Where could I get a microA1 ?

[Colin_Camper]

I think the ratio of things that I read in threads to things which actually happened must be about 20 to 1.

Yes, I agree. I felt pretty much the same way after the Hyperion IRC session. I think that's why bbrv struck such a chord with the openpeg thread - something tangible as opposed to something vapourous!  :-)

But there is a lot of buzz and activity happening at the moment. People who normally post, too busy. People who are not known for hype or exaggeration hinting at things about to happen soon.

Let's hope so.  :-)

[Tripitaka]

Eyetech changed the company that deals with their credit card transactions at the end of last year, this has caused some problems and should all be sorted by the end of this month.
This info comes from an email recieved by me just before Christmas.
I doubt if that helps to clear anything up but perhaps "busy" is a fair comment.
We are all waiting for new hardware, Troika, ACK, Eyetech or Elbox, all quiet. Not much of a suprise as they are all aiming to get OS4 hardware up and running ASAP. Let's hope for sooner rather than later and before kicking off too much try to consider that Eyetech do this for love not cash. If they did this for money they would have given up years ago. :lol:

[coldfish]

Colin_Camper:

The XE's have had issues that are all surmountable - most XE owners are happy with them. I only hear people complain and {bleep} about A1 (and Eyetech) when they don't own one...

Yes, by definition, you wont hear many complaints from A1 buyers.  Not necessarily because there is nothing to complain about though.

The mad folks at the Sinclair-C5 Club will tell you its the best -car- ever made too, but the rest of us know better...

http://www.speedace.info/sinclair_c5.htm

[The_Editor]

?

How would you know better if you haven't owned one ?


I personally think the only thing that lets the A1 down is the lack of a modern browser... And thats nothing to do with the hardware !!

[humppa]

Colin_Camper wrote:
Contrary to what people have said here (I thought the same myself!) Eyetech is busy with new A1 hardware. I don't know when this will ship.

Wrong.

Have you actually noticed that the information you are referring to was posted "25-Feb-2005"? It has no relevance anymore. There won't be new A1s from Eyetech anymore. Period.
The Eyetech-thread is _ancient_. Somebody just dig it out again.

[Waccoon]

Colin Camper:  The uA1 (I bought one of these) - I heard there is an obscure issue with DMA - handled by OS4. I never had any problems with my board.

Does the fix allow the board to work at its rated speed?  People don't notice performance issues if they don't stress the system.

I bought some low-latency memory from Corsair at a big expense.  I found out quickly that it didn't run at its rated speed and gave me blue screens of death several times a day.  I sent it back to the company, and the new modules I received had the same problem.  Reading the memory forums, I see this is a huge issue, becuase the memory is simply overrated at the factory.  I can get the memory to work very stable if I over-volt or underclock it.  Does that mean I'm happy?  Hell, no.

This was apparently a fluke with their early XMS modules.  New Corsair memory continues to get good reviews, just like their pre-XMS products.  Still, I was overcharged for a product that doesn't work as advertised.  The result?  After an RMA that resolved noting, I've decided not to buy Corsair memory again.

Would I treat any "Amiga" differently?  No.  Should anyone else?  NO.

This is why I want AmigaOS on PC hardware.  Many PC companies have been making hardware for years and they have gotten damn good at it.  As a PC builder, I occasionaly take risks with products released very early.  Products sold through resellers must be properly tested under lab conditions before it goes on the market, and backed up by the sellers.  These Amiga guys don't know what they are doing.

The fact that the hardware was selling years before the OS doesn't help.  Got a problem?  Get a patch!  Gee, that sounds familiar.

Colin Camper:  Are you seriously suggesting that Eyetech or any company in this tiny, fragmented market can offer the same after sales support that IBM, Apple or HP do?

Isn't that why people have to pay ungodly prices?

It never ceases to amaze me that Amiga users will criticize a $120 PC combo that lasts for years, while paying $800 or so for a board that has major design flaws is a real pleasure.  Service and support is part of the value of a product, not just specs and price.

My Corsair XMS memory and my Radeon 9800 Pro are the only pieces of hardware I've owned over the last 10+ years that have died on me [Edit - the memory didn't die.  It was not sold as advertised].  Amiga users are not immune to Radeon problems, and it was my own fault for buying the memory the instant it came out, rather than waiting for a month or so for the reviews to come out.  PC hardware is not junk.  The kinds of problems the AmigaOne has would not be acceptable outside the Amiga market.  It's no surprise to me that MAI seems to be MIA.

I've never dealt with Eyetech or any other recent Amiga company.  But, if they do refuse to offer service for their products, they might as well just say there is no waranty.

[ironfist]

Colin Camper:

"Are you seriously suggesting that Eyetech or any company
in this tiny, fragmented market can offer the same after sales
support that IBM, Apple or HP do?"

