Hyperion and Amiga Inc settle

We now have a picture of the Amiga One X1000 motherboard!



And the official website from A-Eon, who are building the hardware: http://www.a-eon.com/6.html

Looks like this thing will actually be built. I can't wait!

When I was at my local computer shop back in the 80's I was watching one gentleman play Defender of the Crown. God, did I want an Amiga so bad (yes, to play the game too). Instead for Christmas I got a Commodore 64...win some lose some.

Maybe now, I can have one

Originally Posted by Shikami

When I was at my local computer shop back in the 80's I was watching one gentleman play Defender of the Crown. God, did I want an Amiga so bad (yes, to play the game too). Instead for Christmas I got a Commodore 64...win some lose some.

Maybe now, I can have one

I had Defender of the Crown for PC. It ran in 4 color, 320X240 CGA (pre-VGA there was EGA, pre-EGA there was CGA). The Amiga version looked soooo much better.

very cool, always wanted an amiga.. i had a tandy 1000 instead.

if they end up making this and its cheap enough i'll grab one.

I had an Amiga 1000 with analog color display.
Sold it back in 89 for cash to buy my wifes engagement ring.

Got more miles out of the wife then I ever would have out of the Amiga

Originally Posted by Cretin

I had an Amiga 1000 with analog color display.
Sold it back in 89 for cash to buy my wifes engagement ring.

Got more miles out of the wife then I ever would have out of the Amiga

and by miles, do you mean...

Finally.

Working Amiga X1000 hardware has been spotted at a vintage computer show

Video Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZdsUU193oo

Video Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EaSN3IuZII

As a long time Amiga user and enthusiast, I'd be delighted if it *ever* made any kind of a come back on the US market. Sadly, i just can't see it happening myself. He mentioned at one point that the X1000 isn't near as groundbreaking as the original (how could it be?), but when he went on to say that the machine they were showing as a demo would cost North of 1500 pounds, I almost stopped watching at that point simply because in this day and age, there will never be enough people to invest that kind of money into something that will probably not be able to keep up with the existing PC's on the market, or offer them anything more than they could get with a $800 computer from Best Buy.

I understand that a business needs to be semi profitable in order to continue to move forward and innovate, support R&D, etc., but in this day and age you've got to really have something *really* special to charge that kind of money. Otherwise, if you can't develop and market a machine that is affordable and attractive to the public, you've already lost the race before it's begun.

I miss my Amiga computers...all of them. I've had several starting with the original A1000, several A500's, an A600HD, a couple A2000HD's, two A3000's maxed out with ZIP RAM and running the latest OS (V3.1 at the time), and finally an A4000. All of them wonderful machines, fantastic to learn on, groundbreaking computers for the time and great fun for entertainment as well.

It's unfortunate that Commodore wasted the technology and innovation that the Amiga brought to the table and rocked the market with back then. I'll continue to watch this side show called the AmigaOne X1000, but I just can't see it getting off the ground...

Long live the Amiga, even if it's just in my memories...

I think you'll be able to build your own (using their motherboard, at least) for considerably less than the price of one of their complete systems.

I don't think they're going after the PC (or even Mac) market. At this point, just getting ahead of desktop Linux would be a huge milestone and a major achievement. With Desktop Linux as fragmented and lacking in broad standards as it is, it might not be too difficult for a singular platform like the Amiga to pass it up in usage.

or find an original one on ebay instead for less!

Originally Posted by Unknown-One

I think you'll be able to build your own (using their motherboard, at least) for considerably less than the price of one of their complete systems.

I don't think they're going after the PC (or even Mac) market. At this point, just getting ahead of desktop Linux would be a huge milestone and a major achievement. With Desktop Linux as fragmented and lacking in broad standards as it is, it might not be too difficult for a singular platform like the Amiga to pass it up in usage.

The problem with that, is that Linux has good hardware support.

You can build a dual quad core Xeon + hyper threading (16 threads) 32 Gig whore of a box with SLI or something insanely stupid like that.

Or, you can take the low row and run it on an Atom, Via or even Arm.

Or, you can take the cheap road and built a linux workstation from spare parts.

Hardware wise Amiga is outmatched in all cases.

Software wise Linux is also doing well. You got good software for anything from email, web, etc. With Amiga you're going to have to re-write all that stuff from scratch or hack up the open source stuff to get it working on that platform. Again, linux will be way ahead. You can out match someone by porting all their software over.

There is nothing really here that makes it more compelling than Linux/freebsd. What would I get out of it by switching?

I loved my Amiga and I still have an A1000 boxed up somewhere around here.

But I don't see any point trying to build some kind of modern Amiga.

Maybe an add in card, that would allow near perfect emulation of an Amiga and read old Amiga floppies and support the new OS in dual boot or VM.

But a new non compatible separate box. That is really dead in the water.

I always lusted for an Amiga but never got one. My 1st PC was an 10mhz XT-Turbo. It had a monochrome graphics card so I had run a program called sim-cga to play some games.

I loved the Amiga and owned a ton of them. Still have an A4000 with the "Video Toaster" installed in it. I can't bear to get rid of it. If you don't remember what it is then just Google it. And that's my point. The "new" Amiga will never do anything unless they have some sort of special "niche" hardware that does a really cool job, cheaper than anybody else and better. That's what the Toaster did and that's what they need now. If not then all they have is an underpowered computer with a really cool.... but outdated operating system on it that nobody will care about, except the 100 or so that will want to buy this computer just to play with it.

