New Amiga500+ mainboard, fully Open Source

[SukkoPera]

Originally Posted by voyager_1701e

SukkoPera, your stuff is great! You put in heaps of effort (you helped me directly with the Video Hybrid, which was excellent!), I hope you dont get too disheartened by the minority of negativity in our community

That has already happened some time ago unfortunately.

[Mick]

Originally Posted by rvctech

I'm sure people will be happy to sell you a hundred blank PCBs out of China, but where exactly do you expect these custom chips to come from?

The free market that half of the Amiga community seem to think it's their job to control and dictate what others can do within it. If you're scared you'll run out of Amiga chips before you die stock up while you can. In another 50 years virtually no-one will care for anything Amiga, the only people still keeping it alive are those who were around in the 80's/90's.

[torsti76]

Originally Posted by Mick

The free market that half of the Amiga community seem to think it's their job to control and dictate what others can do within it. If you're scared you'll run out of Amiga chips before you die stock up while you can. In another 50 years virtually no-one will care for anything Amiga, the only people still keeping it alive are those who were around in the 80's/90's.

Bei careful with predictions. As we all know, no PC will ever need more than 512k. ;-)

[nikoskob]

Originally Posted by SukkoPera

That has already happened some time ago unfortunately.

That is such a shame for the Amiga community if you have stopped development

Your open hardware has been amazing (built A500 and A600 fast ram addons, A2000 cpu adapter), but was really looking forward to your 2MB Agnus megachip, you had hinted that it was nearly ready to go on another forum, now that is a pipe dream

Thanks for all your hard work

[rvctech]

Originally Posted by nikoskob

..but was really looking forward to your 2MB Agnus megachip, you had hinted that it was nearly ready to go on another forum, now that is a pipe dream

If you're desperate for a 2MB Megachip, I'm fairly certain that there has already been at least one open source 2MB Megachip design released in the past.

[nikoskob]

Originally Posted by rvctech

If you're desperate for a 2MB Megachip, I'm fairly certain that there has already been at least one open source 2MB Megachip design released in the past.

Thats good news!! I'll have a look around and see what i can find. Any hints on where to look? Github maybe?

[dalek]

Originally Posted by nikoskob

Thats good news!! I'll have a look around and see what i can find. Any hints on where to look? Github maybe?

rj1307 over at ppa.pl has you covered:



https://www.ppa.pl/forum/elektronika...jemu/3#m610734


What a champion

[nikoskob]

Originally Posted by dalek

rj1307 over at ppa.pl has you covered:



https://www.ppa.pl/forum/elektronika...jemu/3#m610734


What a champion

Thanks heaps mate, that will do the trick

[katarakt]

Is this new Raemixx500 full-color-cvbs-s-video-rgb Hybrid released? I can't find it.

[SukkoPera]

No, and I'm not sure I'll ever release it openly.

[katarakt]

Ok. Thanks for reply. I thought it was released somewhere.

[katarakt]

Sukko, i've sent you a PN on other forum. Have you read it?

[SukkoPera]

Nope, what other forum? I only follow this one and AmiBay.

EDIT: Never mind, found it.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Mick

In another 50 years virtually no-one will care for anything Amiga, the only people still keeping it alive are those who were around in the 80's/90's.

In another 50 years any still working original Amiga will be worth a fortune, but most of us won't care because we will be dead.

However many of us are concerned about what will happen in the next 10 years or so. I was surprised to find out that a couple of people I recently met have Amigas sitting in their cupboards with no plans to do anything with them. Hopefully now that they know these machines are valuable they won't throw them away!

OTOH I also know of people who are hoarding Amiga stuff and have far more than they will ever use. Again I fear that when they die the next of kin cleans out all their 'old junk' not knowing how valuable it is.

[jbenam]

They are "valuable" only because most people who care about them are now reaching a point in their life where they are comfortably settled (house purchased, children leaving the house, retired or nearing retirement) and can justify spending 2000 Euros on something that is probably falling to pieces and will need another 500 Euros of maintenance/repair/upgrade costs on top of it, for just having a slightly higher benchmark in SysInfo.

Honestly if I couldn't do repairs myself and didn't purchase my Amigas early on (early 2010s) when they were going for affordable prices (paid 30 EUR for my 1200 and 20 EUR for my A500!) I would have long ago quit this hobby.

Nowadays, prices, even for new hardware, are crazy high - since everyone knows that there is a lot of people with disposable income out there ready to pay insanely high prices for something which has no practical value at all, they tend to price it accordingly. Yes, yes, limited production runs and everything, but you can see which projects are made with passion (just look at PiStorm and their self-imposed price limit) in mind and which are made just thinking of the insane profits they will reap.

These days I am limiting myself to open-source kits whenever I can. I can afford purchasing a PCB for 10-20 Euros plus another 20-30 Euros of components and wasting an afternoon soldering it. While I really can't justify paying 500 Euros for something barely working which I will have to spend hours troubleshooting anyway.

