Official A1 repair centre in France

[Argo]

Eyetech, Amont Informatique (France) and RELEC Software & Hardware Amiga (Switzerland) are delighted to announce that an agreement has been reached with AMIGA CENTER (France), who is now an official maintenance and repair centre for the AmigaOne.

This includes the hardware fixes for UDMA and USB on the XE "Earlybird" systems. Read more for the full announcement.

AMIGA CENTER have long been known for their technical knowhow in electronics, and most particularly for their competence with the "Classic" Amigas. They are an excellent choice to carry out the same work for the new AmigaOnes.

AmigaOne XE owners who decide to have this fix carried out can therefore now contact AmigaCenter for an estimate. Please don't send your motherboard without first contacting them!

Of course, it is possible to avoid implementing the hardware fix if you use an IDE-UDMA PCI card based on the Silicon Image 0680 chip. PCI-based USB adapters can also be used, a number having already been tested with the XE by developers before and during the "Earlybird" phase.

Amont Informatique, RELEC and Eyetech see this new partnership as reinforcing the infrastructure that is progressively being set up around the AmigaOne, which we feel is a worthy successor to the "Classic" 68k amigas. It is particularly heartening to see someone of the calibre of AmigaCenter, whom some of you may remember as Serele, still active in the Amiga community.

Earlybird owners everywhere, we know that, like us, you are only too aware of the amount of effort required to achieve a fully stable and bug-free machine, with performance in line with customer expectations. We are continually researching ways and means to achieve and improve on our objectives. However, this requires spending a lot of time and work. Most of you understood this from the very beginning, and we take the opportunity here to thank everyone who has involved and helped out in one way or another. Those who decided to participate in this adventure are pioneers, whether you bought a full configuration or just a motherboard, by buying hardware clearly labelled as "for developers only", with all the advantages and - above all - disadvantages this entails. In fact, we all owe you more than thanks, we also owe you our profound respect !

[Piru]

AmigaOne XE owners who decide to have this fix carried out can therefore now contact AmigaCenter for an estimate.

I assume it will be shipping only (return-to-base basis), as described here? (Of course assuming the warranty period isn't over by now)

PS. No I don't have A1, I'm just curious about this.

[Kaminari]

Never heard about that retailer -- mind you, I thought all Amiga retailers located here were dead since about five years ago...

[JoannaK]

Piru: Sorry, but No (information from Aw.net thread)
- According Anarchic Teapot "Price is 50 euros, including VAT but excluding carriage."
- According Gunne (GGS data, reseller in Sweden), this operation is *still* not officially recommended and may void remaining warranty.

Edit.. I took Teapot quote direwctly from AW. so it shoudl be 100% ok now..

Wayne: Thanks.. My account seems to be back

[BatteMan]

Amiga Center is the last retailers in France and he have a very good reputation.

--
/me is a french Amiga user :-D

[Seehund]

... by buying hardware clearly labelled as "for developers only" ...

"A lie told often enough becomes accepted truth."

- Vladimir I. Lenin


No - I repeat NO - "AmigaOnes" except a very small number of the earliest "SE" boards have ever been sold as "developer boards" (much less "clearly labelled as 'for developers only'"!), and that was obviously in reference to developing software preceding the imminent release of AmigaOS4.

How the hell is one supposed to "develop" a piece of hardware once you've bought it, anyway? A piece of hardware that's allegedly passed extra certifications and testing for an extra level of consumer protection, at that.

[Lando]

Well, this is definitely good news for AmigaOne owners.  I'm sure people will have a little more faith in Eyetech now that they are finally starting to honour warranties (although why they didn't do this in the beginning is beyond me...)

[Elwood]

@Seehund
From Eyetech website:

(edited)
Earlybird Systems
The 'Earlybird' Amigaone systems are in effect pre-consumer-production systems designed to let Amiga users who are capable and willing use the AmigaOne hardware now, under Linux. It also allows 'Earlybird' purchasers to hit the ground running when the end user version of OS4 is available, as there is likely to be a big surge in the demand for hardware when the end-user version of OS4 is released.

Please note however that in buying an Earlybird system you are buying into a product that, from the software/firmware pont of view, inevitably needs further refinement before being able to be sold as a true consumer product. Support for the Earlybird systems is provided on mailing lists to which purchasers will be subscribed.

So, in return, we are offering all users who wish to take up this 'Earlybird' offer a free, registered, copy of OS4 for the AmigaOne as soon as it becomes available. The Earlybird 'free OS4' offer will, we expect, represent a saving of around 10% on an Am migaOne-XE G3 motherboard

This of course will not suit everybody, and if you want a switch-on-and-go AmigaOne system then this Earlybird offer is not for you. In this case we're afraid that you have a few more weeks to wait. We intend to drop the Earlybird offer on 31 March 2004.  

[Piru]

@Elwood

I can't find this from Eyetech website, Feb 08, 2004.

Surely this information must have been available by some other means back then?

[itix]

@elwood

Please note however that in buying an Earlybird system you are buying into a product that, from the software/firmware pont of view, inevitably needs further refinement before being able to be sold as a true consumer product.

I dont see hardware is mentioned anywhere in this sentence.

[ikir]

The fix won't invalidate your warranty providing it's done by an official repair centre.

http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2111&start=0
Scroll down, first anarchic_teapot post.

[Piru]

http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2111&start=0
Scroll down, first anarchic_teapot post.

Now I'm totally confused.

These repairs are not warranty repairs?

You need to pay for the repair AND shipping?

If these repairs aren't warranty repairs, what's the point in "not invalidating warranty" if you don't get any benefit from the warranty in the first place?

If these repairs aren't warranty repairs, while some other repairs are, which are which? Who decides which repair is warranty and which one isn't? anarchic_teapot?

Is the warranty information (which repairs fall under warranty and which don't) officially available somewhere from the manufacturer?

Shouldn't these warranty things have been fixed at the moment of the sale of the product, rather than changing the conditions after the fact?

Also, what happened to

The European price will be adjusted to reflect the higher cost of warranty provision for the extended period.

?

For the current and future products, if any hardware faults should occur, can the manufacturer be expected to apply the same methods to "warranty repairs"?

[Framiga]

yes Piru i know . . . .anyway, some "serious" AOne resellers, are doing these fixes at only shipping cost (as it would have to be IMHO).

EDIT- but evidently, not all the resellers can face the expence.

[Framiga]

. .  . and i apologize in advance, if someone will be offended by this statement and for reporting here from an HyperionMP AW.net post but . . .

"It is also a fact that some dealers are offering these fixes to their customers for free, others are not.

Some dealers have supplied free Silicon Images 680 IDE controllers.

Criticising is always easy but the fact remains that some people have put their money where their mouth is.

If you believe Eyetech and Hyperion can take on the full financial burdern of resurrecting the platform alone, think again.

We might consider ripping off the French state, bankrupting a few companies and sticking the OS 4 developers with sizeable unpaid invoices but we'd rather do business in a honest manner without handing out free bees using other people's money."

This is an honest and realistic statement, if you ask me.

[itix]

This is an honest and realistic statement, if you ask me.

No it wasnt.

We might consider ripping off the French state, bankrupting a few companies and sticking the OS 4 developers with sizeable unpaid invoices but we'd rather do business in a honest manner without handing out free bees using other people's money.

Usual from Mr. Hermans. But I wonder why he cares. Eyetech is not his company and has nothing to do with him. Eyetech is just 3rd party HW supplier, isnt it?