»

[CritAnime]

Ok I am seriously lacking sleep. I have been up nearly 24hr and this might not be the most sensible post ever written. So appologies up front.

What I don't get is why Barry, or anyone from Commodore USA, officially affiliated or not, feels they need to come and try to convince us that they are the next best thing since sliced bread. Especially as how barry has stated in the past that he is not interested in the opinions from our "muddy little pond".

At the end of the day people will buy these machines. Regardless of what we or other people would say. Why?

Maybe they believe the hype. Maybe the think that this is the real return of commodore. Hell they may be influenced by nostalgia alone. But people will buy these things regardless.

So let them. Let them spend their money on what ever they feel like. Just please let's stop this silly bickering now. As much as I like to pick faults in their products, like woefully inadequate PSU's, I feel its getting to the point were its become more a personal attack rather than sensible discussion.

[Duce]

There are plenty of people developing HW and SW for legacy and NG Amiga systems without starving to death IRL. Most people refer to it as a "labor of love". Just because people only see things as being "viable" in terms of dollars and cents, doesn't mean a guy can't eek out an existence selling niche market items in a niche market.

You are equating million dollar profits to "success" in a hobby market, and that just isn't what it's all about.

If it were a loss leader there would be no AmigaKit, no X1000, so on and so forth. No one does this out of charity.

Thanks for the reply on the emulator issue - as Leo said, there's no working, out of the box emulator included with the proper ROM's and disk images. UAE doesn't do a whole hell of a lot without them.

I certainly hope the cusaforums.com redirect is a gag. Makes me nervous to think the place may have sold out and people I would not want to have any of my personal info may have it.

[Pyromania]

@Duce

Amiga.org has not sold out to anyone. Expect less CUSA coverage in the future not more. I don't think there is any danger of CUSA trying to buy out your favorite Amiga fan sites anytime soon. Not even including a $10 copy of Amiga Forever with the expensive Linux machines they sell just goes to show how cheap they really are.

[Duce]

Thanks for the clarification, Pyro.

The domain redirect is obviously concerning, was all.

[Pyromania]

@Duce

Someones idea of a joke I guess? Not our doing.

[Wildstar128]

Originally Posted by CritAnime

Ok I am seriously lacking sleep. I have been up nearly 24hr and this might not be the most sensible post ever written. So appologies up front.

What I don't get is why Barry, or anyone from Commodore USA, officially affiliated or not, feels they need to come and try to convince us that they are the next best thing since sliced bread. Especially as how barry has stated in the past that he is not interested in the opinions from our "muddy little pond".

At the end of the day people will buy these machines. Regardless of what we or other people would say. Why?

Maybe they believe the hype. Maybe the think that this is the real return of commodore. Hell they may be influenced by nostalgia alone. But people will buy these things regardless.

So let them. Let them spend their money on what ever they feel like. Just please let's stop this silly bickering now. As much as I like to pick faults in their products, like woefully inadequate PSU's, I feel its getting to the point were its become more a personal attack rather than sensible discussion.

I am not suggesting it is the next best thing since sliced bread. I am only suggesting in counterargument to unwarranted or unreasonable bashing. If people just say, the systems have rational specifications for mainstream computer users and have a strong theme but currently doe not have the specifications I need or that I currently do not have the needs for it. Current development does not directly involve the classic hardware. Leave it at that and the guys just might have a cool headed rational response without contrived bashing because it doesn't continue on the b.s. path of Escom which failed to follow through and lost opportunity.

Escom failed. They promised and failed. They had opportunity with PPC then. The market does not have that opportunity now and too many left the entire amiga community completely since the decade+ time frame. Then all the b.s. by Bill McEwen et al.

I am all too familiar with the litter of lies and b.s. Over the years. My suggestion, get over it and move on. Seek new opportunities instead.

[Wildstar128]

Originally Posted by Duce

There are plenty of people developing HW and SW for legacy and NG Amiga systems without starving to death IRL. Most people refer to it as a "labor of love". Just because people only see things as being "viable" in terms of dollars and cents, doesn't mean a guy can't eek out an existence selling niche market items in a niche market.

You are equating million dollar profits to "success" in a hobby market, and that just isn't what it's all about.

