What's happening to the Indivision cards?

[jurassicman]

Hi there! Below I want to share just a few thoughts without any polemical intention...

I'm wondering what's happening with the Indivision cards (both ECS and AGA).
Not only they are often not available at the icomp.de website (the Indivision ECS has not been available for months now) but their prices are always increasing (the Indivision ECS used to cost 97.90 euros while now its price is 119 euros and the Indivision AGA price has recently gone up as well) and when you are "lucky" enough to find a used card you have often to pay more than its price as new...

I don't think that the components are more expensive than what they were in the past and even if I understand that the maker is free to sell his products to the price he wants I would like to understand why we should pay always more for an "older" piece of hardware. Also, why there aren't similar alternatives made by other makers considering that the request is always quite high?

I don't expect answers, I'd just like to know what people's thoughts are and if anyone has any news about this topic.

[Tigerskunk]

The components these cards are made of and the production costs are not getting cheaper I guess?

[eXeler0]

Demand on those seems high so its not a mystery why the price would go up tbh.
Also, the global chip shortage is having weird effects all over the place..
(Tried to buy a PS5 ? In Sweden the lowest price I can see atm is €830 and still its practically impossible to buy one. Even raspberry pi4 is constantly sold out)

The other part of your reflections, why hasnt anyone else done it?
Well several have tried.. There was this infamous guy in Hungary that promised a lot and took pre orders but then I dont think it was ever released and a lot of people got upset.
The Warp guys are doing their own since the warp 1260 doesnt work with indivision..
Apollo team will work with their own solution so that you can output AGA through HDMI on the new V4 boards..
These are of course custom solutions for those products..i have no idea if the warp guys solution will work without a warp card.

But it seems its simply a very hard thing to do. If it was easy, Amibay would be flooded with cheap designs. ;-)

If you look at the core issue there might be other solutions though. E.g. have you considered getting a modern monitor that supports 15kHz modes etc..

Cheers

[jurassicman]

Thanks both for your thoughts.
I don't know anything about the components cost but since they are new components and not "rare" old chips I'd expect that buying a bigger quantity it could be possible to save on shipping costs and get a better "cost per unit". As per the production costs if they aren't getting cheaper they should at least stay the same.
Unfortunately it seems that it isn't so easy to make a similar card and that we just have to wait for the next bunch of Indivision ECS in the hope that they will be enough to satisfy the request and that the price won't increase even more.
A monitor that supports 15kHz modes is certainly an alternative but it wouldn't be my first choice.

[UberFreak]

For OCS/ECS there is a very good alternative - the RGB2HDMI project, which is based on a Pi.
Less than half the price of an Indivision and its available from multiple sellers (or you can build your own).

[roondar]

Originally Posted by UberFreak

For OCS/ECS there is a very good alternative - the RGB2HDMI project, which is based on a Pi.
Less than half the price of an Indivision and its available from multiple sellers (or you can build your own).

It does sound like a great alternative. But IIRC it does add a frame of latency, which the Indivision cards don't do (again, IIRC).

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by jurassicman

I don't know anything about the components cost but since they are new components and not "rare" old chips I'd expect that buying a bigger quantity it could be possible to save on shipping costs and get a better "cost per unit". As per the production costs if they aren't getting cheaper they should at least stay the same.

We can only speculate, but there are many potential factors involved. It could be the case, for example, that the first batch was quite large, and any future batches have to be smaller because the demand can never be as high as it was at launch in such a small market. So it could be smaller batches pushing both component and manufacturing costs up.

Additionally, the global semiconductor shortage is affecting new components, resulting in shortages that push prices up and/or cause manufacturing delays. In effect, new components can be as rare as vintage ones at the moment - just ask anyone who has tried to buy a modern graphics card in the past few months. CPLDs, FPGAs and other otherwise unassuming chips are in short supply too - I just bought the last 17 of a particular, not very interesting microcontroller that were available from all the main component suppliers for example, and most are not expecting more stock of that chip until 2022. And like with graphics cards, many of the more common chips have been bought up and hoarded so they can be sold for a tidy profit at massively inflated prices while the whole supply chain plays catch up.

[jurassicman]

Thanks for your contribution, Daedalus, I didn't know about the global semiconductor shortage and that it can be difficult to find new chips in this particular moment.
For now I think that I'll see if I could be able to find a RGB2HDMI kit for my A500+.

[jbenam]

Why not just purchase an OSSC? It's a great piece of kit and it literally adds no lag.

Considering how much it does (and with how many systems you can use it), it's pretty much a bargain compared to the Indivision.

Yes, it comes with a learning curve, but the Indivision isn't plug and play either from what I can remember (most certainly that was the case with the MK2 when it launched, not sure if something changes months layer).

