ACube and A-EON announce One Vision on future Amiga co-operation

[utri007]

Price is matter of quantities. Hope with aeon support could help with that, producing low end PPC mobos in china would cost about 30€ per mobo.

But would 10 000 OS4 capable mobos sell?

I would like to see threads like this without x86 fantasies and whining

[utri007]

I belive 10k would be enough.

But to to even consider that it would require OS to be mature enough ie. OS4.2

[utri007]

Because of my work, I know some, but price depends a shematics and parts.

About a year ago we calculated theoretical price to Sam 440ep flex type board, without extra parts and connectors. But surely you know that this is not a problem, even 10 000 can be  too much. Maybe today it could be 460 type board?

[utri007]

They'd be very poor quality, though, at that price, and they'd need to be in massive quantities. Also the PPC used would have to be very low end as the SOC PPCs are quite unusual (embedded PPCs aren't, but ones with all the buses that we need are).
And that's even before you think about design costs.

30 Euros per mobo I'm afraid is way below the costs of anything usable.... otherwise Acube or somebody would have done that already.

Pretty much every electronical vehicle you use, is made in china. Almost every x86 mobo you can found is made in china. Talking about quality is relative.

ACube already did this, but they manufactured mobos in Italy and ordered very low quantities with quite lot extra features, wich are not useable with us. I must admit that quality is super good.

What I think, is that when OS4.2 comes out there is a good change to get new users wich OS4 needs, so getting some low cost mobos would be important. Could be good idee to sell mobos for very low profit, just to make future more brightening. Maximize volume etc.

[utri007]

@utri007

I tend to agree with you, there is no inherent advantage to making a board in Italy versus making one in China.
Increasingly, I find myself relying on Chinese vendors.

Most likely factory in Italy is able to produce small numbers of mobos, when chinesse factories requires bigger orders. Minium is about 10 000

Nobody hasn't wanted to pay for 10 000 mobos, for several reasons. Hardware must be ready, it is a different thing to order 50 mobos and if there is a problem fix it to next order, than order 10 000 mobos and found a problem.

Best solutin would be produce 50 mobos in Italy, test them with users and then order rest of them from china.

Ofcourse this would cost more than 30€ per mobo, but calculation costs is sometimes relative to marketing strategy.

Another problem is that OS4 is not mature enough, there is no sense to produce 10 000 mobos without Radeon HD drivers, Office suite, etc. Five years ago it would have more sense, Sam 440ep Flex level mobo WITHOUT fpga, extra connectors, second land, it would had been cost that 30€ per mobo. In that time there was a Radeon 9250 drivers wich was OK

[utri007]

To be honest, I know that even if mobo production would cost 30€ / mobo, it would still be quite expensive, after taxes, design costs, profit to resellers, OS4 etc.

I was hoping that after investment to OS4 hardware, Aeon & aCube could see it as a feasible move to sell some low-end economy priced mobos, just to get bigger userbase to OS4

As I said when OS4.2 is ready it could have some sense to do it.

 10 000 mobos with OS4, price of 250€ would make some economic loss. When we compare it to X1000 wich has bring joy to several hundred users, could this bring joy to several thousands with similar change to economic loss. Trevor has already done similar move.

If we thing this in bigger scale, it could be smart move to sell that mobo as a complete computer. 50€ more and it would be a complete computer, wich wouldn't sound that expensive. Lets say AmigaOne X600 could cost 300€ wit OS4.2 that is not expensive. Complete computer could also attract people outside of our community, those who still have some nostalgic feelings to Amiga. Who would bought A500 if it would sold only as a mobo?

But this is only my 5 cents, I'm not investing to Amiga OS development, so all the honor them who do so.