FPGA Replay Board

[SysAdmin]

@mikej

This board looks amazing, where can you get them in the USA?

[freqmax]

International shipping ought to make it available anywhere?

[NorthWay]

having built nearly 200 boards now

Just for ****s'n'giggles, what is your very best wild shot at the interest for the board?
1000 from Amiga side? 500?
What can you see from arcade and other machines interest?

Do you have connections with the press to get reviews and get the word Out There? (Retro Gamer in particular.)

[Robert17]

It is true that shipping will make it available almost anywhere, however I would prefer to order from and support my local Amiga dealer if it's possible to do so

Robert.

[Heiroglyph]

I'd like to order from anywhere that I can see that it's available, place an order and have the expectation that it will be delivered or told it's out of stock.

The whole "if you've ever emailed me, you're in the queue" doesn't inspire confidence.  It might as well be vaporware as far as end users are concerned.

Not a slam on the accomplishment, but it's a frustrating experience.

[ChaosLord]

I'd like to order from anywhere that I can see that it's available, place an order and have the expectation that it will be delivered or told it's out of stock.

The whole "if you've ever emailed me, you're in the queue" doesn't inspire confidence.  It might as well be vaporware as far as end users are concerned.

Not a slam on the accomplishment, but it's a frustrating experience.

He is a 1 man company with no profit.  You can't expect a smiling supermodel bikini girl to serve you your order in such a situation as this. :pint:

He's in "engineering mode" right now.  Eventually he will switch to marketing mode for a bit and you will become happier.

[SysAdmin]

@ChaosLord

We could expect a smiling supermodel bikini girl to serve us our order, we just won't get it.

[ChaosLord]

It is true that shipping will make it available almost anywhere, however I would prefer to order from and support my local Amiga dealer if it's possible to do so

Robert.

Famous Amiga Businessman Jim Drew said he was interested in ordering a big pile of Replays to America for us if he saw that enuff ppl wanted one.

From what I can see in this thread from the last few days there are at least 4 of us that we know of right now.   Which means there are another 100 we don't know of.

But some of those might buy direct from MikeJ.

I think MikeJ and JimDrew should seriously consider if they are going to do a bulk deal thing or not.  Weigh the advantages and disadvantages and decide what you guys are doing before everyone buys their Replay one at a time from Sweden.

If anyone can think of any advantages/disadvantages I would be interested to hear them.

I don't personally care where I get my Replay from as long as I get one.  But being a capitalist, I would like to get it the most efficient way possible: that means avoiding as much shipping costs as possible and avoiding as much tax as possible.  Whichever way that is.

One advantage from Mike's perspective could be that if he sold 50 Replays in bulk to Laurent in France and 50 in bulk to JimDrew and 50 in bulk to AmigaKit then he only has to deal with 3 customers instead of 150.  This way Mike could concentrate more on engineering issues and fixing any reported bugs instead of having to do endless amounts of sales support.

Ok I will stop rambling now

[ChaosLord]

@ChaosLord

We could expect a smiling supermodel bikini girl to serve us our order, we just won't get it.

Actually, he is from Sweden so we should expect the entire Swedish Bikini Team to hand deliver each of our orders.

[Heiroglyph]

He is a 1 man company with no profit.  You can't expect a smiling supermodel bikini girl to serve you your order in such a situation as this. :pint:

He's in "engineering mode" right now.  Eventually he will switch to marketing mode for a bit and you will become happier.

I totally understand, but that doesn't make the current experience any more pleasant.

If distributors can fix that problem without jacking up the price too much, then I'm all for it.

[ChaosLord]

I totally understand, but that doesn't make the current experience any more pleasant.

If distributors can fix that problem without jacking up the price too much, then I'm all for it.

hmmm good point.  When I worked at computer stores, the distributors added 15% to 20% to the price when selling to the retailer then the retailer added 40% more to the price.

You have now suddenly convinced me that the "email directly to the mad scientist laboratory" is a really good method

[mikej]

I totally understand, but that doesn't make the current experience any more pleasant.

If distributors can fix that problem without jacking up the price too much, then I'm all for it.

As you know Laurent is reselling boards, I am in discussing with Jim for the US market and one other obvious big player in Europe. If we get production test sorted out, we can ship in bulk to the distributors direct from the factory. This will enable the distis to make sufficient margin to support the product.

Everybody who has mailed me will receive an offer asap. I will back out of direct sales once the stock here is tested and shipped.
Best,

MikeJ

[psxphill]

@Everblue, I think I recall someone mentioning that certain inputs (esp VGA) won't support some resolutions that other inputs will.

A lot of TV's only list certain supported resolutions, however they can be made to display other resolutions if the timings are right.
 
1920x1080 is not listed for VGA on any of the Toshiba TV's that I've used but if you tell Windows that you're outputting to a Standard 1080p TV then it works fine.
 
The only shortcut I knew of in the Amiga chipset was that they ended up with non square pixels because of how they generated the pixel clock from the 28mhz clock.

[kamiga]

Just for the record, here's another US buyer that would prefer to buy it "locally."

I'm interested in a turn key solution with case, power supply, etc that has the daughter boards taken into consideration(ie so it fits, connector slots available) for easy upgrade.

I would be interested to know how large the whole pool of potential buyers is.  Is it 1000 units? More? Sounds like there's been big money invested, so I just hope that it pays huge dividends......just not sure how that math could work, unless the markup of the hardware is huge.  Of course, there's R&D costs and lots of time to pay for, but it would be interesting to do a component-cost vs sale price and find the break-even point for mike and friends. (I'm sure they've done this math 23948 times)

I really can't imagine the market being bigger, than, say a few thousand units especially at a price point of 300 euros +/-.  Guess that's a lot of money.

Not complaining, but I emailed mike years ago, and I haven't seen a single reply......maybe I'm far down the list, but whatever.

thanks

[ElPolloDiabl]

Mike is the distributor. 100 boards for Amikit. 100 boards for Acube etc.

I remember in the Escom days. Amiga equipment use to go from the China factory to the UK. Australian retailers would then buy it from the UK. With the extra shipping we would end up paying nearly 2x the price.

If a third of the cost is postage, I think that will put a lot of people off buying it.

I can accept $50 for shipping. $60 if I get one from UK.

[Dozer]

Not complaining, but I emailed mike years ago, and I haven't seen a single reply......maybe I'm far down the list, but whatever.

You and me both man. I did get a reply however, stating that he had received the email and that I was on the list. This is now a few years back, and I'm sure I'm still on the list. As someone else mentioned earlier in the thread, MikeJ is in "devmode" and doing the best bugkilling a man can do (from what I've heard elsewhere, he's a perfectionist and never does anything half-hearted)

I do, however, also have a devboard with one of the first cores and even though it is unstable as "#$"#$"# ... The buildquality and general "look" of the board is utterly amazing. I am willing to wait for a new version of the board and pay the amount of money needed to get a board for myself (the devboard is on temporary loan

TL;DR: We have waited years and years for this board. Surely we can wait a few more (yes, I probably said the same thing about the AAA chipset back in '93-'94, but the point still stands