If it were a loss leader there would be no AmigaKit, no X1000, so on and so forth. No one does this out of charity.

Thanks for the reply on the emulator issue - as Leo said, there's no working, out of the box emulator included with the proper ROM's and disk images. UAE doesn't do a whole hell of a lot without them.

I certainly hope the cusaforums.com redirect is a gag. Makes me nervous to think the place may have sold out and people I would not want to have any of my personal info may have it.

If I have to get a loan from a bank to finance bring a product to production and market, How am I going to sell that to the bank lender.

Think man, think. Bring products to market involves lending or massive loss and destruction to credit.

[Wildstar128]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

@Duce

Amiga.org has not sold out to anyone. Expect less CUSA coverage in the future not more. I don't think there is any danger of CUSA trying to buy out your favorite Amiga fan sites anytime soon. Not even including a $10 copy of Amiga Forever with the expensive Linux machines they sell just goes to show how cheap they really are.

Do you understand the laws governing interstate and international trade. You can not bundle software without permission. That is what CommodoreUSA is dealing with in accordance with the laws not the quasi-lawless folks who don't run business in any formal business manner whatsoever.

[Duce]

I am thinking, lol.

There's plenty of business people, from guys making parts for cars that haven't been made for 80 years, to guys making components for Amiga's that will never get rich, yet they still keep doing it. If you see what they are doing as a failure because they aren't making millions per year supporting a hobby they love, knock yourself out and call them failures. I won't, and either will 99% of the people here. Instead we're thankful there are people around still slugging away to bring stuff to market. For nearly 20 years these grassroots guys, combined with people selling and trading older hardware have been the lifeblood of the Amiga community. Those guys that are getting their hands dirty and burned up with soldering irons are the ones to respect, and people around here show said respect to them in spades.

For them it's simply not about venture capital and owning nice cars. Perhaps many don't even break even. Perhaps many still work crappy day jobs to fund their passions of bringing new products to market for things that the rest of the world forgot about a long time ago.

It's not all about money, and the fact there's still new products coming out for the Amiga's that were made 20 years ago shows this - things like the ZorRam, Indivision cards, the ACA accels, the FPGA Arcade/Minimig, etc.

[Wildstar128]

Originally Posted by Duce

I am thinking, lol.

There's plenty of business people, from guys making parts for cars that haven't been made for 80 years, to guys making components for Amiga's that will never get rich, yet they still keep doing it. If you see what they are doing as a failure because they aren't making millions per year supporting a hobby they love, knock yourself out and call them failures. I won't, and either will 99% of the people here. Instead we're thankful there are people around still slugging away to bring stuff to market. For nearly 20 years these grassroots guys, combined with people selling and trading older hardware have been the lifeblood of the Amiga community. Those guys that are getting their hands dirty and burned up with soldering irons are the ones to respect, and people around here show said respect to them in spades.

For them it's simply not about venture capital and owning nice cars. Perhaps many don't even break even. Perhaps many still work crappy day jobs to fund their passions of bringing new products to market for things that the rest of the world forgot about a long time ago.

It's not all about money, and the fact there's still new products coming out for the Amiga's that were made 20 years ago shows this - things like the ZorRam, Indivision cards, the ACA accels, the FPGA Arcade/Minimig, etc.

The issue is there isn't enough people with money buying things for Commodore and Amiga classic machines. Different then antique cars. Most antique car collectors are rich executives. Most of the commodore/amiga collectors are poor with poor paying jobs. Maybe $30-50k a year. In addition, there is also so few actually using the hw and don't see much use in buying hardware upgrades. In addition, there is no market room for a company like Commodore USA to even put a CMD like presence in the commodore 8 bit and amiga. There is just not enough people spending money to rent commercial space. This means, they need a main stream market for revenues. As an individual, I can put a limited presence by just doing something and to soften impact. This is the kind of issues we have to keep in mind.

Too many players with not enough purchaser can be detrimental too.

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by Wildstar128

I probably can look at some numbers that were released and figure the money cost and extrapolate gross revenues from sales prices. However, I can't say it is the totals but I can say they they are closer to CMD in their early to mid 90s days given the larger venue.

Jens, jim brain and most of the hw developer 'businesses' don't add up in gross revenues.

