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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Hardware News => Topic started by: System on September 05, 2002, 01:22:05 PM
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Eyetech are now allowing you to order your A1 motherboard:-O
Check this link:
http://www.eyetech.co.uk/search.php?SearchStr=&SearchCat=AMA1
Somebody pinch me to stop me from dreaming!
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Why 686A?
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Looks like there's problems with the SoundBlaster Live and the Via 686B
FAQ for Soundblaster Live (http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/chris.day/sblive.html)
Q) I’ve heard that the Sound Blaster Live! Doesn’t work with motherboards which have a VIA chipset. Is this true?
A) Yes and No. There is nothing wrong physically between the hardware for the sound card and motherboard but there are some settings which can cause problems. The Abit KT7A motherboard is one which used to suffer from problems with data corruption when files are moved from IDE 2 to IDE 1 but this was resolved in a BIOS update. The VIA 686B south-bridge (UDMA 100) is the only version on which this problem shows up. The 686A (same as 686B but UDMA66) is unaffected. If your BIOS has the following settings, then the problems can be fixed by settings them to Disabled, Disabled, 0:
Edwin
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Here's a more authorative link on VIA's web site re problems with 686B and Soundblaster live
VIA Arena FAQ (http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=3&faq=16&Search=)
VIA System Testing (http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=26)
Edwin
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the problem has been sorted out AFAIK, but thats now hy i was asking, originally they said a1 is gonna ship with 686b.
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Well, that certainly looks good. I'm looking very much forward to seeing a demo of it and OS4.0 before I plunk down cash for one, but I'm eager and willing.
I just wonder when we'll see them here in Canada.
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I just wonder when we'll see them here in Canada.
Canada! Your right next door - spare a thought for us here down under - we should be getting our first shippment of sliced bread soon
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I just wonder when we'll see them here in Canada.
I already have mine...the first in Canada ;) There is a good chance I'll be bringing my AmigaOne up to the Ottawa area in October or November to demo for the local user group up there. Toronto's a lot closer to me so I can be easily talked into an AmigaOne demo in the Toronto area as well.
Adam
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Does it say anything about the delivery date?
Coder
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SoundBlasterLive ??
I thought that there was on-board (via AMR-riser) sound,
and even if thats not perfect, so is the SBLive.
(If I would replace on-board, I would do it with something better)
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Well I don't think anyone who is a TeamAmiga member will order until they recieve their coupons.
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I think that order option is there for show. Offcourse you can orderit but when is the deliver time?
Coder
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Could this be the remainder of the batch of Dev boards that Eyetech ordered, to get rid of them Prior to the actual release?
Alan did say on the A1 Mailing list that the board would only be available when OS4 was ready.
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@Droid
How could that be, aslong as Coder and others are still
waiting for their boards ?
This clearly a pre-order with unknown delievery date.
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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
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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
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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(?)
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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!
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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@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.
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Tomas i have a 686b pc mobo works fine. Maybe I can help you?
edit: if so come to #amiga.org :)
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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.
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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).
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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)
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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.
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@KennyR
A 600mhz G3 equals a 1ghz Pentium ? Dream on :-P
G4 with extensive use of Altivec maybe, but "we" won't have those.
Oh and 1-1.2ghz is mid-range ? Are we talking used computers or what ?
The slowest Intel offering I could find is a Celeron 1.2
>300Euro including mobo and german tax.
Pentiums start at 1.8 (only 110Euro more).
Let's face it: We're nuts, and don't care ;-)
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A 600mhz G3 equals a 1ghz Pentium ? Dream on
I said competes with, not equals. And by the way, the difference isn't that great, either. Assuming a 850 AMD K3/4 equals the performance of a 1GHz Pentium4, and that a 700-800 MHz G3 can match the performance of the AMD, I'd say it was closer than you might think. And in a real world test - RC5 - Pentiums do very badly while PPCs excel.
