What else can I do to help make a new Phoenix Motherboard a Reality?

[techie]

Greetings All,
As some of you may already be aware I have recently developed an online database where users can register their interest in a new production run of Phoenix Replacement Motherboards for the Amiga 1000 (seen here). This website has been my own small way of trying to encourage the development of a new motherboard but now that it is complete and users are slowly starting to register I can’t help but wonder what can I do to help next?

 So I ask you all, what else can I do to help make this project a reality? (and no I’m not rich so please don’t ask me to fund it :-P)
Are there any other users out there interested in working to get a new production run going? If so what can I do to help?


Thanks for your time,
Techie

[KThunder]

id skip the phoenix and put effort behind minimig

or boXer :-D

[techie]

Hi KThunder,
Sorry but I see two problems with your suggestion.

1 - While the Minimig is in incredible bit of technology it has not been specifically designed to fit inside the case of an Amiga 1000 and as such would need a great deal of preproduction time to redesign it for that, not to mention make it ready for mass production.
Now that’s not to say it wouldn’t be a VERY cool project but I just don’t see it happening right now.

2- The boXer doesn’t exist :-P not outside of a non functional prototype. (at least to my limited knowledge)

The Phoenix board is a proven, working, available design that just needs a little support to get it out on the market again.  Is it a perfect solution, probably not, but the way I see it it’s the best solution for people who want to upgrade their A1000’s.

[recidivist]

 The minimig sounds very interesting/promising. Just discovered that thread yesterday.Not even sure what a FPGA is but must find out. I basically stopped fooling around with hardware breadboards  25 years ago when everything was DIPS .Did small amount of programming using machine language and Basic on Z80A ,6803 and 6809 .Just a hobby,seldom had an bearing on my work.Lot of catching up to do.

  It appears to me at least of offering more performance,especially in that the designer has found a way around the custom chips.

  Give me a reasonably priced modern board with high speed ports and processor and that I can plug in my old Amiga ROM and load in Amiga 3.x or OS4 ---I'll MAKE a case for it!

  Might be a piece of wood furniture lined with screen or thin sheet metal for rf suppression. or built into a REAl tin breadbox. I KNOW that only a hacker could tolerate the thought of a non-commercial cabinet. Just remember a lot of the early 8 bitters were  short on looks but sparked a whole industry. If somebody could sell a thousand boards to prove the concept and get real world testing I'd think that good.

  I'd still buy a inexpensive ($50 or less) replacement Phoenix board and stuff it myself to renovate one of my A1000 but not sure I see $300 plus justifiable.

[techie]

Hi recidivist,
Yes I agree the Minimig is a very interesting/promising project but seeing as Dennis has already stated that he isn’t very interested in making a commercial product (which is a shame really) for that reason I just don’t see it as being much of an alternative to the Phoenix board, not for the moment anyway. Should Dennis (or someone with his approval) decide to develop a commercial product in the future based on the Minimig then it might just be worth looking into.

As for the cost, again I agree that it would be nice if it only cost $50 but let’s be realistic here. This type of item is aimed at a very (very) small segment of an already Niche market, namely people who want to upgrade their Amiga 1000’s (This is a VERY small market and I’d really be surprised if we get more than 50 registrations on the Phoenix Revival 2 site) for that reason alone the developer simply can not produced a board for anything less than the price indicated. When you also take into consideration the difficulty of finding necessary parts, assembly time, testing time and at least a SMALL profit margin I think the price is actually quite reasonable.  

[LoadWB]

Honestly, if there is to be a re-run of the Pheonix, I'd like to see some of the short-comings of the original design overcome.  From what I have read about it, the positioning of the Zorro slot (and possibly the video slot) made it difficult if not impossible to use.

And since we have newer technology available, a clock port, ability to use 72-pin SIMMs for memory, and an IDE interface would be nice while we're at it.  Granted, such a task would undoubtedly increase the price of the unit.

