downix wrote:
You haven't studied what is available lately, have you? While yes, there is a start-up cost, you can do semi-custom and even custom work for a fraction of the cost that was done back even a decade ago. FPGA's, CPLD's,Structured ASIC's, all bring the cost of a custom machine down to at least the affordable range.
I know very well what's available these days. It's indeed very comfortable not to have to design expensive chips since you can put pretty much anything in FPGA's or the likes. Still, you will have to make a custom mainboard then in some way so, although being cheaper, it's still going to be quite costly when you make very few of them for a small userbase (look at the SAM440 - it's a nice board but too expensive because it's not made in high numbers)
Look at Apple, while yes it might use commodity components, it uses custom PCB's and designwork, giving their equipment different properties than the usual PC design. That is one approach that works for them. Other options abound, you just have to quit being so defeated and actually look around.
Apple has been around for around 3 decades now. The Amiga has been pretty much dead for half of that time now. To design and build new hardware and software that can compete with modern day standards will need either a lot of time from a few people, or a hell of a lot of money. Probably both. That's why a "new Amiga" as in new hardware will never exist. Nobody wants to spend tens of thousands (millions?) of dollars/euros on designing something that is doomed to fail because only 351 people will buy that machine.
Look at my buddy icon for a second. Do you realize that Sun bucks the trend, with "the rule" that x86 is the only processor in the world for desktop, workstation or server work? Also "the rule" that a CPU has to be from a single vendor, as their CPU's can be found made by both Fuji and TI, with no difference to the application code used. They succeed where others fail, maybe you should look at things a bit more positively.
Sun has been around a long time as well and has a long-time userbase. It's not that I don't believe in the possibility of a new Amiga system with non-standard hardware, I just believe (no, wait: I
KNOW) that it isn't economically viable to design such a system.
Let the Amiga exist in the same way as, say, Haiku. An open source OS running on standard wintel-ish hardware (or a Mac or Sun for that matter). That way it's far more accessible for a large public, and still programmers can have their way to make use of the hardware in a very efficient and non-hogging way (unlike Vista for example).