[guybrush]

Originally Posted by jbenam

Why not just purchase an OSSC? It's a great piece of kit and it literally adds no lag.

Considering how much it does (and with how many systems you can use it), it's pretty much a bargain compared to the Indivision.

Yes, it comes with a learning curve, but the Indivision isn't plug and play either from what I can remember (most certainly that was the case with the MK2 when it launched, not sure if something changes months layer).

I simply added the indivision on the chip and it was working out of the box. Not sure what kind of problems other people have but in my case, there was none.
The issues started when I tried to make changes to the default config of the firmware LOL


As far as why they are expensive; it is mostly for what has been said already:


- silicon shortage did reduce throughput for most manufacturers
- Pandemic reduced workforce and amount of units produced
- Being a niche product, it will always cost more to make it, unless you sell a certain amount of units; so if you don't sell enough, the price goes up
- hoarders and scalpers made a living out of Amiga products and its community; they know that Amiga users are mostly in their middle age group and have disposable income, so they take advantage of that.


If you want a cheaper solution; get a video2Scart cable, then get a cheap 30 dollars Scart2HDMI box (amazon has a ton of them, they all work on the same chipset) and you are good to go.



I Have a 4K monitor and my Amiga is connected to an ancient 1024x768 LCD monitor; so I am not even using most of the Indivision functionalities in the end, since going above 640x480 in general does not make much sense for me. But to each their own... with the Scart2HDMI you can go up to 1280x1024 I believe, and the cable+adapter box will cost you less than 60 dollars.

[Lisko]

Does the indivision aga has smooth scrolling and native Amiga refresh rate?

[guybrush]

Originally Posted by Lisko

Does the indivision aga has smooth scrolling and native Amiga refresh rate?

From what I can tell, the scrolling is smooth; although I have a 030 on it; so your mileage may vary.
As far as native refresh rate, no idea; the monitor show 60Hz I believe, when it switch to WB from a game

[thyslo]

Originally Posted by Lisko

Does the indivision aga has smooth scrolling and native Amiga refresh rate?

On the mk3 you can enable "Auto-resolution" mode. Then the monitor gets feed with the exact output signal of the Amiga - which in PAL isn't exactly 50.00 Hz, more like 49.xyz Hz. Not all monitors support this, 'though.

With this enabled I get really smooth scrolling. E.g. At the beginning of Turrican 2 there are some waterfalls. Without "Auto-resolution", simply outputting 50 Hz for PAL, the water "stutters" for a flash every some seconds. With "Auto-resoltion" everything's smooth.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Lisko

Does the indivision aga has smooth scrolling and native Amiga refresh rate?

It has everything as it was made as AGA clone (Indivision reverse engineered original AGA and added new functionality to it - registers are in $DFF000 space and can be accessed trough Copper). This is more than FlickerFixer - it is like Lisa Plus.

Considering amount of work behind this (OCS/ECS/AGA reverse engineering) seem price is fair especially when compared to other "generic scan rate converters" usually based on regular, widely available video IC's are offered with similar price...

[jurassicman]

Thanks all guys, I learnt a few things I didn't know.
To be sincere I don't like external solutions and I had a few Indivision cards in the past (and I still own 2 Indivision AGA MK2cr) and I never had anything to complain about them.
It is sad, though, that their prices are constantly going up and that it is quite difficult to find an ECS one (either new or used) but it seems that this is the "normal situation" at the moment.

[jbenam]

Originally Posted by thyslo

On the mk3 you can enable "Auto-resolution" mode. Then the monitor gets feed with the exact output signal of the Amiga - which in PAL isn't exactly 50.00 Hz, more like 49.xyz Hz. Not all monitors support this, 'though.

With this enabled I get really smooth scrolling. E.g. At the beginning of Turrican 2 there are some waterfalls. Without "Auto-resolution", simply outputting 50 Hz for PAL, the water "stutters" for a flash every some seconds. With "Auto-resoltion" everything's smooth.

That's quite nice! I remember the Mk1 was very well received, then the Mk2 brought a bunch of complains that have apparently been fixed with later versions.

I was considering an Indivision back when I had a single Amiga. Then they grew in number and it isn't economically feasible anymore to put scandoublers on all of them

That's one of my main reasons I went for an OSSC (along with the fact that I have a massive amount of classic consoles, on top of my Amigas). I can just swap the Amiga when I need different hardware compatibility while keeping the same cable on the OSSC. I also have my trusty multiscan CRT in the lab when I need a bit of CRT realness I am already on my second Multisync (the last one started going purple randomly) and my 1084S blew up while lent to a friend.

CRTs won't last forever, that's why we need scandoublers