Estimation on size of the Amiga scene

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by nobody

It's true that WinUAE kept the Amiga alive. I even fixed my Amiga hard drive with it then just transferred everything to Amiga. Every time I want to add some game to whdload I just plug cf to WinUAE.
It's the column that holds the entire building. Amiga would be nothing without this program.

+1 and +1 for Toni. Very knowledgeable chap who makes nothing for his trouble.

[grelbfarlk]

I don't have anything good to suggest to figure this out, since aside from some regulars who are on all the forums, certain crowds only hang out on one or the other.

Mostly I would say A1k guys are not aware of things happening here, Amigaworld, Amigaorg, Amiganews, ppa.pl and all of those seem to have clustered groups of people that don't watch the other sites. Sure there are some crossovers but a lot of duplicate people too.

For something like the TF cards, I had no idea it was 500 sold. How many of them were to people with multiple Amigas and such are things we can't know.

Regarding the A1200 cases kickstarter, that was a very large amount of money for something only some people could use. But for €156,310 a very large amount of projects could have been funded and completed, but some very ardent portion of the community just wanted replacement cases.

And now the new one for A500 cases, $197,840 USD total funds raised. That's pretty crazy.

I'm not saying I disagree with either of these projects, for someone to follow through with them and for people to get the thing they want is great.

[Marchie]

Originally Posted by plasmab

+1 and +1 for Toni. Very knowledgeable chap who makes nothing for his trouble.

Even as someone who vastly prefers real hardware, WinUAE is a pretty-much essential tool, I'd be surprised if there is anyone here who doesn't use it in some capacity. Toni does amazing work. I don't say that enough.


Relating to the topic - millions of Amigas were sold, those are all people with some memory of the system, they are all potential viewers/scene members/customers for new products.



But yeah, people who have actually booted an Amiga program or game in any form the last five years, tens of thousands at most.

[plasmab]

To be clear it’s about 500 TF328s sold. I’ve sold a similar number of blank 530 boards but know knows how many will be actually built.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Regarding the A1200 cases kickstarter, that was a very large amount of money for something only some people could use. But for €156,310 a very large amount of projects could have been funded and completed, but some very ardent portion of the community just wanted replacement cases.

And now the new one for A500 cases, $197,840 USD total funds raised. That's pretty crazy.

Agree. That's 325 000€ raised just to have new cases for users that for the vast majority already have a 1200 or a 500. Pretty sure this money could have been used to make a brand new fonctional Amiga.
In comparison, they were asking 280 000€ for the Spectrum Next... And they raised more than 800 000€.
But it was for a brand new computer. Not just cases or emulated speccy.
Amiga market is, as always, too fragmented. I know many old Amiga users who would be happy to buy a new Amiga for some retro playing. But when they see how complicated and expensive it is now to have a fonctional Amiga, they stay with UAE or go rasberry.

[Daedalus]

€325,000 is less than half what was raised for the Next, yet the Amiga is a far more complicated machine to emulate / reproduce. It's very difficult to compare the two, but if you really wanted to, all you have to do is buy a Raspberry Pi 3, install one of the Amiga style distros on it, build it into the A1200 Kickstarter cases (there are already mounts for the Pi), and have a custom USB keyboard made for the case. There you go, brand new "Amiga" computers similar to the Next.

It's a little strange that you seem to feel annoyed that other people spent their money on things they wanted. Functional Amigas already exist, which can be expanded to a level of usability that the original Spectrum could only dream of. That means that there's much less demand for a remake, since there are existing machines that will do the job just fine.

[plasmab]

A case is a low risk product. There aren’t many things to test about it before you sell it. That’s not the same for a new computer and certainly not one as complex as the Amiga.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

€325,000 is less than half what was raised for the Next, yet the Amiga is a far more complicated machine to emulate / reproduce. It's very difficult to compare the two, but if you really wanted to, all you have to do is buy a Raspberry Pi 3, install one of the Amiga style distros on it, build it into the A1200 Kickstarter cases (there are already mounts for the Pi), and have a custom USB keyboard made for the case. There you go, brand new "Amiga" computers similar to the Next.

It's a little strange that you seem to feel annoyed that other people spent their money on things they wanted. Functional Amigas already exist, which can be expanded to a level of usability that the original Spectrum could only dream of. That means that there's much less demand for a remake, since there are existing machines that will do the job just fine.

I'm not annoyed at all. I've got an Amiga and it's working perfect. But I also know that it isn't immortal and I'm not a soldering wizard (that's the only thing annoying me in fact)
Btw they were asking 280 000€ for the speccy. So less than 325 000€ (the number that was raised isn't relevant there).

