It was more than one or two. I balked too when I found out the NatAmi MX might cost as much as a SAM. That said, I've learned second-hand that Thomas Hirsch is still working on a new NatAmi.
About the Apollo accelerators, there's a locked thread about them on EAB. Gunnar posted there that the accelerator boards will have FPGA usable HDMI and Ethernet ports on them. The idea that some Amiga chipset core with graphics card features will use the HDMI port is very likely.
This is the first I have read about anyone with direct knowledge of what Thomas Hirsch is working on right now, so thanks for that bit of info. I can understand how many people became worried about the cost of the NatAmi MX board, if it could not be cost reduced by increasing the volume of boards to be produced and it looked like it was going to cost as much as the SAM boards, but there were probably hundreds, if not thousands of users who would have gladly paid that price to get a working NatAmi MX system. If some new design can incorporate all, or most of the features of the NatAmi MX board at a much cheaper price, and that is what Thomas Hirsch is working on, he will surely be able to sell many boards to all the former NatAmi hopefuls, if most or all of the features that were announced previously for the NatAmi are implemented. The same should happen for the soon to be released Apollo accelerator boards, as there still seems to be strong interest in Amiga 68k.
It is too bad that the Apollo developers and Thomas Hirsch aren't working together any longer, as they could probably get things done faster if they were working on one project, instead of two different ones that appear to be very similar.
I am waiting to hear from Gunnar on the progress for the Apollo boards and I wonder how the production costs are going to be funded to get those boards manufactured and into the hands of us buyers. Maybe a Kickstarter project would work?
