
AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Update 1 – Pre-Release for the AmigaOne X5000 - doener
http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/index.php/news/36-amigaos-4x/176-amigaos-41-final-edition-update-1-pre-release-for-the-amigaone-x5000
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dingdingdang
Presumably one of the excellent points about using a PowerPC structure is that
there is no Intel ME system within it: since the system (X5000) is already
marketed as running Ubuntu and Debian ([http://www.amiga-shop.net/Amiga-
Hardware/New-Amiga-Computers...](http://www.amiga-shop.net/Amiga-Hardware/New-
Amiga-Computers/AmigaONE-X5000-complete-system::790.html)) there's presumably
no reason why it couldn't be certified for Qubes OS and find wider audience!?

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LeoPanthera
The X5000 presumably succeeds the X1000 from 2010:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOne_X1000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOne_X1000)

Are there any sales figures available for that machine? I'd love to know how
many people are still buying "Amigas".

(Also worth noting, the X1000 had a dual-core CPU, but AmigaOS can only use
one core. RISC OS (the ex-Acorn OS) has a similar problem when running on
later Raspberry Pi devices.)

~~~
vidarh
They're being coy about it, but [1]:

"As I replied in another interview recently, we have sold in excess of 200
AmigaOne X1000 systems and boards but less than 2000. As for satisfaction, yes
we were very pleased with AmigaONE X1000 sales but, due to the high cost and
shortage of P.A. Semi CPUs, we took the decision to discontinue manufacturing
the Nemo motherboard." (June 2015)

Note that this is not the only AmigaOne's on sale. There are also the ACube
SAM boards/computers [2], which are substantially cheaper. They don't really
directly compete due to the price gap - in fact, A-Eon apparently contracts
ACube for some work (firmware etc.).

Estimating the yearly sales of AmigaOS 4.x machines is thus quite hard, but
I'm assuming it's in the low hundreds per year at most.

[1] [http://distrita.com/a-eon-interview-about-amigas-
future/](http://distrita.com/a-eon-interview-about-amigas-future/)

[2] [http://www.acube-
systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=7](http://www.acube-
systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=7)

~~~
azinman2
So how can these companies survive? And produce custom motherboards, no less?

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armitron
Price for that board is preposterous especially considering it doesn't have
the old Amiga custom chipsets to optionally run old software and games, but
depends on emulation.

How many years left till these vultures stop picking the bones of the Amiga
community...

~~~
vidarh
Nobody are forcing anyone to buy these. And I very much doubt Trevor Dickinson
is making much money from A-Eon. It's pretty clear he's doing this as an
expensive hobby.

Those that can't afford these have plenty of cheaper alternatives to choose
from, ranging from AROS on a wide range of platforms, to classic AmigaOS or
AROS in emulators, MorphOS on old Macs, classic AmigaOS on upgraded classics
or FPGA reimplementations, to SAM AmigaOne boards from ACube.

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gbraad
I love the Amiga, but this seems a little too much; for a computer that will
cost € 2.299,00, consisting of 'old' hardware.

~~~
mastazi
> this seems a little too much

It is. Especially considering that other m68k systems are sold for much less,
such as this one which is an Atari-compatible computer and is sold for 643
Euros (560 for the motherboard and 83 for the case): [http://firebee.org/fb-
bin/index](http://firebee.org/fb-bin/index)

~~~
cmrdporcupine
My FireBee is being couriered to me as we speak, I'm super excited about it.

But it is kind of a different sort of thing. I think the AmigaOne is a foolish
concept, but it is a far more powerful machine than the FireBee, as it is
based around a high speed PowerPC board.

PowerPC IMHO is a dead-end, but it seems like many in the Amiga community have
tried to hitch their wagon to it. They'd be better off porting to ARM (running
in big-endian mode I guess) if the OS is really worth it.

~~~
vidarh
AROS does run on ARM. As for AmigaOS 4.x I don't think Hyperion have the
resources, and they're very dependent on their hardware partners bearing part
of the cost.

The only problem with PPC from an Amiga point of view is that most of the SOCs
are targetting networking and automotive markets and similar embedded use
rather than desktops (total PPC sales in terms of number of chips is still in
a similar region to x86 sales; revenue per unit is way lower, though). It's
not like people will buy these machines looking for top end performance, and
the OS is still incredibly light weight, but if you pay for it you can still
get PPC chips that perform very well.

But AmigaOne's are an very expensive hobby for most people who buy them, not
bought to be cost effective.

More comparable to the FireBee you have a multitude of M68k accelerators and
FPGA Amiga reimplementations that are much cheaper.

There's been various discussions about trying to run AmigaOS or AROS on
ColdFire like the FireBee too. Problem is people would expect to run their old
binary-only software, and AFAIK the ColdFire can't trap all the unimplemented
instruction combinations fully, so it'd require "fun" hacks (e.g. dynamic
translation; I think it probably _could_ be done reasonably easily for
AmigaOS, but finding someone with both the time and the skills is another
matter) so the Amiga community focus has been on FPGAs.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Yeah ColdFire is also a dead end because Freescale isn't going to be releasing
any more models and certainly not at any higher clock speeds. And it's really
being made for specialized markets (automotive, ethernet switches, etc.)

The FireBee is a neat hack I don't mind supporting, but if people really want
hardware and emulators don't cut it, then FPGA is probably the way to go.

Or switch architectures and port the OS (EmuTOS and/or AROS) + some sort of
CPU translation/emulation layer for 68k stuff. It would probably have to be
something big endian, so that rules out RISC-V but OpenRISC, J2 (SuperH) and
OpenSPARC are some open source candidates.

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transfire
IMO the X5000 is kind of a joke. It doesn't even have USB 3.0, for instance. I
really don't understand how A-Eon or Hyperion stay in business. Why the entire
Amiga community, including the commercial interests, don't get behind AROS is
just insane.

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unixhero
What can you use this for?

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Fjolsvith
Is there a PPC VM that could run this on Linux or Windows?