How does Amiga Mini sell.... Well... At the pricing... I can guess it would sell when it has an i7 quad core processor and 16 GB RAM and high end GPUs is about twice the clock rate, twice the number of cores and and faster sysyem bus for DDR3 not DDR2 memory and SATA3 sockets... And you have an OS that has more mainstream software immediately functional right from get go.

Lotta guesswork in there and not much in the way of numbers. I ask again: do you have any basis for saying that CUSA makes more money than the entire Commodore/Amiga hobbyist market?

The OS has a big part to do with whether the product has commercial viability in the mainstream. Linux is strong and viable and in fact Linus Torvald started with Commodore and I suspect he was strongly influenced by C64, Amiga and other system over the years.

The biggest problem with AmigaOS is it lacks mainstream viability because there isn't the apps and the Amiga operating system is largely outdated.

Again, "mainstream viability" is irrelevant. The Amiga is twenty years out of being the mainstream and a good fifteen years past any hope of ever recapturing a significant part of it. Even if you redefine "Amiga" to mean nothing more than any computer that has rented the brand name from Bill, there's no way they can ever make a dent in the mainstream. (Certainly not at those prices.)

Mainstream Computer users don't want to program software.

Okay, if you were advocating for Windows or Mac OS and saying this, that'd be one thing, but if you're using this as a point in Linux's favor? I can only conclude that you've never actually used Linux. Trying to use Linux in any kind of semi-comprehensive desktop PC capacity is closer to programming than some actual programmers get these days.

Originally Posted by Wildstar128

Ok, semantics.... I was using produce to differentiate from develop. They produce just as much as many of the PC computer brands that don't actually produce the motherboard themselves but get special OEM boards for their product and assemble into their own cases.

Dell doesn't even manufacturer their motherboards. So producing in the sense of a complete product package. Just like a car producer that uses a chassis from on manufactuerer, engine of another and just produce their on body and cosmetics.

Okay, but even by that definition, they've produced a run (10,000, according to Barry) of C64x cases. How many C64xes have they sold? If one were to judge by user posts on the CUSA forums, it's a dozen or two. Have they ordered another run of cases? Have they even made a dent in their existing case stock? How does this compare to the sold-out first run of AmigaOne X1000 machines and registrations for the second run?

Lets put it like this, they don't absolutely have to have employees but when they have, they pay them. As far as I know, Leo is an employee and is paid. If he wasn't, I would think he be gone. They have people that work at the communication. As a company with employees, you must pay your employees. I am sure it can be ascertained under public information requests through the proper government entities and get the picture.

And, what, do the people at Amigakit just come in on a Saturday and fill orders for kicks? What basis do you have for suggesting that Amiga hobbyist businesses don't pay their workers?

Originally Posted by Wildstar128

I do believe they can capture some of the Amiga essence. Now, lets take a look at the underlying framework of Amiga kernal. Isn't it some sort of framework built off of UNIX to some degree but certainly divergent in a massive way.

No. It is not based on Unix. It's not even Unix-like. It's certainly nothing like Linux.

Originally Posted by Wildstar128

Business is simply about selling a product that people would use at a fair price. Jack Tramiel did quite well with that philosophy.

Okay. Now under what logic would you say that charging somewhere around twice the cost of the components for a PC built entirely from commodity hardware is "a fair price?"

Originally Posted by Wildstar128

So, how in zeus's butthole can you possibly expect a new Amiga PPC amiga that competes competitively with intel.

Who says it has to compete? It's an entirely separate market.

How many purchases of Amiga x1000 by hyperion et al. How many was ever sold?

The entire first run (100 machines? I think? Correct me if I'm wrong) has sold and they're registering interest for a second.

Originally Posted by Wildstar128

Lets take a second to think about this, every other Commodore IP holder CEO never even talked to the Commodore members. At least Barry has been remotely communicating with any of you. I give him credit for that.

Wait, so we're supposed to be grateful he comes on here to condescend and smarm and insult us? Dude told me outright that I've never accomplished anything in my life, and he doesn't even know me. I'm supposed to be impressed because he deigned to talk to me?

Originally Posted by Wildstar128

Show me 1,000,000 Amigans actively using Amiga. Considering you need to expect a 1% of them might purchase a given year. R&D for a hardware developer is easily $100/hr. For labor of time. You need to have account for at least a year to get someone to bring price cost to something a million might buy but expecting only 1% success rate.

