Would anyone like a real Amiga shop?

Paul_s · 18 July 2008, 21:46

As in where you can walk in and have stacks/rows of Amiga goodies on display?

I therefore plead that an Amigakit shop is built asap! please with cherries on top

We could have old skool demo's running on display in the window and Retro-Nerd could serve up fruit smoothies

Uh I just woke up from a dream

Anyone miss 'real' Amiga shops? I know I do

Do any still exist?!

edit: I have just realised I drempt about Retro-Nerd

amigakit.com · 18 July 2008, 23:10

We have two industrial units as well as our web presence. Some EAB members have visited us already.

alexh · 18 July 2008, 23:14

I would be surprised if it is economically viable. AmigaKit almost assuredly does not make a living from Amiga sales.

amigakit.com · 18 July 2008, 23:19

95 percent of our time is dedicated to Amiga specific sales and support. We have been operating in this way since 2004

alexh · 18 July 2008, 23:21

95% of you time maybe, but 95% of your income?

You say "we" do you have employees?

Wow. I am impressed. I would not have imagined you could make enough profit from sales of Amiga hardware to pay one person a decent wage let alone two (or more).

You have done a very good job at creating a good Amiga shop.

If I could ask you a question: What is more difficult - finding sales or finding stock?

I would imagine that there are some items you could sell 10x over if only you could get any!

I was very impressed when you employed Jen's Schoenfeld to make the A600 trap door RAM expansion. (Perhaps a strange choice of item, but hey). Manufacturing a new product, wondering if you'll ever make your investment back, wondering if you got the demand levels right... all good stuff.

amigakit.com · 18 July 2008, 23:29

The wages are paid at the end of every month - of course every sale is appreciated to reinvest into the amigakit project.

There are loyal customers that shop with us regularly (some EAB members)- without them the business wouldn't be viable. Thank you!

It would always be nice to have more stock- but the we keep the income we get circulating within the Amiga community- we use it to pay Amiga hardware partners such as Individual Computers and in turn keep them in business too with new projects. The Amiga Economic Circle Of Life

amigakit.com · 18 July 2008, 23:41

I have a good professional relationship with Jens- he is a great hardware partner to work with.

The A602 came about because the Ebay prices were getting too high. They took a year to sell out and get our money back, however we are considering funding another production run - the problem is that we cannot currently locate the RAM chips. There has also been funds channelled for the forthcoming new A1200 scandoubler/new Catweasel MK4 production run available at amigakit.com shortly.

DDNI · 18 July 2008, 23:43

@ AmigaKit, I have money here to pre order the scandoubler. When do you want it?

amigakit.com · 18 July 2008, 23:46

We will be taking pre-orders in August. The scandoubler is currently awaiting production - all components are ready except for some missing resistor arrays which are currently out of stock.

alexh · 19 July 2008, 00:05

If I could recommend a few new products for AmigaKit to consider??

GuruROM, the replacement ROM for the A590, A2091, GVP HC8+, GVP HD8+, GVP A530 (and several others). Ralph Babel has expressed his willingness to license the design for re-manufacture if the vendor was to do all the work. The cost per unit would be about £3 and a price of £15-20 would not be too offensive. You'd easily sell over 100 units. The demand for these items is high.

Modern heatsink and fan for Blizzard PPC or A1260/A1240. It should be fairly easy and cheap to have designed a modern heatsink that uses heat-pipe technology which could be used to protect the large investment of these cards. Blizzard PPC cards cost a fortune they run at stupidly high temperatures, especially in desktop cases. This would be something that almost any blizzard owner would buy.

16-Mbyte GVP compatible 64-pin 60ns SIMMs. These are like rocking horse poo. Development would be very cheap. Manufacture in china would be very cheap. You'd be able to sell these items at a good profit and the price not be offensive.

A new power supply for desktop Amiga's. A lot of the work has already been done by enthusiasts. Something similar to the PicoPSU mod that has already been shown to work in Amiga. Preferably remade to be a better overall physical fit and easier to install.

Not so much a new product but:

Acard AEC-7720U and AEC-7720UW adapters. Go direct to Acard, see if you cannot negotiate a very low price for a reasonable volume and pass this price on to your customers. More and more Amiga users will want these cards as SCSI drives become more and more rare and unreliable. If you could get them low enough to pass on prices we've come to see on the web ($30-ish) it would be amazing.

amigakit.com · 19 July 2008, 00:12

Thanks for the useful feedback, I will see what we can do.

vodley · 19 July 2008, 06:33

Might be a fun project for a virtual world! I'll get a second life capable video card some day.

