Can you not use the "free for hobbyists" license? Autodesk make it unreasonably hard to renew it, instead dark-patterning you into upgrading to the paid tier. (Unless of course you need paid tier features)
I agree on the easy to use front though. I'm trying to move to freecad but it hasn't had its blender moment yet.
That's what I used for a long time but it was way too restrictive: like I can have 10 saved designs at a time with their entire timeline in case I wanted to go back or modify/improve anything. And converting an STL back into a solid doesn't give the best results and adds a lot of overhead. So until something better pops up, I have no other choice but to pay for it.
getting the hardware is only half the battle. Hard agree with going for a MiSTer setup however it's quite an expense for someone dipping a toe in.
ultimately it's hard to prescribe the "definitive" amiga experience in 2025 to a total newbie. At a surface level, for many people, amiga ownership was simply a console like experience -> Buy an amiga 500, and shovel game disks into it, play game, turn it off. Replicating that is super easy with either just a raspberry pi and the PiMiga distro (see the Chris Edwards youtube channel for details) or even retropie comes with support for amiga OOTB however it comes with the caveat of having a little background knowledge of the hardware combinations available.
The ABSOLUTE easiest way of getting a taste of amiga is to get hold of a "The A500" mini console which comes with pre-packaged games (but also lets you run your own once you've got to the end of enjoying the 30 or so pack-ins).
There is the WinUAE emulator for windows that's excellent (so good, you can use it to prep real-world Hard drives for actual physical amigas) but it's complicated without prior knowledge of the OG hardware combinations.
The most common setup back in the day (for UKers playing games at least) was an OG Amiga 500 with OCS (Original Chip Set) with 0.5MB RAM(ChipRAM - essentially shared system and graphics memory) and maybe an optional extra 0.5 MB upgrade (FastRAM - CPU only memory, though often known now as SlowRAM because it was directly accessable by the CPU only but had to share the bus with the chip RAM) and 1.3 Kickstart ROM.
This was later upgraded by the A500+ which came with ECS (Enhanced Chip Set) which gave a few added graphical modes, 1MB of Chip RAM (typically upgradable to +1MB fast RAM) and kickstart 2.0. it broke compatibility with some games and was a min spec for others.
This was replaced directly by the A1200 which came with an upgraded CPU (68020ec at 14 MHz) AGA chipset (16.7 mil colour palette, 256 on screen), internal IDE interface and kickstart 3.0 with 2MB ChipRAM out of the box.
The A500+ was also indirectly replaced with the A600. Essentially a A500+ mini - they updated the manuafcturing to surface mount, reduced the PCB size significantly and removed the numberpad from the keyboard and added the IDE interface from the A1200. it was supposed to be a cost reduced version but initially cost more to make than the outgoing A500+. It was hated at the time because it cost more at retail and had less features (lack of keypad broke a lot of software, IDE interface wasn't seen as beneficial at the time and the side expansion port was replaced by a PCMCIA port which again only had much more expensive peripherals at the time)
The rest are the "Big Box" amigas - computers with a separate keyboard from the main box case:
A1000 (the OG or just "Amiga" when it launched)
A2000 - The workhorse version of thw A500 with expansion, processor,video upgrade slots.
A1500 - a UK specific cut down version of the A2000 just launched to inflict trademark damage to a sole trader startup making aftermarket cases for the A500.
A3000 - the first fully 32-bit platform - ECS and 32-bit 680x0 CPUs available (IIRC both 68020 and 68030 though might be wrong about the '020)
A4000 - a big box equivalent to the A1200 - AGA and expansion
A4000T - towerized version of A4000 - the holy grail for collectors and rare as hens teeth.
However in 2025 getting involved with the amiga scene is a huge rabbit hole as the community is so large there are always wonderful projects (such as PiStorm) for enhancing and extending the life of these now very aged machines.
Sorry, this ended up a bit of an essay on what was only supposed to be a quick note...
> "The A500" mini console which comes with pre-packaged games (but also lets you run your own once you've got to the end of enjoying the 30 or so pack-ins).
I count to 26, plus one free download they provide for testing out the USB feature.
Amiga Forever in Windows (or in WINE) is about as easy to run, plus it comes with nice pre-configured system images to boot into Workbench. Not having much real Amiga experience I struggle a bit with making use of those. I tried to install some freeware Amiga applications (trackers and such) but not much success.
