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Author Topic: A new Zorro III memory board  (Read 8030 times)

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Offline alexh

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Re: A new Zorro III memory board
« on: December 07, 2007, 10:43:12 PM »
The reason there is no ZIII RAM card is because there is very little demand and certainly no investment.

If 200 people paid $200 up front, with a lead time of six months, I'd make one. Hell, any of the Amiga hardware developers would. It aint going to happen though.

Look at the costs: a design would cost about $4k make the first, and about $20-30 each to make there after with an MOQ of 200.

At $200 each, the break even is 60. If you sold all 200, it's $20k profit, not bad, probably worth the risk.

If you sell at $100, break even is 142 units and even if you sell them all you only make a profit of $4k. Hardly even worth the effort? There is also a very high chance of loosing the majority of your investment ($10k) :-(

The fact is that if you need more RAM you get an existing accelerator on the second hand market, Cyberstorm, Apollo etc.

If you are asking "How come there are no new Accelerators with RAM?" now that is a different question.

Someone said "136Mbytes on a classic Amiga is not enough". Really??

I think 99.9% of Zorro III capable Amiga owners would think a RAM board was cool, but when it came to putting their hand in their pockets, not buy one. Probably save up for a CSPPC, or a DENEB ;-)
 

Offline alexh

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Re: A new Zorro III memory board
« Reply #1 on: December 08, 2007, 09:54:24 AM »
I dont think you are wrong, I think you are the minority / only one who needs that much RAM.

I am sure there are a few people who will always want more RAM, but IMHO finding a second hand ZIII RAM card would be more practical than trying to get a new RAM card manufactured.

Despite what has been posted about availability, I managed to pick up a DKB 3128(£85) and a FASTLANE(£65) relatively easy.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220155723947

 

Offline alexh

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Re: A new Zorro III memory board
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2007, 12:49:49 PM »
Quote

ChaosLord wrote:
I need 1024 MB of ram in my A1200T.

Shame you dont have ZorroIII then ;-)
 

Offline alexh

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Re: A new Zorro III memory board
« Reply #3 on: December 09, 2007, 12:52:22 PM »
Quote

Tenacious wrote:
I've been looking for a DKB 3128 for years in the US.

You cannot have been looking very hard. I've seen at least one advertised on ebay.com

Set up a range of searches, get ebay to email you when it is advertised and you'll easily find one in under a year.
 

Offline alexh

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Re: A new Zorro III memory board
« Reply #4 on: January 12, 2008, 09:13:30 AM »
Quote

da9000 wrote:
I hate HDDs and CDs and their unreliability.

WTF do you do to your HDD's to make them unreliable? I've never had a failure within the lifetime (5-6 years) of a hard drive. (Touch wood)

If you use modern SMART tools you can predict most drive failures well in advance.
 

Offline alexh

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Re: A new Zorro III memory board
« Reply #5 on: January 12, 2008, 05:07:16 PM »
Quote

da9000 wrote:
One time I was turning on and off a computer while trying different combinations (jumpers/dips). I was careful to leave it a few seconds off each time. After about 20 times (it's been a while so I don't recall exactly, but it certainly wasn't 100), the hard drive died. How do you like that?

20 seems a lot. You were kinda asking for failure. Power On, AutoPark and Spin Up are the 3 most likely points of failure for a drive. Hard drives are less prone to failure if they are hardly ever switched off and that includes spinning down. EXCESSIVE power saving (i.e. Turn off hard drives after: 5 minutes) can kill drives in weeks.

Quote
never keeping he machine on constantly, but turning it off every night).

As I said, drives last longer if they never switched off and never power/spin down. It is also interesting to note that higher (but not insanely high) temperatures have negligable effect on lifespan, neither does excessive utilisation.

I should know, I work as an engineer at a company which designs them. But dont just listen to me, listen to the experts:

http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

"One of our key findings has been the lack of a consistent pattern of higher failure rates for higher temperature drives or for those drives at higher utilization levels."