Even in the days of Commodore, new Amigas were occasional, but now with Amiga International's licencing, we are seeing all sorts of Amigas released. This section might as well be a regular feature!
When I first read about this licence, I thought 'Oh, another company making A4000s with '040s and 6MB RAM for over £2000...' A look at their website reveals what must surely be the most powerful Amigas to have walked the planet.
Their A4000s are all equipped with Cyberstorm PowerPC boards, providing '060s and 604s, together with the Cybervision PPC graphics card. Loadsa RAM, huge ultra wide SCSI hard drives, fast CD ROMs, and some come with a Video Toaster and Flyer!
Specifications...
There are three ranges of machines; the Alpha series, the Bravo series and the Nitro series, and there are three models in each of the Alpha and Bravo ranges, and two in the Nitro (the Nitro, and the NirtoPro). Prices range from $2899 for a 'basic' 150MHz 604e, 48MB RAM, 4MB VRAM and 2.1GB HD model, up to around $7500+ for the Nitro models with Video Toasters and Flyers. UK prices have not been announce. Even so, rough conversions into UKP suggests excellent value for money, far better than previously available A4000s, and only slightly more expensive than equivalent PCs - impressive when you consider that these machines are just A4000s with bits bolted onto them, as opposed to completely new machines, not to mention having to be supplied with that additional 68060, which costs about £300 in itself.
Nova have also announced the Nova Supreme, to be released shortly (more powerful than the NitroPro...) They are also working on a Notebook Amiga, which will feature PowerPC, AmigaOS 3.5, and emulation for 680x0 Amiga binaries.
The machines are bundled with various bits of Amiga software (including the Magic Pack), as well as a 3D raytracer program, either Aladdin or Lightwave. This is a curious point actually - presumably, the raytracer would be a PPC port (a 604 rendering machine would be a bit pointless if it used the '060 only...) but I have not yet heard of news of a port of Lightwave, or even if Newtek are intending to. Maybe Nova know differently...
It is pleasing to see that Nova's website is very pro-Amiga, unlike Newtek's (see another article I have written...) They have sections saying why their Amiga based models are much better than PowerMacs and PCs.
It is great to see such high end machines being made available. Of course, these are no good for the average home user, but the Amiga has always had a niche in high end 3D and video work. Such niches have been hard to keep with the Amiga being restricted to the 680x0 processors, but these machines put the Amiga back at the top! Some people may say how these machines are no good when most Amiga software is in 680x0 code, and multitasking is not possible between 680x0 and PPC. I don't think it is too much of a problem, as hopefully PPC software will become more and more available. Certainly, one of the main uses of these machines would be as 3D renderers, and many Amiga raytracers are either available for PPC, or will soon be. The fall back '060 or more than enough to cope with the AmigaOS!
If you look at the range of Macs available, as well as the lower end Macs, you have lots of high end Macs in the £2000-£5000 range. If these just weren't available, the Mac would have lost out a lot on its high end markets such as in desktop publishing. In fact, you would have a situation where Macs would be better value than Amigas for traditionally Amiga dominated areas such as 3D, simply because there were no high end Amigas available. Thankfully, that is no longer the case.
These machines from DCE and Power Computing are based on the first of three completely new motherboards for the Amiga. These truely are new Amigas, not merely A1200T or A4000T clones. Details are few at the moment, but this is what is know.
Specifications...
The scandoubler is most welcome, as it means any VGA monitor can be used, and all Amiga modes, including the 15kHz 'TV' ones, can be displayed. There may also be an A7000, which will feature a PowerPC processor.
This is a new motherboard produced by Index Information and Blittersoft. At present, no models have been announced, but hopefully we will see lots appearing soon.
Specifications...
There is a slot for expansions, and they are planning a 'very cheap' PowerPC card. The '040/'060 on board will be useable as the dual processor, and there is no need for SIMM sockets, so the card will feature little more than the PPC chip itself. We should expect something significantly cheaper than existing PPC cards.
If you thought that was good, Index Information have now announced that the board will be able to accept some version of the Cyber/BlizzardVision PPC graphics card. This is excellent news; without it, you would be stuck with either AGA, or expensive (and still not particulary great) Zorro cards. Hardly what you would want from a new machine, especially when the A1200 can take the BlizzardVision.
But while this solution may not be as good as working PCI slots, it is still excellent news; and you still have the Zorro slots for further expansion such as sound cards. The AGA chipset is better off too, with Chip RAM access up to 30% faster.
Prices have yet to be announced, but at the very least, they should offer us better value than an existing equivalent A1200T system.
I'm beginning to like the BoXeR more and more. If you wanted to buy a new high end Amiga, you would do well to buy one of these fitted with PPC and the CyberVision PPC cards. While we will hopefully see even better Amigas in the near future, I would not expect the BoXeR to become suddenly outdated, now that AI have made PPC/680x0 dual processing the Amiga's official future. Unlike, say, an upgraded A1200T (or an A4000T, come to that), this is a new machine, and more than capable of competing with the latest PCs and PowerMacs.
Want a Walker anyone? The BoXeR is what the 'new Amiga' should be, and we will hopefully see even better systems following.
Micronik's Infinitiv A1200T clones have already been shipped with PCI slots, but these have only been there for those intending to fit a PC motherboard into the same case. Getting them to be used by the Amiga was impossible... until now.
They have a version of their 1500 model, which was on show at Computer '97, happily displaying the Amiga graphics on a standard PCI graphics card!
The expected price is £700. This does seem rather expensive, assuming they mean for a base machine with '020, 2MB RAM and no hard disk (as all their other models are sold as). But it must be remembered that the base 1500 costs £600, which includes SCSI2, Zorro 3 slots and an A4000 CPU slot. Surely, if you can use PCI slots, you would not need Zorro slots at all, let alone Zorro 3.
If they produced a version of the 1400 that could use PCI cards, then that would be cheaper, and still have Zorro 2 slots. If they produced a new model, that had working PCI slots, as well as ISA slots, but no Zorro slots, it would be even cheaper.
The A\BOX looks more and more distant (last I heard, the release date had slipped to end of '98), and worse, with phase 5 talking about a new OS, one wonders whether it will be an Amiga in any way, after all.
Mark