5 ms·

As an Amiga 1000 owner, I watched this video with interest... unfortunately the add-on shown costs over $200. Way too expensive for me :( I applaud the develo

As an Amiga 1000 owner, I watched this video with interest... unfortunately the add-on shown costs over $200. Way too expensive for me :( I applaud the developers efforts, but I personally would have preferred an open-source design, using through-hole components, that anyone could build. The time-line of Amiga add-ons over the past 35 years is littered with the corpses of closed hardware that you can no longer buy, or are now so rare that their value pushes them out of most peoples reach.

teddyh 6y ago
It seems to be endemic with the Amiga culture to have everything be commercial. Open source never got much of a foothold there.
- einr 6y ago
  To an extent you are right, lots of Amiga software and hardware has traditionally been commercial and proprietary in a (maybe misguided) effort to save the platform. That said, there is a lot of open source hardware too nowadays, here's a very helpful list: https://github.com/grovdata/Amiga_Sources https://github.com/grovdata/Amiga_Sources
  - teddyh 6y ago
    From what I saw, this attutude was there from the very beginning, from the top down. (This has been observed before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22888726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22888726)
    - einr 6y ago
      Probably true. As an aside, coming from a Linux/Windows background and having partially moved to Mac recently, I observe the same of the Mac community. For instance, when Big Sur launched, there was a tiny little utility that did nothing but change the color of the menu bar, and they wanted something like five dollars for it. Lots of stuff like this on Mac, I find. Popular FTP clients and text editors and disk utilities and stuff like that, they all cost money. The equivalents on Windows are more often than not free-as-in-beer. Just an observation. But yeah, surely AmigaOS would benefit from being open source and free software in 2021, like EmuTOS or RISC OS Open. Unfortunately the ownership of the core parts of the OS has fallen into less than optimal hands (Cloanto...) and/or is still encumbered by patents or rights issues. So it goes. There is AROS though of course.
      - fractallyte 6y ago
        Just curious: what's wrong with Cloanto?
        einr 6y ago
        Didn't see your reply until much later, but in case you're still wondering, this blog post about sums it up: https://jonlennartaasenden.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/hyperion-vs-cloanto-the-longest-running-lawsuit-in-the-history-of-computing/ https://jonlennartaasenden.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/hyperion...
        fractallyte 6y ago
        Thank you, that's interesting! But it's just one side, and I wonder what the other side would write...
  - the_af 6y ago
    > lots of Amiga software and hardware has traditionally been commercial and proprietary in a (maybe misguided) effort to save the platform Wow. "Misguided" seems like the understatement of the century. How can a niche retro platform be "saved" by keeping everything proprietary (and often expensive)?
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Most likely because the people keeping the platform alive have better things to do than offer free beer, and would rather spend their lives doing something else instead.
      - the_af 6y ago
        I'm not sure I follow. Giving something to the community, either for free or gratis, in a hobbyist space such as this one is not more work. It's clear people in the retro computing scene feel passionate about it -- they'd rather spend their time doing this and not something else (and if you see the people writing retro games, they are willing to put a lot of work into it). So how can this closed/proprietary mindset help "save" the platform? It only caters to the very small niche of people who are willing to pay relatively large sums for custom hardware & software with no real use (it's a hobby) and who will take it all to their graves.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Because the people charging for their work, would do something else if that wasn't the case, thus there wouldn't exist anything at all. They are passionate, just not that passionate. People doing retro games also happen to actually sell them, with nice packaging.
        the_af 6y ago