Yes. Genesi have no problem with this. There have been a bunch
of CPU-cards dying for no reason on the Peg2 and they have always
been exchanged without any cost besides your shipping to
bPlan. It happened to me and after a week or two I had
a new CPU card waiting in the Post office. This has happened
to quite many people and noone have said their card wasn't
replaced or had any problems with bPlan and Genesi.

[Colin_Camper]

@Humpa

Have you actually noticed that the information you are referring to was posted "25-Feb-2005"?

Haha!  :lol: Someone got me good on Amigaworld.net! Thanks for pointing that out.

@Ironfist

Yes. Genesi have no problem with this.

Yes, I agree. Genesi probably provide the best user experience of any Amiga company shipping new hardware (Not exactly a big club!). However you still can't compare them to people like IBM - IBM don't have old sites on the internet with disgruntled rants from ex AIX or OS400 developers on them. What I'm saying is that ALL companies operating in this market will have huge (almost insurmountable) problems and Genesi are no exception. Thankfully they seem to be on the verge of breaking through to the next level - let's hope others can follow.

[Noster]

Hi,

just have had a look to Amiga.org -- yesterday there was no time for being online -- and noticed that I've started a larger thread.
But damned, noone knows a source for a microA1 :-(

Now the OS is nearly completely finished and no hardware is available? *sick*.

@ikir
> Don't buy an A1 SE or a classic PPC like CyberStorm or Blizzard.
I currently own an CyberstormPPC and a CyperVisionPPC but I would sell it, if I could gain a microA1 instead.

@The editor
> I believe Sven Harvey has ONE A1-XE G4 left.
It must be a microA1, I want to place it into an Amiga 1000 case (see http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20038) and there is no space for a larger board or a gfx-card.

So I have to look around and must have much luck that I could either get an used board or that any other company offers something comparable.

Noster

[Savan]

Are you seriously suggesting that Eyetech or any company in this tiny, fragmented market can offer the same after sales support that IBM, Apple or HP do?

Yes. Taking customers money and vanishing is hardly a good way to treat the Amiga users. who have payed premium prices for the hardware that they thought they would recieve FULL support on their purchased products (including a full warranty).

Small shops can handle after sales support, so can eyetech. Making excuses for redhouse is pathetic, the situation can not be covered up anymore because people (suprisingly even some of the hardcore users) have had enough.

Service and support is part of the value of a product, not just specs and price

Not the case at all anymore. The bigger the amiga companies dump on the amiga users, the happier the amiga users seem to be.

[itix]

Well the SE was a mess. But to be fair it was sold as a Beta development system AND these owners were very much encouraged to upgrade to XE (at some cost to Eyetech if I remember.
The XE's have had issues that are all surmountable - most XE owners are happy with them. I only hear people complain and {bleep} about A1 and Eyetech when they don't own one and have no intention.

Marketing their products to me is good reason enough. Having intention to buy one or not is irrelevant.

Not that I would do anything against EyeTech but they were playing dangerous game.

Are you seriously suggesting that Eyetech or any company in this tiny, fragmented market can offer the same after sales support that IBM, Apple or HP do?

Why not? The CPU card on my Pegasos II died last year (fan was dead) but bPlan fixed it for free (of course, it was only 8 months old) and shipped it back with new fan. Took four weeks but they fixed it nevertheless. Apple probably would have fixed it in a week.

[coldfish]

@The_Editor

Yeah, point noted.  However, like any product opinion, the potential buyer has to weigh up the information they have to hand with their own experience.

I'm not likely to sway those people who already have an A1.  That's my point, anyone dedicated/fanatical enough to already own an A1 is never going to have a bad word to say about it, even if criticism is justified.  The A1 being a bad-buy reflects poorly on the buyer.  

You cant get an accurate and dispassionate hardware opinion from A1 owners.  And you cant get a fully informed opinion from non-owners.  So you just have to look at the facts and form an opinion from those.

Unfortunately, those raw facts taken by themselves (without a dispassionate and truthful hands-on account) paint a pretty bleak picture.  Hence my analogy with the Sinclair-C5, you dont have to own one to know they're junk.

 

[Seehund]

ikir wrote:
@ Noster

If you don't find a Micro, save for a Ack or Troika, there will be also high end models later.

Thanks to Eyetech we have OS4,

Partly thanks to Eyetech, we DON'T have OS4 for sale.
Thanks to Eyetech, OS4 stands without any hardware to run on at all, much less any viable hardware.

Or should we say thanks to AInc, as it was them who allowed the totally irrelevant Eyetech to have any say at all on the OS4+ distribution model, on the prerequisites for the development of OS4, and on who's supposed to be allowed to get a licence to compete with Eyetech.

thanks to Eyetech i'm posting this from a A1XE 1Ghz and it is my favorite computer ever

THANK YOU, EYETECH!

I agree, he did some big errors,

Thank you, Eyetech!

but after all we have something thanks to him...

