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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga Retail News / Sales => Topic started by: CD32Freak on December 30, 2007, 04:36:43 AM

Title: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: CD32Freak on December 30, 2007, 04:36:43 AM
Bassano del Grappa, Italy - 29 december 2007
ACube Systems is pleased to present the perfect companion for your emulation fever: Minimig v. 1.1.

The Minimig will be available starting from mid-January at a retail price starting from EUR 138,00 (plus local taxes and shipping costs).

More info on http://www.acube-systems.com/eng/hardware.php (http://www.acube-systems.com/eng/hardware.php)
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: AMC258 on December 30, 2007, 05:28:43 AM
Well, I was interested... but for that price I can wait.
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: Crom00 on December 30, 2007, 06:04:42 AM
Actually I'm the fella that was looking into a mass run on these. That's a great price bub...
At that price they're probably making 1000 units.
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: redrumloa on December 30, 2007, 06:39:21 AM
Can't get through to the site. Has it been Slahdotted?

As for the price, with today's exchange rate it is about $203.13. Not terrible and maybe this high a necessity based on scale. I would have liked to see a much more aggressive price, but maybe it wasn't possible for some reason.

Bravo to Acube for doing it in the first place. I could complain about the price, but I am not the one ponying up and making a production run. Anyone think they could do it for less? Go for it :-)
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: LoadWB on December 30, 2007, 08:33:30 AM
Nah, sometimes I think /. got tired of Amiga "news" a long time ago.

Anyway, I won't complain about the price, I'll just note that it is certainly out of my price range, especially since I'm about to plonk down God knows how much to get one of my two dead CyberStormPPCs fixed.
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: tonyyeb on December 30, 2007, 09:53:18 AM
At just over £100, this is less than half the price of 'ebay minimigs'. Plus this may come with PSU, case, joystick, memory card etc...
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: dammy on December 30, 2007, 10:28:21 AM
Now if they can just find a OS (http://thenostromo.com/teamaros2/?number=23) to use that is free from AI's IP.

Dammy
TeamAROS (http://www.teamaros.org)
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: ChrisH on December 30, 2007, 10:30:05 AM
It's £120 plus shipping at current exchange rates.

If I was mean (grin) I would say that £100 gets you a GP2X that can emulate an Amiga (not quite as well), Megadrive (perfectly), SNES (almost perfectly), etc, along with TV-out capability...
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: whiteb on December 30, 2007, 11:56:49 AM
[color=3300CC]At just over £100, this is less than half the price of 'ebay minimigs'. Plus this may come with PSU, case, joystick, memory card etc...[/color]

Notice how it says "FROM" EUR 138,00.

Case, PSU, Joystick and MMC will be extra.

This is precisely my point, give someone an orange and they want an Orchard.
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: Tripitaka on December 30, 2007, 11:58:23 AM
Shame this didn't happen before Christmas, they may have made a few sales over the hols. Now we at least have a supply of retail 'migs available however.

I have also looked at the price of minimig runs and I have to say, I couldn't get close to ACube's price without putting in a lot of time/cash & doing much of the work myself. I'm impressed they managed a retail price as low as they have.

 :pint:  -Thanx ACube.  :-D
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: Tripitaka on December 30, 2007, 12:01:38 PM
Now were is the Minimig implementation for SAM'S FPGA?

 :inquisitive:
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: EDS.bod on December 30, 2007, 12:55:42 PM
Well, I'm having one - looks like a nice little toy.

Now, if only I could get my hands on an A1 as well!
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: TheMagicM on December 30, 2007, 02:49:12 PM
~$200 USD.. thats cheaper than what they sell on ebay.  Not a bad deal!
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: Delta on December 30, 2007, 02:56:36 PM
Considering parts are retailed to around $150 I think plus you have to build it which is quite a sensible subject so I'd say their US$200 price is damn right.  

But I ordered a bare board and I intend to build mine otherwise it would be no fun :D
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: Tripitaka on December 30, 2007, 03:13:05 PM
@ Delta

DIY or DIE. I'm right with you on that one. I have an A500 and I don't need another, building a Minimig however is something else entirely.
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: Darrin on December 30, 2007, 05:26:32 PM
The price is about what I expected from a private company who are in business to make a proffit and who have to stand by the product with some sort of support.  Considering the boards on eBay go for around double the price and if they fail in 1 month then it's your problem, I think a $200 price tag is a great deal.

