Release 4.1 [460LE vs A1222]: The Price of Admission

If Amiga retailers and OS developers are to be believed, there is a surge of interest in the platform from people without proper OS 4.1 hardware. As of mid-September 2022, the only viable option to jump on the modern Amiga train is to buy an Amiga X5000. However, with a price tag of over €2,000, that is far from realistic for the potential user base.

Enter the SAM 460LE and the Amiga A1222. While the latter has been delayed on several occasions and while its developer - British A-EON - refuses to update the A1222 homepage - the former is expected to hit store shelves within a matter of weeks. The advent of an entry-level Amiga system should bust the OS 4 door wide open - right?

Well, that all comes down to how deep your pockets are. Unlike the Amiga 1222 - which has a lot of its sub-systems on board its motherboard - the SAM460LE is cost reduced for a reason. Apart from the SAM460LE motherboard, its users will have to bring a SATA controller for the hard drive, a graphics card and a sound card to the table (filling up all available three PCI slots in the process).

A complete SAM460LE is around €900, including sales tax. It's a lot of money - but just how much money is it? Is a seat onboard the Amiga bullet train in 2022 too high? At the end of the day, that's a question every budding or returning Amiga user will have to ask themselves. When they do, they are well advised to know that the Amiga 500 was introduced to the US market for an asking price of $699 USD in 1987 - equivalent of around €1,670/$1,670 USD today.

If you are currently on a Legacy Amiga or on foreign operating system but want a slice of the Release 4 cake - what do you think a reasonable price tag is? Will A-EON be able to launch the A1222 at a lower price than what the SAM460LE is expected to cost? Any thoughts and comments are most welcome!

@FirstNinja

It's called Sam460le now. https://www.soft3dev.net/hardware-imag ... m460le_pre_production.jpg

@arfcarl

It seems you are right. The product page still shows its name is 460CR, but an announcment made back in February says otherwise. On top of that, if that photo shows the final consumer product it looks like they've changed the PCB color from red to green.

SAM460LE is a bigger (worse) SAM460CR, which costed less than 500 euro and is 10 years old. For me 900 euro is no go. SAM is too old, too weak and too expensive. Thats why I think A1222plus is a better option (if its crippled CPU performs acceptable). X5000, especially x5000/40 costs "only" twice as much but performs many times better. As long as we can't get a cheaper, entry level machine our community will not grow. For me 500 euro is a max for a "toy".

BTW. It looks that ports of modern games and apps require the power of X5000 which makes the purchase of SAM460 even less meaningful.

It is perfectly possible produce PPC hardware for masses, it just requires large enough patch. I think that A1222 what meant to do that, but problem lays elsewhere than hardware.

Bad that there is a now people who would like to produce large amounts Amiga OS4 compatible hardware, but software is a problem.

@utri007

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No, our problem No. 1 is affordable hardware that would help extend the userbase. The software situation on OS4 is not that bad, except for the web browser of course.

There's more to this than just "affordable hardware". MorphOS can run on cheap PPC Macs, yet the user base doesn't seem to be growing all that much.

@BSzili

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There's always more of course. But without relatively cheap hardware options that could bring new users, combined with the fact that A-EON are apparently unable to repair failing AmigaOne hardware, we're straight on a collision course.

Of course it doesn't help, but look at this from the other perspective. WinUAE costs nothing, and when PPC supports was added OS4.1FE Classic sold like hot cakes, yet that didn't translate into a lot of new active users.

With winuae we have "all slow". I use it lately while not at home - that sloooow. Its really not what can be used for fast work. Not slugish, but close to. Also no 3d support at all (wazp3d is of no go of course). Also factor that this is emulator. If it can be as fast as x5k for basic funcs then it can be considered at least, but as of now, it just for tests and doing "list" in shell to see that it slower 3 times that even on sam460.

With morpos - no name (yeah, funny but this count on fanats). For outsiders its just another intrresting ppc os.

Aros - code mess, no name.

With os4, with cheap hw, it possible to add more users with proper PR (more than for aros, morpos and winuae). And because of name, and because of fanboys, and because of pretend that there are "commercical" stuff going on.

