User avatar
intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Feb 16, 2022 9:44 am

So I'm sipping my coffee scanning the daily Amiga chatter sites and my cup pauses briefly as I come across this:

Sam460LE 1.10 Ghz Pre-Order
  • Sam460LE board running up to 1.1 Ghz
  • Micro-ATX form factor with enough space for double slot graphic cards ;-)
  • MicroSD Slot at the rear of the board, so it can operated from the back.
  • 1 backplate
  • AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition included (OEM license)
Pre-order price: €240.00

sam.jpg

OK, I think, that's really not that bad. I don't really "get" the modern Amiga machines that can barely run any software. But it could be a fun machine to stick into some cool case and simply make it a project box. I start to try and mentally justify this kind of endeavor in my mind. Would I use it beyond the 3-4 weeks it might take to set it all up? Could be fun to get a mechanical keyboard for it, I think. My mind trails off...

I read on.
Sam460LE (Limited Edition) is a PowerPC motherboard engineered and produced by ACube Systems and it is totally made in Italy.
OK so it's going after the PPC market. Got it. So that's a whole world I never really dabbled in Amiga-wise. Could be potentially interesting for a little while.

I continue.

The Sam460LE bundle contains:
  • 7 USB ports
  • Gigabit ethernet
  • 4 usable boot media
  • The Sam460LE supports 3 expansion slots: PCI, PCIe 1x and PCIe 4x.
What PCi cards have AmigaOS drivers for them, I wonder? Must be a very limited handful.

Board sounds pretty capable, though. I would think this is aiming directly at the tiny little A-EON market, if there even still is one out there. Does anyone still sell Amiga 4.1 CDs?

Then I get to this part, well below the fold of the initial page load.
Please consider this:

This product is a pre-order offer. The final price of this pre-order product will be 739 Euros [approximately $840 US] VAT excluded (European countries should add 22% VAT).
I totally get that it is not cheap to make these niche systems in very small quantities. But am I completely off-base wondering why I couldn't just grab a PowerPC G4 1.25Ghz Mac Mini off Ebay and load MorphOS on it for virtually the same experience - minus the PCI slots - for less than $100? Or, for that matter, go make some crazy Raspberry Pi Frankenstein thing. Am I wrong?

OK! That settles that. I return to sipping my coffee and flick to the next site.

User avatar
Silverstreak
YouTube

Posted Wed Feb 16, 2022 12:52 pm

I saw the news of this preorder. Like you, it peaked my interest for a moment.

It seemed liked a nice idea, pretty good price…. woah woah woah… ok.

User avatar
BloodyCactus
Lexington VA

Posted Wed Feb 16, 2022 1:51 pm

The performance on these boards is pretty woefull.

and if you look, half the board is not even populated to save cost :) (now think of the current cost....)...

then go back and realise this is a design from 2009...

the 460ex doesnt have Altivec either... my mac mini g4 1.5ghz has altivec... Altivec can have a huge difference if an app is compiled for it, and runs morphos nicely.

As having a morphos machine, I'd love a similar sized small machine to run AOS4.1, for development + messing around but not at those prices :( (I did get excited when I saw the start price, but realised that was a down payment ugh)

User avatar
A1-X1000
Toronto, Canada

Posted Tue Feb 22, 2022 12:57 pm

guys you can't even buy a decent A1200 or A4000 with 060 nowadays for that money! heck CS-MKII's NOT III have been selling for that amount and more

User avatar
obitus1990
USA

Posted Tue Feb 22, 2022 6:10 pm

Are the USB ports even 3.0?

User avatar
blakespot

Posted Sun Jan 29, 2023 9:29 am

obitus1990 wrote:
Tue Feb 22, 2022 6:10 pm
Are the USB ports even 3.0?
Are they even 2.0?

I just became aware of this one. I have a SAM440ep-Flex, gotten quite some time ago, and have watched the Tabor A1222, which seems not yet to have "happened," and will have abysmal floating point performance due to its oddity.

I must say I almost never use my PPC "Amiga" these days. It does run the official AmigaOS 4.x, and I guess that's what sets these apart from older, more powerful and cheaper Macs, but MorphOS is similar.

One of the things about the "new" or PPC Amiga scene that seems crazy to me is that that tiny group is fractured between three operating sytems: Official AmigaOS, MorphOS, and AROS. As if that interest group wasn't facing enough adversity.


bp





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