Where are you getting these numbers from?

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by Middleman

To be fair, after looking at the answers after his reply, I think the Amiga community in general I think is being too harsh on his company, and being too pessimistic about certain things a little too early. He has said he is a small company slowly working to rebuild the Commodore and Amiga brands. As Leo has mentioned many times before Rome wasn't built in a day…..

It's been two years. If they haven't stopped with the compulsive lying/spreading of misinformation and general abuse of dissenters now (to say nothing of the obscene markup,) why should we expect them to suddenly get better at any point in the future?

[Wildstar128]

Originally Posted by commodorejohn

Lotta guesswork in there and not much in the way of numbers. I ask again: do you have any basis for saying that CUSA makes more money than the entire Commodore/Amiga hobbyist market?

Again, "mainstream viability" is irrelevant. The Amiga is twenty years out of being the mainstream and a good fifteen years past any hope of ever recapturing a significant part of it. Even if you redefine "Amiga" to mean nothing more than any computer that has rented the brand name from Bill, there's no way they can ever make a dent in the mainstream. (Certainly not at those prices.)

Okay, if you were advocating for Windows or Mac OS and saying this, that'd be one thing, but if you're using this as a point in Linux's favor? I can only conclude that you've never actually used Linux. Trying to use Linux in any kind of semi-comprehensive desktop PC capacity is closer to programming than some actual programmers get these days.


Okay, but even by that definition, they've produced a run (10,000, according to Barry) of C64x cases. How many C64xes have they sold? If one were to judge by user posts on the CUSA forums, it's a dozen or two. Have they ordered another run of cases? Have they even made a dent in their existing case stock? How does this compare to the sold-out first run of AmigaOne X1000 machines and registrations for the second run?

And, what, do the people at Amigakit just come in on a Saturday and fill orders for kicks? What basis do you have for suggesting that Amiga hobbyist businesses don't pay their workers?


No. It is not based on Unix. It's not even Unix-like. It's certainly nothing like Linux.


Okay. Now under what logic would you say that charging somewhere around twice the cost of the components for a PC built entirely from commodity hardware is "a fair price?"


Who says it has to compete? It's an entirely separate market.

The entire first run (100 machines? I think? Correct me if I'm wrong) has sold and they're registering interest for a second.


Wait, so we're supposed to be grateful he comes on here to condescend and smarm and insult us? Dude told me outright that I've never accomplished anything in my life, and he doesn't even know me. I'm supposed to be impressed because he deigned to talk to me?


Where are you getting these numbers from?

You can either get new people or serve only those that are already die hard people. The only way to get new people is in the mainstream. That is where they are. Old people that once was here and now is there - is there.

"Wait, so we're supposed to be grateful he comes on here to condescend and smarm and insult us? Dude told me outright that I've never accomplished anything in my life, and he doesn't even know me. I'm supposed to be impressed because he deigned to talk to me?"

I don't know, it might be because you guys started bashing him just for getting the brand and in other words started it. I suspect he is better then the other a--holes who would shut down every Commodore website. Sued everyone of the sites with the logos, and had them all thrown in jail and fined for statutory violation of $25,000 per violation and legal precedence is that each day a violation occured would be a violation up to statutes of repose.

Well lets assume 2 years. That is 365x2 or 730 days of violations. Each day a violation. 730 violations at $25,000 and a year in jail for each violation. Imagine 730 years of imprisonment and $18+ Million dollars in fines each. That would be pretty gnarly. Then throw in the copyright violations.

That would be an grade AAA a--hole.

It is a good thing Barry is not one of those.

[CritAnime]

Originally Posted by Wildstar128

I am not suggesting it is the next best thing since sliced bread. I am only suggesting in counterargument to unwarranted or unreasonable bashing. If people just say, the systems have rational specifications for mainstream computer users and have a strong theme but currently doe not have the specifications I need or that I currently do not have the needs for it. Current development does not directly involve the classic hardware. Leave it at that and the guys just might have a cool headed rational response without contrived bashing because it doesn't continue on the b.s. path of Escom which failed to follow through and lost opportunity.