Just remember, Acube are taking a risk with this run and they have to pay from them up-front.  Not only does this proce have to cover their time and effort, it has to cover after-sales support, dead boards and the interest on their investment (say $100,000 or so).

They can add me to their customer list just for having the balls to do this.  I look forward to seeing who the USA distributer is going to be and what the configurations are.

Hell, if I could spend $50 on an invisible OS4 coupon then I can sure as hell spend $200 on a real, working Amiga.
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: InTheSand on December 30, 2007, 08:13:31 PM
Seems a fair price for such a (potentially) reconfigurable machine...

If someone could port the existing ST, Spectrum and C64 FPGA implementations to it, it'd make a great multi-purpose retro machine!

 - Ali
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: Darrin on December 30, 2007, 09:13:17 PM
Quote
InTheSand  Posted:

Seems a fair price for such a (potentially) reconfigurable machine...

If someone could port the existing ST, Spectrum and C64 FPGA implementations to it, it'd make a great multi-purpose retro machine!


That's something I keep forgetting.  The potential is there to have several MMC cards and depending on which one you insert on boot-up will decide whether you end up running a C64, ZX Spectrum, a Sinclair QL, a BBC Micro, a Dragon 64, Atari ST, etc.

The possibilities are endless, providing someone actually writes the code for the FPGA.  I'm sure that the larger the potential user-base is for such code then the greater the chance of such code being published or even marketed.  At the end of the day, it boils down to people putting their hands into their wallets and supporting bulk production runs.  $200 when devided over a year amounts to 55c a day.  I'm sure we can all find that amount of cash, even if it means visiting friends and family and sticking a hand down the backs of their sofas to look for loose change.
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: InTheSand on December 30, 2007, 10:47:47 PM
The on-board 68K would certainly help with ST and QL emulation anyway!

And not forgetting the FPGA implementations of various old arcade machines too...

Would be great if those old 8-bit systems were ported over... I haven't plugged in a real 8-bitter for a while, don't want to risk damaging the hardware or having the machines blow up when I switch them on!

 - Ali
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: Darrin on December 31, 2007, 04:19:10 AM
I just treated myself to a C128 off eBay in order to get back into the old 8 bit computing.

I still have the BBC Micro emulator software for the Amiga on floppy and it will be interesting to see that run on the Minimig.
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: InTheSand on December 31, 2007, 07:44:38 AM
Ah, the good old "The Emulator" package! I paid GBP £50 for that brand new in early 1990! I still have it and the disk still works!

Great 68K implementation of BBC BASIC and the Beeb's basic screenmodes, but not much cop for running commercial BBC software!

Would be great to see a "real" Beeb implementation using the Minimig's FPGA....

 - Ali
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: Darrin on December 31, 2007, 03:11:13 PM
Ah, I never ran any BBC commercial games on it (just as well) and just used it to play around with the BBC Basic.  When I was doing my A Levels and we had to write a program for 30% of the total marks, we had the choice between using the Basic on our ancient Research Machines 380Z or the new BBC Micro model B machines - no competition really!  Just before the deadline however they changed the rules and you could use any machine running Basic to host your program as long as you didn't mind lugging it in to the classroom for the teacher to evaluate it while it was running.  I dumped my original project and substituted one that I had written at home using Simon's Basic on my C64.  I remember wishing that my C64 had the screen modes and speed of the BBC.
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: InTheSand on January 01, 2008, 05:56:58 AM
Ah! I also wrote my A-level project in BBC BASIC! Worked on it at home on the Amiga, then had to go from Amiga floppy to PC 3.5", then via a dual-drive PC to get it on to a 5.25" bendy, then I forget the final step for getting it on to a DFS-formatted disk!

Oh for the good old days!!!

 - Ali
Title: Re: Acube Minimig price announced
Post by: denli on January 02, 2008, 04:47:12 PM
Quote
Poster: redrumloa  Posted: 2007/12/30 7:39:21

Can't get through to the site. Has it been Slahdotted?

Appearently Acube have changed from .com to .biz
http://www.acube-systems.biz/eng/hardware.php