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 there 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.