Escom failed. They promised and failed. They had opportunity with PPC then. The market does not have that opportunity now and too many left the entire amiga community completely since the decade+ time frame. Then all the b.s. by Bill McEwen et al.

I am all too familiar with the litter of lies and b.s. Over the years. My suggestion, get over it and move on. Seek new opportunities instead.

I wasn't suggesting that it was you personally. It was a generalized statement about that amount of times we have seen people trying to convince us that Commodore USA where the best people for the job. And yes like you I have seen others trying to bring the brands back into the mainstream. Lets not forget Commodore Gaming, a company I feel Commodore USA resemble in a fashion, that had taken a stab at bringing Commodore kicking and screaming into the x86/64 era. And that survived for a while then failed.

Look I am simply saying maybe it's time we just let this one go and allow the thread to fall off the front page.

[Wildstar128]

Originally Posted by commodorejohn

Lotta guesswork in there and not much in the way of numbers. I ask again: do you have any basis for saying that CUSA makes more money than the entire Commodore/Amiga hobbyist market?

Again, "mainstream viability" is irrelevant. The Amiga is twenty years out of being the mainstream and a good fifteen years past any hope of ever recapturing a significant part of it. Even if you redefine "Amiga" to mean nothing more than any computer that has rented the brand name from Bill, there's no way they can ever make a dent in the mainstream. (Certainly not at those prices.)

Okay, if you were advocating for Windows or Mac OS and saying this, that'd be one thing, but if you're using this as a point in Linux's favor? I can only conclude that you've never actually used Linux. Trying to use Linux in any kind of semi-comprehensive desktop PC capacity is closer to programming than some actual programmers get these days.


Okay, but even by that definition, they've produced a run (10,000, according to Barry) of C64x cases. How many C64xes have they sold? If one were to judge by user posts on the CUSA forums, it's a dozen or two. Have they ordered another run of cases? Have they even made a dent in their existing case stock? How does this compare to the sold-out first run of AmigaOne X1000 machines and registrations for the second run?

And, what, do the people at Amigakit just come in on a Saturday and fill orders for kicks? What basis do you have for suggesting that Amiga hobbyist businesses don't pay their workers?


No. It is not based on Unix. It's not even Unix-like. It's certainly nothing like Linux.


Okay. Now under what logic would you say that charging somewhere around twice the cost of the components for a PC built entirely from commodity hardware is "a fair price?"


Who says it has to compete? It's an entirely separate market.

The entire first run (100 machines? I think? Correct me if I'm wrong) has sold and they're registering interest for a second.


Wait, so we're supposed to be grateful he comes on here to condescend and smarm and insult us? Dude told me outright that I've never accomplished anything in my life, and he doesn't even know me. I'm supposed to be impressed because he deigned to talk to me?


Where are you getting these numbers from?

If your batch run is 10 then that isn't much to say.

10,000 units at $595 is 5.95 Million in sales. Then you have the Vic and other models. So, if you figure about $6-8 million in revenue. How much sales does jens make a year on all his products.

The last I recall, he didn't even sell 100 C-Ones. That was maybe $35k-$50k. Did he even get that. If I recall, he spent over $150k to get the batch produced. Maybe it was somewhere between $125k-$175k. It has been awhile since I saw his old post on the CommodoreOne list(s) with that info.

He is one of the largest commodore/amiga hardware developers existent. The big -10 would be lucky to be between $750k-$1M. That is if they have a good year and that is usually only the one time batch pre-order that happens maybe once in 5 years with each of the developers.

The sw developers generally make $0.

So, how do anyone make a living when you are lucky to sell 30-50 of anything.

There usually is only one time batches and that first may get sold old but the second batch takes years to deplete even though the second batch is half to equal the first batch.

There are maybe 100-250 active folks left world wide that actively purchases hardware on a regular basis. Of the ~6000, you are lucky to get 10% to buy anything a given year. So, each vendor is lucky to get 1-2% to purchase their product. So viably, I can only expect at most 50-60 purchases of something a given year and it would then take 3-5 times as much time to sell another 50-60. Product sale life is good for maybe a year and then it is slow as heck.

I seen this with many of the stuff produced in the Commodore and Amiga community.

These are ball park and vary. I seen this with Jens, Jim and others.

The few things that continuously sell are cables and cords.