Introducing ACA 1221 Low Cost Accelerator At AmigaKit.com

[kolla]

I believe most of us posting here are not among the customers of this board anyways, so... not much to care about. Right?

[Azryl]

Originally Posted by kolla

I believe most of us posting here are not among the customers of this board anyways, so... not much to care about. Right?

Agree with Kolla... geez reading through this thread.. YAY new Amiga hardware in 2015!!! oh wow... the comments from users... what a bunch of whingers

Az

[hansel75]

And just like the gaming industry with it's 'On Disc DLC', 'Micro-transactions', 'Day One DLC' all trying to milk the customer, this kind of thing never goes down well.

As can be seen from the many unhappy people here talking about this new unlockable for cash feature, for something that's already there on the product when they buy it.

They wouldn't be selling it for £57 if they couldn't make a profit from the basic model, so why charge for extras that are already there.

Someone will no doubt crack it and be able to unlock these features on there own, giving them the card they should of gotten out of the box.

[roy bates]

i must admit,it does look like a whinge...

i hope no-one does crack it ,its not a bad card i just dont like the pay to unlock upgrade option.

i wish jens the best of luck.

[hansel75]

I think everyone is entitled to there opinion, it is a free world after all.

Also having previously spent a small fortune on 4 of Jen's products already, with some of the products feeling half finished(IndivisionAGA Mrk2 firmware + features), or simply don't work in my Amiga(A604), i feel entitled to have an opinion on future products.

[Reido]

Great to see new affordable hardware.

[roy bates]

yes,an opinion,some dont like that.

still,i wish him the best of luck,its not something im going to buy.

hmm,yeah.i did buy an indi...dont have it anymore to worry about.so ill leave it be...

[gulliver]

I personally understand this way of selling things, and I have to agree that at the stock configuration it is a good deal for Amiga enthusiast at that price.

I see no foul play or anyting like that, just that you get what you pay for.

Furthermore, it is an inexpensive and fast way to update the hardware when you feel like you need to.

I also like the reduced size of the board.

But then it is just my opinion

[Retro1234]

Very reasonable price
Now give me ACA68060

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Thorham

I don't like those unlock features because software can permanently change how hardware works. What if something goes wrong?

Before changes to the licensing can be made, the "unprotect" jumper must be set. While a license code is being checked for validity, the whole computer freezes (mouse pointer does not move) for a few seconds. You only get this far if the "unlock" jumper is set, so you're safe when the jumper is open.

Originally Posted by Akira

This is the assumption I don't agree with. The lower price doesn't necessarily mean more people will buy it, since the "bare bones" model is so basic.

The basic model is so basic because it does not compete with any accelerator. It competes with memory-only expansions, which are still sold in considerable quantity. So yes, the lower price opens up a whole new group of customers (where only one in this thread has had enough courage to say that he's a customer due to his financial situation - all others prefer to pretend that they can afford anything).

Originally Posted by roy bates

and ...nothing of jens's has ever sold for more money?
and less people bought the units for more per unit?
i dont think so...

You're looking the wrong way: Past sales are good, as they have brought me this far. Future sales are what I need to keep paying my bills and my employees. What I have successfully done with the ACA500 is to bring back people into our nice hobby, as it was a very affordable card. The ACA1221 has the same purpose: Attract new customers who wouldn't normally look at new hardware, because to date, it has been too expensive.

Originally Posted by Allen1

As I see it, you get ten attempts to unlock its features,

Not correct. You can set the "trial" jumper ten times and start the computer ten times with all features enabled. For adding a license, you have unlimited attempts, so a typo won't cause any harm.

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

But this card is also quite low-profile too so i wonder if you could use it with the Reloaded board and fit it in an A600 case.

It's by far the smallest card I've ever made for the A1200, and it will surely fit the Amiga Reloaded in an A600 case.

Originally Posted by Interceptor

what i'm genuinely curious about, is why bother adding a 68020 at 28mhz,instead of an faster better processor.

is there really that much different in processor costs for things this old? i would have guessed that these days adding a 68030 at 50mhz (again,assuming max over clock) would
have been just as cost effective.

Motorola processors are still available new, but for ridiculous prices of over 200 dollars each. That's because these CPUs have been used in Aviation (Boeing used them), and they need to be available up to 20 years after the last plane has been built using these processors. So what I'm stuck with (if I want to make affordable hardware) is chips from the "used" market, where lots of fakes are around, and prices aren't always good. It's an "eat or die" market with no real choice. For the ACA1221, I was lucky enough to buy a box of MC68020-16 processors by the kilogram.

Originally Posted by roy bates

i would rather buy something second hand and wave goodbye to a warranty that i care nothing about to avoid this sort of thing.

Warranty and "buy used" can go together. I don't make a difference between first-hand and second-hand customers. What I care about is "how old is the product" and "has it been tampered with". This has been good advertising for my products, and many customers decided to buy new products after they experienced good support for a used item that has the iComp brand.