Galahad/FLT · 19 July 2008, 16:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by amigakit.com

The wages are paid at the end of every month - of course every sale is appreciated to reinvest into the amigakit project.

There are loyal customers that shop with us regularly (some EAB members)- without them the business wouldn't be viable. Thank you!

It would always be nice to have more stock- but the we keep the income we get circulating within the Amiga community- we use it to pay Amiga hardware partners such as Individual Computers and in turn keep them in business too with new projects. The Amiga Economic Circle Of Life

I have a pair of developer A4000's here if you want them, one had a dodgy keyboard port, and the other worked the last time I used it (1994), both ex-Gremlin Graphics machines.

You pay the postage, and Amigakit can have them and do what you like with them.

cv643d · 19 July 2008, 23:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexh

GuruROM, the replacement ROM for the A590, A2091, GVP HC8+, GVP HD8+, GVP A530 (and several others). Ralph Babel has expressed his willingness to license the design for re-manufacture if the vendor was to do all the work. The cost per unit would be about £3 and a price of £15-20 would not be too offensive. You'd easily sell over 100 units. The demand for these items is high.

You sure about that? I havent noticed high demand for these chips, besides if you are serious about the Amiga you would get an A1200 and keep A500 for nostalgic purposes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexh

Modern heatsink and fan for Blizzard PPC or A1260/A1240. It should be fairly easy and cheap to have designed a modern heatsink that uses heat-pipe technology which could be used to protect the large investment of these cards. Blizzard PPC cards cost a fortune they run at stupidly high temperatures, especially in desktop cases. This would be something that almost any blizzard owner would buy.

Sounds expensive, and you need airflow around the card. The chips around the PPC CPU needs cooling too. Cheaper alternative is to attach large heatsink with fragtape to the stock PPC heatsink. If you run your PPC card in a desktop A1200 you are crazy. To protect your investment you need to mount it in a tower -where there usually is good cooling already!

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexh

A new power supply for desktop Amiga's. A lot of the work has already been done by enthusiasts. Something similar to the PicoPSU mod that has already been shown to work in Amiga. Preferably remade to be a better overall physical fit and easier to install.

The standard PSU is actually great. It doesnt consume watts when turned off, is not of typical chinese quality (exploding PSU's), runs very cool and has a decent amount of watt (some variants are 40 watt) plus it is actually styled after the Amiga.

I can understand why you need a new PSU if you are going to end up with a PPC or 040 in your A1200, but other than that -whats the point? The stock PSU is good enough.

dword · 20 July 2008, 02:22

As a newbie its good to here what you folks at amiga kit are up to, especially interesting what you were saying about ebay, I REALLY hope business stays good for you , because actually if there wasnt the odd shop like yourself , I reckon prices would get even worse, I was really shocked at the price off, well lets be honest old hardware but the fact is I like the amiga so what can I do

I dont know if you already do this, but you should have like high end pre-built and tested amigas (built only from yourselfs) with a thorough listing of everything thats in it as well as any slots that are left unused for potential upgrades, you could have like low, medium and high end builds.

Its just I am thinking a few months down the line I just want to be able to go to a shop like amigakit go in click high end amigas and know that those amigas are fully upgraded and I just click buy knowing that when I get the amiga home I just plug in and go .

I think assuming that you dont have fully built ones listed that would entice alot of prospective buyers who dont yet know enough to build from parts but want a brilliant machine.

Just an idea

as your place is probably the only place I would be prepared to spend a good lot of cash on a fully upgraded high end system(by amiga standards)

Cammy · 20 July 2008, 02:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by cv643d

You sure about that? I havent noticed high demand for these chips, besides if you are serious about the Amiga you would get an A1200 and keep A500 for nostalgic purposes.

I need one and I'd buy one. I have an A1200, but I have a few A500s as well that I like to use.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cv643d

Sounds expensive, and you need airflow around the card. The chips around the PPC CPU needs cooling too. Cheaper alternative is to attach large heatsink with fragtape to the stock PPC heatsink. If you run your PPC card in a desktop A1200 you are crazy. To protect your investment you need to mount it in a tower -where there usually is good cooling already!

