Which is faster - AmigaOne 1200 or AmigaOne 4000?

Both will be the same speed given the same CPU.

What about the reliability of the expansion connector on the A4000 compared to the A1200?

Remember that the AmigaOne is a complete single board (+ PCI/AGP slots) in its own right. The A1200 edge connector and A4000 CPU connector are only used for accessing the custom chips (at relatively low speeds) by applications that 'hit the hardware' directly. Eventually with a fully retargetable OS & applications the original A1200/A4000 will be redundant.

Will the AmigaOne 1200 fit in XXX tower?

The AmigaOne will fit in any tower which is compatible with the Z4 busboard, as it is designed around this form factor.

Towers which it will fit are the Eyetech Z4 Tower and Elbox Tower / Power Tower. It will not fit an Eyetech Mk.1-Mk.5 Tower. If you are aware of any other towers which fit the Z4 busboard form factor, please let us know.

I've got an A3000 - you've forgotten about me!

No we haven't, as stated in a previous Eyetech press release, if you are interested in potentially purchasing an AmigaOne for another type of Amiga system it would be enormously helpful if you could email our sales address indicating in the subject line the type of system you would like to use the AmigaOne with.

Your subject line should read "AmigaOne for xxxxx"
where "xxxxx" is:
- "A4000 desktop tower conversion using (manufacturers name) tower"
or
- "A4000T tower Amiga International design"
or
- "A3000 desktop system by Commodore"
or
- "A3000 tower system by Commodore"

Will the AmigaOne 1200 work with XXX expansion?

PowerFlyer / Elbox IDE Flyer
These will be redundant, as there is a 4-channel UDMA IDE controller on the AmigaOne itself.

Prelude 1200 / Clockport Serial & Parallel / Catweasel
These will be supported, as the AmigaOne will be operating in AmigaDOS compatible mode. However, the optional PCI soundcard + drivers will give much better performance, as will similar solutions for serial, parallel & floppy drive expansion.

Can you estimate how much it will it cost?

As far as price is concerned we obviously have our own estimates, but these are at this stage within fairly broad bands to allow for variations in the market price of chips, exchange rates etc at the time we place the main bulk orders. If we were to fix our prices now then we would have to opt for prices that fully covered the risk of worst case purchasing and exchange rates - which would not be in the interest of end users.

The only estimation which we are able to release at this time is that the AmigaOne 1200 / 4000 will be significantly cheaper than the current top of the range Amiga PPC accelerators, while offering a major increase in performance and functionality.

What is the fastest G3/G4 processor that can be attached?

The processor will be mounted on a support card - we see no speed restrictions on the use of currently available processors within the limitations of the pinouts.

How will drivers be handled?

Obviously, after installing new hardware, you will have to install the appropriate driver. However most drivers will fit in the FlashROM, which can be write-protected. So after that, the AmigaOne will perform a fast and reliable reboot, with the new hardware being instantly available to the OS.

Will the AmigaOne be able to run Linux?

Yes, if someone recompiles the kernal etc to suit.

Will you be supplying XXX drivers with the AmigaOne?

The initial release operating system shipped with the AmigaOne will have drivers for graphics and IDE UDMA, with USB, firewire, ethernet and soundcard drivers following shortly afterwards.

A PCI resource library with published API entry points will be supplied for individuals / organisations wishing to port drivers for other hardware.

What speed of SDRAM DIMM's does the AmigaOne need?

PC100 or better.

Will there be an updateable flashrom on the AmigaOne?

Yes.

What sort of connector is used for the G3/G4 processor? Can I buy a Mac-style CPU upgrade?

A universal 'Slot 1' type CPU connector will be provided with adaptors being available for most popular pinouts / form factors of Mac-type G3/G4 CPUs.

How will the keyboard and mouse connect to the AmigaOne?

The existing Amiga keyboard & mouse/joystick will continue to be able to be used, although drivers will be provided for their USB equivalents in due course.

On the AmigaOne 4000, will I have any Zorro slots remaining?

Currently, it does not look like it will be possible to add a Zorro slot from an engineering point of view. But we are still looking to see if there is a possible way around this. However most of the functionality of Zorro cards will be available, better and cheaper, using the PCI route.