Originally Posted by rare_j

Will the dealers be able to configure the product before shipping? I'd rather pay the dealer to fiddle with the codes than do it myself.

There's nothing that will stop the dealers from buying license codes, but since these codes are no reseller items, it will cost them the same as the end-customer. You will most likely pay more, as the reseller will presumably do extensive tests that must be paid for.

Originally Posted by rare_j

Will the card require timing fixes? The requirement for timing fixes makes your previous products expensive and inconvenient. I'd rather have slightly decreased performance than have to ship my motherboard off at great expense for timing fixes. Maybe there could be a jumper or software switch to make it go slow and not require timing fixes?

You probably refer to capacitors E123C and E125C - according to Commodore documentation (see Budgie documentation), these should have never been installed. Installing them means creating a broken system timing that also harms S-Hires display. I will NOT encourage keeping a system like that.

Jens

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by roy bates

i must admit,it does look like a whinge...

i hope no-one does crack it ,its not a bad card i just dont like the pay to unlock upgrade option.

i wish jens the best of luck.

Nah, it's not really a whinge at all. Feedback from the community will be helpful to gauge if a product will be successful or a flop.
I still think its a non starter doing things this way.

When a customer purchases one of these cards the 'cost' of the components will be fully paid for (i.e. the full complement of RAM etc). By then charging the customer a further fee to 'unlock' something they have paid in its physical form is a little greedy imo. I know Jens is in the business to make profit and that's fair enough but it just leaves a sour taste.

Perhaps it should be renamed the ACA 1221 Candy Crush saga RAM card?

[dJOS]

Originally Posted by kolla

I believe most of us posting here are not among the customers of this board anyways, so... not much to care about. Right?

I own an aca1220 so I'd suggest I'm in or have been in Jens target market.

Jens is right, for me it was an affordable ram upgrade for my a1200. Although these days I lust over the aca1230 and would love one with an FPU (not likely to happen any time soon tho).

[Daedalus]

I think some of the problems in accepting the concept here come from the use of the word "crippled". What you're getting for the low price is a fully functional board that can do everything its specifications say it can for that price. It's absolutely *nothing* like buying a car with 3 wheels and paying more for the 4th. No matter how you look at it, the car with 3 wheels can't be used, whereas even the most basic ACA1221 configuration will offer a significant speed boost over a bog standard A1200.

But since we're on the subject of cars, I can think of a much better example that happens all the time in the automotive world. For example, the venerable 1.8 litre turbo engine used by Volkswagen in millions of VW, Audi, Seat and Skoda cars. Its power output ranges from ~150BHP to close to 300BHP, even though the entire engine is physically the same. What's the difference? Firmware that affects timing, fuel management, throttle control, turbo use and so on. That's all. My car has that engine and puts out 225BHP. Does that mean my car is crippled? Of course not. Should I bitch and moan to Seat that they sold me a crippled car? They'd laugh me out of the garage. And I bet all those millions of people who bought the Mk 4 Golf GTI are pretty peeved now that they suddenly realise they bought a crippled car that only puts out 180BHP, even though the hardware is designed to do 300. I can see them all now, banging on the doors of the VW showrooms, demanding that their cars be uncrippled.

It's a pretty trivial operation to upgrade the firmware to release the potential of the engine since the firmware has been reverse engineered. You can pay any car tuning place around €200 and they'll happily install a replacement firmware image that unlocks a whole heap of extra power. Or you can pay an extra couple of thousand when you buy the car to get a manufacturer-approved unlock that does the same thing.

From working on software and hardware development in the medical industry, I can tell you very similar things happen there too. It's the same machine physically, but the customer pays more for extra features that are enabled in firmware prior to shipping.

Anyway, it's perfectly normal practice in many industries, and not the crazy/foolish/insulting/cynical move some people seem to think. I guess these people would be happier if the board was missing the physical RAM chips and cost €10 more than it does due to additional development costs outweighing the cost saving on the chips. Now *that* is silly.

[Paul_s]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

But since we're on the subject of cars, I can think of a much better example that happens all the time in the automotive world. For example, the venerable 1.8 litre turbo engine used by Volkswagen in millions of VW, Audi, Seat and Skoda cars. Its power output ranges from ~150BHP to close to 300BHP, even though the entire engine is physically the same. What's the difference? Firmware that affects timing, fuel management, throttle control, turbo use and so on. That's all. My car has that engine and puts out 225BHP. Does that mean my car is crippled? Of course not. Should I bitch and moan to Seat that they sold me a crippled car? They'd laugh me out of the garage. And I bet all those millions of people who bought the Mk 4 Golf GTI are pretty peeved now that they suddenly realise they bought a crippled car that only puts out 180BHP, even though the hardware is designed to do 300. I can see them all now, banging on the doors of the VW showrooms, demanding that their cars be uncrippled.