I spent less on getting my MiSTer up and running than I did getting my A500+ and a lot less than getting my A1200 setup running. And I have the original Ultimate MiSTer setup.
With the RetroRemake and QMTech setup you're up and running for the 8/16-bits for under $200 all-in which for most people in tech in the US isn't a big ask. The experience is also much better than emulation IMHO.
My workaround for multiple PCB's for one schematic is to have the schematic as a top level sheet which can then be imported into sub-level projects. so each PCB becomes it's own project but use the common schematic sheet
My personal experience with a modern microwave (they mostly seem to be the same design internally, coming from the same chassis with the same electronics just a different button panel) was that the internal light bulb blowing generated a surge (it was a mains voltage bulb) that wasn't fused so the next nearest thing in the mains circuit was a trace on the motherboard that vaporized.
There is no way of easily changing this bulb (inside the main casing with no access panel for the bulb) so for want of a single in-line fuse, the entire microwave was rendered scrap[0] by the lifetime of a light bulb.
[0] - Except for the fact that I care not for electrical safety "DO NOT OPEN" warnings of doom due to being actually competent with handling high voltage equipment and being able to do a board level repair on the burned out trace without touching the very large capacitors associated with the very high voltage side controlling the magnetron...
Just saying "Pixar movies" was probably not a great example. They can be deliberately location ambiguous (Monsters Inc., Toy Story - though it's clearly _somewhere_ in America, The Incredibles - a generic "metropolis"/50's futuristic city, lightyear, Elemental) or very specifically somewhere (cars - mashup of Route 66 towns, Finding Nemo - Sydney when on land, Ratatouille - Paris, etc...)
It makes sense to "translate" locale cultural indicators in say Wall·E which was very location agnostic but not so much for say Turning red which is very culturally specific.
The localization of The Incredibles in Argentina was embarrassing, though someone must have thought it was a good idea. They used local voice actors popular at the time (though not so much today) with strong porteño (Buenos Aires') accents. They also referred to the streets with Argentinian names, e.g. "let's turn that corner of Corrientes Avenue!". The problem is that Corrientes Av is very typical of Buenos Aires, but nothing on screen looked anywhere close to it, so the whole thing was ridiculous and embarrassing, sort of like if the characters pretended they were in Tokyo and were Japanese.
What if they had gone the extra mile (maybe possible in the near future) and reskinned every character to look more Argentinian, and rethemed the city to look more like Buenos Aires, would I have been happier? Certainly not -- I want to see the original movie as intended, not some sanitized version designed to make me feel "at home" and not challenge me in the slightest.
(I watched the movie in English as well, mind you).
It's not a repackaged A500 but it IS a repackaged (and enhanced with the IDE/PCMCIA interface) A500+ which was also already shipping with ECS, 1Mb Chip RAM and Kickstart 2.0
The stupid thing was it was designed to be cheaper to produce and sell than the outgoing A500+ and was supposed to be branded the A300 (early revisions even have A300 printed in the top copper layer on the motherboard)
Long term it was cheaper to produce and had fewer warranty returns however at launch the production cost was higher than expected so they had to sell it for MORE than the outgoing A500+ (for what was perceived at the time as no real improvement to the end user and a lack of numberpad meant breaking functionality for programs and games that relied on the numpad) and changed the name up to A600 to reflect that.
The biggest problem IMHO is that the 600 was launched before the A1200 was announced so the whole product just seemed like a slap in the face for what we were expecting.
Basically at the time it just felt like a massive let down so out anger was directed as hatred of the product, but in hindsight it's easier to see the tangible benefits.
I used to live in the Boston area as a kid and dad used to take me to loads of ham radio swap meets in the city. I loved rummaging around the stuff and finding cool things to try to use with my Commodore 64 (even in the 80s, ham swap fest's had a lot of computer gear proliferating)
I really miss the format but I just haven't seen them around for years (decades?) at least in my part of the world...
Unfortunately I'm not only not in the BOS area, I'm not even in the US anymore. Though the RSGB probably has a similar listing...
If I get my license I might even find out directly :)
Git status says everything is fine and downdetector says otherwise...
Doing a commandline git clone seems to be OK though (albeit on a very small project)