[plasmab]

I do think people here think once you have a design you are done... just fund it’s assembly and ship the units. The real world is more complex.

You have to test the design, get CE certification, probably get public liability insurance, supply technical support, pay for people who blow it up and claim it was dead on arrival. All of these get built into the price every customer pays.

[mcgeezer]

I guess when I thought about the question, what I had in mind was how many Amiga gamers there were actively (monthly) playing/buying games either on real hardware or WinUAE.

I do all my coding on WinUAE and test on real hardware. Even my current project I am developing for I don't currently own an A1200 (that will change in the next week). The Amiga scene would be much smaller or extinct without WinUAE.

But how many active gamers? who knows.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

I'm not annoyed at all. I've got an Amiga and it's working perfect. But I also know that it isn't immortal and I'm not a soldering wizard (that's the only thing annoying me in fact)
Btw they were asking 280 000€ for the speccy. So less than 325 000€ (the number that was raised isn't relevant there).

Indeed... So where did the other €520,000 go? Was it given back to the backers? Were the unit costs reduced? The last time I saw one, there weren't even cases for the machines, so even though they had almost tripled their target, they still only had bare boards with the case lagging many months behind. People weren't buying complete computers; they were buying circuit boards. And you haven't addressed the issue of complexity - the Amiga is an order of magnitude more complex than the Speccy, so emulation of the Amiga is a much tougher proposition. Accordingly, making a modern incarnation will also be far more difficult and expensive. despite that, there are already several options for modern incarnations that you either don't want or don't know about. Such as:

- Amibian
- Armiga
- OS 4 systems such as the AmigaOne 500
- FPGAArcade
- MiST
- Stand-alone Vampire in the works

And that's not counting the three separate projects I'm aware of to reproduce the A1200 motherboard alone.

If none of these fulfil your expectations as a modern replacement, then please do tell us what it is that you think the money should have been spent on?

[plasmab]

For this sort of work it would be ballpark €500 a day plus equipment needed and parts. I might be aiming too low there. Plus you’d need to manage the project and do all the CE testing. And spend time properly specifying requirements.

Are they providing premises etc?

Typical engineering project of this scale and complexity probably turn out to be a six month project and then you have a design. And your problems start then.

68060s are hard to get. You’ll argue I’m wrong and point to websites selling them but there are lots of fakes out there. V risky.

Assembly may need to change parts due to availability etc.

The vampire is the best option for what you want.

The design is the easy bit. Manufacturing and production of complex circuits is a PITA.

EDIT: Incase my point is missed. The reason this hasn’t happened is it’s too risky for anyone to undertake this on the scale you suggest it should be done.

[DamienD]

Guys, let's not turn this into another hardware wish list / related thread

I'm sure by now you've all read mcgeezer's answer to why he created this thread in the first place

Originally Posted by mcgeezer

I guess when I thought about the question, what I had in mind was how many Amiga gamers there were actively (monthly) playing/buying games either on real hardware or WinUAE.

Sorry but hardware alone isn't a definite indication of the "Amiga scene", there are many other factors as have been discussed...

Back on topic please.

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Guys, let's not turn this into another hardware wish list / related thread

Indeed. It’s getting boring explaining risk vs reward over and over. Like Groundhog Day.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Sorry for forking it even more off topic, since we were talking about money, and what Amiga people would actually buy and stuff, I thought it was related.

No it never was; it's simply about the size of the "Amiga scene" in general...

That's just the direction all the "hardware" people decided to take this thread towards...

Please re-read mcgeezer's 1st post again and his follow-up, I don't see any mention of money?

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Sorry for forking it even more off topic, since we were talking about money, and what Amiga people would actually buy and stuff, I thought it was related.

Plasmab your points are not lost on me, I just thought putting an upper limit on something that many people would want would cost was somewhat relevant.

Promise my last hardware post here. A good 68060 costs £120. That’s before you put it in a board. You aren’t going to make the board you suggest cheaper than vampire. It would end up being around 4-500 quid all in.

On the subject of games. I never play Amiga games. Usually game a PC.

[DamienD]

Seriously, ^^^ , after my last few replies???

Next "off-topic" hardware related post gets auto-deleted without warning

Please don't make me ask you again; back on topic!!!

[plasmab]

Just delete the thread back to post 44 then. It’s not like anything has been added from there on.

[Amigajay]

32,337 give or take

[ross]

32767, not one more or you will overflow