my uncle had an amiga, that got passed onto me. I loved it because it had much better games than the consoles. I have doubts they'll manage to drum up enough developer interest to get a bunch of killer games that'd make me want to buy one.

I had Amiga 500 - what a great machine it was. I still think the Sid Meier's Colonization on Amiga as the best game ever.

And seeing the Deluxe Paint almost brought a tear into my eye.

It would be great to have an Amiga back in the running as a usable computer, but it is never going to happen.

Look at the site!
http://www.a-eon.com/index.html

Like all the recent Amiga stuff it's basic and unprofessional. Even the screen grab of the OS isn't a screen grab it's a terrible camera shot of a monitor.

I would so like this to be successful, but that's just a pipe dream. I would put money on this new company / machine disapearing before the end of the year.

Such a shame.

P.S. Anyone else ever noticed that one of the 'In the night garden' Ha Hoos looks like the Boing Ball?

http://www.inthenightgarden.co.uk/en/assets/images/characters/haahoos/layout-visit-char-haahoos.jpg

I had an A500, A1500 then finally a tricked out A1200 (Which I still have) they were all great machines in their day.

Will this run workbench?

I dont understand, what purpose is this computer? It's way past 1st of April.

just sold my A1200 030/50 accelerator on ebay and my towered A1200 with CD drive, external modem and HDD will be going on there sometime soon too. I must say it was a wrench to actually sell the thing, I spent many hours playing UFO:Enemy unknown, The Settlers, Sensible soccer, Alien Breed etc. There really were some fantastic games for the Amiga.

I wouldn't buy one now though and I can't see this being anything bigger than a pet project or vintage computing platform etc. Interesting though all the same.

I had a 500, 600, and a 1200. I loved my amiga, and some of the games I think I would still play today. North and South, Wings of Fury, Prince of Persia, Hunter, Sensible Soccer and countless others.

Still have my Amiga 1200 and I doubt I'll ever part with it. What a fantastic machine, and it was so much better than the PC's back then for gaming.

But I can't see this new one being any kind of serious contender. I would love them back in the marketplace but I just don't see it happening. I will wait and see though...and hope.

Originally Posted by M7ck
I had a 500, 600, and a 1200. I loved my amiga, and some of the games I think I would still play today. North and South, Wings of Fury, Prince of Persia, Hunter, Sensible Soccer and countless others.

North & South, now that was a great game I'd forgotten about.

Originally Posted by vampalan
I dont understand, what purpose is this computer? It's way past 1st of April.

If hearing of a new Amiga meant nothing to you, I doubt you'll ever understand this machine, especially if the specs do nothing for you.

Nice to see PPC CPUs again, especially with the internal expansion potential this thing has. Looks like a great scientific tinkering system, and a fairly serious one at that. Guess it all depends on the launch price though.

10% of the budget wasted on this nonsense would have got AROS up and running properly. The choice between an Amiga-compatible OS for x86 or some ridiculously arcane RISC system with Xorro slots (hooray for retro) seems obvious to everyone except those with the money.

AmigaOS 4 demonstrated that there is still a viable niche market there, it's just a shame those few that bother to invest are so utterly clueless.

used to be a running joke between commodore and atari users.. atari 800xl/130xe had drives that were so much faster than the old commodore drives- remember going over to a german exchange students place and he attacked me like full on bucktooth bodyslam.. I'm serious when I made fun of how slow his rig was

I got out of there lolol still remember that- amiga was alright but I was a ST guy.. still couldn't get past how slow the commodore was back in the day.. programming on those old rigs was nothing short of fun- you had to really watch your memory usage.. oh yeah atari's had better sound too stuff it commodore fags! XD

OMG this has me really excited. Any news on backward compatibility? The thought of loading up and running Alien Breed 3D with decent graphics settings without resorting to emulation is awesome.

I shall be keeping abreast of this me thinks.

Originally Posted by thehippoz
oh yeah atari's had better sound too stuff it commodore fags! XD

Which dimension are you from?!?

Yeah yeah, let me see...two A500's, 1 A1200, 1 A1500, 1 A4000/030 whic I SWOPPED for my first PC, a Pentium 90 with 512k of RAM! Mmm, interesting....

if they had relaunched this 10 years ago, then maybe i would be interested

i had an amiga 500, then updated the various parts, cant remember all the names now, but denise chip was one of them, added a cd rom, memory etc

then i got a cd32, then added an sx1 module, with extra ram, keyboard mouse hard drive, external floppy etc, think i had 2 or 3 floppy drives

i also managed to get a genlock device, that was rather cool for the bluescreen effects adding titles etc to video

those were the days, ahhhh

Originally Posted by blohum
Which dimension are you from?!?