        Yes, some sell them. It's puzzling to me, because this effectively narrows down their audience. > Because the people charging for their work, would do something else if that wasn't the case, thus there wouldn't exist anything at all. I don't know that this is the case for Amiga enthusiasts. They chose this not for the money, but because they love retro computing. They wouldn't be doing something else, just like a writer or an artist wouldn't. And by making their output proprietary -- and pricey! -- they are narrowing down their audience, which is the opposite of "saving" the platform. I've seldom seen people more passionate about their hobby (note: hobby, not business) than retro computing fans.
- LIV2 6y ago
  Unfortunately the market exists for insanely overpriced things for the Amiga and full of grifters who take open source hardware and sell it assembled for massive markups. Still, there are many of us who make open source hardware for the Amiga still but it seems that commercial projects are the ones you hear about more
  - rasz 6y ago
    >full of grifters who take open source hardware and sell it assembled WTF is this attitude? and I dont mean people actually manufacturing hardware. I mean your reaction to it. Even Terriblefire, author of "open source" Amiga accelerators, got mad [1] someone had the gall to manufacture his designs for people unable to solder/compile and as a result deleted all of his work from the internet and vanished. WTF is this? If you dont like people making money manufacturing your projects then ....manufacture them yourself cheaper? [1] complaining about someone in a country with <700 Euro average engineer salary manufacturing and selling something a guy in UK making 3000-8000 pounds cant be bothered to waste time on.
    - LIV2 6y ago
      It’s the exorbitant markup that I have a problem with In regards to the TF blowup his problem with that was someone selling clones of the TF536 which wasn’t open source (yet). How much he earns is irrelevant you don’t get to just steal his work
      - rasz 6y ago
        >exorbitant markup Sell it cheaper, cut off speculators. How much someone earns is the crux of the matter here. All of a sudden slaving away soldering, manual labor pfeh, doesnt sound all that sexy when it translates to fast food wages for someone with >10 year EE experience.
      - rasz 6y ago
        Overnight I remembered more details, cant edit my last post so another reply. TF had a racist (nationalistic?) tirade on YT around end of May 2020 about Poles making money off of him and charging exorbitant prices. All the while talking about overpriced Super Agnus chips and those damn Polish price gougers. When I pointed out the _only_ place selling Super Agnus at the time was in Germany and charged ~100 Euro/chip he only got angrier .. at Poles.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  Yep, looking over from the Atari ST community, I'm always astounded by the way Amiga projects are run. On the ST we have a fully GPL'd version of the operating system now (EmuTOS), which matches and exceeds in many cases the original OS. And a Coldfire based system (Firebee) following in Atari lineage, for which the FPGA and supporting software are all open source. Most hardware add-ons have fairly open specifications and drivers etc. are usually open source. Nobody is under the illusion that they're going to be making a living or a profit out of this community, they're doing it for passion. But looking over at the Amiga, I see new and interesting projects all the time but they seem to be always closed.
rasz 6y ago
This extension is only possible due to very modern part (2017?), a $25 AS6C6416, 8MB SRAM in a TSOP Package https://www.alliancememory.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Alliance%20Memory_64M_AS6C6416-55TIN%20v1.0%20July%202017.pdf https://www.alliancememory.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Allian... the rest is really cheap and very simple. You could replicate it at $50 bom including shipping for all the parts. Thru hole would indeed push the price to >$150. Even still, I am a bit dubious about this Ram chip. Its 3.3V rated, and its maximum ratings are below what Amiga presents on its bus (5V). I wonder if the fact its working is the miracle of modern manufacturing processes and safety margins, or just a temporary fluke and will results in dead parts in near future. Normally you would need either a 5V tolerant part or a bus translator like <$1 74ALVC164245.
- nezgar 6y ago
  Commonly solved on modern upgrades with voltage level converting components... 5V to 3.3V and vice versa.
sokoloff 6y ago
SMD parts aren’t much of a barrier to open source/DIY assembly. They look harder, but any parts with leads and 0805 or larger are just as possible in my experience to hand-assemble and I find SMD generally slightly faster. (All assuming a board with solder mask and the intention in board design was to allow hand-assembly, which if you’re using 0805s everywhere today, that’s probably your intent.) That specific board would be easy to hand assemble by anyone who finds through-hole assembly easy.

