An absurd suggestion...

[CCCP alert]

You have to ask exactly how many £2000 A4000s and A3000s are sold on pee-bay each year, it's not exactly in the hundreds, so it's a small niche market. A business would need to sell units measured in the hundreds, if not thousands, a year as the upfront start-up costs would be massive.

[Kepler]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

I think you (like always) will never satisfy everybody

there are different groups:
1. amiga fans who only want to use original devices
2. amiga fans who are interested in faster and better hardware
3. amiga fans currently using emulated systems and no hardware
4. former amiga fans with no current connection
5. People not knowing amiga anymore

a reimplementation of A3000/A4000 would be for group 1 mostly but in this group even FPGA is partly considered as just emulation. So I am not sure how many of those would be willing to buy such a hardware. And it would not be cheap. Additionally in this group certainly many own already a number of original devices. Of course A3000 and A4000 were not produced and sold as much as A500 or A1200 but still I am unsure how many would really buy it. It would make only sense if it is really original so you could take f.e. a graphic card you use in a A3000 and put it in the new device and it works. But I imagine that difficult to do today and it would be a expensive device too.

I do like this summary of the different groups...
I am of the opinion that the majority of current Amiga users belong to the first category. They are the ones who are the most committed and enthusiastic about the Amiga which is why they have persisted with the original hardware...but of course, I could be totally wrong. I am merely speaking about the hundred or so of current Amiga users that I know of. They want to use the original hardware that they owned in the 80s/90s or the hardware that they only dreamed of owning, such as the 3000 and 4000.

[Kepler]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

You have to ask exactly how many £2000 A4000s and A3000s are sold on pee-bay each year, it's not exactly in the hundreds, so it's a small niche market. A business would need to sell units measured in the hundreds, if not thousands, a year as the upfront start-up costs would be massive.

I would estimate that it is not more than 30 but that doesn't include Amibay which is also a popular choice for purchasing high end Amigas.
However, the exorbitant costs involved in buying those Amigas must dissuade a large number of people from considering them.
I am also not suggesting for a moment that manufacturing new Amigas would not be:
a. Hugely expensive
b. A new long term sustainable business

I was merely postulating the ridiculously remote possibily of manufacturing a batch of original Amigas to satisfy what demand there is and to reduce the price - for everyone.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by Kepler

I would estimate that it is not more than 30 but that doesn't include Amibay which is also a popular choice for purchasing high end Amigas.
However, the exorbitant costs involved in buying those Amigas must dissuade a large number of people from considering them.
I am also not suggesting for a moment that manufacturing new Amigas would not be:
a. Hugely expensive
b. A new long term sustainable business

I was merely postulating the ridiculously remote possibily of manufacturing a batch of original Amigas to satisfy what demand there is and to reduce the price - for everyone.

Was just really saying it's a small market so it would be more of a labour of love than a real profit making machine. I think as a pre-order only sign up with deposit it probably could be do-able. I am assuming there is no technical reason why all the chips on the motherboard couldn't be made today.

Do people still make 3.5" disk drives, I personally don't know.

I am guessing most of the chip production cost would be taken up in actually making prototypes to produce, assuming you could do that.

Would it be possible to get an A2000/3000 quality keyboard mechanism too is another thing, that sort of quality and feel is rare in the affordable keyboard market now. theC64 Maxi fullsize has a terrible mushy keyboard qualitatively and also it's more like a Spectrum +2 or Amstrad keyboard. Detracts from the experience. Also you will need to develop a computer that uses defunct CRT technology, which is also not available. I don't even know if CRT tubes are still being made but you need the monitor to go with the machine. Looks a bit off when you see an LCD on top of an A3000, it's an anathema

OFF TOPIC: There's probably money to be made in just making Amiga 1000/2000/3000/4000 case replicas though. I wish I had kept my dead (battery leakage!) A2000 from 20 years ago, I could have put an x86 board with S-video output and run an emulator and tied it up to a pair of USB to Atari D9 joystick adaptors and placed them in the right place.

