When Escom bought the Amiga in 1995 many Amiga users
expressed a concern that they had just bought it for the Commodore
patents and were uninterested in the Amiga itself. These worries
were laid to rest when Escom announced a range of systems based
upon the Commodore and Amiga technology. Here are some of the
projects that were announced between 1995 and 1996.
Amiga 600- One of the first systems to be
announced was the return of the A600. This would have been aimed at
the extreme low-end of the market. They quickly realised that it
would cost a great deal to restart production and divide the
market.
Amiga 1200- Amiga Technologies first priority
was to bring the existing Amiga technology to the market. This led
to the release of the A1200. Apart from using a different brand of
floppy disk (it is actually a PC high density unit that has been
tailored to work with the Amiga) and a new logo on the case, there
is little difference from the original A1200.
Amiga 4000T- Only 1000 A4000T were made before
Commodore went into liquidation, making this the first new
Amiga.
Amiga CD32- Amiga Technologies were adamant
that the CD32 would eventually make a comeback, stating their
intention to use it as the basis for a low cost platform. This
would have been sold directly, as well as licensed to cable and
on-line entertainment and information companies to use as TV
set-top boxes. General Manager, Petro Tyschtschenko suggested the
original model would be back on the shelves by Christmas 1995.
Manfred Schmitt was less optimistic, indicating that increased
competition from the recently launch Sony Playstation would require
the CD32 to be redesigned and uprate the system specs in order to
make it more appealing to the console market. Target dates for the
updated CD32 placed its release sometime towards the end of
1996.
Commodore 64- Under license from Escom, Tianjin
Family-Used Multimedia Co. Ltd were planning to revive the
Commodore 64 for sale in East Europe.
Power Amiga- The launch of the PowerMAC led
many Amiga devotees to demand the Amiga take a similar path. When
Amiga Technologies were set up they took time to evaluate the
previous decisions that had been made by Commodore regarding the
RISC-based Amiga. Rather than use the HP-RISC that Commodore had
chosen, Amiga Technologies announced the PowerPC to be more viable
at the time. The only real information on the system comes from a
press release issued towards the end of 1995. Like the Amiga MCC
system, the Power Amiga would be jointly developed between a dozen
companies in close partnership with Amiga Technologies GmbH. The
development of the RISC-based AmigaOS was planned to be created
internally at Amiga Technologies, with a number of Commodore
engineers, most notably Dave Haynie being hired. The Power Amiga
was due for release during the first quarter of 1997.
Read the Press release
Encapsulated Amiga Environments- A precursor to
the InsideOut card. The EAE would have been a hardware-based
emulator for the Intel PC and Mac platforms.
Omnibox- Talks were held between Omnibox (a
Connecticut-based company) and Amiga Technologies. They were
mentioned in the same paragraph as Viscorp leading to the belief
that they may also have been producing an Amiga set-top box.
Portable AmigaDOS- Plans were made for porting
the AmigaOS to a range of "non-Amiga platforms". Compatibility may
have relied on the EAE card. Only the PowerPC port made it past the
conceptual stage, although it is possible that AmigaOS ports to
other hardware architectures would have been on the cards for
development after the PPC AmigaOS was released.
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