A500 with Vampire 2 on Ebay!!!

[Pgovotsos]

It's hard to know if this is legit or not. Some things in the description don't seem right and he's listed it in remote control toy batteries category. The category is why I didn't see it in the searches I follow.

[Pgovotsos]

Majsta and kipper2k did you investigate options where the boards were partially or completely assembled at a factory? Between the low price and labor, you're losing money and probably sanity. There's no time for life and no enjoyment in what you're doing.

From what I've seen of small run products, it shouldn't cost you too much more and it would free you to do other things, enjoy life, earn a decent profit.

If another unnamed company is able to sell much lower performing boards for much more than you're charging for a much more capable board, you're doing it wrong.

The price that you're charging for the Vampire is ridiculous - ridiculously low. You haven't costed your bill of materials, labor or shipping correctly. The Vampire should cost minimum $300 US and probably more.

People see the performance of the Vampire. They see that it makes an Amiga faster than at any time in its history - by orders of magnitude. With everything that the Vampire provides - stellar performance, lots of very fast memory, fast SD storage, and video performance that every Amigan drools over.

I honestly don't think you would have any problems selling for $300 - $400. Heck, I think you'd sell out several production runs at $500. This would let you have the boards manufactured by a commercial assembler, yield would definitely improve, quality would improve with commercial pick and place and reflow, and factory tested. The only labor you would have is programming and shipping. Charge what it's really worth, what covers the COMPLETE costs plus 50% minimum. Charge more than that, whatever the market will bear! You should be charging more and profiting more than that other company. They've kept the classic machines alive and the community is very grateful to them for it but you are taking the Amiga into the future!

Life would be better for you, customers would be MUCH happier with wait times reduced and quality improvements, and more importantly you'd be able to focus on the more important tasks of development and MAKE MORE MONEY.

Sure,this started as a labor of love but how much love are you feeling right now? This needs to be a business that moves product and makes money! It needs to move on from the hobbyist stage as soon as possible.

[Pgovotsos]

kipper2k either wants to make some money or he doesn't. Keeping pre-order customers happy is just part of business. He should have closed the pre-order waiting list if he felt it was getting out of control! $250 is an ok price to pay as long as your not someone who has pre-ordered it for a lot less!!! It's an example of bad business practice so maybe he just needed a business partner who was a bit more business savvy? It's a shame that this means there will be no more boards developed but then I can't buy a new DENEB board anymore either :-(

All of that may or may not be true, but none of it justifies people sending him hate mail and threats.

[Pgovotsos]

The Amiga isn't cursed, it's the toxic emotionally unstable entitled lunatics that make up the so called ”community” that are a curse.

Time and time again stuff like this happens because of those freaks. I'd love to say it is a minority but as time has passed they have now become a majority sadly.

So called community. Yep, that's it right there. We don't have a community here, we have a collection of egos. If we had a community, we wouldn't have 73 Amiga operating systems, we might even have a viable platform. Instead we have the current mess and, just like every other time something comes along that promises to revitalize the platform, the "community" Fs it up.

I know that isn't the only reason why the platform didn't rise back up, but for the last 20 years it pretty much has.