Oh and 1-1.2ghz is mid-range ? Are we talking used computers or what ?
Well, it was 4 months ago ;-) It just shows how fast PC's move on. All the more reason to think that x86 fanatics have so much MHz in their heads they don't have room for anything else.
Pentium boards are cheap, but so are Ford Escorts. I'd still like a cadellac. :-)
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Assuming a 850 AMD K3/4 equals the performance of a 1GHz Pentium4, and that a 700-800 MHz G3 can match the performance of the AMD
Assumption is the mother of all fsckups.
An 850 AMD K3/4 (was there such a thing?) is not even in the same fricking ballpark as even a 1.4Ghz Pentium 4. There were no such things as 1 Ghz P4's, this, I know. Even if there were, you can't buy them today.
Stop defending a bad idea. The Pentium 4 is not the be all, end all of chips, but it's a damned site better than a piddly little laughably outdated, 3 generation behind, G3/600.
Don't confuse my complete disdain for the AmigaOnce / PPC concept with my lack of support for the Amiga.
Hardware independence. Anything else is just a red herring.
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@KennyR
Mmmm Ford Escort (should be Focus) RS3 or Cosworth ?
Or 2 tons of ami-scrap-metal ?
I'd allways take the Ford, and the extra change mabe enough
for an Toyata MR2 (~Laptop) :-P
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> For me, I cannot justify all that money for a hobby to run an antiquated OS (4.x) on a dead-end machine (PPC).
Well, if it gets the job done in a pleasant matter, it will beat any Wintel machine with any number of MHz as far as I'm concerned. Real life performance and user satisfaction is what matters. MHz are just a measure of how many cycles the system's CPU does every second.
And as for the Amiga being a "only a toy": It boots up, allows me to a bunch of stuff I need/want to do the way I want it done, and then I can shut it off again. That's a real computer fulfilling a real purpose in a satisfactory way.
But of course, if it doesn't work that way for you, it might just be an expensive toy as far as you're concerned. For me it's a useful item, and I am quite ready to pay for it.
Kay
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I don't know how fast a 600Mhz PPC powered Amiga will run, but what I suspect is somewhere close to a bottom of the range Celeron or Duron. Ofcourse there is no real way of finding out as there is no dual OS software that could tell us, and even if there was, programming/compiling inefficiencies on one platform or the other could end up hexing the whole test - so bottom line is even if we had, say, Lightwave 7 for the Mac, PC and Amiga (I know v7 wasn't released for the Amiga, this is just a supposition) and rendered the exact same project, we still wouldn't know what "processor" was faster, because each of the different platforms uses a different set of development tools.
So is the 600Mhz A1 a ripoff? I don't know, because no one apart from Eyetech knows how much they are paying for it. Also it could be that Eyetech themselves are being ripped off - and are simply passing the price gouging down the line.
What Wayne says is true about the Amiga however. Amiga dealers have a long history of selling standard computer hardware at inflated prices. Even when Commodore were in power I never bought simms or hard drives from an Amiga dealer - I never have been rich enough to pay twice as much for something, just because it would fill the wallet of an Amiga dealer, instead of giving a marginal profit to a PC dealer.
I think $600 for a processor/mobo combo is a hell of lot of money (the 411 was in UK pounds Wayne, so add 1/2 that much again for the pound/dollar conversion) - especially considering that a 1.2Ghz Duron + mobo can be bought for under $200, and usually includes sound, graphics, modem, LAN and USB onboard. However it is in keeping with Amiga history. Hands up who paid $600 for 1/2MB A500 or worse, $3000 for an A3000.
The closest thing the Amiga has ever had to a value for money computer was a toss up between the A4000 '030 and a bog standard A1200. They didn't have the monitor, as much ram or as large a hard drive as the similarly priced 486DX (A1200) or 486DX2 (A4000), but they did give about the same performance for a similar price.
