SAM 440 - What would owning one mean to you?

[Amithony]

I thought id throw this out there.

[Crom00]

Means I'd be out $700 or so to run a handful of software.

Like the board though, the FPGA is interesting. Wonder if Mini-Mig could be ported to that FPGA, then you'd have something. AGA emulation on the FPGA would be the cats meow!!!!!

[jj]

From what I remember its not big enough for the minimig core and softcore 68k, plus there is no way to connect it sufficiently to the rest of the system, so what use would it be

[skurk]

Crom00 wrote:
Means I'd be out $700 or so to run a handful of software.

..and for a software developer (like me) that's gold :-)

That's one of the reasons I ordered mine; to populate this niche platform with more software.

[KimmoK]

One of the reasons that I've not used Amiga for a long time is that my A4000 68k has become too slow for handling big amount of data. Also I would like to have a little more modern system with better screen resolution and 16bit sound.

There is no sense in buying a PPC accelerator for a 15 year old computer.

In the meanwhile I've tried Windows, OSX and Linux, they are slow and always on my way. AmigaOS is fast, small and simple.


And I remember when computing was fun.   ;-)


Waiting for my SAM440ep... :-D
(so far I got: A500*2, A600HD, A2000, A4000, AMD64x2 and a lot of older x86 HW)

[Gebrochen]

Well, I am still a tad annoyed,as I am still awaiting my system to arrive, while I see others on here have already retrieved thiers.

Apart from that, its going to be good. A colleague with his A1 and me with sam440ep are planning to try to get some games out over time. We will see if anything good develops from it.

Also looking forward to using it as my everyday home system, itll be a relief, especially since my day career involves using crapy windows, and takes about 10 minutes to start up, weather other people are there or not.

then theres the constant annoyance of how slow it is, and thats when it is running on massive cpu core, etc, WTF. Amiga never had that problem, even back in the day when one could compare it to apple and windows systems, it was clearly better OS.

As for linux, well, tried it also, but, I just want my amiga.

Its like cars really isnt it, some people think anything GM is crap, others think ford is crap, then there are those that dont even bother getting either, and go for a porsche straight away.

hahahaha, dont believe it, I think I just compared a particular OS to a porsche, and that the there others are like GM crap, ha, and to think I thought I wasnt completely and Morally Insane.  :-o

hehe, ok, enough said, heaps of plans i got, lets hope it all works out, Ive been reading good and bad with the os4.1 for sam users, but more good than bad, I hope Ill be one of the people in the Good section with my sam440ep running 4.1

Cheers, and I hope more hardare is on the way next year, perhaps that 2.5 Ghz dream system Someone was showing off on another amiga forum.  :lol:

[takemehomegrandma]

SAM 440 - What would owning one mean to you?

It would mean that I would have been a lot poorer than I am by owning a $99 Efika with MorphOS 2.1, and not in any way happier.

Look, the SAM is simply overly complex, overspecced (why on earth is the FPGA there for starters), yet vastly underpowered for its price. If you are going to charge that kind of money you must go *way beyond* the SAM/Efika performance. The Efika gets away with its low performance (and specs) thanks to its low cost, the SAM doesn't.

Acube should have used a CPU with a higher level of integration, hence less external controllers, less layers, and cut away things like FPGA that serves no natural purpose. Maybe they could have reduced the price to about two-three times the Efika price tag, which could really have made a difference. Now they have a board that is "stuck in the middle", it's not a high performer (which could justify its high price) and it's not a low cost (which could justify its low performance).

[Dwyloc]

@Amithony

As other people have already said its just about having some fun I already have a desktop PC and a laptop, so I don't need it to be a replacement for my PCs.

As my day job involves administrating linux and windows servers and supporting windows desktops and laptops it takes a lot of the fun out of using them at home.  In recent years I have also just about stopped buying and playing new PC games so that frees up the time and money I used to spend on them.

So I am looking for something else to do during the dark winter nights and wet Scottish weekends when I don't feel like reading or watching DVDs/TV or going out with friends.

