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.

It's amazing how quickly time flies, but we're just a couple of weeks away from Amiwest 2013, the premier Amiga get-together in North America. Representatives from A-eon Technology, Hyperion Entertainment, AmigaKit -- and IntuitionBase -- will be there, including Trevor Dickinson, Matthew Leaman, and Steven Solie. This looks to be a great show this year at a nice location in Sacramento, California. There will also be a developers' conference just prior to the show this year, focusing on AmigaOS application software development.

It may be a little late given that AmiWest 2013 is starting in three weeks, but earlier this evening Bill Bosari posted links to videos of the various seminars presented last year at the AmiWest 2012 Programmers Conference. A big thanks to Bill Bosari, Mike Brantley, Steve Solie, Lyle Hazelwood, and Paul Sadlik for their presentations and work on the videos for those unable to make it. Just click on the 'source' button below to head over to the AmigaOS wiki page where the videos can be downloaded.

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 exceptional multimedia creation suite Hollywood has been updated to version 5.3, including significant performance improvements, bug fixes, new capabilities on Android, and much more. The update is free to existing customers and continues ongoing development of Hollywood and Hollywood Designer by Airsoft Softwair since it announced a temporary hiatus on new sales in 2012. The best news, though, is the announcement that the hiatus will shortly end and Hollywood will again be available for sale to the public.

Hyperion Entertainment managing partner Ben Hermans issued the following statement on the progress of OS4.2 development this past weekend:

For all of you early planners the AmiWest planning committee has recently announced this year's details for the AmiWest Conference. This year's conference will be held from October 18th through the 20th at the Cal Expo Holiday Inn Express in beautiful Sacramento, California. In addition to the show -- which is among the largest Amiga shows globally -- there will be a Programming Conference starting October 16th for those interested in developing for AmigaOS or learning the system's internals.

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.