I personally think that if CBM had priced the A3000 at the same price as a 386DX - which was it's main competitor at the time - they would have won the business world over in about a month. Missed opportunities are the one constant in the Amiga's history, and it never ceases to amaze me how often they were missed.
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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.
The Pentium 4 is not the be all, end all of chips, but it's a damned site better than a piddly little laughably outdated, 3 generation behind, G3/600.
Lets look at it this way,
On Power Computings Site, a Cyberstorm with an 060 and a PPC604@233Mhz will set you back 559ukp, then, a Mediator will cost 169ukp, total 728ukp. I cant justify that when a new PC with all the bits will cost the same if not a little less (if you shop round)
Now a brand new board, with a cpu almost 3 times faster than the cyberstorm, and almost certainly more stable, with AGP so i can use the latest gfx cards, onboard sound and networking for 411ukp. now thats something i can justify. Dont forget we're talking about a complete motherboard here, not just an accelerator.
Sure its not as cheap as a pc, but neither is Apple or Sun hardware.
I have an A1200T with a 1230-IV in it. Id love to run a RTG system, but i cant justify the cost
so my amiga doesnt get used as much as i'd like. UAE is not stable enough IMO.
With the A1, im finally going to get the amiga i always wanted, not some fake system running on intel hardware, or frankensteins monster thats held together with sticky tape.
I love the amiga. and i cant wait. As far as im concerned, if it runs Amiga OS natively then its a real amiga.
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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.
It's $550 for the mobo and CPU only. You'd still need to add the rest of the kit to have a working system, at my estimate that would add another 50% onto the price.
I have to agree that looks like a silly purchase in VFM terms, which is why I won't be buying one.
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Assumption is the mother of all fsckups.
I can only assume. As you say, there were no CPUs of the type I mentioned clocked at those speeds. Simple sums are somewhat accurate, and anyway, it was a moot point.
Stop defending a bad idea. The Pentium 4 is not the be all, end all of chips, but it's a damned site better than a piddly little laughably outdated, 3 generation behind, G3/600.
There's no real choice. The Amiga could not compete on the x86 platform. There is simply no room. The company(ies) that run the Amiga now rely on hardware for their present income. There is no economically viable way of selling PCs - because the big companies are already doing it. So if its not x86, where then? PPC is the closest "rival", so its a natural choice. Without these Amiga companies, the AmigaOS would become a migrant - no stable base, and no future - and there is no money in selling emulators or OS's, since this is software and most people expect them to be free.
The point of this whole venture is that Amiga will become a name again, not just to supply present users with better machines, despite what many now think. The way to do that is custom hardware. It's 2-3 years behind current technology. It doesn't have to stay that way. But it does have to start that way. How many years is my current Amiga setup behind now? Five, six years? More? I could buy a fully up to date Amithlon PC but it would cost me probably as much as an A1 and I'd be forever trapped in OS3.9 and no WarpOS/Warp3D.
Hardware independence. Anything else is just a red herring.
There's no such thing. It's unworkable. Even if there were, PPC would be logical first step to establish a solid base to build into those areas later. x86 is not a solid base - ask BeOS.
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There's no real choice. The Amiga could not compete on the x86 platform. There is simply no room. The company(ies) that run the Amiga now rely on hardware for their present income. There is no economically viable way of selling PCs - because the big companies are already doing it. So if its not x86, where then? PPC is the closest "rival", so its a natural choice. Without these Amiga companies, the AmigaOS would become a migrant - no stable base, and no future - and there is no money in selling emulators or OS's, since this is software and most people expect them to be free.
So I should pay 200% for 50% of the machine simply because Amiga dealers can't figure out how to gouge the price of an x86 machine? More than likely Amiga Inc can't figure out how to make money from it than anything else.