Originally Posted by budec

The problem with that, is that Linux has good hardware support.

I shouldn't read the forums while eating breakfast. I just laughed so hard I blew hashed browns out my nose.

Desktop Linux has better support than Amiga OS as it currently exists, no doubt. Even so, I would not call Desktop Linux's hardware support "good" by any means. Not enough hardware manufacturers and OEMs make drivers for Linux, basically leaving huge swaths of PC hardware unsupported unless a community member happens to come along and write a driver.

When building a Linux PC, I have to look for parts that are known to be supported, otherwise I'll most likely end up with incomparable hardware somewhere in the box. Building a modern Amiga is going to be pretty much the same thing for now.

Originally Posted by budec

You can build a dual quad core Xeon + hyper threading (16 threads) 32 Gig whore of a box with SLI or something insanely stupid like that.

Or, you can take the low row and run it on an Atom, Via or even Arm.

Or, you can take the cheap road and built a Linux workstation from spare parts.

Hardware wise Amiga is outmatched in all cases.

Are you seriously about to claim that the dual core PowerPC processor in the X1000 is slower than all Atom, VIA, and ARM CPUs? I highly doubt that.

Besides that, you're completely misunderstanding their business model. They're working with the same mindset as Commodore used to, and that Apple uses now.

1. Sell a limited number of hardware sets to minimize the number required hardware drivers.
2. Lock the OS to this platform to prevent people from sapping your hardware revenue, and to prevent the OS from being run on unsupported hardware.
3. Market it as a secure and stable system thanks to the above two points.
4. Profit.

That business model has kept OSX's market share well ahead of Desktop Linux. If it can work for Apple, it can work for the Amiga. They just need to get the boing-ball rolling.

Originally Posted by budec

Software wise Linux is also doing well. You got good software for anything from email, web, etc. With Amiga you're going to have to re-write all that stuff from scratch or hack up the open source stuff to get it working on that platform. Again, linux will be way ahead. You can out match someone by porting all their software over.

They don't really have to rewrite anything. The Linux community was nice enough to write a gigantic library of open source software that just needs to be slightly tweaked and recompiled for Amiga OS.

There's also the option of running a side-by-side kernel (like coLinux or andLinux on Windows) that allows the native execution of Linux applications on Amiga OS.

Originally Posted by budec

There is nothing really here that makes it more compelling than Linux/freebsd. What would I get out of it by switching?

I'd use it over Linux simply because it's a singular uniform platform with a set of fixed standards. Linux has a serious problem with fragmentation; there are too many options and too many ways to do one thing. Too many people with their own ideas about how something should work writing redundant software over-and-over again.

I'd use Amiga OS over Desktop Linux just to get away from that mess.

Originally Posted by Unknown-One

I shouldn't read the forums while eating breakfast. I just laughed so hard I blew hashed browns out my nose.

Desktop Linux has better support than Amiga OS as it currently exists, no doubt. Even so, I would not call Desktop Linux's hardware support "good" by any means. Not enough hardware manufacturers and OEMs make drivers for Linux, basically leaving huge swaths of PC hardware unsupported unless a community member happens to come along and write a driver.

When building a Linux PC, I have to look for parts that are known to be supported, otherwise I'll most likely end up with incomparable hardware somewhere in the box. Building a modern Amiga is going to be pretty much the same thing for now.


Are you seriously about to claim that the dual core PowerPC processor in the X1000 is slower than all Atom, VIA, and ARM CPUs? I highly doubt that.

Besides that, you're completely misunderstanding their business model. They're working with the same mindset as Commodore used to, and that Apple uses now.

1. Sell a limited number of hardware sets to minimize the number required hardware drivers.
2. Lock the OS to this platform to prevent people from sapping your hardware revenue, and to prevent the OS from being run on unsupported hardware.
3. Market it as a secure and stable system thanks to the above two points.
4. Profit.

That business model has kept OSX's market share well ahead of Desktop Linux. If it can work for Apple, it can work for the Amiga. They just need to get the boing-ball rolling.


They don't really have to rewrite anything. The Linux community was nice enough to write a gigantic library of open source software that just needs to be slightly tweaked and recompiled for Amiga OS.

There's also the option of running a side-by-side kernel (like coLinux or andLinux on Windows) that allows the native execution of Linux applications on Amiga OS.



I'd use it over Linux simply because it's a singular uniform platform with a set of fixed standards. Linux has a serious problem with fragmentation; there are too many options and too many ways to do one thing. Too many people with their own ideas about how something should work writing redundant software over-and-over again.

I'd use Amiga OS over Desktop Linux just to get away from that mess.

Thing is that the Amiga was like decades ahead of the competition when it first came out, but now its decades behind. There's nothing hardware wise that is attractive about the new Amiga in any way.

Now if it was designed to meet an specific market, say HTPC, Internet TV,slate or netbooks. Then it would stand a chance.

And I really hope they don't use the same mindset as commodore. That's what killed the amiga in the first place.

I kind of agree on this. They should at least make it super compact to fit in a tv cabinet and market it as a htpc/ tv computer. add a tv tuner and make it like a DVR with browser. There probably won't be a big enough market. Besides M$ and Apple have secured them selves as the big players being house hold names. Do you go to best buy and see a Amiga section? I doubt anyone would buy one at a B&M store.

The concept cool, but ultimately pointless. I mean If I can build one of these for under a $100 I would just to tinker but I doubt it will be cheap.