Damn straight! The Amigas ALL had 4-channel 8-bit stereo sound. The only ST that came anywhere near was the STE. The ST's only advantage was that it had built-in MIDI ports, so you didn't have to use an external serial->MIDI box.

And as far as graphics went, the Amiga blew everything that was around at the time away, 3 times. Once with the A1000/A500 (OCS), again with the A500+ and A600 (ECS) and finally with the A1200/A4000 (AGA).

Dulux Paint 3! Despite the terrible stability, constant crashes and appalling userbility, my old Amiga 1500 was the best computer I ever owned.

I even once formatted the one harddrive by accident... and it made absolutely no difference! I'd like to see a modern PC manage that feat!

Although I've never owned an amiga, I really like AROS, which is an open source amiga-like OS that runs natively in PCs. It have progressed tremendously over the past couple of years, there's even an OS distro called IcAROS, which you can install on the PC or run on a virtual machine.

What I find interesting about the amiga community is their reluctance to use x86 computers, at a great expense. The Sam440ep motherboard, which is the only platform that runs AmigaOS 4.1 that is actually produced nowadays costs around 450€. Since this price is for a Flex-ATX motherboard with a 667Mhz CPU, I don't want to think how much the Amiga X1000 is going to cost.
I can understand the reluctance towards the x86 architecture, but I honestly think that AROS is going to be the one to survive over the years, because it simply runs on the wide majority of PCs and you don't have to sell a kidney to experience an amiga environment...

I have fond memories of my Amiga! Great games, fun times with friends. Of course this X1000 isn't made by Commodore, just some company trying to cash in on the Amiga name. Pretty sad.

Cost is key. It must be competitive or many of us old Amiga users just won't buy... Remember that price and performance are what sold us our first machines and kept poor folks like me from buying into Apple... and it remains true. What did I like about the Amiga? It was the ease of creativity, the community of users, the plain old fun to be had and it wasn't all games either... Though I used many computers including mainframes I can honestly say that I never learned more with any computer than I did with my old 3000.

I have used Amigas since 1987 or so.
A500, A2000, A3000, A4000 (AOS3.9), SAM440ep (AOS4.1).
I also have AmigaOS clone MOS on a MacMini and AROS on a laptop.

Here are some reviews:

http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2008/09/amigaos41-ars.ars
http://jpv.wmhost.com/morphos2_review/
Video of AOS4 etc: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fx3q2wFIn6k

Another interesting article for people that are not familiar of Amigas recent history:
http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2009/08/26/amiga-state-of-the-union-august-2009/

What is this computer aimed at? It isn't powerful enough for gaming, I can't see office users jumping away from all the software they already have... etc.

The only noteworthy thing is this Xorro slot, which I will now go and look up.

p.s. why isn't this in the news feed?

I would certainly dig a commercial alternative to the Borgs (WinMacs),if they manage to get me the following I'm in:

1)a good Image processor
2)a nice 3D authoring software.
3)a nice video sequencer.
4)a powerful spread-sheet app (I use it for MANY things).
5) a modern browser.

Ahhhhh! It's a zombie, shoot it, shoot it!

Originally Posted by BradF
I have fond memories of my Amiga! Great games, fun times with friends. Of course this X1000 isn't made by Commodore, just some company trying to cash in on the Amiga name. Pretty sad.

Yeah right, they've worked on porting and upgrading amigaos for what? seven years, and they launch a computer which isn't for free and you think that they are trying to get rich?!

Of course they want it to be a success and sell enough but really, do you think that the amiga marked is the place to be if you try to make big money quickly?

Your comment is pretty sad and you don't have any idea what you're talking about. You know, when you don't know, don't comment. It's as easy as that. Because people that do know just see you as a joke and gets sick about comments like the one that you made.

@Alterlife2010
>1)a good Image processor

AmigaOS4.1 is capable of running old/existing 68k apps that were/are famous in Image processing.
And IIRC, GIMP can nowdays be run on AOS4.1.
But Amiga SW offerings need to improve on this area, after the long silence.

>2)a nice 3D authoring software.

Blender is ported to AOS4.
And old famous 68k 3D apps run as well.

>3)a nice video sequencer.

Blender cand handle video editing.
But Amiga SW offerings need to improve on this area...

>4)a powerful spread-sheet app (I use it for MANY things).