I've been quiet for a while because, well, first of all, I have been on travel, and secondly -- in all honesty -- I wanted to see who would be the next one to blindly sit around and defend Amiga Inc's stupidity without actually being able to back it up. I don't think they make "cupie dolls" any more, but if they do, you would win the prize. ;-)
In regards to benchmarks, It's a VERY simple test. I think, if I am not mistaken, that Lightwave 5 was the last made for each of the platforms. Using that version and rendering the same object with the same light sources and settings would give you an EXACT benchmark of what each CPU is capable of. Luckily NewTek's already done this for us, and even the Macintosh with a G4 gets completely dusted by Pentium IV machines. The G3/600 isn't "competitive", it's pitiful. For those of you who bought G3 accelerators earlier, stick with them. for those of you who are paying the ransom for a "new" AmigaOne, good luck but I wish I had your disposable income. For those of you teetering on the line, you'd be better off and have a hell of a lot more support just buying a good (and cheap) PC and running BeOS.
// FarQ
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> So I should pay 200% for 50% of the machine simply because Amiga dealers can't figure out how to gouge the price of an x86 machine?
No, feel free not to buy it.
> I've been quiet for a while because, well, first of all, I have been on travel, and secondly -- in all honesty -- I wanted to see who would be the next one
> to blindly sit around and defend Amiga Inc's stupidity without actually being able to back it up.
Gee, that really makes you sound intellectually superior.
> In regards to benchmarks,
Screw benchmarks. I think an AmigaOne with a G3 will do what I want it to in a satisfactory manner. And it will do so without MS Windows. That's what
I want from my computer. If you want a regular PC, you can just get a regular PC. I won't stop you. I won't even question your choice.
Now, I'd like to know: All those who constantly bicker about Amiga Inc., AmigaOne and AOS4, what are you trying to achieve? If you don't want the
product, don't buy it. I get the impression that some of you are doing your very best to discourage the rest of us from getting what we want. Why
is that? Does it give you some sort of kick? The AmigaOne and AOS4 are coming. Most of the work has been done, and discontinuing it would mean a
great loss to all parties involved. Why not just let us poor feeble minds who wants it in peace?
Kay
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So I should pay 200% for 50% of the machine simply because Amiga dealers can't figure out how to gouge the price of an x86 machine?
No-one's forcing you to buy the A1. And small companies competing against big corporations have no chance. That much is inarguable. Comparing the price of the A1 to a PC m/b is both unfair, and to be brutally honest, stupid.
would give you an EXACT benchmark of what each CPU is capable of
There's no such thing! CPUs all differ in abilities and specialities. Some might be better at number crunching for Lightwave5. You simply cannot compare different families of CPU in a specific test like that.
And as Kay said, benchmarks suck. You can get them to say whatever you want. There are other benchmarks - such as RC5 - that show just as "conclusively" that the PPC range smash the x86 into oblivion.
or those of you who bought G3 accelerators earlier, stick with them.
Er, none of us did. Looks like you deserve that doll more than I do. Dear dear, yet another non-amiga user who thinks he can dictate or even judge what happens in a community he isn't part of.
For those of you teetering on the line, you'd be better off and have a hell of a lot more support just buying a good (and cheap) PC and running BeOS.
BeOS is dead. Deader than Amiga.
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In 1908 Henry Ford charged $825 for a T-Model. By 1916 the price had dropped to $360 although he sold EVERY one he built!
Are those 'A1 Price Wingers' of the opinion that FORD was "gouging" the American motorists $465 in 1908?
I have an Australian Amiga price list from 1985...... the 1000 (A1000) heads the list at $3500.
The (A)1010 External 3.5" 880k ds/dd drive is number three on the list at $850.
The (A)1050 256k RAM expansion cartridge is $575.
The 1985 Amiga Pioneers bought their 'kit' inspite of THOSE prices. Without their committment the Amiga would have never outlasted 1987!
Amiga Diehards are growing extremely tired of the 'A1 Price Wingers' and the 'x86 Droolers'...... maybe arstechnica is YOUR kind of place?