Introducing ACA 1221 Low Cost Accelerator At AmigaKit.com

[Mrs Beanbag]

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.

well firstly i think it's worth it just as a RAM expansion, secondly isn't this actually aimed at the new Amiga Reloaded motherboards, which will need at least some CPU card to work at all?

i was actually expecting something even more basic, to be honest

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

isn't this actually aimed at the new Amiga Reloaded motherboards, which will need at least some CPU card to work at all?

bingo!

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

Because then fewer people would want to buy it, which means fewer units would be sold, which means the cost per unit would be higher. Because there are up-front costs as well as per-unit costs.

Ok let's put the riddles aside and make it straightforward.

You are saying you don't want to pay £57 for something that has £57 worth of functionality because it could be worth £90 instead and you wouldn't mind paying that much for £90 worth of functionality. Even though you will actually be able to do that.

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...


ok,im glad the riddles are out the way,or similarities to make a point.

no...im saying if the card is for sale at X amount and jens wants X amount to enable hardware thats already there,why not enable it for X plus X?
its pretty easy concept to understand you know.
but,the fact he is happy to accept X amount at stock when its there does make me wonder a little,but there you go.his choice

in my mind adding functionality to something that already has the hardware there but is crippled in software.is a no no for me.my choice to buy or not.

surely if it was worth more it would have a price tag of a bit more.its easy to do.you know...since its already there and all that.
instead of the pay a little more you get a little more...and then a little bit more.

but,like a say its an opinion and thats all.

[Mrs Beanbag]

the card is for sale at £57 and jens wants €40 to enable hardware thats already there,why not enable it for £57 plus €40... <- exactly what he is doing

the hardware is worth next to nothing. it is just some sand and plastic and copper. only functionality is worth anything. value is not the same as cost or price.

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

well firstly i think it's worth it just as a RAM expansion, secondly isn't this actually aimed at the new Amiga Reloaded motherboards, which will need at least some CPU card to work at all?

i was actually expecting something even more basic, to be honest

more basic?from the accelerator?

yes and the reloaded,thats bare bones isnt it?

[MrFluffy]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

Pretty sure there already exists this sort of thing in the Tate Modern... and if not, it is a brilliant idea!

If it is there, its there as a deep wry social comment and warning to a society at the insane business practices we seem to be sleepwalking into as acceptable...

[Allen1]

I most definitely am not a believer in buying something that is crippled from new and then have to pay extra to get it fully working.

As I see it, you get ten attempts to unlock its features, I would presume that the the eeprom would be where the features would be stored although I may be wrong. If however that is correct then what's to stop someone from dumping the eeprom or any other programmable devices from a fully working card to any other card, bypassing the need to have a licence, mind you if each card has a different serial number using this method would probably program each card with the number that was used in the original fully working card.

Most of us have done similar things with the old Xbox "TSOP" or the Gotek drives just for the fun of it so things like that are not beyond reality.

Personally, I would like this pay extra idea scrapped, its pretty bad marketing and will probably encourage people to either play around as above or wait till something better comes along!

[Predseda]

I think there should be achievements: once you completed Turrican trilogy, the card would unlock better speed, after you completed Project X, the card would unlock bigger RAM and after you completed Frontier, the card would overclock itself to 100MHz

[Mrs Beanbag]

yes, i thought there would be a card that would be a 68EC020 at 14MHz with synchronous bus and maybe the 1Mb trapdoor RAM, so as to match a stock A1200. Obviously there is no point selling such a thing until the Reloaded is ready. 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.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by Predseda

I think there should be achievements: once you completed Turrican trilogy, the card would unlock better speed, after you completed Project X, the card would unlock bigger RAM and after you completed Frontier, the card would overclock itself to 100MHz

YES
[ Show youtube player ]

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

the card is for sale at £57 and jens wants €40 to enable hardware thats already there,why not enable it for £57 plus €40... <- exactly what he is doing

the hardware is worth next to nothing. it is just some sand and plastic and copper. only functionality is worth anything. value is not the same as cost or price.

its value is the same as cost or price,why do you think it has a damn price tag?
well,with that sort of logic it might be hard to sell anything.

if its on sale for £57 and its worth next to nothing hardware wise why isnt all the options enabled?
that are there in the first place.

i think your wasting your time,if your a salesman...your not very good at it.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by roy bates

its value is the same as cost or price,why do you think it has a damn price tag?

The price tag shows the price, not the value. He could price it at a billion pounds if he wished. But, obviously nobody would buy it. Or he could price it at 2p and sell it at an enormous loss. The question he has to ask himself is, what price, or prices, would sell the most units?

if its on sale for £57 and its worth next to nothing hardware wise why isnt all the options enabled?

Why? Simply because he can charge more money for enabling all the options! Because people don't pay money just for a glass fibre sheet with some nice blocks of plastic on it, people pay money for things to be useful to them! You pay for an object's utility not its atoms. People pay money even for virtual clothes and furniture in online worlds that don't physically exist!

This is all really quite basic economics. And i really hate saying that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_%28economics%29

[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.

[roy bates]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

The price tag shows the price, not the value. He could price it at a billion pounds if he wished. But, obviously nobody would buy it. Or he could price it at 2p and sell it at an enormous loss. The question he has to ask himself is, what price, or prices, would sell the most units?