A lot of people prefer their desktop cases, so if there was a better cooling option for Blizzards, people wouldn't NEED to butcher their sexy A1200s and stick them in ugly bloated towers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cv643d

The standard PSU is actually great. It doesnt consume watts when turned off, is not of typical chinese quality (exploding PSU's), runs very cool and has a decent amount of watt (some variants are 40 watt) plus it is actually styled after the Amiga.

I can understand why you need a new PSU if you are going to end up with a PPC or 040 in your A1200, but other than that -whats the point? The stock PSU is good enough.

The standard PSU was great... in the 80s! Since then, they've become angry old bastards who blow up randomly and take Amigas with them. We need something to replace them simply because they're killing too many Amigas and we need a safer new option.

T_hairy_bootson · 20 July 2008, 02:40

I too would like GURU roms for all my a590s and a2091s. I have a 1200 and a 4000 but still like tinkering with the older stuff.

alexh · 20 July 2008, 09:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by cv643d

You sure about that? [Guru ROM's] I haven't noticed high demand for these chips

You must not have ever looked. Whenever a thread gets started, it almost gets violent

Quote:

Originally Posted by cv643d

besides if you are serious about the Amiga you would get an A1200 and keep A500 for nostalgic purposes.

Logically you would, but as you will read in countless threads, Amiga users are not logical. They still insist on upgrading A500's and A2000's!

Quote:

Originally Posted by cv643d

Sounds expensive, and you need airflow around the card.

Not true, the whole point is to move the heat somewhere else that has airflow.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cv643d

The chips around the PPC CPU needs cooling too.

The stock heatsink does this??

Quote:

Originally Posted by cv643d

I can understand why you need a new PSU if you are going to end up with a PPC or 040 in your A1200, but other than that -whats the point?

I dunno about you but all stock PSU's struggle, even solid core A500 ones with an above normal load. Accelerator + hard drive + Ethernet card + scandoubler + FastATA + CF card = no go.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cv643d

The stock PSU is good enough.

It wasn't back then and it isn't now! Why else would people buy ATX adapters. Certainly isn't because they've broken or lost their original PSU. It's because their system is not running stable.

Charlie · 21 July 2008, 00:03

Hmmm, a real Amiga shop would be great (maybe even a general retro-computer shop complete with spotty geeks fiddling with the merchandise).

Still, the chances of one being in visitable distance of most would be nil - on-line's fine.

Requests?
1) Keep it up amigakit - I'm only sorry I have so few reasons to buy stuff & so support you, my Amigas being 'complete' with regard to stuff that can be bought...
2) There's plenty of stuff that I would like that can only be sourced for cruel prices on fleaBay: It would be nice to see some remanufacturing of things like accelerators but I guess the business case isn't there.

foody · 21 July 2008, 02:42

Speaking of such, I have already set aside in my shopping cart $260 worth of items awaiting from me to buy them. Since I am starting work tomorrow, as soon as I get my paid cheque I will deposit the amount on MasterCard and pay for the items. Amazing, I am spending that much and you would think I would have bought a tower case for my A1200 hehe The second I do that the second I declare myself

My Amiga 1200 will be desktop case till end of time, call me

but I am happy this way

.

If someone is curious as to what I am buying I will list them here (I am going to sell my SCSI CD burner in eBay.) I find my SCSI port not working well with me, it keeps causing a major freeze in my system and my favorite CD games don't work well with it, because it requires lots of loading and this freezes the game. I cannot even transfer more than 10 MB before it crashes my system. But if I buy USB Sub I am able to solve this problem:

Remove Product(s) Qty. Total

EASYNET PCMCIA NETWORK CARD (A1200/A600) EASYNET PCMCIA NETWORK CARD (A1200/A600)
$50.71

EasyADF PCMCIA Compact Flash Transfer Kit EasyADF PCMCIA Compact Flash Transfer Kit
- Memory Card 1GB
$40.40

2M NETWORK CABLE RJ45 CAT 5 2M NETWORK CABLE RJ45 CAT 5
$8.45

2M NETWORK CROSSOVER CABLE RJ45 CAT 5 2M NETWORK CROSSOVER CABLE RJ45 CAT 5
$8.45

SUBWAY USB CONTROLLER SUBWAY USB CONTROLLER
- Clockport Cable 20 cm
$121.36

18 July 2008, 21:46	#1
Paul_s Registered User Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Amigaville Age: 46 Posts: 3,335	Would anyone like a real Amiga shop? As in where you can walk in and have stacks/rows of Amiga goodies on display? I therefore plead that an Amigakit shop is built asap! please with cherries on top We could have old skool demo's running on display in the window and Retro-Nerd could serve up fruit smoothies Uh I just woke up from a dream Anyone miss 'real' Amiga shops? I know I do Do any still exist?! edit: I have just realised I drempt about Retro-Nerd

