The end of 1999 was a tense moment for Amigans. No, not whether our Amigas were truly Y2K compliant, but whether there would be any future at all for the Amiga platform. The last thing that we heard was in November when, president James Schmitds said that the MCC Amiga computer project was being scrapped by Amiga, Inc. "It wasn't about a box, anyway." Then there was silence. Word was that Gatesway was absorbing, Amiga, Inc. They had only wanted the Amiga for its patents after all, right?
The Champagne-Urbana (Illinois) Computer Users Group dropped their support for the Amiga platform citing the steady decline in the Amiga marketplace. CUCUG's famous Amiga Web Directory and news pages were a regular starting point for many Amigans surfing the World Wide Web. Much of the slack was taken up by http://www.amiga.org, Amiga Network News (http://ann.lu), and amiga-news.de (http://www.amiga-news.de/indexe.shtml).
Then, in December 31st, there was a late announcement that a company called Amino, owned by x-Amiga employee Bill McEwen, had purchased the rights to the Amiga name, web pages, hardware and software, as well as licensee of the Amiga patents. A $5 million price tag was named (but not confirmed). A British networking company named the TAO Group may have been a silent partner.
The TAO Group was under contract with Motorola to develop a Java Virtual Machine to be used on a new line of Motorola Java Smart Phones. The TAO Group was also sponsored by Sony and Sun Microsystems.
Was the Amiga platform truly back on the boards? According to an interview with Fleecy Moss, Amiga, Inc. was software only, but several licensees were in negotiations to build Amiga hardware. Although most Amigans were ecstatic of this new Amiga, Inc., there were still plans to make the Amiga run home networks and digital appliances.
In the meantime work was being done by other Amigans. The Phoenix Consortium, a group of disgruntled Amiga software and hardware developers, was working with QNX Software, Ltd. to develop an Amiga- like OS (and native applications) that would run on newer PC and PowerPC hardware. Again, classic Amiga software could only be run from emulation. The QNX Neutrino System was a totally different OS but many Amigans still feel that it contains the true spirit of the Amiga, and it wasn't long before Amigans were signing up for a QNX CD-ROM disk. There was also news that QNX was also partnering with the TAO Group.
Likewise, the Amiga Research Operating System (AROS) group was working closer to its goal of an Amiga (3.X) OS that would work on any kind of hardware. From February to May the AROS group joined forces with the Open Amiga Foundation (formerly known as the Open Amiga/COSA). A beta version of AROS came out that could work on X86 PC clones.
Finally, MorphOS was making an Amiga OS that could work on classic Amigas accelerated with a PowerPC processor. They released a beta version of their OS this year.
April 1st at the Amiga2K show, Bill McEwen discussed the new Amiga Developers System but didn't have any actual computers available for sale. Amiga, Inc. re-vamped their web site and even created an Amiga- based web magazine, called "AmigaWorld".
In June, Sun Microsystems announced that the TAO group's product was now an officially certified Java Virtual Machine that could work on small information appliances. Many business organizations that were partnered with the TAO group were announcing their elation (no pun intended) over the TAO group's virtual processor, including Bill McEwen of Amiga, Inc.
June 17th, Bill McEwen released the Amiga Software Developers Kit (SDK) on CD-ROM which held the software development tools needed to create the Amiga environment on top of the TAO group's Elate. There was still no memory protection, or sound, or 3-D graphics support, but it was an excellent start. Most Amigans were grateful that this Amiga company would actually develop and sell a product. By the end of the month, 15,000 copies of the Amiga SDK were sold.
July marked the Amiga's 15th year anniversary. It was a time for many Amigan's to reflect on what they have done with their Amiga computers. Some have jumped platform but still watch apprehensively to see what Amiga, Inc. will come up with.
July 29th and 30th was the AmiWest`2000 convention in Sacramento. At the banquet, Bill McEwen thanked the Amiga community for their continued support and asked for a little more patience. There was word of a developer's Amiga computer, the d`Amiga being available now (but none were at the show) and talk of a consumer level Amiga computer called "Amiga One" was scheduled for December 2000 (or early 2001). By August, Amiga dealers were shipping the d`Amiga. September 26th, QNX Software Development, Ltd. made their QNX real-time OS (RTOS) available to the consumer public as a free download from their web site. They could also send you everything on a CD-ROM in the mail for a small fee.
October, at the ACE`2000 show in Australia, Bill McEwen announced that the SDK for Windows was being released. He also announced that Haage & Partner were going to release an Amiga 3.9 OS upgrade. Haage & Partner seemed surprised with this announcement. There were no details on the H&P's or Amiga, Inc's web site. It was only a year since the 3.5 OS upgrade came out.
October there was an announcement that Bob "the Coz" Cosby had passed away of natural causes. He was one of the original employees of the first Amiga, Inc. developing the A-1000 in Los Gatos in 1985. He was recently working in Snoqualmie, Washington for Amiga, Inc. in their Hardware Group when he passed on.
November, Petro Tschtschenko announced plans for his retirement, when all of their inventory of Amigas were sold in Germany. Petro was instrumental in keeping the Amiga alive. He sold the idea of buying the rights to the Amiga to Gateway. He also was instrumental in persuading H&P to take on development of the 3.5 OS upgrade.
December 9th was the release date of the 3.9 OS upgrade.