Gnumetric can be used on AOS4.
And old famous 68k spreadsheet apps run as well.
I believe we see OpenOffice also on AOS4 within one year.
But improvements needed...

>5) a modern browser.[/QUOTE]

Amiga has hand full of web browsers.
The best so far is OWB that can handle almost any web site.
I think the release of Firefox for AOS4 is planned for summer 2010.
Another big needs are a full JAVA engine, OpenGL, OpenCL, etc…

Generally there exist AmigaSW for "almost" anything but most are more or less behind the x86 mainstream.
(some positive exceptions exist, like Hollywood and ShowGirls)

AOS (and MOS and AROS) is currently mainly for brave people who like to play with weird stuff.

@Cupboard
"What is this computer aimed at?"

1) For existing Amiga fans that want a more powerful AOS HW. (and expensive)
2) For people that want to try another kind of computer & computing.

Hopefully the lower end (SAM) will evolve to a cheap alternative to x1000.
http://sam4x0.com/

Most likely Amiga offerings will never again compete with the mainstream in price/performance.
But hopefully the small niche stays alive and grows a little.
0,01% computer market share would be nice.

" It isn't powerful enough for gaming,"

It is capable for xbox360 caliber of games, but there is no multimilliondollar companies developing for Amiga any more, so, the latest Games will not appear on Amigas before those Games become older and cheaper to licence for Amiga niche. People need to have separate box for latest games. Amiga would be mainly for some other fun.

" I can't see office users jumping away from all the software they already have... etc. "

I see a lot of people using OpenOffice and other open source SW. For example I find OpenOffice far nicer than M$Office.
And the move from M$Office to OpenOffice was very smooth in our home.
I hope OO appears on Amiga soon.
(so far I do not need Windows any more @ home, hopefully I one day manage to do every thing I want again on Amiga.)

They at least better come out with something that look modern, and IS modern or it will be an epic fail here.

I do remember the Amiga's challending the ST's and making the PC's of the time, like the Amstrad PC1512 that I once had seem slow and clunky by comparison.

I don't think this is so much about the revival of the Amiga, more like a way to resurrect and bring RISC back in to the home market. I can't help wonder when the IBM dinosaur will finally give up and die. That said, should a RISC based OS also make an appearance, we could have some interesting times ahead with Windows, *nux, Arm and Risc OSes fighting for user real estate.

aye brings me back.. you can't convince a commodore user of anything- they will attack and bodyslam anyone who fondles that nostalgic memory XD ST's kicked the amigas face up around the back of it's ass just like the 8 bit atari's reeped the original snufolufagus

you guys are really missing the point here. they have never made Amiga hardware recently for the big masses. A-eon, and acube and other companies involved are just Amiga fans and makes things for other Amiga fans. They will never think this will sell in huge numbers. Hence the price. And the fans are crazy enough to actually pay that price. Because they love Amiga. It is a burning passion.

non-Amiga fans or casual computer users wont ever understand this so it is just useless to debate it.

as much as the amiga has meant to me during my lifetime, i've lost count of how many times the brand has been "re-launched" so i'm not going to hold my breath. not that i expect it to do much apart from appeal to enthusiasts.

still, most of my happiest gaming + computing memories involved the amiga/commodore 64 in one way or another.

KimmoK:
Thanks :)
The problem I see is that you already have the big OS player (Microsoft), the flashy one (Apple), the free and powerful one (Linux in all the various forms) and others like BSD and I guess I just don't see space for another one. This may just be me being short sighted and I have nothing against this at all.

After all, it's not like OOo doesn't have plenty of platforms to run on already ;)

has it still got the blitter chip though? :D

I'd get one if only for the sound system it uses. And for music editing and other things the Amiga (and even the Atari's from that era) did very well.

A pointless system and I'll tell you why;

1.) This is aimed at the 'high end' of the market, they already have a range of 'mid range' board out for some time in the shape of the Sam flex and Amiga one systems, they cost anywhere between £400-900 depending on spec, so this is likely to be in the four figure bracket before you've even started to 'kit it out'.

2.) Lack of compatibility with the 68000 architecture means that any old amiga games and software will have to be run through emulators, making this just about as 'Amiga' as a PC.

Amiga as we knew it is dead, if you want the classic Amiga experience the best thing to do is to get hold of an A1200 and pop in an accelerator.