18 July 2008, 23:21	#5
alexh Thalion Webshrine Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Oxford Posts: 14,354	95% of you time maybe, but 95% of your income? You say "we" do you have employees? Wow. I am impressed. I would not have imagined you could make enough profit from sales of Amiga hardware to pay one person a decent wage let alone two (or more). You have done a very good job at creating a good Amiga shop. If I could ask you a question: What is more difficult - finding sales or finding stock? I would imagine that there are some items you could sell 10x over if only you could get any! I was very impressed when you employed Jen's Schoenfeld to make the A600 trap door RAM expansion. (Perhaps a strange choice of item, but hey). Manufacturing a new product, wondering if you'll ever make your investment back, wondering if you got the demand levels right... all good stuff. Last edited by alexh; 18 July 2008 at 23:32.

18 July 2008, 23:41	#7
amigakit.com Registered User Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: www.amigakit.com Posts: 2,019	I have a good professional relationship with Jens- he is a great hardware partner to work with. The A602 came about because the Ebay prices were getting too high. They took a year to sell out and get our money back, however we are considering funding another production run - the problem is that we cannot currently locate the RAM chips. There has also been funds channelled for the forthcoming new A1200 scandoubler/new Catweasel MK4 production run available at amigakit.com shortly. Last edited by amigakit.com; 18 July 2008 at 23:48.

19 July 2008, 00:05	#10
alexh Thalion Webshrine Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Oxford Posts: 14,354	If I could recommend a few new products for AmigaKit to consider?? GuruROM, the replacement ROM for the A590, A2091, GVP HC8+, GVP HD8+, GVP A530 (and several others). Ralph Babel has expressed his willingness to license the design for re-manufacture if the vendor was to do all the work. The cost per unit would be about £3 and a price of £15-20 would not be too offensive. You'd easily sell over 100 units. The demand for these items is high. Modern heatsink and fan for Blizzard PPC or A1260/A1240. It should be fairly easy and cheap to have designed a modern heatsink that uses heat-pipe technology which could be used to protect the large investment of these cards. Blizzard PPC cards cost a fortune they run at stupidly high temperatures, especially in desktop cases. This would be something that almost any blizzard owner would buy. 16-Mbyte GVP compatible 64-pin 60ns SIMMs. These are like rocking horse poo. Development would be very cheap. Manufacture in china would be very cheap. You'd be able to sell these items at a good profit and the price not be offensive. A new power supply for desktop Amiga's. A lot of the work has already been done by enthusiasts. Something similar to the PicoPSU mod that has already been shown to work in Amiga. Preferably remade to be a better overall physical fit and easier to install. Not so much a new product but: Acard AEC-7720U and AEC-7720UW adapters. Go direct to Acard, see if you cannot negotiate a very low price for a reasonable volume and pass this price on to your customers. More and more Amiga users will want these cards as SCSI drives become more and more rare and unreliable. If you could get them low enough to pass on prices we've come to see on the web ($30-ish) it would be amazing. Last edited by alexh; 19 July 2008 at 00:23.

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18 July 2008, 23:10	#2
amigakit.com Registered User Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: www.amigakit.com Posts: 2,019	We have two industrial units as well as our web presence. Some EAB members have visited us already.

18 July 2008, 23:14	#3
alexh Thalion Webshrine Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Oxford Posts: 14,354	I would be surprised if it is economically viable. AmigaKit almost assuredly does not make a living from Amiga sales.

18 July 2008, 23:19	#4
amigakit.com Registered User Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: www.amigakit.com Posts: 2,019	95 percent of our time is dedicated to Amiga specific sales and support. We have been operating in this way since 2004

18 July 2008, 23:29	#6
amigakit.com Registered User Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: www.amigakit.com Posts: 2,019	The wages are paid at the end of every month - of course every sale is appreciated to reinvest into the amigakit project. There are loyal customers that shop with us regularly (some EAB members)- without them the business wouldn't be viable. Thank you! It would always be nice to have more stock- but the we keep the income we get circulating within the Amiga community- we use it to pay Amiga hardware partners such as Individual Computers and in turn keep them in business too with new projects. The Amiga Economic Circle Of Life

18 July 2008, 23:43	#8
DDNI Targ Explorer Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Northern Ireland Posts: 5,432	@ AmigaKit, I have money here to pre order the scandoubler. When do you want it?

