AmigaONE X5000 (A-Eon Technology Ltd on Facebook)

[Andre.Siegel]

Hey, Andre says we can not make fun of a banned poster!

I have never said anything about what the visitors of amiga.org can or cannot do.

What I did do was ask you personally if you think it is sane behaviour to open up a new discussion thread specifically to shame somebody else by calling that person insane.

Sadly, you failed to see see the hypocrisy of your actions, and you seem to have missed my point entirely.

[Andre.Siegel]

The developer resources (and financial cost) to keep pace with current x86 motherboard hardware developments would be significant, due to the short shelf life of x86 hardware.  Then you are paying to support motherboards that are discontinued within a few months of release.

It would be better from a practical and anti-piracy point of view to concentrate on a limited set of x86 motherboards.  Apple do exactly this.  However, an investment in securing these boards for the 2 years+ product life would be required.

I am afraid you are ill-informed. Long-term availability is a crucial concern for many industrial and embedded applications so numerous companies sell x86 mainboards with a guarantueed minimum production life of 5 years.

For example, Kontron sell Mini-ITX mainboards that are compatible with Intel i3, i5, and i7 processors and they advertize up to 7 years of availability after release. These type of mainboards are very similar to consumer mainboards but generally use better components and are specifically designed to last.

For bundles of long-term available mainboards and Intel processors, end user prices could be well below $1000 USD for hardware that would provide competitive levels of performance.

[Andre.Siegel]

It should be noted, though, that a quick Google search suggests these boards start at about £280 including VAT, much more than an equivalently specced "normal" motherboard.

Prices in the UK tend to be a bit higher than on the European mainland but you can definitely find much better pricing for long-term available mainboards.

Since I mentioned Kontron, here is an example:
http://www.dpieshop.com/kontron-ktq87mitx-industrial-miniitx-intel-core-i3-i5-i7-socket-lga1150-motherboard-p-1281.html

230 GBP (incl. VAT) - This price is for single unit purchases! And this is certainly not the lowest price I have seen.

If A-Eon or Amigakit were to use these, they'd have people complaining about having to use years-old x86 motherboards when there are much cheaper brand-new ones out there.

So, your argument appears to be that because some people might perhaps object to pay 50% more for extra durable and long-term available hardware, it is better to continue to sell hardware that costs 1000% more (and is notably slower).

Please do correct me if I misunderstood.

Either way, they can't please everybody, so better to do what they are doing I think - make a design decision (i.e. custom PPC motherboards) and stick to it. Better than to keep changing direction.

Failure to learn from mistakes and to adapt in a timely manner has killed many former industry leaders, including Commodore.

If you realize that an on-going project will not help you reach your goals afterall, I see no point in "sticking with" what you realized is ultimately a bad plan.

The question is what the motivation of the A-Eon management is. If the goal is to sell premium specialty mainboards to hobby enthusiasts, then I see no point to switch to x86 processors (for future custom mainboard designs) or to pre-designed industrial mainboards.  

If, however, the company's primary mission is to nurture the development and market adoption of an operating system, then the situation would be very different, of course.

[Andre.Siegel]

I wouldn't even pay that.  For the extra money you'd pay for these boards I'd just buy more stock of standard boards to hold in inventory.

I am afraid you have not thought this through. I would recommend that you talk to business owners about the immense difficulty of accurately predicting consumer demand several years in advance.

There are huge financial risks involved if you overestimate demand which will need to be considered when you choose a price. If you cannot sell 30% of your inventory or you need to sell for 30% below your initial investment just to get rid of all units, which would not be an unusual percentage, you would have to choose a roughly 50% higher price just to cover that.

Also, financing inventory and storage cost money as well. The bigger your inventory, the higher your storage costs, etc.

In addition to all of this, there are also huge issues with warranty replacements once a product has been out of production for two years which is not the case if you deal with long-term available hardware.

From a business perspective, going the consumer mainboard route would most likely be more expensive as well as much riskier.

[Andre.Siegel]

@Andre.Siegel
may i point out that you seem to propose a bare motherboard for 230gbp, without cpu and ram, let alone a complete system. okay, its still much less than x1k for much better hardware, but it still isnt cheap.

If you wanted to go cheap, you could. As I mentioned before, there are many companies offering hardware with long product life cycles. You can buy Jetway mainboard and processor bundles for 150 USD on newegg.com which are being advertized to have at least a 5 year product life cycle.

There are plenty of choices out there that span a wide gamut of price points.

That being said, I am not proposing anything. I can think of reasons for staying with the Power Architecture for now, but the lack of stable x86 / x64 hardware options is definitely a myth, albeit one that has been repeated quite often for some reason.

[Andre.Siegel]

Actually I am a business owner.

I wouldn't have guessed.

That's far more reasonable a price to pay versus paying quadruple+ the price for the oddball boards you are recommending

You might want to read again what I actually wrote. I have not been recommending any mainboards that are four times as expensive as comparable consumer mainboards. I listed one specific manufacturer that offers an unusually long product life cycle of at least 7 years which perfectly countered amikit's statement that people would be "paying to support motherboards that are discontinued within a few months of release."

I specifically said that there are many manufacturers covering a wide gamut price points.

If the goal is to minimize development work by supporting as few mainboards as possible for as long as possible, which is what Amikit hinted at, you can either port your OS to a long-term available mainboard or you can build up a relatively huge inventory of a particular consumer mainboard with a shorter product life. I have stated my preference regarding the former which was in no way an endorsement of any specific mainboard.

[Andre.Siegel]

Oh.  Perhaps someone hacked your account:

Once again, you might want to read what I wrote a fourth and fifth time.

Out of curiosity, spirantho looked up prices for Kontron mainboards in his home country and shared his findings regarding the cheapest offer he could find. I found an offer for a Kontron mainboard in his country that was 80 USD cheaper and specifically mentioned that prices in the UK tend to be higher and that I have seen lower prices elsewhere.

In what strange universe does this constitute a "recommendation" for any specific mainboard?

 

It makes much more business sense to keep some reasonably priced boards on-hand at EOL rather than pay extremely high prices for some vertical market mainboard manufactured by a relatively unknown vendor.

For the second time, Kontron were mentioned because of the unusual 7 years long product life cycle which was in response to claims that x86 mainboards have extremely short product lifes.

If you need me to repeat it a third time, please let me know and I will gladly do so.