Quote:
Originally Posted by plasmab
What I want to know is how these things get CE marked when they’re prototypes
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This is also a concern.
My Furia came with a counterfeit freescale CPU and three dodgy 18 year old RAM chips of unknown origin (new old stock or salvaged). Whilst this is unlikely to be a health concern, it has been noted several times that risk of overheating and resultant burning would violate the CE marking.
These things don't conform to CE marking at all, really, they're just stamped with the mark.
This is another reason why open hardware is the way to go for hobbyist systems. In amateur radio you're allowed to design and build your own equipment because it isn't intended for mass production. You can even sell it from one ham to another, because as Stephen suggested its a prototype of sorts. Try and sell it to a mass audience however, and in this country at least you'll have ofcom, trading standards and the whole shebang right up you're a$$. You'd be in for a lot of trouble never mind the loss of your license.
There's a lot of these low cost accelerators coming out of Europe lately. They're not bad, they're fantastic. But they're not sold with the legal protection and quality assurance of products built on a commercial scale like the ACA boards. Take a look at lothareks videos. It's a guy in a room at a desk putting these things together and then shipping them to either ebay buyers, or online Amiga stores. That isn't company, with liability, and assurance if something goes wrong. It is legally questionable.
I know i'm ranting here and i'm really not having a go at the designers or builders of these boards. A lot of work has gone into them and they work well, very well in some cases. All i'm saying is that designing a proprietary board, operating as a 'company' and selling these things en-masse it not a good idea.
Designing open hardware projects, and yes - selling the odd prototype privately whether for a profit or at cost - is both legal and fair to all. You know what you're getting, and if you're up for the learning curve you can do it yourself.
Isn't that what this is all about? These 16 bit systems are perfect for tinkering around with due to their relative simplicity. For me, and others, this is all a learning process.
If all you want is a faster Amiga to run your WHDLoad games quicker and more conveniently - i get it - i really really do. I don't have a solution for you, but you're taking risk when you're buying these 'out of nowhere' proprietary cards with little to no technical support. Just search these forums for how many users have had trouble with their Furias, for example, and i'm not talking 'poor socket seating' - and that's just on the English forums! At least if it was open-source, you could have a friend or a professional fix the problem for you. You would have experienced forum users able to look at the schematics and help you troubleshoot. The solution offered for my problem? I was asked to send my Furia back to Eastern Europe (forget the country, i'd have to check) for 'testing', covering postage myself, no legal assurance that i'd even get it back, and with a charge for labour despite the fact that the board had a counterfeit processor and faulty RAM chips. The response from the designer was one line, requesting i send the board back and that go to PM for more details. I'm still awaiting a response for the possibility of a blank PCB so I can transfer my working parts over from a broken board. (Long story, i fixed all the problems myself, then had a bit of an accident and bloody destroyed it. See my other posts for details).
Just - buyer beware, that's all.
John