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The last production run of those units was around 20 years ago. I do have a few of those white plastic cases left, but there is not a single flickerfixer left (well, maybe one or two units that failed QC). Also, I can't produce them any more, as the two key chips and field memories aren't available any more. The DA converter was particularly nice, as it also had an analogue input that would let me pass through the native VGA modes.
These flicker fixers are not suitable for most monitors these days, as they only worked on a half-frame/line basis like all flicker fixers of the late 1980s/1990s did. If you had PAL as a source screen, you'd only get a 50Hz VGA signal, which many monitors can't display any more. This is nice for tearing-free animations and this special mode is supported by the latest versions of the internal Indivision units, but these days, a true frame rate conversion should be part of the product, so you can really use "any" monitor.
Maybe the forthcoming Indivision ECS V4 can change your mind about an internal unit? It'll have EDID (automatic monitor recognition) and live config (pan/zoon the picture with mouse while a game or demo runs). These features are known from the AGA MK3 version, and people love it. Providing this on an external unit is impossible, as getting all the signals would be really messy on bigbox machines, and impossible on the compact Amigas.
Out of curiosity: Why don't you want an internal unit? After all, taking pixels on the digital side provides the best-possible picture quality.
Jens
I have a 19" TFT 5:4 vga screen so a lot of features aren't needed as for 16:9 monitors I guess.
I actually recommend 5:4 or 4:3 ratio for our internal flickerfixers. The Amiga hardly outputs anything close to 16:9, so those widescreen panels mostly mean wasted screen space.
I've sourced something for now but am interested in a small form factor external unit with VGA passthrough too.
We've been talking about a "universal external Indivision" for years (first material collecrted on December 4th, 2007), but always pushed the idea back for the high cost and lower picture quality. For an OCS/ECS machine, we're only talking 12 bit colours, which is easy to do, but the 24-bit colour resolution of AGA machines is a whole different beast that would have to be covered with an external unit.
Further, the "universal" part of the name would have to be taken seriously, as we also make hardware for Commodore 8-bit computers and 1980s/1990s consoles (I have recently added Sega Megadrive carts to my portfolio). This would mandate inputs for C64/VIC20/C16/C128 (including 80-column mode) and possibly more inputs to make the unit appealing to more customers. However, only the 24-bit colour requirement would bump such a unit beyond the 300,- EUR price point, which I believe is a huge hurdle to take for a hobby.
Compare that to just over 230,- EUR for a Chameleon V2 cartridge that lets you run C64 and Amiga stuff on a cheap monitor like the one you've mentioned.
Also, your point of "changing machines on the desk" is something I always wanted to tackle, as I believe it's possible to cover 99% of all Amiga needs with a single machine. Take an A500 with ACA500plus and ACA1234-50: That gives you more than twice the CPU performance of an A3000, but it can be downgraded to a plain 68000-7MHz A500 with a very compatible memory setup and software-selectable Kickstarts. That thing could live with Indivisino ECS for any software you throw at it. And trust me, the new Indivision ECS V4 is going to be worth it once we've added everything that we have on the Todo-list.
Only having a single machine in the man cave is actually my "big goal", as the number of Amigas out there doesn't grow, but the number of Amiga users is on the rise, as you may have seen from the high activity in the demoscene and Aminet releases (did you check all the releases of Revision this year?). This means that we should all work towards repairing all the machines in our collections and put them on the market. Each and everyone of us!
Jens
Just saw that you mentioned VGA passthrough - the passthrough idea was often mentioned for the internal flickerfixers when combined with RTG cards. However, we have digital outputs on the AGA versions, and that would mean lots of explaining: A switcher/pass-through unit would have to be analogue-only, as most RTG cards for the Amiga are VGA-only. However, if people buy Indivision AGA MK3, they often do that for the HDMI output that gives you fully digital media, including audio, which is generated without involving any analogue signals.
If you combine that with a VGA switch, you'd lose both the digital picture quality and the digital audio path. People would ask why they can't view RTG on HDMI, and that's exactly what a VGA "passthrough" on an external unit would have to do: Convert relatively-high-resolution VGA to HDMI, making things even more expensive than the price I mentioned above. However, that would be the only way you could actually sell such a product: If all inputs can really be routed to all outputs, including frame rate conversion and colour correction where required.
Jens