It is not pointless. It is a true AmigaOS 4 system. It is what Amiga would have become (most likely) if the management at Commodore didn't suck balls and were short sighted.
People added PPC processor boards to their original Amigas too and ran WarpOS and software coded for PPC on top of AmigaOS 3.1. And its not true that all old software runs on all original Amigas. There are a lot of software that only runs on A4000 with the better Motorola CPU or some software than only runs on the classic A500. Amiga is a lot of things and software was coded to utilize the hardware to its fullest. Only pure AmigaOS API applications can have a chance at running well on newer platforms or you need to port the application.

And we see this today on the PC too. Software coded for CUDA requires you to have a NVIDIA graphics card which is just like the accelerator boards for Amiga.

If you just want to play the old Amiga games you can still do that. Emulation will be better and there is always the MiniMig.

I started out with a C64, then moved to an Amiga 500. Sold that, and got an Amiga 2000. I still have it in its original box somewhere. :) Good times, good times...

The Amiga OS had some good original ideas that I would have liked to see on a Windows desktop. Like how when you fed it a disk it would instantly appear as an icon on the desktop, ready to click and open. Like having four independently functioning desktops on top of each other that you could pull up or down like a blind (how's that for multitasking?).

I have an Amiga emulator on my PC; and my favorite game: Mindwalker (originally it came out with the Amiga 1000 only). There was also Carrier Command, Starglider I and II, Damocles... ah, the memories. :)

I started late with the Amiga, with the 600 and then the 1200. I later picked up my cousin's 500 when he decided to go with the consoles. I loved the Amiga, and still do. I used to have a favourite game, Gunship, and played it for many hours. I would definitely buy into the new Amiga, if everything pans out well. There have been no end of "relaunches" though that didn't come to much, so fingers crossed this time;)

Damocles, wow that brings back some memories. Flipping awesome game, I got it free when I bought my A500.

The amiga brings out your creative side, programming, art, music, I think this is why it holds a place in many peoples hearts. I've tried to make music on my PC, but it just doesn't have the same appeal as using octamed...

In a moment of insanity I threw my C64 + floppy drive and A500 with gvp hard drive and 2meg ram and all my 100s of games, into the dustbin. One of the biggest mistakes of my life.

If anyone found above items in said dustbin in Slippers Place Estate in London SE16, it's all my stuff you lucky barsteward!

@dire_wolf

The x1000 will be more compatible with old Amigas than any Amiga so far.
(and I have experience (and I own) almost every official Amiga there was/is)

I have been "in love" with the AmigaOS way of doing things since 1989 when I got a high end Amiga.
AOS has delivered some unigue experiences and usability during all these 20+ years, even though I have used other OSs as well.

From my experience of AmigaOS4, it acts just like one expects AOS to act, it has the same familiar directory structure, simple enough to learn (unlike the mainstream), same speed. + it has more features than the previous AmigaOS versions.

@thread

Correction to the article, re:
"The last - a modified PCI Express x8 slot - will require some explanation: designed to provide additional input output lines to the system bus, the Xorro slot can be equipped with an add-on programmable co-processor to keep multi-core software ticking along nicely. As standard, the Xorro slot will be populated with a programmable 500MHz board dubbed Xena."

That is incorrect.
Xena is on the motherboard of the computer and xorro slot (that is inline with one of the PCIex1 slots) is free for expansions, like more xcore chips, I/O adapters, etc...
Xena is connected directly to the PPC chip local bus and to CPUs GPIO lines, so it can be totally controlled and reprogrammed on the fly by the SW on the PPC SoC.

"ohh bring back the amiga so that I can play all my old games that I haven't been able to let go of"

For christ sake people, do you not get it, its moved on, it died, PC is too well dug in, and its not just the hardware, most people who use a computer dong give a damn about what ATI board is producing children with which version of USB, it's the software, there is nothing on the Amiga that comes close to what is available on the PC or the mac.

