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Amiga returns with AmigaOne PPC hardware

This month's comeback announcement...

Back from a triumphant Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco where he publicised Amiga Anywhere, Amiga CEO Bill McEwen has posted an update on progress with Amiga hardware and AmigaOS 4 and 5. At the very least it will bring a nostalgic tear to the eye, if you encountered Amiga the first time around, and it might even persuade you this remains an intensely desirable platform.

The Register, for the record, started thinking "want one" about halfway down Bill's bulletin. This is well worth reading for all the detail, but briefly, the position is approximately as follows.

The next generation of Amiga hardware is being designed by Eyetech of the UK, which is currently taking orders for developer boards (details in Bill's bulletin). This, the AmigaOne, is a PPC machine with a G3 or G4, USB, built in Ethernet and built in modem. It takes up to two gigs of memory, has a 2xAGP graphics adapter and four PCI slots. Eyetech will be building a PCI to A1200 adapter which will plug into a PCI slot and provide support for older apps that require direct access to the AA chipset, but AmigaOS 4 won't require this to run on the AmigaOne. The AmigaOne itself is currently running Linux PPC.

AmigaOS 4, which is intended to transition Amiga from 68K to PPC, is being produced by Hyperion Entertainment of Belgium. AmigaOS 5, meanwhile, is intended to be the Big One where the code bases of the desktop OS and the Amiga Anywhere cellphone, PDA, set top box and Internet appliance merge, "and the two worlds will allow the content to co-mingle and proliferate." That, any any rate, is the plan. Good luck, Bill. ®

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