AmigaOne
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AmigaOne is a series of PowerPC mainboards made by U.K. computer vendor Eyetech Group and Taiwanese integrated circuit manufacturer MAI Logic. The trademark "AmigaOne" is exclusively licensed from Amiga to Eyetech for the purpose of reselling various third party hardware to AmigaOS 4 users.
Originally, AmigaOne was the name of a project for new Amiga hardware, managed by Eyetech and designed by the German company Escena GmbH (http://www.escena.de). The AmigaOne motherboard was to be available in two models, the AmigaOne-1200 and the AmigaOne-4000. It was to have connectors for an optionally attached Amiga A1200 or an A4000 respectively, in order to utilise the old custom chips of an Amiga. This AmigaOne project was cancelled in 2001, mostly due to the inability to find or design a suitable northbridge chip.
Once the Escena design was consigned to the scrapheap, Eyetech looked around for an alternative route. The result was that they decided to sell the Teron CX PowerPC evaluation motherboard, with some revisions as AmigaOne SE. Later the AmigaOne XE was sold, this product is developed from the MAI Logic reference motherboard Teron PX.
The main difference between the two was that the AmigaOne SE had a soldered-on 600MHz G3 PowerPC processor, whereas the AmigaOne XE used a CPU board attached to a MegArray connector on the motherboard (there were G3 and G4 options with a maximum clock of 800MHz and 933MHz, respectively). Both these models are now discontinued, with the XE model to be made available again with certain fixes to the original design with regards to how the PCI bus is configured. Recently, Eyetech have begun selling the µ-A1 series of motherboards, which are somewhat similar motherboards as the A1-XE but made in a Mini-ITX formfactor and with some additions. The µA1 is offered in two configurations, under the Micro-AmigaOne I and Micro-AmigaOne C labels. Eyetechs µ-A1s are in some way or other based on a reference designs from MAI logic, called the Teron mini.
Currently these boards ship with a "developer prerelease" version of AmigaOS 4, which does not have all the features proposed for the full version.
For other consumer PowerPC hardware, see also
External links
- Amiga, Inc. (http://www.amiga.com)
- Eyetech Group, Ltd. (http://www.eyetech.co.uk)
- Hyperion Entertainment (http://www.hyperion-entertainment.com)
- www.amigaworld.net - Fan-site with an AmigaOne support forum
- AmigaOne model comparison table (http://amigaworld.net/modules/features/index.php?op=r&cat_id=8&rev_id=67&sort_by)
- Mai Logic (http://www.mai.com)