Retro Games are apparently at the early prototype stage for the fullsize maxi version of an Amiga Mini, no images yet. Would be interesting to see if they do a 1:1 sized replica of the large A500 and how much it cost them to do that, they are working on a large scale production financial model though I would imagine.

[sokolovic]

There was millions of Amiga users and most of them doesn't care/knew at all what was inside the machine.
Make a plug and play classic Amiga and it will sell by thousands, much more than a niche motherboard recreating perfectly the original hardware. Because people are as much nostalgics of the objects than they are of the system.
Yes, you can make a brand new Amiga by yourself now, with time, money and expertise. Things that most people now doesn't have.
After buying your motherboard, and soldered old chips you bought or taken on an old one (granted you had a spare Amiga motherboard to harvest chips on it), then you have to buy a case, a keyboard, a mouse, generic ones of course because Amiga branded ones are either too much expensive or out of stock anyway.
Many money wasted, and you're ot even sure to have a functionnal Amiga at the end. And you surely doesn't have something physically looking like an old school Amiga.

[wiisoldier]

OK. Maybe I didn't make myself clear in my previous post on this. So I'll give my background in the Amiga world.
I first got to use an Amiga in about 1991/2 and bought an A1200 with a hard-drive in late 1992 or early 1993. It was great, and I really mean GREAT.
I had very little computer knowledge but it played games, could be used to write and print letters and create videos and music. My first delve into doing my own programming was done on that machine. I created a video / music disk and then learned how to hack my first game. For me, this is great nostalgia. I sold the 1200 in about 2003 to put towards funds for a Windows PC. Would I like to buy it back? Well yes, of course. But it would be for nostalgia only.
And this is why I build linux and windows based emulators that can do the same thing for me. Because, like most members here on EAB, I enjoy reliving the things I used to do.
However I would not spend £1000 to get a piece of dedicated hardware that is out of date with limited resources. I do understand that some members will do so and I commend them for that. The whole reason that EAB exists is because of the dedicated following that the Amiga has. The wealth of knowledge here is amazing but it also includes a huge range of knowledge to be able to emulate the Amiga on modern architecture thus giving the best of both worlds.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Because we aren't doing it for performance or price, we're doing it to enjoy the retro experience! Knowing it was just an emulator would spoil it for us.

I can enjoy the retro experience on an emulator with to the same level as I enjoyed it on my original Amiga. I can enjoy pictures of places I have never been without actually going there. If I didn't, I would be blinkered. This is 2023 and we can have wonder and awe in front of us every day. I can look at the ruins of a castle and appreciate what once stood there without having to rebuild it.

[sokolovic]

Enjoying a picture of place in front of your computer and going there is not quite exactly the same thing.
You're making a point that proves the exact contrary of what you're trying to explain.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by wiisoldier

I can enjoy the retro experience on an emulator with to the same level as I enjoyed it on my original Amiga. I can enjoy pictures of places I have never been without actually going there. If I didn't, I would be blinkered. This is 2023 and we can have wonder and awe in front of us every day. I can look at the ruins of a castle and appreciate what once stood there without having to rebuild it.

So you are not one of us then, and that's fine. After we have built our castles we'll send postcards for your enjoyment.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

OFF TOPIC: There's probably money to be made in just making Amiga 1000/2000/3000/4000 case replicas though.

Not off-topic. We already have reproduction motherboards, CPU boards and keyboards. Just add a case and you have everything you need! (except custom chips).

Steven Jones makes the Checkmate A1500+, a reproduction A3000 case with backplates to suit various motherboards. It is not expensive. However I would much rather have an A1000 or A4000 style case.

I think the way to do this is to ease into it one component at a time, then people can buy whatever they need to build a complete machine. Eventually - as supplies of original parts dry up - that will become everything, and then you can sell complete machines at a good price because you already made enough sales to cover tooling costs.

[daxb]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

So you are not one of us then, and that's fine.

If you say "we" then you mean "you", right? Or how many are you?

