AmigaOne X1000

Introduction After years of waiting the Amiga community will finally get a new complete AmigaNG experience. The AmigaONE X1000 was a machine commissioned by A-EON Technology, the company was set up for the sole purpose to develop and support AmigaOS4 software, it has a very close relationship with Hyperion and the key developers of the AmigaOS market. This will be the first new Amiga designed for the high end market for 17 years since A4000 launched back in 1992 and it is hoped that this computer can regenerate some interest in the Amiga market and lay the foundations for the Amiga platform to continue. Unlike the previous AmigaONE systems, this system will not just be another motherboard that you will have to build up to a computer yourself but a whole complete computer system, with even a modded, branded computer case designed for the system. The main goal of the AmigaONE X1000 is to offer a high end and complete end user experience for Amiga enthusiasts right out of the box. To that end the hardware and operating system was extensively beta tested on this system to ensure that it offers the best AmigaOS4 platform to date, a team of a 100 beta testers have been selected to ensure this outcome. Only beta testers will be offered the motherboard separately, however the custom case, keyboard and mouse will be available individual to the beta testers as well as for people with old AmigaONE systems or Sams who may want their hardware in an official Amiga branded case. It is not known when the Boing Ball Fractal Tower will be available. The potential price of the system has been one of much debate in the Amiga community, due to the fact that this is a specially designed motherboard for AmigaOS and offers some unique features and add to the fact of the small production quantity when compared to the PC markets the cost of such a system was always going to be high. The first production run named “First Contact“ system will be priced at £1699 and will be exclusively available from Amigakit (a partner with A-EON and a well establish long serving Amiga online store) more details on this system below. The release date of the system has also been another well discuss topic in Amiga land, the reason is the original release date was intended for Summer 2010, but both OS and machine were only just in alpha stage at this point, it was hoped that at least beta testing would begin in 2010 however due to a required hardware revision and more extensive testing including a full Linux port being made for testing of the system it has caused some delay. Finally, in September 2011 Beta boards began shipping to beta testers and work could truly begin on AmigaOS4.2 development and testing for the machine. Beta testing ended up being a short affair this is due to the extended hardware development time the key OS developers have been able to much further develop the OS and the hardware has had quite significant testing in-house, far more than previous AmigaONE systems. Because of early reports and tests of the system have been very positive it was decided that rather than delay the release of the complete commercial system any longer for AmigaOS 4.2 the system would ship with AmigaOS4.1 update 5 with users getting a coupon for OS4.2 when it becomes available, it is also a good test of the market to see if the demand/interest is still there for such a high price system. Within 36 hours, the first production run was sold out. Due to the success a second production run was ordered to fulfil all orders, again Amigakit asked users to register interest, and it believed that the same set up as the First Contact run, this time details of the system were placed on AmigaKit web site and the special sub web site for the product got an update. The second production run also sold out and so enquiries were made on producing a third, but due to CPU cost rises due to limiting supply of chips, it was decided to begin development on another new motherboard with a much longer life span and much lower production cost than of the X1000, and only supply existing orders for the X1000. It's a slightly bitter end to the story of the X1000, but X1000 support is expected for a long time, considering even classic AmigaOS PPC computers are still supported. Plus the X1000 does it main duty and pushes the platform forward to having to think about developing support for dual-core cpu, more than 2gb of ram, 64bit platform, newer graphics cards and the machine now widely supports various Linux distributions thanks to the efforts of the Amiga community. So the X1000 will live on and I think it will be an important step in moving the platform forward.

HARDWARE CPU: PWRficient PA6T-1682M Dual-core 1.8 GHz 64bit CPU Co-processor: “Xena“ Dual Core 500 MHz Xmos XCore XS1-L2 128 SDS GFX: Radeon R700 Series (most likely Radeon HD 4650 1Gb) Audio: 7.1 channel HD audio Memory: 4x DDR2 SDRAM slots 8x USB 2.0 1x Gigabit Ethernet 2x PCIe x16 slots (1x16 or 2x8) 2x PCIe x1 slots 1x Xorro slot (gives access to "Xena") 2x PCI legacy slots 2x RS-232 4x SATA 2 connectors 1x IDE connector JTAG connector 1x Compact Flash

Can only find second hand now.