teddyh 6y ago

It seems to be endemic with the Amiga culture to have everything be commercial. Open source never got much of a foothold there.

einr 6y ago
To an extent you are right, lots of Amiga software and hardware has traditionally been commercial and proprietary in a (maybe misguided) effort to save the platform. That said, there is a lot of open source hardware too nowadays, here's a very helpful list: https://github.com/grovdata/Amiga_Sources https://github.com/grovdata/Amiga_Sources
- teddyh 6y ago
  From what I saw, this attutude was there from the very beginning, from the top down. (This has been observed before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22888726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22888726)
  - einr 6y ago
    Probably true. As an aside, coming from a Linux/Windows background and having partially moved to Mac recently, I observe the same of the Mac community. For instance, when Big Sur launched, there was a tiny little utility that did nothing but change the color of the menu bar, and they wanted something like five dollars for it. Lots of stuff like this on Mac, I find. Popular FTP clients and text editors and disk utilities and stuff like that, they all cost money. The equivalents on Windows are more often than not free-as-in-beer. Just an observation. But yeah, surely AmigaOS would benefit from being open source and free software in 2021, like EmuTOS or RISC OS Open. Unfortunately the ownership of the core parts of the OS has fallen into less than optimal hands (Cloanto...) and/or is still encumbered by patents or rights issues. So it goes. There is AROS though of course.
    - fractallyte 6y ago
      Just curious: what's wrong with Cloanto?
      - einr 6y ago
        Didn't see your reply until much later, but in case you're still wondering, this blog post about sums it up: https://jonlennartaasenden.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/hyperion-vs-cloanto-the-longest-running-lawsuit-in-the-history-of-computing/ https://jonlennartaasenden.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/hyperion...
        fractallyte 6y ago
        Thank you, that's interesting! But it's just one side, and I wonder what the other side would write...
- the_af 6y ago
  > lots of Amiga software and hardware has traditionally been commercial and proprietary in a (maybe misguided) effort to save the platform Wow. "Misguided" seems like the understatement of the century. How can a niche retro platform be "saved" by keeping everything proprietary (and often expensive)?
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Most likely because the people keeping the platform alive have better things to do than offer free beer, and would rather spend their lives doing something else instead.
    - the_af 6y ago
      I'm not sure I follow. Giving something to the community, either for free or gratis, in a hobbyist space such as this one is not more work. It's clear people in the retro computing scene feel passionate about it -- they'd rather spend their time doing this and not something else (and if you see the people writing retro games, they are willing to put a lot of work into it). So how can this closed/proprietary mindset help "save" the platform? It only caters to the very small niche of people who are willing to pay relatively large sums for custom hardware & software with no real use (it's a hobby) and who will take it all to their graves.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Because the people charging for their work, would do something else if that wasn't the case, thus there wouldn't exist anything at all. They are passionate, just not that passionate. People doing retro games also happen to actually sell them, with nice packaging.
        the_af 6y ago
        Yes, some sell them. It's puzzling to me, because this effectively narrows down their audience. > Because the people charging for their work, would do something else if that wasn't the case, thus there wouldn't exist anything at all. I don't know that this is the case for Amiga enthusiasts. They chose this not for the money, but because they love retro computing. They wouldn't be doing something else, just like a writer or an artist wouldn't. And by making their output proprietary -- and pricey! -- they are narrowing down their audience, which is the opposite of "saving" the platform. I've seldom seen people more passionate about their hobby (note: hobby, not business) than retro computing fans.
LIV2 6y ago
Unfortunately the market exists for insanely overpriced things for the Amiga and full of grifters who take open source hardware and sell it assembled for massive markups. Still, there are many of us who make open source hardware for the Amiga still but it seems that commercial projects are the ones you hear about more
- rasz 6y ago
  >full of grifters who take open source hardware and sell it assembled WTF is this attitude? and I dont mean people actually manufacturing hardware. I mean your reaction to it. Even Terriblefire, author of "open source" Amiga accelerators, got mad [1] someone had the gall to manufacture his designs for people unable to solder/compile and as a result deleted all of his work from the internet and vanished. WTF is this? If you dont like people making money manufacturing your projects then ....manufacture them yourself cheaper? [1] complaining about someone in a country with <700 Euro average engineer salary manufacturing and selling something a guy in UK making 3000-8000 pounds cant be bothered to waste time on.
  - LIV2 6y ago
    It’s the exorbitant markup that I have a problem with In regards to the TF blowup his problem with that was someone selling clones of the TF536 which wasn’t open source (yet). How much he earns is irrelevant you don’t get to just steal his work
    - rasz 6y ago
      >exorbitant markup Sell it cheaper, cut off speculators. How much someone earns is the crux of the matter here. All of a sudden slaving away soldering, manual labor pfeh, doesnt sound all that sexy when it translates to fast food wages for someone with >10 year EE experience.
    - rasz 6y ago
      Overnight I remembered more details, cant edit my last post so another reply. TF had a racist (nationalistic?) tirade on YT around end of May 2020 about Poles making money off of him and charging exorbitant prices. All the while talking about overpriced Super Agnus chips and those damn Polish price gougers. When I pointed out the _only_ place selling Super Agnus at the time was in Germany and charged ~100 Euro/chip he only got angrier .. at Poles.
cmrdporcupine 6y ago
Yep, looking over from the Atari ST community, I'm always astounded by the way Amiga projects are run. On the ST we have a fully GPL'd version of the operating system now (EmuTOS), which matches and exceeds in many cases the original OS. And a Coldfire based system (Firebee) following in Atari lineage, for which the FPGA and supporting software are all open source. Most hardware add-ons have fairly open specifications and drivers etc. are usually open source. Nobody is under the illusion that they're going to be making a living or a profit out of this community, they're doing it for passion. But looking over at the Amiga, I see new and interesting projects all the time but they seem to be always closed.

rasz 6y ago

This extension is only possible due to very modern part (2017?), a $25 AS6C6416, 8MB SRAM in a TSOP Package https://www.alliancememory.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Alliance%20Memory_64M_AS6C6416-55TIN%20v1.0%20July%202017.pdf https://www.alliancememory.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Allian... the rest is really cheap and very simple. You could replicate it at $50 bom including shipping for all the parts. Thru hole would indeed push the price to >$150. Even still, I am a bit dubious about this Ram chip. Its 3.3V rated, and its maximum ratings are below what Amiga presents on its bus (5V). I wonder if the fact its working is the miracle of modern manufacturing processes and safety margins, or just a temporary fluke and will results in dead parts in near future. Normally you would need either a 5V tolerant part or a bus translator like <$1 74ALVC164245.

nezgar 6y ago
Commonly solved on modern upgrades with voltage level converting components... 5V to 3.3V and vice versa.

sokoloff 6y ago

SMD parts aren’t much of a barrier to open source/DIY assembly. They look harder, but any parts with leads and 0805 or larger are just as possible in my experience to hand-assemble and I find SMD generally slightly faster. (All assuming a board with solder mask and the intention in board design was to allow hand-assembly, which if you’re using 0805s everywhere today, that’s probably your intent.) That specific board would be easy to hand assemble by anyone who finds through-hole assembly easy.