Thanks for the welcome and words of encourgement.

You are quoting the prices of the 533Mhz version which Acube have discontinued, it is not available anymore from them and we cannot get hold of it. Acube have told us that they will not make any more 533Mhz versions and cannot sell any.

They now sell the 667Mhz version (which is the version we sell) for £440 - (465 EUR+ VAT) - we sell the exactly the same 667Mhz version for £439.99 - our pricing is entirely consistent with them.

We do not inflate any prices. We sell at the manufacturer's RRP.
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I'm sure you don't inflate prices. I have myself ordered many times from your site and have been very happy with the prices I've paid.

The problem with any hardware like the SAM is that due to a small market the manufacturing costs will always be high. It is sad but for us to enjoy the Amiga hobby we all love we have to pay over the odds to get the hardware we want.
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At first glance if you look at what was ACube's lowest price and then compair it to the AmigaKit price it does look a big difference. However when you look more closely and realise that the boards are different and that ACube has the price for the lowest 667MHZ SAM at 489 Euros and then add VAT it works out that AmigaKit may even be selling at a lower price than the manufacturer (£461.00 from ACube at todays exchange rate).

The good news is that the SAM will also run several versions of Linux and also AROS so at least thanks to the Linux support it will be slightly more than a toy.

@AmigaKit.com

Will you be doing a complete version of the SAM? i.e with tower case and drives etc.
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I would also be interested in knowing that. A full system would be of interest to many people I'm sure, and there are some great mini-itx cases available.

Also when will the SAM actually be available to buy with OS4.1 from amigakit.com? Is the October date shown on the site quite accurate? or might that change? I can post a news item on classicamiga when it does become available.
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SAM is available now to buy with 4.1 here:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...roducts_id=839
http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/...roducts_id=840

We will be offering complete systems next month as well.
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A1200 Motherboard New £78.77
Mediator TX £190.14
Ethernet Card x2 £20
Spider II USB Card £50.68
Mobilty Radeon 9200 £35.62
SoundBlaster 4.1 Digital £38.79
FastATA MK-III £72.08
PPC 240mhz 256meg Ebay £400?

Total £886.08.

These prices are taken from Amiga shops.
I'm sure people can find some of these bits and pieces cheaper but this gives a rough guide.
I've chosen the Mediator solution because I thought it delivered the closet specs to the Sam but of course there are other setups that could achieve something similar.

The PPC is the big stumbling block as they can't be bought new, so we are at the mercy of auctions on Ebay.
It's also slower than the Sam and the max memory is half that of the Sam as well.
I chosen £400 as the standard amount bearing in mind recent auctions although this is not an exact science when choosing a price for auctioned items.
I also chose to add the FastATA because SAM has SATA.
Without looking into it, I'm confident that SATA would be faster than the FastATA.

Currently the above system is only capable of OS4, although this may change.
Sam will use the newer OS4.1.
The above system would also take more effort to set up, and need a fairly large tower to house it.
Cooling and perhaps noise would be a consideration.
Sam is passively cooled.

So £440 for a Sam starts to look a lot better.
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You don't need the soundblaster card as OS4 connot use them. What would be the point of an ethernet card when you've already got USB and would just need a Wi-Fi dongle? You've forgotten to add the cost of OS4.1 into your £440 taking it to £540. Also what is so great about 4.1 over 4.0? Especially when neither has any apps that aren't already available for classic Amigas. It's little more than a very expensive door stop for people with more money than sense. If you want to see a folly then go to a stately garden it's much cheaper. Sorry but i can't get excited about this at all as everything about it is over expensive (not Amigakits fault) and out of date with little functionality. You can't even use the thing to play games which at least you can on a 1200. This stinks of white elephant sh1t. The Natami will at least be able to run Amiga software.
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It is the lack of real software for OS4 that has put me off even considering a PPC based platform to run the OS. There is the argument that you can also run versions of Linux on PPC hardware, but I could just as easily be running Linux on a PC, and I could build a reasonable spec one for under £200.

I think that while OS4 is a commecially licensed OS for a very rare CPU it is never going to gain any interest outside of the existing Amiga userbase, and therefore it will never see much commercial or open source software developed and released for it. The reason Linux can compete against Windows and is so popular is because it is open source, and this invites the development world to experiment and share, building a robust and stable OS for business use.

The only ways forward for OS4 in my view is, as I've said many times before, to port OS4 to Intel compatible processors. Everyone who has been using PCs for more than a couple of years will all have at least one spare working PC knocking around. Being about to buy AmigaOS4 and install it on there would entice a lot more people than buying into a completely new PPC based hardware based with hardly any software or support. And while it probably wouldn't ever be possible to make OS4 competely open source due to licensing, what is the license holder of the AmigaOS really making profit wise from the license at the moment? I bet it isn't much, if anything at all. Is it worthwhile still trying to milk the remaining small fragments of such an old OS license until it is killed off because of it?
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I didn't forget about the cost of the OS, I deliberately didn't include it as the cost would be the same for both machines if available.

Besides which, I was costing hardware, nothing else.

Sound cards do work in OS4, I know because I use one.

The exitement surrounding the new hardware is because there is a chance for more Amiga enthusiasts to start developing software for OS4.1.

It's not about OS4.1 being better than OS4 to a large degree, it's about the fact that more people can get access to OS4xxx.

Ethernet ports are preferred to USB by many people.

There are apps available for OS4xxx that are not available to OS3xxx.
In some case it's because classic machines are lacking that bit of extra grunt needed.
A1, UA1 and Sam have that bit more, not massive difference to someone with a PPC or CPPC but just enough to make the difference.

As for games, well I'm not sure how good the various emulators are but will investigate.
Games that usr rtg and AHI generally run under OS4 anyway.

As for the Natami, well it's a nice idea but a bit too late I feel.
If it runs all or most old games, then it could be a good replacement for ageing boards but I'm not convinced there will be much software development.
I could be wrong of course, but I can't see yet another split developing.

Already have AOS3xxx, AOS4xxx, Morphos and AROS but again I could be wrong.
It's possible with new hardware that programers could be attracted from other groups particulary AOS3 as there would be common ground.
Although the AOS4 might also attract AOS3 developers who have previously been unable to get hardware.

Natami is not available yet and costs could make the project prohibitve.
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A review of OS4.1 plus a small interview with one of the programmers.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/cult...gaos41-ars.ars
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