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.
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.
That specific board would be easy to hand assemble by anyone who finds through-hole assembly easy.
That said, there is a lot of open source hardware too nowadays, here's a very helpful list:
(This has been observed before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22888726)
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.
https://jonlennartaasenden.wordpress.com/2019/02/15/hyperion...
Wow. "Misguided" seems like the understatement of the century. How can a niche retro platform be "saved" by keeping everything proprietary (and often expensive)?
They are passionate, just not that passionate.
People doing retro games also happen to actually sell them, with nice packaging.
> 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.
Not everyone is blessed with such a wealthy life that can just seat and offer free beer to others.
So they choose a side job where they can still have some fun.
If that wasn't the case they would probably just be dumping remakes into iOS, Switch, PS, XBox indie stores or even doing something completely unrelated to computers.
> Not everyone is blessed with such a wealthy life that can just seat and offer free beer to others.
I understand what you're saying in principle, but I don't believe this is the case with retrocomputing or the Amiga scene. This is an expensive hobby anyway, people who are not blessed with a relatively wealthy life do not have time for retro computing. People love retro computing because they feel passionate about it and find it intellectually or aesthetically stimulating. Nobody sets out to make a game for the Amiga, the C64 or the Speccy thinking "I know, this is where the money is!". They do it primarily out of love.
I believe the issue here is a cultural thing, really. Like someone else mentioned, the Amiga community, much like the Apple community, is used to paying for things that would be free or even libre in other tech communities. (edit: this is supported by this thread from 8 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22888726, let me quote: "In my observations (also as a relative outsider), it has been like this at least from the early 1990s. Every little itty-bitty program for the Amiga cost money.")
Back when I was a kid, Amigas were pretty expensive and few people could afford them (none of my friends could). Kids without wealthy parents didn't own Amigas.
Regardless of their motivations, my overall point still stands: pricey gadgets/software for a tiny niche hobbyist platform puts up a wall, raises the barrier to entry, and discourages newcomers -- surely not the best way to "save" it!
Doing stuff out of love doesn't mean we have to offer it as free beer. UK RetroGaming magazine has plenty of new interesting games being sold for 8 and 16 bit platforms, where the authors even repurpose old cartridges, or go through the effort to produce tapes just like back in the day.
In the 80's all computers were expensive, I find it interesting that you mention Amigas only being available to wealthy families, given that in Portugal getting an Amiga 500 was definitely cheaper than most PCs.
Anyone capable of buying a computer would do so via credit anyway.
Even on MS-DOS/Windows, people are used to pay, only the UNIX communities tend to feel entitled to get stuff for free.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.