Author Topic: X-Surf II, what a scam... (Read 3675 times)

Acill · « **on:** March 21, 2004, 01:51:14 PM »

I just got an X-surf II for free out of a trashed A2000 I found at a yard sale here. It works and thats a great deal for me. The thing that pissed me off though is what the X-surf II card IS. This thing is nothing more then a $5 Realtek based 8029 chip ISA card stuck on a custom ZII adapter board. I looked and see these sell for $120 at most places. Thats a damn shame. I see no reason they should be any more then $50-75 MAX. This s yet another hardware company taking a cheap card and adapting to use on an Amiga then marking it up for max profits. This is going to kill the Amiga all over if new stuff comes out and they mark it up just because it works on Amiga.

Floid · « **Reply #1 on:** March 21, 2004, 01:58:16 PM »

The problem is the demand; for all the work put into designing the ISA bridge and making it cost-effective to produce, how many of these do you think have sold, versus the original silicon that could 1. integrate the bus logic and 2. ship in quantities great enough that I own more generic Realtek cards than computers?

(In other words, the expense isn't the ethernet controller; if it were just an ISA bridge, a-la GoldenGate, it would still be just as expensive and do less.)

I do think it's a shame that a couple bucks couldn't have been knocked off the original 5? years ago; lack of connectivity has literally kept the Amiga isolated. (Nobody had 'obvious' Plug-'n'-PPP solutions then, and the slightly larger crowd of holdouts left weren't ready to tether their machines to PCs.)

justthatgood · « **Reply #2 on:** March 21, 2004, 01:59:42 PM »

Well it's what I said before. Too many Amiga users take their hardware to emotional levels. Some people have near to utter wedding vows to their machines. Companies know this, and will play anything on the emotions of the Amiga users. Even if it means using sub-par hardware on items they sell to the users.

Hell, the x86 market might be cut throat, and cheap, cheap, cheap, but I tend to find more honest people in it then the Amiga market. It's just as bad as a certain Macintosh video card company insisting on charging money for drivers for cards over 12 years old.

KennyR · « **Reply #3 on:** March 21, 2004, 02:03:31 PM »

Normally what happens in commercial enterprise is this:

Company release hardware for the highest price they think they can get away with.

Competitor release a cheaper version.

Company lose sales due to compitor, so reduce prices.

...and so on.

The problem here is that the Amiga market has very little competition. People will pay inordinate sums of money for hardware because they have to - there is no cheaper alternative.

Unless of course you try to beat competition by releasing huge quantities of FUD and disinformation against your competitors...

Floid · « **Reply #4 on:** March 21, 2004, 02:04:52 PM »

The other problem is that Amiga hackers (of all colors) approach business like 1985's Amiga Corp. with the Joyboards and Atari games -- "Let's do this so we can fund something better." The shortsightedness of the commodity market is sometimes a virtue; companies get into 'doing one thing' (think Linksys or Realtek with networking), and don't get tricked into thinking "Oh, if we mark this up by 10, 15, 1500 cents, that much more to invest in what we really want to do."

Framiga · « **Reply #5 on:** March 21, 2004, 02:17:49 PM »

hi acill,

yes i agree, it is a little bit overpriced but take in mind that it is the only nic, that has an its own PPPoE driver for Genesis, 2 IDE buses (1 2.5"and 1 3.5") and a clock port as well.

It is very useful for ADSL and an ADSL eth. modem with Genesis.

Ciao

IonDeluxe · « **Reply #6 on:** March 21, 2004, 02:20:28 PM »

Quote

Unless of course you try to beat competition by releasing huge quantities of FUD and disinformation against your competitors...

Was it really necessary to include this?
This kind of statement really does not help anybody and certainly does not assist an already troubled community

mikeymike · « **Reply #7 on:** March 21, 2004, 02:24:01 PM »

Quote

Hell, the x86 market might be cut throat, and cheap, cheap, cheap, but I tend to find more honest people in it then the Amiga market.

There are swings and roundabouts here. The PC hardware market suffers *badly* from cheapo, crap, not-well-QA'd hardware. It also makes it extremely difficult for new companies to get in on a market where a product (say a graphics card) has had a good few billion dollars poured into R&D then sold for less than $100.

