Vampire 600 V2 - Amiga 600 FPGA accelerator Pre-order

[DyLucke]

So, what happens now?
Will i need to be waiting again?
I sent Kipper a message early this year, later in summer. Finally i was able to get other mail account related to him, and i asked again.
No response...

It would have been nice to have a "Hey, thank you for your interest, you're in the list already, be patient until i contact you".
Not even a single word from Kipper.

Now i see the price went up AGAIN.
Don't get me wrong, i do think 250 euro for for one unit, taking in consideration the former price is an increment of 100 euro... That's TOO MUCH.
I don't feel it's comprehensible talking just about manufacturing costs.

However, well... Accelerator prices are high, really high, and if we think about the A600, prices are even higher.
So, i guess it's still worth the money... Specially since they're the fastest around.

But one thing is clear, i thought about getting one unit for my A600, and then for my A500 and A1200 whenever they come to light...
Now i guess i should reconsider it. I guess i will go for the A600... But i'm not sure about the other models.

Specially since i have a MIST, and i'm pretty sure it can deliver a similar performance with the proper core.

I hope other teams that are manufacturing accelerators for the Amiga will be able to follow the FPGA trend and develop their own units.
That would at least, make prices a bit more friendly.

Most of us can't afford to buy 3 units at 300 euro each.
So, i think some kind of reasoning must be involved.
If you can sell 3 units at 150 euro each... Why conform selling just one unit at 300 euro?
I'm pretty sure some kind of offer can be done, and prices can be adjusted to a bit lower numbers.

[IanP]

It's easier to have a mist or even a FPGA arcade.

MiST maybe but FPGA Arcade? That was announced in March 2008. I don't recall when pre-orders began but it was a very long time ago.

Current pricing (from me) is 199Euro for the non-SVHS version, and 229Euro for the SVHS version. If you are within the EU, and not a business, you need to add 25% Swedish VAT. I have very limited supply capability and am only really sending to developers and people I promised to years ago. The aim is to move to a reseller model. There are two distributors signed up, Laurent who is handling France and assembling complete systems (I just supply the board) and Jim Drew in the US. (April 2014) source

On Jim's site you can use the mailto to get on the waiting list and quotes a price of $299 reduced from $399
Laurent offers a system on back order for €499 reduced from €549

- - - Updated - - -

So, what happens now?
Will i need to be waiting again?
I sent Kipper a message early this year, later in summer. Finally i was able to get other mail account related to him, and i asked again.
No response...

It would have been nice to have a "Hey, thank you for your interest, you're in the list already, be patient until i contact you".
Not even a single word from Kipper.

Did you check you are on the pre-order system link

[o0Nosferatu0o]

This is all a load of crap. 1000 people waiting for a Vampire , some people selling Vampire's with A600 for €800plus through Ebay. The other day i saw someone selling a Vampire 500 with an A500 also on Ebay, stating he was a developer/tester and had authorization to sell it. A few months ago, i sent an email to Kipper for 1 Vampire A600 and 1 Vampire A500, no reply from him. I thought ok, he has a life and there are other people first , so let's wait. Still no reply from him and the prices are up again.
When the time comes to buy/pay, let's see what prices we are really going to pay. €650 for a Vampire 600 , €750 for a Vampire 500, €1500 for Vampire A4000/3000 whatever. Do not forget those Black Edition Vampires , that will also clean your house and pay for all those monthly expenses - for a PREMIUM you have the BEST.

[eStorm]

90€ -> 250€
250€ + p&p EU + customs duty + VAT ~ 350€
350€ for hardware, that possibly can be confiscated and destroyed (at least at german customs) because of not being authorized/certificated in the EU? No warrenty?
Yeah...more feautres, special prices, higher FPGA-prices... that are all things I may understand. But a price rise of nearly 200%...?
I really hope, your future project management (V500, V1200, other V's) will be more professional.

[CrazyBob]

Keep in mind: when the Vampire 600 v2 pre-order started it was a different board compared to what it is today.
It looked more like a slightly updated Vampire 600 v1.
Smaller PCB, bigger FPGA.

In the meantime it got an even bigger FPGA in BGA package. (which is incredibly difficult to solder by hand)
More memory was installed because of new features (i.e. RTG) and Apollo core was being modelled and fitted.

The Apollo core, RTG (even AGA), SD are still under development.
The most important component the FPGA has doubled in price, maybe even trippled compared to the first non-BGA FPGA at the time the base price was set to 90 euro.

Having said that, it makes completely sense that the price is being increased to a healtier level now the project is maturing.
If the initial price was set at 200 euro we wouldn't have had these discussions.

One other thing not to forget: everybody involved in making the Vampire series a succes can say: hey we did it, it was great, we proved it could work and walk away from the project. They are not obliged to give support for the next 10 years.
It was a personal project we all just liked very much.