18 July 2008, 23:46	#9
amigakit.com Registered User Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: www.amigakit.com Posts: 2,019	We will be taking pre-orders in August. The scandoubler is currently awaiting production - all components are ready except for some missing resistor arrays which are currently out of stock.

19 July 2008, 00:12	#11
amigakit.com Registered User Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: www.amigakit.com Posts: 2,019	Thanks for the useful feedback, I will see what we can do.

19 July 2008, 06:33	#12
vodley Zone Friend Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: homer AK usa Age: 59 Posts: 82	Might be a fun project for a virtual world! I'll get a second life capable video card some day.

20 July 2008, 02:22	#15
dword Registered User Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: UK Posts: 80	As a newbie its good to here what you folks at amiga kit are up to, especially interesting what you were saying about ebay, I REALLY hope business stays good for you , because actually if there wasnt the odd shop like yourself , I reckon prices would get even worse, I was really shocked at the price off, well lets be honest old hardware but the fact is I like the amiga so what can I do I dont know if you already do this, but you should have like high end pre-built and tested amigas (built only from yourselfs) with a thorough listing of everything thats in it as well as any slots that are left unused for potential upgrades, you could have like low, medium and high end builds. Its just I am thinking a few months down the line I just want to be able to go to a shop like amigakit go in click high end amigas and know that those amigas are fully upgraded and I just click buy knowing that when I get the amiga home I just plug in and go . I think assuming that you dont have fully built ones listed that would entice alot of prospective buyers who dont yet know enough to build from parts but want a brilliant machine. Just an idea as your place is probably the only place I would be prepared to spend a good lot of cash on a fully upgraded high end system(by amiga standards)

20 July 2008, 02:40	#17
T_hairy_bootson Workbitch 1.3 Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Melbourne, Australia Age: 46 Posts: 2,084	I too would like GURU roms for all my a590s and a2091s. I have a 1200 and a 4000 but still like tinkering with the older stuff.

21 July 2008, 00:03	#19
Charlie . . Mouse . . Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Nowhere Age: 55 Posts: 1,792	Hmmm, a real Amiga shop would be great (maybe even a general retro-computer shop complete with spotty geeks fiddling with the merchandise). Still, the chances of one being in visitable distance of most would be nil - on-line's fine. Requests? 1) Keep it up amigakit - I'm only sorry I have so few reasons to buy stuff & so support you, my Amigas being 'complete' with regard to stuff that can be bought... 2) There's plenty of stuff that I would like that can only be sourced for cruel prices on fleaBay: It would be nice to see some remanufacturing of things like accelerators but I guess the business case isn't there.

21 July 2008, 02:42	#20
foody Registered User Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: Montreal Age: 45 Posts: 56	Speaking of such, I have already set aside in my shopping cart $260 worth of items awaiting from me to buy them. Since I am starting work tomorrow, as soon as I get my paid cheque I will deposit the amount on MasterCard and pay for the items. Amazing, I am spending that much and you would think I would have bought a tower case for my A1200 hehe The second I do that the second I declare myself My Amiga 1200 will be desktop case till end of time, call me but I am happy this way . If someone is curious as to what I am buying I will list them here (I am going to sell my SCSI CD burner in eBay.) I find my SCSI port not working well with me, it keeps causing a major freeze in my system and my favorite CD games don't work well with it, because it requires lots of loading and this freezes the game. I cannot even transfer more than 10 MB before it crashes my system. But if I buy USB Sub I am able to solve this problem: Remove Product(s) Qty. Total EASYNET PCMCIA NETWORK CARD (A1200/A600) EASYNET PCMCIA NETWORK CARD (A1200/A600) $50.71 EasyADF PCMCIA Compact Flash Transfer Kit EasyADF PCMCIA Compact Flash Transfer Kit - Memory Card 1GB $40.40 2M NETWORK CABLE RJ45 CAT 5 2M NETWORK CABLE RJ45 CAT 5 $8.45 2M NETWORK CROSSOVER CABLE RJ45 CAT 5 2M NETWORK CROSSOVER CABLE RJ45 CAT 5 $8.45 SUBWAY USB CONTROLLER SUBWAY USB CONTROLLER - Clockport Cable 20 cm $121.36

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