In January this year Blittersoft kept true to their promise by providing more pictures of the BoXer board. And they delivered with a new graphic of the next prototype. They also reconfirmed their commitment to the BoXers delivery. This was all very encouraging news to prospective BoXer owners. But little consolation to those who had pre-orded systems and are still waiting. To date I still receive many emails from disgruntled people who  are still waiting. But then on the flip side more and more people are interested in the board and what the BoXer can offer them. St. Louis. April 2000, showed the Amiga community that the BoXer is still with us and even more so.

AntiGravity have recently reached an agreement with Blittersoft and Mick Tinker (Access Innovation) whereas AntiGravity have purchased all of the intellectual property rights as well as the world-wide manufacturing, distribution and sales rights of the BoXeR. 
WOW! Either they see future potential or the BoXer was under threat of vapourwaring away into non-existance and AntiGravity needed to salvage what they had invested. Well, we may probably never know but in the meantime atleast the BoXer is back - and its BAD! (in a good way - end cliché)

Now as to when and where .....? BoXers will be built in California, by Anti-Gravity either in Los Angeles or Palmdale.
"Two additional engineers have been hired to complete the AGA compatibility aspects of an all-in-one chip to be known as Hombre (TM)." Now where have we heard that name before? 
Final development and testing of the board are underway. A list price of $1895 USD was posted. 
When, I personally thing we will some announcements soon but June/July is my educated guess.

Now for some more exciting news ! "BoXeR received some very good "promises" of support from AI at the show" (St.Louis 2000) [Sourced Amiga-News.de] Either way lets hope that the BoXer is released soon and gets justly deserved support from AI it needs.

AGP Versus PCI The never ending argument. Sort of reminiscent when the BoXer only featured ISA and Zorro and people were lamenting over PCI. Now we have PCI and people still aren't overly happy with the lack of AGP support. Well I personally agree but for the moment we need the BoXer now. Would you prefer to wait for more development time and perchance to raise in the overall costs just for the addition of AGP. I think not!
AGP could be a future concern for a future upgrade or revision - say the BoXer II.
For the moment lets get support for PCI and get a wealth of drivers behind us. It's not like there are a lack of PCI gfx cards. Ok so AGP sales are higher but for those doom gloom sayers - Voodoo5 will come in PCI aswell as a host of other cards from manufacturers. Plus what with the new PCI-X on the horizon, it's not over for PCI by a long shot! With the advent of POP boards I'm confident we will see a resurge in the PCI card market again.

U.S.B. (Universal Serial Bus) Is still an uncertainty. While the BoXer has sockets on the board, no guarantee has been made to adding it on the final production board. Personally I think it will be added but no software supoprt will be provided. The BoXer boys are stating they have no real intentions for providing software support. But will consider other vendors taking an interest.
I say, let the third party vendors take up the challenge for software support and drivers. So long as the hardware is there it offers the BoXer owner a chance to own and run hardware never before made available. It is widely known that several companies are working on both Zorro USB cards and ones suitable fro the A1200. This is where the community should show a concerted effort and work together - lets not have another multi standards fiasco like the PPC. 
So long as some sort of DDk (Developer Driver Kit) is available then there are many will bedroom programmers to companies offering to write drivers, just like the case with PCI.

So what of the future of the BoXer ? We live in interesting times and things are about to heat up thanks to TAO and Amiga Corp. So where will the BoXer fit into this equation? For now the BoXer must be delivered and soon. Very soon! Money must be recouped on sales as Im sure both Mick Tinker and Blittersoft aswell as AntiGravity have invested a great deal of time, energy, resources and money into this project. BUT. The public is where the greater concern lies. People have waited far too long for this product. Potential sales have most certainly been lost. The reasons for delays  of this product have been many and varied of the years but now the timing is right.

For the BoXer to survive in its current incarnation it must be made available asap and at a reasonable cost. Not only must systems be sold but also bare motherboards be available to those who want them. Software support or driver construction material is a must. Many a programmer and company have emailed and offered support. We don't want PCI to become like the PPC was in the old days. What's the point of having PCI if we can only use a handful of cards. The support is being offered from the community - only AnitGravity and Access have to take it up
. 
In the not so distant future we will surely see newer systems and boards from other 3rd party vendors - all stamped with the all too familiar "Powered by Amiga" and that eye catching Boing Ball. The BoXer will have to compete with market share. And this is where more features will be the key (alongside price) to the BoXers eventual survival. Fair enough, the BoXer could be said to be that next system we've always wanted or that STOP-GAP or BRIDGE type system. But why not take it that one step further. I'm sure now that AntiGarvity have taken over, that they are keeping this in mind. To extend the life of the BoXer we will have to see things like AGP, perhaps a variety of expansion Processor cards. Not only PPC, but why not Intel, AMD, Strongarm etc. Software support? That's TAO for you then!

BUT WHY! Simple. Just take a look at the spec's of the upcoming POP boards, and i'm sure the next gen machine will come with some amazing spec's if the Developers box is anything to go by. So for the BoXer to compete it will have to have some of these features - and more! The BoXer in my view has more potential and a good future - and I for one bet AntiGravity have this in mind. 
Simply take a look a look at the St.Louis Show, in particular the report by RMAU. 

"The Boxer is a unit which uses a proprietary graphics chip of Mick Tinker's design. This chip is capable of emulating all AGA graphics modes, as well as producing some enhanced modes of it's own. Consequently, the Boxer is one solution to the crisis of no longer being able to produce the AGA chipset. Since the Boxer will be capable of PPC acceleration, it should be able to run both the Amiga Classic OS and the new Amiga OS. 
McEwen also pointed out, however, that the Boxer is just the first project with Anti Gravity Products that Amiga is interested in. The relationship with Anti Gravity is a long term relationship. It is anticipated that Anti Gravity Product will be producing machines capable of running the new Amiga OS for some time to come. So, Anti Gravity will be at least one manufacturer that the Amiga enthusiast can turn to for a purely Amiga box. Dan from Anti Gravity then gave a very short speech describing the status of the Boxer project, which appears to be entering final test. "