Why? Simply because he can charge more money for enabling all the options! Because people don't pay money just for a glass fibre sheet with some nice blocks of plastic on it, people pay money for things to be useful to them! You pay for an object's utility not its atoms. People pay money even for virtual clothes and furniture in online worlds that don't physically exist!

This is all really quite basic economics. And i really hate saying that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_%28economics%29

no no no,i pay for whats on the card and what its supposed to do as an end user.hmm,or should i say expect as an end user.

not to do something it its capable of doing from the factory when it already has it for an extra cost to unlock later.

thats value to me.when it already does it.

like buying a colour monitor,i dont expect it to only show part of the picture or in black and white,i expect it to do what its made for.
and,i dont like if the seller says you can see the rest if you pay a little extra,and a little bit more for colour just because its the sellers choice,mine would be to say i dont want it and why.like anything else.

im not saying the price is wrong for the card as i think its cheap,im saying the way to get the extras is,it wont work for everyone from moral point of view.thats all really.
and it definitely dont cut it with me because theres little to no choice,because i would rather buy something second hand and wave goodbye to a warranty that i care nothing about to avoid this sort of thing.
lets face it,ill be using any accelerator in a 20+ year old machine...so i wont care there.

[rare_j]

The card sounds like great value, and the upgrade levels seem really good value as well.
2 questions.
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.

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?

[dJOS]

Originally Posted by modrobert

How about selling a full version of ACA-1221 which doesn't require any license handling at all at the highest price, just flash it without license code during production, and in parallel you sell the low price version with license handling.

I think the online retailers can deal with two versions of ACA-1221 in their systems, and both sides of this argument gets what they want.

This would be my preference too ....

I really dont like the idea of having to pay for unlocks on HW i already own ... just a really cynical business model imo even tho I understand the benefits to Jens and others who employ it.

Btw, imo if a fully loaded version is sold, should be at a "bundled price" to reward buyers for stumping up the cash all at once (eg like a car, if you just add extras to the base model, it ends up cheaper to buy the next model up that includes those features already).

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Retrofan

Warranty?

Yeah, I know, but it's the principle. The same for things like firmware upgrades. The moment software can change hardware behavior permanently, I get an itch somewhere.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Yeah, I know, but it's the principle. The same for things like firmware upgrades. The moment software can change hardware behavior permanently, I get an itch somewhere.

Not a big fan of FPGA either then ey?

Some general reminders for the nay-sayers in this thread:
20 years ago Intel 486SX were actually 486DX with math co-processor disabled
10 years ago I could soft-mod mod my GF6800 to a (much more expensive) Quadro 4000FX and magically install quadro drivers to get better performance in 3d software. it was possible because it was essentially the same chip.
0 years ago, the same nVidia chip GK110 masquerades as GeForce 780, 780Ti, Titan, Titan Black... etc... difference is in diabling number of CUDA cores, adjusting frequencies.. nVidia is selling them at vastly different prices..
From the beginning it may be that yealds for the top model are bad and instead of throwing the whole chip away it is sold as a cheap chip with lots of disabled cores.. but after yealds improve theu might still artifically disable cores for the cheaper chips.
It is done this way because it makes sense for the manufacturer...
At that point nVidia could also do the same.. pay to unlock CUDA cores. I would actually prefer it to having a zillion physical models to choose from. Its just wasteful.

Ok, Time to... Get.Over.It.. Ya all.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Not a big fan of FPGA either then ey?

Depends on how it's done. I like things to be cast in stone, so to speak. Feels better. Does it matter in practice? Probably not.

[modrobert]

Originally Posted by MrFluffy

If it is there, its there as a deep wry social comment and warning to a society at the insane business practices we seem to be sleepwalking into as acceptable...

I agree, there seems to be a lot of sleepwalking in general these days, we need to question and oppose more. Only dead fish go with the flow.

While on the subject of questionable business practices.

I recently bought a new Epson LQ-310 24-pin dot matrix printer (Yes, these are still sold new in Asia). You might think the reason for this was because it makes a cool retro sound while printing, or due to the fact it has three interfaces (USB, Parallel IEEE-1284 and Serial RS-232), or maybe because Amiga supports this printer natively in workbench.

While all this is true, the main reason I bought a dot matrix printer in 2015 was to get out of the current printer "refill racket" which plagues both the laser and inkjet printer market these days. The huge ribbon cartridges for the dot matrix printer last for a long time (several years even), and when it's time to change the original ribbon cartridge from Epson it costs roughly the equivalent of USD $5 in local currency.

The funny part is that it's not so much about the money, I just hate taking care of needy printers which cry about low toner, drum fail, low ink, etc. Especially when the modern laser/inkjet printers stop working with blinking leds due to firmware which is deliberately programmed to make you refill often, rather than actually sensing when the toner/color is actually empty. Yes, there are hacks for these things as well, but as a consumer, I felt it was high time to make a stand by choosing another product.

Back in the 80s when the first HP Laserjet was released a toner cartridge was good for roughly 5000 pages, now, 30 years later, it's usually around 500 pages in the "small" toner you get when buying the printer, and maybe around 1000 pages if you buy a new toner. Is this progress?

Sure, the dot matrix printer has its limitations, but at least it's sold using a decent business model.