[Kepler]

I must say that I for one think that an ARM processor has no business being anywhere near Amiga architecture!
Not that I am prejudiced towards ARM, in fact I consider the original ARM machine - the mighty Archimedes - superior to an Amiga, rather I simply believe that the original architecture should not be altered by "foreign" hardware.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Kepler

I must say that I for one think that an ARM processor has no business being anywhere near Amiga architecture!
Not that I am prejudiced towards ARM, in fact I consider the original ARM machine - the mighty Archimedes - superior to an Amiga, rather I simply believe that the original architecture should not be altered by "foreign" hardware.

I agree in principle.

If 'back in the day' we could have used an ARM SoC to emulate a 68k CPU at much higher mips and lower cost than an actual 68k CPU, you can bet we would have. Those of us who want ludicrous speed would be nuts to pay current prices for a 75MHz 68060 when a PiStorm can do it cheaper and faster. OTOH if you want an authentic experience then you must eschew the PiStorm etc. and stick to period hardware or an exact equivalent of it.

But of course you can have both.

I put a Vampire in my A600 to reproduce the power I had with an 060 and RTG in my A3000, but I keep my A500 stock and my A1200 still has the same 50MHz 030 it had in 1995 (which can be turned off when I want a stock A1200). The A1200 at 50MHz is fast enough for most of the stuff I do, and the Vampire is plenty fast enough for 'high-end' stuff, so a PiStorm would just be a novelty for doing stupid stuff like running Tomb Raider in PC Task.

The Amiga has always had a variety of accelerator options that got more powerful over time, but the standard for software development was always a base model. What concerns me is that the base level could creep up like it did on PCs, encouraging bloat and leaving owners of classic machines behind. We are already seeing this with ported software that requires an 80MHz 060 minimum for reasonable performance. This is not what retro computing is supposed to be about.

However this trend may not continue for long. In my experience in other hobbies, the people who are never satisfied will eventually burn out and move on to something else. We just have to keep the faith and wait a few years...

And remember - you can have just as much fun playing with a base model A500/A600/A1200 as a fully kitted out A4000 - possibly more, and you won't have to mortgage the house to do it! That's the great thing about true retro computing - you don't have to spend a fortune to enjoy it.

[E-Penguin]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

an exact equivalent of it

A cycle-exact emulation in SW is equivalent to a gate-exact implementation in FPGA is equivalent to original hardware. There comes a point (and I think we're pretty much there with WinUAE) that the SW emulation behaviour is indistinguishable from that of the original hardware.

[Karlos]

If you use an interpretive emulator, rather than a JIT, on the Pi, there's no reason why you couldn't have a "dial your own performance" setting.

[grelbfarlk]

I mortgaged my house to upgrade my A4000 to UAGA. It cost $25 for a Voodoo 3, $75 for a Mediator and $200 for a PowerPC PCI card. However for the $300 they gave me for a fair asking price for my house at 6% interest rate, I was able after about a year to pay it off and gain ownership of my house again, total mortage price of $457 including late fees(I missed some payments during this time.) I have suffered a lot under the iron boot of capitalism. That's why I should be able to run Dark Forces on it. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[Korodny]

In 2023 terms, an A3/4000 is stupid hardware: why buy a ridiculously expensive machine with tons of expansion slots if those expansion slots require more custom hardware, which will cost another fortune and might be in stock again in three years if you're lucky? A1200 + Indivision + internal accelerator is way cheaper. Or use a Vampire, if you really need RTG.

The people who still buy A3000/A4000 machines don't buy them for performance reasons, they buy them because they're collectibles. Or because they like tinkering with old, expensive hardware. Good luck selling a douchebag version of an A3000 to those people

There's still a small market for a clone, of course. It's simply too small to finance anything like a new A4000. "Couple of millions" - yeah, sure. No big deal.

[saimon69]

Me i just want machines available at a broke-consumer-affordable price ^^

[CCCP alert]

I don't have an a500 mini so I can't really say how much better it is than using a mini PC the size of a PC Engine hooked up to your LCD TV and running WinUAE. That's really the area there is the most money, trouble is WinUAE is free and I doubt the ability to download the TOSEC is going to vanish from the internet.

