Who's getting the Tabor?

[Rob]

I wanted one, but if the price I recently read of 400euro is correct then my interest has significantly dwindled.

It's not terrible if that's the price for a complete system but if it's for just the motherboard then it's still better than the cheapest Sam460cr and you also don't have the extra cost of audio and a SATA cards.  If it's due in October you could put €50 aside each month until then and then decide if it 's worth the €400 sat in a spare bank account.

Pretty much rhetorical, and voiced out of frustration, but why is it every man and his dog, unless the word "Amiga" is involved seem to be able to produce obscure, and cheap machines, even when in small runs?

What hardware are you specifically thinking of?

[Rob]

2 years to port to Tabor is a shambles.

There are so many cheap ARM boards - I cannot believe Hyperion have not contacted any to create some cheap Amiga based systems.
ARM 1 Ghz, 1GB PCIe, USB £180.


http://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/VIA/VAB-820/?qs=noSWugIXIHr2GDYJY2Aq5w==

A port to this or similar hardware would take longer than Tabor.  You're talking about a port to a different CPU architecture, completely new video hardware and a bunch of new I/O.

A lot of driver code for the X5000 can be re-used for the Tabor support.  Aside from support for the e500mc core the only additional drivers needed are for the onboard audio and the network, the driver for which will also work on the X5000.

[Rob]

@RobertB

Trevor has just such a setup which you may have seen in his blog last October.

Something like this would be nice too but it's not practical to build in small quantities like the X500 case

[youtube]r85S48zsqTM[/youtube]

[Rob]

Well there are those new A1200 cases being made... :idea:
However fitting a video card in that without using some kind of PCI-E raiser and doing some custom work is going to be tricky.

The A1200 case needs to be deeper of the Tabor simply wont fit let alone the video card.  Found this project on EAB.  

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=724498&postcount=8

[Rob]

scarry.. must put some encyclopedia in front of it while typing.

I don't know if the case that was on Indiegogo is going to happen or not but that is a deeper design with an alternative back plate for mounting a thin ITX motherboard, Keyrah and Raspberry Pi.  Tabor might go in with a small amount of case butchery at the rear since some of the audio connectors and the second network port would be obscured otherwise.  

It all depends on whether the case gets made or not now.  I think it was the case Jens mentioned at Amiga 30 in Amsterdam, he said it was better thought out than the Kickstarter case and I'm inclined to agree.

[Rob]

Nice design. Is he actually moving forward to make these?

If you're asking about the case on EAB then it was just a private project the user made years before and shown to help the OP in that thread who was considering doing something similar.

As for the Indiegogo case the last update from 8 months ago might offer a glimmer of hope.

Dear Supporters, AMIGA CASE enthusiasts,

First of all I like to thank all the people who supported me the last two months and not to forget, the official supporters of AMIGA CASE. Special thanks goes to Vesalia, Imagine3D, KCS, Amiga Inc. and Individual Computers.

AMIGA CASE has been, is discussed on several famous Amiga forums. This makes me very proud and gives me very important feedback and useful information. As a result it becomes clearer what to do better and how to prepare my next steps. I see the last period, running the campaign on Indiegogo, as a learning period, for me it doesn’t end here!

What does that mean? I go forward, make changes and come back. I have a license from Amiga Inc. and it encourages me to go forward with AMIGA CASE.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me!

Kind Regards,

Jarno Smit

[Rob]

Although seemingly contrary to a lot of peoples opinion, the non standard fpu is actually attractive to me. Makes the hardware a little different and interesting. No Amiga/AmigaOne hardware can come close to competing with mainstream hardware anyway, so at least the spes of Tabor make it interesting to see what you can squeeze from it. Having said that though, this is from the perspective of someone who can compile his own binaries.

If I wanted more typical hardware I would, and do use an x86 machine. From a pure "for fun" perspective Tabor is the most interesting OS4 hardware available for my tastes.

I just hope the quoted 400 euro is for a full system and not just the mobo. A Raspberry Pi, with Neon offers the same sort of fun for me as Tabors CPU, and I'm only willing to add a limited premium (still 10* or thereabouts mind you) to have that fun on AmigaOS.

You could offer to do SPE compiles of software already ported to OS4.x for small bounties and get the Tabor to pay for itself over time.

[Rob]

thats at least what has been communicated. and that at a loss. according to announcement the production costs shall be covered by software sales. given that the board appears to need dedicated software to be attractive i wonder how thats going to work.

Trevor said he hopes to sell at cost, not loss.  He also said it depends on the agreement of Matthew.  I think realistically there has to be some amount of profit otherwise dealers might not be too keen to stock it.