Will the "8MB memory window" affect the AmigaOne?

No - it could access this area, but does not make use of the A1200/A4000 Zorro II address space.

Is it still possible to access the PCMCIA port with the AmigaOne 1200?

Yes.

Will it be possible to overclock the G3/G4 CPU?

Not within the warranty arrangements, and we would not advise it anyway.

Will there be a jumper to prevent flashrom upgrades, to avoid virus problems?

It will be possible to write protect the flashrom.

Where can I buy the AmigaOne? What bundles will be available?

The AmigaOne -1200/4000 came out of work that we were already undertaking on the Predator-Plus, but substantially revised to make it fully compliant with the Zico specification from Amiga. Whilst the Predator-Plus was our own (Eyetech's) product to sell directly and via the distributors which we selected, the AmigaOne 1200/4000 is to be 'open availability' - that is available at the same price and under the same conditions to any bona fide Amiga dealer worldwide. There will be no territorial 'exclusives' either in the UK or elsewhere.

How does this work in practice? Well the development and manufacturing sides of the AmigaOne 1200/4000 are being undertaken by a consortium of companies, including Eyetech's industrial systems division, Escena and others. There is open accounting between consortium members and a contractual undertaking as to how the costs, risks and margins on the manufacture of the boards will be shared, and on the cost price to dealers. The prime concern of the development/manufacturing consortium will be to make sure as many boards as possible are sold in order to recover development costs and generate economies of scale.

All dealers, whether existing competitors, partners or otherwise, of any of the manufacturing consortium, will be able to buy the AmigaOne 1200/4000 at exactly the same price as Eyetech's retail division does. This will ensure wide availability and price competition amongst the dealers and the best deal for end users. The only constraint on dealers is that each dealer will need to buy boards in minimum quantities of units, cash with order, and have at least one physical, named person able to support end users who buy the product. Dealer margins at recommended end user prices are sufficient for the dealers to be able to provide this level of support.

The manufacturing consortium will sell bare boards to dealers, for them to add their own SDRAM, I/O & graphics cards, cases, storage etc. We will also make the specification for the CPU slot open , so that other companies can build CPU modules, in addition to the ones the consortium builds. The pinout has been agreed (last October) with bPlan so CPU modules manufactured by them should work in the AmigaOne 1200/4000 and vice versa. We will also be making the adapter boards which carry, as one example, the 'mac-type' ZIF CPU/cache modules available to dealers for them to fit their own CPU's. In fact our philosophy is to build adapter boards which can be used with any G3/G4 modules which are readily available either new or second user (eg from Mac owners upgrading).

Individual dealers will have the option of what specification and how many CPU modules to buy from us and from the other CPU module suppliers. We expect that most dealers will sell both the AmigaOne boards/CPU's and fully towered, ready to roll systems. They will be able to buy the Eyetech EZTower-Z4 (or equivalent towers from other manufacturers) if they wish to sell a system with an AmigaOne and A1200 integrated in the same case (necessary to run OS4.0) or a system with an AmigaOne 1200 board in an ATX case (without an A1200) for retargetable applications from OS4.2 on. As far as Eyetech's retail operations are concerned we will certainly offering both 'board-only' upgrades and custom built ready-to-run systems.

As well as the choice of CPU and memory you will also be able to add (specified) PCI/AGP graphics, networking, modem (ISDN), firewire, SCSI and sound cards either buying them direct from your dealer or elsewhere. Some of these cards will have drivers provided with OS4.x and some will be provided by third parties. In addition the on-board 2xUSB and 4xUDMA-ATA channels will have drivers provided as part of OS4.x.

As far as preorders are concerned, our retail operations are certainly taking 'no-obligation, no charge' preorders to help them decide on the level of initial demand for the AmigaOne 1200, and I imagine other dealers are doing the same. However we have also stated that final pricing will not be released (by the manufacturing consortium) until the board goes into final production so that we can set the best possible price based on optimising component pricing, exchange rates etc.

Will you be supporting MorphOS?

Our main (and only current) objective is to produce the first new Amiga in 10 years for the Amiga community, running the Amiga operating system specified/developed by Amiga Inc.

When will an ATX board be available?

The AmigaOne 1200 is an ATX board as well. See picture of it in a standard ATX tower.