amigaone

Could there be yet another next-generation system on its way to Amiga land? According to a poster on an Italian Amiga forum the answer may be 'yes.' The new board appears to be a cost-reduced variant of the existing SAM460ex with no on-board SM502 controller, no external USB ports, no FPGA, and other components not used or well supported by the Amiga operating system removed. While the missing USB ports is a bit of surprise, since the boards have an internal USB header, that shouldn't be a big issue.

Earlier this morning at AmiWest 2013 A-EON Technology Founder Trevor Dickinson announced a major purchase agreement with Ultra Varisys for the design and manufacture of a new family of AmigaOne computers. The investment, totaling some $1.2 million, comes after the surprisingly high demand for the AmigaOne X1000. The new systems are centered around a new motherboard design, code-named Cyrus, which should support multiple PowerPC offerings from Freescale Semiconductor, including the quad-core P3041, dual-core P5020, and quad-core P5040.

A big and hearty welcome to another dealer in the Amiga universe, this time in France: Amedia Computer. Focusing on both classic and next-generation Amiga computing, Amedia is the brainchild of Laurent Zorawski and Lionel Thillot. For Amigans in France the company is celebrating its grand opening with a special sale: a complete SAM460ex system for e999 -- which includes VAT. A very competitive price and a great system to jump into Amiga NG computing.

Although we don't typically link to interviews elsewhere, this is a nice exception. Click the source link below to review David Burnet's interview with Trevor Dickinson, Managing Director of A-EON Technology, Ltd. There are some very nice high-resolution photos of the upcoming Cyrus+ motherboard from A-EON as well as hints about other possible hardware projects in the works.

Visitors to the 2013 Vintage Computer Festival in the UK this weekend got a special preview of a new AmigaOne system coming from A-EON Technology as well the chance to play around on multiple AmigaOne X1000 systems running AmigaOS and GNU/Linux. The new system, code-named Cyrus after an ancient Persian king, is apparently based on the Freescale P5020 processor, one of the newer offerings in the QorIQ family.

The odd, crackling audio which has bedeviled some SAM460ex and AmigaOne 500 owners has finally had its root cause identified: a missing resistor on some boards. According to Acube Systems a particular board resistor which serves as a clock select for the on-board AC97 codec is missing for some boards but not others.