So yes, thank you again to everyone who is working on open-sourcing things, as you are keeping this hobby viable for some of us.

[SukkoPera]

There are a few different things to consider, IMHO.

Originally Posted by jbenam

Nowadays, prices, even for new hardware, are crazy high - since everyone knows that there is a lot of people with disposable income out there ready to pay insanely high prices for something which has no practical value at all, they tend to price it accordingly.

This is the first point which I absolutely agree with. There are people making something that costs them $10 and selling it at $70, which is an unfair margin as far as I'm concerned.

But at least it's their design, so be it. There are sharks who do the same with designs from other people, so they don't even have design costs to factor in the price. Just look for C64 cartridges on eBay: it is full of homebrew items done with Sven's/bwack's/my PCBs, costing $1 in materials and another $1 in assembly time sold at $25+ (and let's ignore the fact that many are selling copyrighted material they have no rights for).

To go even worse than that, just see the guy who took my Raemixx board, removed all credits, put his name on it and pretended it was his own product.

As much as I hate this situation, contrasting it is only part of the reason why I do what I do. My main goal is documentation and preservation. My work is the first step to let someone living 50 years in the future build a new A500. Sure, they'll still need to get hold of the custom chips, but an open FPGA reimplementation of Denise has surfaced, and hopefully the others will follow (sorry but I can't help at all with that). At least they'll have the board to start with and they'll be able to replace any part that will no longer be available with a then-modern equivalent. This will be possible because Raemixx is a fully open project, including design files in an open format. It's not only gerbers, and this is another fundamental difference that a lot of people do not seem to understand.

Hopefully this qualifies my projects as "made with passion". As I've said many times, what really drives me crazy is that very few people can distinguish this kind of projects from those I mentioned earlier, or just do not care to. A lot of the most respected individuals of the "scene" are actually selfish persons trying to squeeze out every penny from those same people that will go great lengths to defend them. I really wish the average retro enthusiast would go the extra mile and tried to support people who really deserve it.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by SukkoPera

Hopefully this qualifies my projects as "made with passion". As I've said many times, what really drives me crazy is that very few people can distinguish this kind of projects from those I mentioned earlier, or just do not care to. A lot of the most respected individuals of the "scene" are actually selfish persons trying to squeeze out every penny from those same people that will go great lengths to defend them. I really wish the average retro enthusiast would go the extra mile and tried to support people who really deserve it.

Sure it does. Working for "free" is the utmost embodiment of doing something for passion. Your reward is in the work itself, not money.

Indeed, many people can't distinguish between the two kind of projects. They just see something they want, and are ready to pay any sum for it. Not considering if the prices are inflated or not. This is what is driving the market insane.

I have always preferred going without a specific piece of hardware if I couldn't get it at the price I thought fair. Let's be honest - it won't change anyone's lives if they are using a 030 or a 060. Sure, some very specific pieces of software and/or demos require it, but how vital it really is, to the Amiga experience?

Not many people think like we do.

[rvctech]

Hi SukkoPera,

Originally Posted by SukkoPera

To go even worse than that, just see the guy who took my Raemixx board, removed all credits, put his name on it and pretended it was his own product.

I'm really sorry to see that this happened to you. There's nothing worse than people stealing work and then passing it off as their own. This behaviour really typifies the greedy profiteering that occurs once people smell easy profit. I've seen so many examples of this in the "retro scene" but there's no point to dwell on it. This is an unavoidable consequence of human nature I suppose.

Originally Posted by SukkoPera

As much as I hate this situation, contrasting it is only part of the reason why I do what I do. My main goal is documentation and preservation. My work is the first step to let someone living 50 years in the future build a new A500. Sure, they'll still need to get hold of the custom chips, but an open FPGA reimplementation of Denise has surfaced, and hopefully the others will follow (sorry but I can't help at all with that).

Although many people will disagree with me, I see little purpose in replacement motherboards being offered until a solution for replacement of custom chips and other unique parts is available. In my opinion it mostly encourages people to sell cheaply made blank boards in large quantities for easy profit and for others to strip parts from working Amigas for their "latest project". The reality is that we have few original parts left. It doesn't help preservation when people destroy working or repairable Amigas for parts. I have seen this a lot of times now. I appreciate that it's not easy to replace the custom chips but that project you linked to looks very promising, thanks for the link!

No disrespect intended to you, your board is a work of art. I would love to build one in the future when I can use re-manufactured or replacement parts for those items that are unique to the Amiga and currently irreplaceable. The cases and keyboards are coming, as well as other items. We're getting closer I hope...

[Fery]

I am considering buying this board. But does anyone know the differences compared to the A500++?

[SukkoPera]

The A500++ is almost a 1:1 copy of the original board, I don't think it has many differences with respect to it.

The list of differences/improvements of the Rämixx500 board is available on the project page.

Please note that there is currently no authorized dealer of Rämixx500 V2. All those that are currently selling it are violating the license, please do not support them and buy the boards straight from PCBWay. I'm ok if you sell the extra ones at cost.