The reason the Amiga couldn't compete with the PC the first time round was because the Amiga got lumbered with the title of it being a games computer and not a serious contender, hence why it never did that well in the business sector, that was always a PC area, the Amiga Came with a modulator, so that it could be hooked up to a TV, and it wasn't so that you could do your work in your "budget home office", it was to play games, and now with the potential to actually get an Amiga back what's one of the biggest discussion points... Games, and before anyone questions my right to complain, I used to own an amiga 500, a 600 a 1200 a 1500 and a 4000 (sadly not for as long as I would have liked), I used music X, Turbo Silver, Imagine, Soundtracker, Directory opus sculpt animate 4D but never did I own one game, that's why we have consoles, what I would have expected to see would be the whole community getting together to push forward a computer that works logically has the best software and rivals both the pc and the mac, but I have a feeling that wont happen, more than likely what will happen is the "so called Amiga community will sit and wait, probably emailing forums and each other about how they cant wait to get a computer back that was in its hey day a groundbreaking piece of technology so that they can play mindwalker or gunship or spaceinvaders, and then let it fade into insignificance, that sickens me, one of the most amazing part of the original amiga computers was the fact that the community back then actually did act like a community, there were games programmed in bedrooms, one song created on the Amiga actually got in the charts, people were doing things with the amiga that promoted better and better things to be created, what does the amiga community consist of now? A bunch of people sat on PC, griping about how bad their pc is, how great the Amiga was and how they cant wait to get the new Amiga, no one designing new interface designs, new ways of operating the computer, nobody doing anything as a community to push the X1000 as far as it will go, nothing, why do you people even want an Amiga back I think for the most part its a nostalgia trip, I don't think it will break any, ground, not with the current mentality, not with the way that all the ex owners of Amigas have become Sheep hearded by the apple and microsoft sheepdogs.

I don't see anyone moaning about PCs in here. I love PCs, but I'd also love to see an up to date Amiga with backwards compatibility. I used to have a A4000/060, which at the time beat pretty much any PC around. I used it for games and for rendering with Lightwave... NOT business use, so no idea why you mentioned that. Even at the time, no one really considered it for business use - that's what PCs were for. It was used creatively with video, 3D, and music.... and of course, games.

No one is suggesting it will compete with PCs... or would even want it to. It would however, be a great creative platform if Newtek developed Lightwave for it again. The OS was brilliant as well.

I don't know what your problem is with people liking the idea of a new Amiga.


...and Hello by the way :)

@photoncepts

So because we enjoyed gaming on the Amiga, we shouldn't be allowed to say that we would welcome the platform's return? I used my Amiga almost exclusively for gaming, and enjoyed every minute of doing so too. So does this mean that I should keep my mouth shut when the mention of the platform is made? Just because you didn't play games doesn't make your point any more or less valid. It sounds like you seem to hold yourself in higher esteem because you didn't play games. If you truly loved the Amiga, then you would realise that there were many reasons for people feeling this way, and one of them was indeed the gaming aspect. I suggest you come down from the high horse you stepped on:(

As for Amiga owners becoming sheep, you seem to hold a large portion of ex Amiga owners in contempt. For what? For now using PC's and Mac's? So did you stay with the Amiga, and never have your platform of choice evolve? If you did, then are you not one of those "sheep" too?

Some news:
- revision2 of the board is being manufactured & sent to the crew of ~150 AmigaOS beta testers.
- revision2 is rumoured to have XS1 L2 xcore
- CPU has been accidentally detected to be a 2Ghz PA6T, being run at 1,8Ghz max (clock rate can be changed from the OS command line)
- final consumer release is pushed to Q4/2010 and full x1000 system price is going up :-( (€1800+)

Also another AmigaOS compatible HW is progressing. SAM460ex might be available Q3 for end users.
More info: http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware

In the meanwhile MOS is heading to G5 PowerMacs and AROS based x86 HW has got new drivers etc....
Amiga News site: www.amigaworld.net

BONUS:
The history of AmigaOS code files can be seen here: http://www.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=141:twenty-five&catid=36:amigaos-4x&Itemid=18

This whole X1000 is just a hoax. They announced it at the start of the year and claimed it would be available before Summer 2010. It never appeared.

Then they went to a vintage computing show at Bletchley Park and piggybacked on that venue to pitch the X1000. They did have a case with what appeared to be an X1000 board in it, but a sealed box was also wired in off to one side. When the sealed box was discovered, A-eon tried to play it off as a debugging system of some sort!

At later shows a printed paper cutout of an X1000 board has been spotted inside an open case:
http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/5403/x1000goodonpaper.jpg

These are just the highlights of their shenanigans over the past year. I won't even get into the beta program where users are expected to purchase a board for $1778 and give it a spin. No warranty and also no test plan, you figure out what they're about with that scheme.

@BenJammin
"This whole X1000 is just a hoax..."

LOL! You have no clue.


PS. Get a life.

And here it is 2011, the A-eon website still reads “Available late 2010″ and still no X1000. The betatesters who deposited upwards of $700 still haven’t even heard anything. Nevermind hoax, this is turning out to be a full on scam!

I believe the deposit is 750 Great British Pounds, not $700 US Dollars. Retail costs for the A1X1K should be very close to $3,000 USD, if not over. Yes, it's delayed but so are many projects by small companies.