which is generally what most sales expect.

Gouge and destroy the market is more accurate.  Historically, in every niche market (from escalators to Video production) every provider adds double the amount of profit of an ordinary vendor.  

Let's not forget that CyberPPC and BlizzardPPC boards were up to £750 when first sold - over a thousand dollars

Yeah, and my last four head, HI-FI VCR was $500, but that was 8 years ago.  Now they are under $75 at any Wal-Mart.

 It's a bullshit argument to defend the insane marketing and pricing practices with "yeah but this niche device cost xxx 10 years ago" and you know it.  Technology gets CHEAPER, not more expensive as time goes along.  Only the Amiga community doesn't care about such trivial realities.

I've said this once, and I'll say it again: Amiga is now a niche market, and an expensive hobby. The only alternative to this cost it is another operating system, or an emulator. I'll have neither, thanks.

You are correct on both parts.  The Amiga is a hobbyist machine, not a real computer, and it is also insanely expensive.  The choice of OS/whatever is your choice, but I can buy one hell of a G4 Mac with OSX for the price of an Amiga 4000 tower running at 50 Megahertz.  

I can't even imagine putting $2700 into the building of ANY PC unless you toss in 2 21" monitors and multiple processors.  

For me, I cannot justify all that money for a hobby to run an antiquated OS (4.x) on a dead-end machine (PPC).

[KennyR]

You're telling me that you think "1000" motherboards is not "mass produced"?

Yes! 1000 is practically a custom job. 100,000 I would consider to be mass production. Below that, economies of scale account for most of the price.

Gouge and destroy the market is more accurate.

What market? Have you forgotten Amiga's market died some years ago? How can they destroy something that doesn't exist?

Technology gets CHEAPER, not more expensive as time goes along.

Completely wrong. It gets cheaper because its demand becomes higher, the production runs become larger, and competition sets in. Age DOES NOT make technology cheaper. Demand does. This is a simple fact of economics.

The choice of OS/whatever is your choice, but I can buy one hell of a G4 Mac with OSX for the price of an Amiga 4000 tower running at 50 Megahertz.

And you would have a Mac, not an Amiga.

on a dead-end machine (PPC).

...which assumes that any other CPU chip but the x86 is destined to fail, which is corporate spawned propaganda, and false, too. Its another matter of use. If suddenly everbody started using PPC its prices would tumble and its MHz would skyrocket. Even as we speak, a 600MHz is a good competitor for mid-range Pentium4s (1000-1200Mhz).

This x86 crap really starts to annoy. To quote an emulamer who came to my IRC channel once: "But my Workbench does more FPS than yours." Uh...yeah... I really expected a more balanced view from you, Wayne.

I don't see Motorola pulling the plug on PPC any time soon, despite some wild rumours.

Rant over for today. (Maybe)

[anarchic_teapot]

Wayne:

If Eyetech HONESTLY cannot produce this already antiquated board -- with processor -- for under $300, then they are incompetent. I don't think they are incompetent, so $250 or more must be profit.

Interesting proposition. Have you any idea how much the IBM 750CXe costs? I can't find anything on the web, but when I look at the price of G3 accelerator cards for the Mac I get the impression they don't come that cheap. Plus the board itself, plus fitting, plus carriage from the Far East to the UK, plus AInc's licence fee, plus a bit to pay for company overheads...

Also, it's a fairly high risk article - unlike cheap x86 boards which can generally be expected to sell steadily and reliably - so, yes, I  would expect the markup for both manufacturer and distributor to be a little higher than for mass-produced stuff (my definition of mass-produced does include runs of 1000 articles... but runs plural i.e. several, not just one or two with no guarantee of any more at present).

I'm not convinced the situation is as extreme as you think.