Yeah, all PPC hardware, including Terons, would have ceased to exist if it weren't for Eyetech.
I hope you're all really grateful towards Eyetech now, aren't you, Mr Jobs, Mr Buck, Mr Carda, Mr Staats, Mr Hou, Mr Mueller, ...?

"We" have always "had" something. We still "have" something. We're just not allowed to buy it to use with AmigaOS, thanks to Eyetech.

and dma is fixable (for free in some country) and works ok, sound onboard works fine.... and go on.

So some things have been worked around mostly by software developers or by the board designers with more or less acceptable results, some issues remain unaddressed, some dealers haven taken it upon themselves to do "for free in some country" what should be Eyetech's job, and you think this is somehow supposed to make people grateful towards Eyetech?

[Seehund]

Colin_Camper wrote:
@Savan

What was said was FACT. redhouse sold "known" faulty boards and when he found that out he decided not to honor the boards warranty. He is a dishonst and a dirty buisness man.

If you met Alan, you would find him a really genuine, decent guy.

I don't know about Alan as a person, but the whole "AmigaOne" venture has been dishonest from its unnecessary birth to its miserable end.

Well the SE was a mess. But to be fair it was sold as a Beta development system AND these owners were very much encouraged to upgrade to XE (at some cost to Eyetech if I remember.

No. Only a small number of the earliest "SE"s were ever sold as "developer boards", and that was in reference to software development, not hardware quality or warranties.

The upgrade cost was to the customers, not Eyetech. Of course people were encouraged to upgrade! Personally I'm not upset at all over that buying an upgrade obviously will cost you money, but the "SE"s were broken and the "XE"s were supposed to be functional replacements for these. Either the boards should have been fixed for free, or replaced for free* if a fix wasn't possible.

*= IIRC, the "upgrade" deal was just a small reduction on the ordinary price of an "XE". If not totally free of charge, one could at least expect to have a faulty and unavailable product replaced with a newer available model if one only has to pay the price difference between the two models.

The XE's have had issues that are all surmountable - most XE owners are happy with them. I only hear people complain and {bleep} about A1 and Eyetech when they don't own one and have no intention.

Are you saying you haven't heard the complaints from the actual owners, then? Royally pi$$ed-off people don't count?

And why would the opinion of people who aren't customers not count? We want to buy AmigaOS, and so Eyetech are/were the only ones who we are/were allowed to buy hardware from. And what about those who MIGHT want to buy AmigaOS, but see all this? IMO, the solution is not to ignore or shut up about the problem in order to "con" more people, the solution is to solve the underlying problem (in whatever way; I think I've already said how I'd like to see it done).

Are you seriously suggesting that Eyetech or any company in this tiny, fragmented market can offer the same after sales support that IBM, Apple or HP do?

Actually, they're supposed to offer BETTER support than eg. Apple. That's one of the stated reasons to why we should have a tiny, fragmented market in the first place, and why we're only supposed to be allowed to buy hardware from Eyetech, and pay extra for it.

Apple haven't bought a licence to sell OS4 with their hardware, which according to AInc's/Eyetech's own words makes Apple's (and anybody else's) hardware potentially "substandard" and the vendors unable to provide "guarantees on product quality, delivery, and most important of all post sales support, with firm commitments to repair, replacement and turnaround".

So yeah, considering the officially alleged reasons for inventing the whole compulsory licensing scheme, considering this is what people are supposedly paying extra for, and considering that Eyetech only have like a tiny fraction of a percent of the number of customers to support that Apple have, one would at least expect the legislated minimum warranty to be honoured.

I also heard in another thread that the ACK PowerVixxens are  soon (next month at latest) to be shipped to dealers and that the product range will include CPU modules for A1's at reasonable prices.

Being cheaper than an "AmigaOne" isn't the same as having a reasonable price. It's difficult to be more expensive. And both those options, assuming they will materialise, are even worse "general desktop computing" hardware options and less competitive than the Terons/"AmigaOnes" were in 2002, which I think is quite a feat!

[Wilse]

xeron wrote:
@Wilse

Have you tried replacing the clock battery?

Not yet but I will, desoppite being fairly sure it will be a pointless excercise.

The A1 won't boot with a dead battery for some reason..

... but apparently will still give some serial output. Mine doesn't.

[ikir]

@Wilse

Try anyway, the battery is: CR 2032 It cost much more less than a new system :-)

I read sometimes you are unable to get serial output with a non working battery.

Let us know, goo luck.


@all

Eyetech is working also for us.... i see a new board (micro) from a delaer with my eyes :-P

Alan sucks at marketing and comunication you know.

I don't know about Alan as a person, but the whole "AmigaOne" venture has been dishonest from its unnecessary birth to its miserable end.

Oh ROFL. Again... you have too much free time guy!
I'm happy with my A1, and it has working usb, working dma, working onboard sound... it is really pathetic that in every amiga forum you go, you can se Seehoud rant about Eyetech... get a life, really.