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Author Topic: WTB: DKB3128 Memory board  (Read 4394 times)

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Offline alexh

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Re: WTB: DKB3128 Memory board
« on: January 03, 2008, 09:13:01 AM »
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Tenacious wrote:
I still think a new design would be viable, profitable, and a no-brainer for the right company.

No-brainer, yes.
Viable and profitable, no.

There just isnt a large enough market.

ZIII is only on A3000/A4000 users, which greatly narrows your potential market.

Most A3000/A4000 users already have 146Mbytes of RAM (18 on motherboard, 128Mbytes on accelerator) and that means that you have narrowed your market even further, to those who want more than 146Mbytes of RAM.

You'd be lucky to sell 100-200 units.

You would have to create a card with another function as well as RAM, that would grab the attention of most A3000/A4000 users before it would be viable.
 

Offline alexh

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Re: WTB: DKB3128 Memory board
« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2008, 10:01:56 AM »
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HyAmi wrote:
Well, a combination with Deneb would be nice then. That's about the only new Z3 card likely to be made these days.

Too late now I fear. Last I heard the board was going off for production and it's only features were USB 2.0 HS and FlashROM.

I hope Deneb sells well, but I fear it too has a very small market. Lots of A3000/A4000 users already have a Highway or Subway and Kickflash / eFlash 4000. Will they be excited enough to buy a faster card?
 

Offline alexh

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Re: WTB: DKB3128 Memory board
« Reply #2 on: January 03, 2008, 04:48:10 PM »
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I don't agree with Alexh's statement that "most" a3000/4000 owners already have 140+ MBs of RAM on board.  I would say that MOST A3000/4000 owners are still operating in the range of the onboard 16MBs and desperately wanting to expand (this is just based on the specs in signatures I've seen & on A3000s/4000s selling online).

Is that not just that they are selling their accelerator separately?

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I have 16MB on my A3000s motherboard +32MB on its accelerator. That's the limit of my hardware at the moment

Which accelerator have you got?
 

Offline alexh

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Re: WTB: DKB3128 Memory board
« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2008, 05:55:50 PM »
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ral-clan wrote:
Surely there were more A3000s and 4000s made than accelerators.

Quite probably. But of all the A3k & A4k's ever made how many have now been destroyed or are just not used anymore?

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ral-clan wrote:
Even generously estimating that there was one accelerator produced for every two A3000/A4000 computers, a third to half of these accelerators were probably Commodore's unexpandable 3640 and third party ones that had the 32/64MB upper limit

With no cold hard facts on numbers we're just speculating. But if you look at all the different models of accelerator that were ever available for the A3k/A4k:

Apollo = 128Mbyte
QuickPak = 128Mbyte
GVP = 128Mbyte
Phase 5 = 128Mbyte
Warp Engine = 128Mbyte
PPS = 32Mbyte
A3640 = 0 Mbyte

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This admittedly crude estimate means that for every 4 A3000s/4000s produced, there was only 1 accelerator capable of accepting more than 128 MBs of RAM.

Quite possibly. But of those other 3 how many are still in use today? And of those, how many of those users want more RAM?

Is the main reason there are so many A3640 boards not because they came "free" with many A4000's? They are not exactly fast.

The A3k/A4k accelerators you see the most of on ebay are the Phase5 boards and were successors to many an A3640 which got stuffed in a draw as a backup.

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I still believe there are far more A3000s/4000s surviving and in use than there are accelerators capable of taking 128MB RAM.

As an owner of one, what would you rather spend your money on? A RAM card or an 060 accelerator with RAM?

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So I think a Zorro III RAM board would be useful.

Useful, yes. Economically viable as a new product, I am not so sure.

I could be wrong and there could be thousands of A3k/A4k A3640 users out there screaming for such a product, but I doubt it.
 

Offline alexh

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Re: WTB: DKB3128 Memory board
« Reply #4 on: January 06, 2008, 09:18:24 AM »
Let's see how much interest there really is

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180203404450

£120 is about what it's worth.
 

Offline alexh

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Re: WTB: DKB3128 Memory board
« Reply #5 on: January 06, 2008, 11:21:50 PM »
My estimate of £120 is probably a bit on the high side  bearing in mind that you can regularly get Fastlane SCSI cards on Ebay. 64Mbytes of ZIII RAM and DMA capable Fast SCSI 2 card all for about £60 each

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200172615077

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200189252473