That's not to say that I am not interested in possessing a production of the original design, I'm just shooting for Jupiter :-)  Isn't the Pheonix pretty much the only "Fan Clone" of the Amiga?

[recidivist]

 What we have is a failure to communicate....I thought the last order of bare boards was priced at $30.I said I'd stuff them and that's what I mean:sell me a bare board with the parts list and layout.It wouldn't be  difficult,just tedious. If we need to rob chips from an old Amiga anyway for the ROM and the girls the more mundane parts shouldn't be that bad.

 I am reminded of the ads in the local Trading Post which read:196X Chev Model,restoration project 90% finished,$15K invested,will take B.O. over $4K,must sell,getting divorced. There is a limit to what a person or spouse will put into a hobby. Time may be money,but often is easier to come by.

 Perhaps Dennis would be willing to make his code available under GNU or something,or for a fee.If it is as good as reported,be a shame to be lost.

[techie]

Hi LoadWB
Err…sort of; essentially it’s a third party replacement motherboard that adds a great deal of expandability to the Amiga 1000 computer system. Allowing users to upgrade their systems considerably more than a stock 1000 ever could. Unfortunately it does require the addition of custom chips from a real Amiga in order to function. However seeing as Amiga 500’s are, relatively, plentiful it shouldn’t be much of a problem to find a donor system.

Yes a new design of the board using more modern technology would be nice but really at this point I'd just be happy seeing the orginal production board for sale again  :-)

[techie]

@recidivist
Ah…okay now I understand, sorry about the misinterpretation :-)

I’m not going to speculate on what Dennis has planned for the future (plenty of people doing that already :-) ) but just like you I hope that something comes of his work. It would be a pity to lose such  a wonderful piece of technology.

[iamaboringperson]

Manufacter A1000 style cases.

[CD32Freak]

@iamaboringperson

Well, you might be a boring person, but you're making a clever remark :-D Unfortunately, creating a new mold for an A1000 case would cost even more than producing the Phoenix motherboards. You'll need at least a few thousands Dollars/Euro's to design the case from scratch, building prototypes/etc.  :-(

[recidivist]

 A competent woodworker or maybe cabinent maker could build a very nice little piece of desk furniture  that would house the motherboard, have  a metal plate in the back? for mounting the
various I/O connectors,be sturdy enough to support a monitor,and look good doing it.

 Few people realize the costs of manufactured items are not in the materials used but in the engineering,the production machinery,marketing,and even a little profit as an incentive to make the item. The smaller the number of items made the higher cost per unit for all those non-material cost. For instance setting up a CNC milling machine is pretty much the same in order to  make one part or thousands.That's why single quantity and prototype cost so much.

[Elwood]

"re-run"
Where the hell, the first run has gone? Never heard or seen anything about it.

[recidivist]

 What I am trying to suggest is that a different approach might be called for in making something to sell to a few hundred or thousand hobbyists versus the mass marketing of consumer goods. Several ham radio companies started out selling uncased specialty boards for the user to house as he wanted.Typically they also offered a metal cabinet costing as much as the functional board for those willing to pay for it.

[techie]

Hi Elwood,
The previous batch of Phoenix Boards were put together for a group of users at the a1k.org (see original thread )

I guess I should clarify that this was NOT an entirely new batch of boards created solely for the people who bought them. These were leftover boards from the original manufacturing of the Phoenix replacement motherboard that the developer had kept and thanks to the efforts of the a1k.org group managed to put together to sell to their members.  

Unfortunately this means that the only boards left now are boards that did not work well enough to sell in the previous batch. However thanks to an email from bigmac we have learned that these boards should be repairable IF there is enough interest from the community to make going to the effort of repairing them worth while (see the original post here)    

I apologize if my use of “new run” has misled anyone to believe I was referring to the manufacture of new blank boards as that was not my intention.


@iamaboringperson

While I would be all for a new production of A1000 cases I highly doubt that such a production could be made financially viable as the number of people interested in purchasing such a product would not likely exceed a few hundred people.