Now if someone could design a card that cost $5 to make (all costs included), they'd have to be extremely stupid to try and sell it for $150 when it's a much easier sell at say $50. Anyone in business knows that it is far better to have 20 customers paying you $5 for a product than 5 customers each paying you $20. Word of mouth sales. Greater confidence in the market because more people have seen the product work.

The Amiga has a technical problem though (business/community/history issues aside). A big range of stock computers that haven't varied much over time. There isn't much incentive for someone with an expanded A2000 to start all over again with an A4000. So (for example) a network card can't be sold that will fit in all Amigas, so the size of the potential number of sales drops sharply.

I bet the price of that network card is justified. Justified in that it can't be mass-produced due to lack of funds, nor is there a reasonable-sized market to sell it to, or there might be an issue where not enough funding has gone into it to ensure it can be mass-produced cheaply.

mikeymike · « **Reply #8 on:** March 21, 2004, 02:25:02 PM »

Quote

IonDeluxe wrote:
Quote
Unless of course you try to beat competition by releasing huge quantities of FUD and disinformation against your competitors...

Was it really necessary to include this?
This kind of statement really does not help anybody and certainly does not assist an already troubled community

I'm not sure KennyR can help it.

Kronos · « **Reply #9 on:** March 21, 2004, 02:30:20 PM »

@Acill

When it is all so damm easy and cheap to do, why don't you
just start to do it yourself ?

You know, designing the bridge, writing the drivers, production
distribution .....

Cards like the Ariadne were even more expensive, same goes
for Multi-serial-boards and such like. They all have one
thing in common. One took a standard chip (or card the differene
is minimal) from the PC-world, added a Zorro-interface and
a driver ....

Thats how it works in a market were you can only sell less
than 1000 pieces of one product.

IonDeluxe · « **Reply #10 on:** March 21, 2004, 02:33:59 PM »

Quote

mikeymike wrote:
Quote
IonDeluxe wrote:
Quote
Unless of course you try to beat competition by releasing huge quantities of FUD and disinformation against your competitors...

Was it really necessary to include this?
This kind of statement really does not help anybody and certainly does not assist an already troubled community

I'm not sure KennyR can help it.

LOL
Maybe you're right

KennyR · « **Reply #11 on:** March 21, 2004, 02:34:21 PM »

Well, it's true enough, isn't it? Whenever you get two products that do the same job in the Amiga market, the FUD starts flying. GREX and Mediator is another example.

Limited resources always makes for lots of infighting. It's human nature. And in this community, resources couldn't be much more limited.

But anyway, it's not even limited to small markets. The internet is full of GUI vs. Shell wars, BSD vs. Linux, Windows vs. Linux, Radeon vs. nVidia, etc etc etc. Human beings are intolerant tribal things who cripple their choice with their own prejudices.

mikeymike · « **Reply #12 on:** March 21, 2004, 02:39:42 PM »

It may be true, but that doesn't draw away from the fact that you like to draw attention to it more often than not :-)

Paul_Gadd · « **Reply #13 on:** March 21, 2004, 02:58:49 PM »

There is always a high "premium" in this market, think of it as "Amiga TAX".

Eyetech are masters of the above (especially with misleading adverts of products which are not even available.)

« **Reply #14 on:** March 21, 2004, 03:07:10 PM »

You may not realize how much it costs to produce that custom zorro adaptor in the quantities the Amiga market has demand for... He's not manufacturing these in bulk remember. Or the fact that he'd like compensation for supporting his products, and some amount of profit from the thing so he can pay rent and buy food. Or are you one of those "I don't care if Amiga developers have bills to pay" folks? Considering the size of his available market, I don't think it much of a ripoff myself. If you don't like it, get a Zorro3 machine if you don't already have one and a PCI bus adaptor. That way you only buy the adaptor once and then can have your $5 network card, $40 sound card, etc...

Author Topic: X-Surf II, what a scam... (Read 3675 times)

Acill

X-Surf II, what a scam...

Floid

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

justthatgood

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

KennyR

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

Floid

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

Framiga

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

IonDeluxe

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

mikeymike

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

mikeymike

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

Kronos

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

IonDeluxe

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

KennyR

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

mikeymike

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

Paul_Gadd

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...

Re: X-Surf II, what a scam...