Is it an expensive toy? Yes but is it any more expensive than buying a PS3 or other games console after you figure in buying games for it as well? maybe not.

As such I ordered a SAM and a copy of OS4.1 from Amigakit.

The question you have to ask yourself while purchasing any Amiga stuff or anything else is what else could I purchase with the money and do I need it more, or would it give me more enjoyment that what I am thinking about spending the money on.  What is a worthwhile purchase for me may not be such a worthwhile purchase to someone else with different needs and tastes.

As such I can see were some people are coming from with the SAM is over priced and under powered argument but to me the price is OK and its faster than my old BlizzardPPC equipped A1200 tower that so the speed will do as well.

So my answer to what a SAM means to me is having fun with a computer doing other thinks than playing games for a change, but I don't ever expect the SAM I have ordered to replace my other computers for doing work, just to be a fun diversion for a few hours now and again, while I play with ImageFX4, photogenic and what ever new OS4 software I find fun when I get it.

[Dwyloc]

@takemehomegrandma
Sadly the Efika is only available at its full retail price in the UK and shipping is about as much again to the UK as the $100 purchase price then we have to pay VAT of 17.5% on top of the purchase and shipping them it uses a non standard form factor so a case is also expensive for people that don't want to make their own.

I looked at purchasing one and a copy of morphos when morphos 2.0 was released but it was going to workout almost as expensive as the SAM and OS4 is now but it just dose not have the ram required to run linux well so I could not really use it under linux as a replacement for my existing epia-m Linux box.

But If I lived in the USA instead of the UK I would have been inclined to have purchased the Efika and MorphOS2 as I am sure it would have the same fun factor I am looking for with the SAM and OS4.

[takemehomegrandma]

Dwyloc wrote:

I looked at purchasing one and a copy of morphos when morphos 2.0 was released but it was going to workout almost as expensive as the SAM and OS4 is now

That my friend, is very hard to believe! The Efika motherboard is very small and very light weight, and shipment from Directron.com to Europe can't possibly be an issue. Maybe if you fly over to the states to pick it up yourself it will, but... ;-)

[persia]

Means I would be sleeping in the garage when my wife learned I'd blown that much money on another "junk" computer....

[Hans_]

(why on earth is the FPGA there for starters)

For industrial customers. If they can find enough industrial customers then they might be able lower the cost. Besides that, it could prove to be a good toy for those who know how to use it.

Maybe they could have reduced the price to about two-three times the Efika price tag, which could really have made a difference. Now they have a board that is "stuck in the middle", it's not a high performer (which could justify its high price) and it's not a low cost (which could justify its low performance).

If they could have, they probably would have. In fact, the SAM 440 flex is probably going to be cheaper.

Hans

[motorollin]

takemehomegrandma wrote:

Dwyloc wrote:
I looked at purchasing one and a copy of morphos when morphos 2.0 was released but it was going to workout almost as expensive as the SAM and OS4 is now

That my friend, is very hard to believe!

Believe it. I looked in to it, and the shipping costs, insurance, import tax and VAT bring the cost up to almost exactly to the same cost as buying it within the the UK (within just a few pounds).

takemehomegrandma wrote:
The Efika motherboard is very small and very light weight, and shipment from Directron.com to Europe can't possibly be an issue.

It might not be if they bothered to reply to requests for shipping quotes...

--
moto

[HopperJF]

It would mean selling my PowerTower to recoup the costs and also mean I'd have a much more useable Amiga in terms of hardware! Would be quite a jump from an 030 with only 2meg graphics and 32meg fast!

[Hans_]

@HopperJF

I jumped from an A1200 with an 030 @40 MHz and 32 MB RAM to an A1-XE G4 @800 MHz. Trust me, being able to watch movies, listen to mp3s, and use truecolour screens without slowdown on an Amiga is sooo easy to get used to. The A1200 did feel fast and responsive, but the modern Amiga is so much better.

Hans