So imho, with os4 you can attract a bit more users than on other amiga like, but need cheap hw, and good PR

@kas1e

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And actual leaders at the helm, with managerial skills.

@Trixie
And even then, in current economical crisis around the world cheap hw almost unpossible :)

And even then it should be not just "cheap" but something like 300$ for motherboard of x5000 kind perfomance, which also unreal :)

And we endup with just those users who have money and high interest

@BSzili
Well, because the common problem to Amiga NG systems AmigaOS4, MorphOS or AROS is that the current Amiga user only want play to classic games from 90s with their classic 68k Amigas or on the Raspberry Pi, Vampire or the Amiga 500 mini, also other problem is the old hardware Mac PPC to find it in good condition, other cause these Macs in the 20xx were very expensives and the people bough the less expensives PC x86 to work or play this is less Macs in the market for example in Spain, other cause you can buy an old Mac Mini G4 but it has too much hours of working or internal problems, both causes can stop the MorphOS users.

@trixie
I think that besides of expensive hardware for AmigaOS4 the great rival for the Amiga NG systems are being the new 68k hardware clons like Rapsberry Pi, Vampire, Mister FPG, Amiga Mini, etc. and the current Amiga users only want from Amiga hobby to play the classic Amiga "free" games from 68k, even to use emulators with these "free" games; to work they use the less expensive PC with Windos or Linux, neither is of great help the two sides Hyperion and A-EON with theirs software solutions and to have that to buy the OS4 system to one and the patch system/graphics drivers to other; for a new user from PC or Mac world this situation cans to be strange, when in those system the graphic drivers and pacths are free.

@FirstNinja
I think that the price of PPC CPUs is a big drag, and the other problem is the repair service, for example if you live in Australia, other problem is the lack the interesting software to use these systems every day, or even games, not the modern 3D games but yes a good fresh games, but beyond of these common problems for AmigaOS4 and MorphOS, is that current Amiga user has more offers and as when the time the Amiga 500 a large catalog of games and like then with "free" games available.
To find a solution, the only way will be to speak among users, manufactures, software and games developers from AmigaOS4, MorphOS, AROS and 68k clons to try to have a future in common instead of a guerrilla war, and we have an advantage the software progress in Windos, MacOS, I think have reached their limit of development, because the Android devices and Virtual reality are the future, our systems be other diners in the cake to OS, Linux is a good example and there are dozens of versions.

@trixie

Software is problem, because there is no needed drives even now for a x5000, so how it is for A1222?

It is virtually impossilbe to sell anything without proper support, excet ofcourse for a hardcore hobbyists. But to get new users, sw support for hw needs to be 100 %.

@kas1e
I'm probably biased because WinUAE is the reason I stuck around a bit longer compared to MorphOS, which a the time didn't run well in QEMU, but I digress.
To clarify I'm not talking about the fanatics, as they already own at least one OS4 system, and they don't seem to mind the price. What I'm skeptical about is that the name alone would be able to pull in significantly more regular users compared to MorphOS, if the hardware was similarly priced. Unfortunately it's unlikely we will ever find out who was right about this, since every company that owns a chunk of OS4 is committed to the custom hardware route, and custom hardware will always be more expensive than mass produced.

@mr2
The reason for poor Sam460ex performance on the more modern games needs to be examined in more detail .

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@Spectre660
Yes you have reason the problem with some modern games with the Sams or for example with the MacMini and with a game that I have played like Return to Castle Wolfenstein is that the ports for our system are make for volunteers when the original game was made for a team, testing, fixed etc., in this case I played it on K7 to 600 Mhz and Ati Radeon 9200, the same GPU that you can find inside of Mac Mini, but the speed and quality was better i the K7 than MacMini with 800Mhz more, the reason isn't the problem of the Mac or Sams is the port, compiled and worked for an only man and free in his free time. Solutions well, perhaps try to work in team, but this can be difficult in this hobby when each user wages war on his own.

@Templario

The same binaries run ok on X5000 and X1000.

So issues may either be CPU related or PCIE bus related.
If it boils down to lack of CPU processing power and/or raw bus bandwidth then that is that.