The Amiga, a sophisticated personal computer that had multimedia capability years before competitors, has been out of production for more than 18 months.
Edward Goff, who works for Escom as a consultant, said he hoped to have Amiga 4000 model towers, which contain the main workings of the desktop computers, available for distribution by the end of August.
Escom had planned to restart making Amigas in China, or possibly Europe, but so far has been unable to work out a manufacturing agreement with a Chinese company. A European company has agreed to do some Amiga assembly.
The circuit boards for the computers will be produced by Zober Industries Inc., a contract manufacturer, in Croydon, Pa. The computers themselves will be assembled by Quikpak Corp. of Norristown, Pa.
Executives of the two firms said details of the manufacturing had not been finalized.
Goff was vice president and general counsel of Commodore. He and two former Commodore engineers now are working as consultants for Escom, with the assignment of starting production here.
Commodore, which had its North American headquarters in West Chester, Pa., went into liquidation in May 1994. Escom paid $10 million for the company's core assets and technology in April.
At that time, Escom President Manfred Schmitt said he wanted to resume production of all Commodore products in China if possible. Commodore had last done its manufacturing in the Philippines.
However, Petro Tyschtschenko, general manager of a newly formed Escom subsidiary, Amiga Technologies GmbH, said the Chinese would not be ready to begin manufacturing for at least a year. Tyschtschenko said in a telephone interview last week that Escom wanted to produce 22,000 Amiga 4000s this year. The circuit boards for all the computers will be made in the Philadelphia area, and about 10,000 of the machines will be assembled near Philadelphia for the North American market, he said.
The remaining 12,000 circuit boards probably will be shipped to Scotland, where the computers themselves will be made by a contract manufacturer that used to assemble some machines for Commodore. These 12,000 machines will be sold in Europe, he said.
''I think we can start production in July or August,'' said Tyschtschenko.
The company also hopes to manufacture 100,000 to 120,000 of the smaller Amiga 1200s this year in Europe for the European market, he said.
Spring 1996