Then you have a massive gulf between the sort of user that will go no further than an £80 A500 mini or just getting a decent USB gamepad for their PC for £10 and the option of using real hardware again in less than yucky yellow condition with the smell of old feet, AKA parts machines

The next cheapest step is probably a 512+512kb A500 + GOTEK drive and RGB cable for your LCD TV or even an actual monitor/TV from back then. That's quite a bit more than £80 and many people keep buying such setups and adding a GOTEK so I guess that price point is worth noting. I would imagine A1200 2mb base machine is also a demand exceeds supply healthy situation on ebay too.

Trouble is I don't think you could recreate a brand new identical technology production of a replica A500 for anything like the cost of the above solution. The biggest market would be something like 50% more than the cost of a new old stock mint condition Amiga 1200 package, if you could do that I reckon it would sell, giving access to AGA software and modern cheap accelerators of today. I don't know what that price is but it probably isn't possible to do without making a loss.

Shouldn't really be news to anybody, a mint condition restored to showroom condition 1983 Ford XR3i hot hatch sure is expensive but I doubt Ford could build a new identical replica and sell it for any kind of profit. I wish it was possible in many areas of 80s/70s tech. Who wouldn't want a real Dodge Challenger like in the movie classic Vanishing Point for less than the price they go for on ebay in showroom condition

Never say never though!

[wiisoldier]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Enjoying a picture of place in front of your computer and going there is not quite exactly the same thing.
You're making a point that proves the exact contrary of what you're trying to explain.

Originally Posted by wiisoldier

I can look at the ruins of a castle and appreciate what once stood there without having to rebuild it.

@sokolovic
Not really. What I am saying is, I can appreciate how good something once was (in it's heyday), but appreciate when better things come along. As some analogies: Would you prefer a horse and cart or a motorised car? Should medicine continue to improve our way of life or are we to rely on 18th century remedies? Would you prefer electric light bulbs or a paraffin candle?



Let me put it this way. I spent nearly £500 in 1993 on my Amiga 1200, but if I put that money in the bank at 5% annual interest it would now be worth £2233.00. Would I spend £2000.00 on an A1200 now? Would you when you can buy much better and faster computer for far less money?


I totally understand why people want "original" hardware and I respect them for that. And yes I would love to buy back my A1200 at a reasonable price. However I would far prefer to donate a small amount to the people who provide an emulated solution (thanks again to all of you) rather than spend a silly sum of money on a piece of 30 year old hardware that was manufactured yesterday.


I realise that many will disagree with me and I respect everyone's choice. However I am still to be convinced on the benefit of running any software on actual hardware compared to a quality emulated alternative.


We have entered a new era of computer programming and I think NASA, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Youtube ChatGPT, etc. etc. etc. will agree with me on this.


However, we are all fans of the Amiga and we may have a different view on how we use it. I enjoy the history and nostalgia. I enjoy re-learning some of the basic functions of running the Amiga OS that I rarely have to do with a Windows PC. I appreciate the similarities between Amiga OS and some Linux / UNIX commands. In fact, when I took time to start to learn Linux over 15 years ago, it reminded me so much of my original enjoyment of learning how to do basic code on the Amiga that it brought me to such sites as WIN-UAE, FS-UAE, Amiberry, RaspberryPi and here at the English Amiga Board.


So, in summary, if you can afford to spend £2000 on an original piece of Amiga hardware, or are willing to spend a similar amount on a modern day reproduction that's great. I take my hat off to you, respect you for that and wish you great success. I will continue to enjoy using my emulated Amigas, playing the original games, messing with some original software and helping out where I can on this forum.


We are all here for the Amiga. Some have more money than others. Some will yearn for the past in a different way. Some will require / ask for a hardware reproduction whilst others are happy with emulated software. Let's not argue about this. We all love the Amiga.

[grelbfarlk]

It seems more ridiculous when a lot of those millions would be going to making a case and a keyboard that are not very good in the first place.
You know who makes good cases and keyboards that are cheap and ubiquitous?
Literally every company making cases and keyboards.
So if you make an A4000 or A3000 equivalent motherboard that can use those cases, keyboards and power supplies, you can save one of those millions for a Bugatti, or other things you might like to buy. Maybe an HD TV? Or one that has 3D and Bluetooth too. Or a yacht.