Sure, but they're configured that way to offer economy/reliability over a longer period of time along with decent performance/reasonable insurance costs.

300bhp with increased wear/tear to the engine and insurance costs. No thanks!
Nice engine though

64MB of ram for an Amiga is still daft and over the top for most users unless you're using it for a high-end workbench setup and/or productivity use.
Maybe if Jens just offered the card with 32MB RAM and ditch the 'crippled' hardware option then everyone would be happy?

[Mrs Beanbag]

a little story...

once upon a time there was a niche hobbyist market, and one day in a particular forum for this hobby, Bob announced the creation of a new 64Mb widget. Exactly 50 people expressed interest in such a product. So Bob got out his calculator and worked out that at this volume, he could sell these widgets for €100 each (with a little profit for himself).

"Great!" said these 50 people, "this is exactly how much i would pay for a 64Mb widget!"

But another group of exactly 50 people also piped up, saying "nice though it would be to have a 64Mb widget, we don't really want to spend that much, and we only really need 8Mb."

So Bob gets his calculator out again, but, alas, a run of 50 8Mb cards would cost €95 a piece, which really wouldn't be worth doing. Then a smile crosses Bob's lips as an idea occurs to him.

"Yes!" he declares, "i can also produce an 8Mb widget for €50 each!"

And everyone is ecstatically happy, because €50 is exactly how much this second group of people is willing to pay.

But how is it possible? Well, Bob realised that if he were to sell 100 of the 64Mb widgets, they would come to €75 a piece. So he can sell 50 of them for €100 and another 50 of them for €50 and still make the same amount of profit per unit, and everybody gets what they want at a price they considered fair. All he has to do is limit half of the widgets to 8Mb in their firmware, which is easy to do and costs nothing.

Then one day, a certain person appears on the forum and says "hey a while ago i bought an 8Mb widget, but i've changed my mind and i'd actually quite like 64Mb afterall."

So Bob replies, "well, if you will just pay me the €50 difference, all i have to do is say the magic word, and your 8Mb widget will become a 64Mb widget, the same as the others!"

But instead of being pleased that they can still have everything they want for what everyone agreed was a fair price, the people were outraged, and Bob wakes up the next morning with a mob outside his window, throwing stones at his house and chanting "we already got 64Mb! We won't pay just to use it!"

A solitary tear trickles down Bob's cheek as his faith in humanity and civilisation is wiped out in an instant. He burns all his possessions and runs off to live in the woods, subsisting on roots and berries. Now and then he entertains a fond memory of the old days, when he used to produce low-volume electronics devices for his peers, but the squirrels and crows are his friends now, and they never complain when he finds a way to give them everything they want. Eventually the entire world evaporates as the sun enters its red giant stage.

And the moral of the story is, never be open and honest about your business model.

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

It's by far the smallest card I've ever made for the A1200, and it will surely fit the Amiga Reloaded in an A600 case.

btw if Apollo cards really are that terrible, surely you can improve on the design? i know that 68060s are hard to come by, but i, for one, already own a dead Apollo 1260 and i would be more than happy to donate the CPU to a new card. i am sure there are others out there who would pay for a socketed board and provide their own CPU. just a suggestion.

I like the idea that you can attach the Rapidroad to this card so freeing up the A1200 clock port. It's a neater solution than a clock port cable and you can use the motherboard clock port for say a Catweasel or the Prima mega mix sound card etc. Can't understand the gripes about price. There will be many new users who have bought unexpanded A1200's on eBay but are unable to source a reasonable price acelerator / ram card so this is a great solution without breaking the bank, with or without the extras.

I have no problems with the business model. If say you want an accelerator but funds are limited it's an ideal solution. Now say later on you are a bit flush and want a faster card, more ram etc with previous hardware you would have to buy a separate card with those features. So you spend £57 initially and say £90 for the fully loaded model. I have to buy what I can afford and I know in the past when I have tried to save up for the higher priced piece of hardware by the time that has come around it has sold out!

[Tyball]

I would love to have one of these.

The only thing I worry about is the availability.

I would like to have one for the upcoming ACA500(+). If I'm able to get a hold of one.

Are the ACA1221 still going to be available then?

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by Tyball

I would love to have one of these.

The only thing I worry about is the availability.

I would like to have one for the upcoming ACA500(+). If I'm able to get a hold of one.

Are the ACA1221 still going to be available then?

Although my prediction is "yes" (because both products are planned for Xmas business 2015), I recommend to buy when they are available. I can never guarantee when anything is in stock, as it's so unpredictable what people will buy and when.

Jens

[Vot]

Originally Posted by Arnie

That's my point. To you, it's not a lot of money, to me, it nearly doubles the price of the card. I personally couldn't afford it if it was unlocked.

Well his unlock model is great then. You can buy the card now. And buy features as you can afford them. Rather than him releasing two cards one that can never be upgraded and one that is fully unlocked and both with a higher cost as he has to incur the higher costs of producing both.