[TheNey]

I'm just looking forward to the V500/V1200 becoming available, and selling the cards at a profit instead of a loss gives me confidence that that will happen.

It's a wise decision.

Keep up the good work Apollo team!

[bebek]

Guys, this looks like price discussions. On top, this is Majsta's sell thread and the last thing I have heard was that he is not changing the price in it. EAB membership is free and kipper is over there so maybe that would be the best place to go and moan about it.

[Weehawk]

Boah, tons of judgements and rumors hitting the fan with vastest assumptions. Oh my.
Do some read what they write demanding cheap, considering there are real people behind the project with feelings?
Think you're soldering boards and boards by hand to keep it cheap for the community and then see someone making a profit of it on Ebay? And you wonder?
And blame then the project folks to give it to professional manufactures needing a raise in price? Then again one'd also complain if the handcrafted card doesn't live up to your expectations.

Klipper2k, Majsta, thanks for the project and keeping up with all of that. The Vampire rocks and hit the accelerator scene like lightning. What a storm.

[NoPyroNoParty]

Didn't the authors just prove that it was best to pay over the odds on Ebay to get one?
Anyway good to see that the demand has caused them to do the needed actions to upscale production and in as the original backers who have had to wait for ages get their cards at half the price so it's kind of a reward.

[majsta]

I have read some comments here. First people like I said 100 times before this is pre-orders thread started by me and has nothing to do with other lists or other people involved and has nothing to do with price increase.
I ll try to explain but please again this is not place to discuss this.
Let's be clear, I have pick and place machine but there are certain things that needs to be soldered by hand. This specific SDRAM also needs to be soldered by hand if you solder it another way it will die then PLCC socket who also needs sanding and butchering, other headers and connectors.
Then there is testing of the card who can take one day per card. But anyway as a person who worked on PCB assembly line I can say that most of the people have no clue how those stuff goes and if this was possible it would be done. First, I m not the person who should build those cards at all, instead I m the person who should design them and solder only few for beta testers or to cover pre-orders. Once I got scared of those pre orders I have stopped them because even this is too many for me to handle. No one could predict that demand will be so high. There is also list collected over my site so in total I have no idea how many cards needs to be made. Regarding manufacturing in Asia, yesterday I had discussion with the man who should build us card edge connectors, we need to give guarantee that we will buy 10 000pcs that's the first obstacle so in such small volumes we have massive price increase. And to be honest and talk numbers I have done some Vampire cards assembled in China, without mentioned connectors and FPGA,Sdram, price was 69USD per one card. Adding to that cost of FPGA etc... You can easily calculate for yourself. First initial price was 90Eur because I have about 80-90 10K LE FPGA who are paid about 30Eur each at the time. Then we noticed that this will be too small to use and went to 120Eur. I never asked from the people who paid 90Eur to give more money but some of them did that anyway on they own. Price of FPGA we use back then was about 60Eur so we could cover it. I have tried also to order cheap FPGA from eBay and failed. They were listed for 20Eur or so and at the end you realize that you pay them 150Eur because most of them you get in the package don't work or they are fake or whatever.

Now real deal.
No one was serious enough to resell the cards. I have asked every amiga shop to sell them to manufacture them or to work together with us in next projects and maybe sell V1200. I have only asked from them to sell the cards and to give me their connectors. They didn't even bother to reply or when I was sending them number of mails they just reply once to me with something like we will discuss this bla bla and never reply back. However when there were offers from someone to manufacture cards no one was serious enough. Only to the point that I should give him design files for free. I won't give anyone design files without signing contract. When I said that everyone gives up. Why's that. Apollo-core worth millions and it is not my core it is someones else life's work. If that person decide to do something with it, sell it, first question from the buyer will be who have any kind designing files that are connected to this core. I don't want to create problems there. That story goes so far that I have received mails from the people saying that they will use x-rays to copy boards and produce it. Everyone just wanted design files for free. This time like I said I can't opensource it or give Gerber files like I did with Vampire V1 because Apollo-core isn't opensourced. Vampire V1 was opensourced and who was interested to continue work on it, only one man from Poland.

When I see that some people are saying that we don't have any sense how to do business. Let me just say that this is not business we are doing here. I don't own company so for me could be huge problem to order 100 cards assembled somewhere. I won't turn this into business or make company from it.

Regarding kipper2k, don't know what to say but I think that all of this isn't fair for him. Would you accept to solder 800 cards, pack them and send, do you think that you would do it better? If that's the case search for me on the chat, there will be other Vampire models so we can talk about that. When you see that you are doing worse than him you will understand why is situation like this. I receive over 30 mails or PM per day, just try to answer that in front of doing other things.

People have no clue what is going on behind scenes with us and other shops, manufacturers, vultures. Blackmails are constant thing, phone calls... Everyone sees huge money in this but no one want's to do cooperation properly.