PIOS 1- TransAM
Developer: PIOS
Announcement: 1997 |
During the dark days of 1996 the Amiga sunk to an all-time low. Escom
had entered liquidation, cancelling any development plans that were underway.
To keep the Amiga spirit alive, a new company was created by the former
employees of Amiga Technologies. Under the name, PIOS systems and led by
Dave Haynie, one of the Amigas engineers during the Commodore era, they
set about creating an Amiga style computer using the latest hardware. Rather
than making the mistake of completely redesigning the entire system from
the ground up, they combined some of the movers in the hardware and software
industry to create a powerful machine with a great deal of software support.
The TransAM was the Amiga-oriented version of the PIOS
One (unlike the
Maxxtrem and Keenya that were aimed at
the Mac market). Its name reflected the machines ideology, it was a TRANSitional
Amiga system that would move the Amiga market onto the PowerPC without
the baggage of legacy hardware.
The company released an initial specification
list during 1997, but this was replaced by an updated
version in February 1998.
Operating System
Rather than creating their own operating system as Phase 5 had promised
with the A\Box, PIOS decided to link into the
momentum of alternative operating systems that were available at the time
(BeOS, MacOS, and Linux). The desire to build upon the remains of the Amiga
market was quite strong, given the companies Amiga background, resulting
in discussions with Viscorp to create an AmigaOS PPC. However, the delay
in Escom's liquidation resulted in the cancellation of this idea and the
adoption of pOS.
TransAM 2001
Since the TransAM specifications were released the computer market has changed considerably. However, the PIOS One design was bought back into the limelight in April 2001 as an example of Amiga Inc's plans for AmigaOS 4 and the AmigaOne. By doing this, Amiga sought to educate Amiga users on the alternative solutions that they can provide and demonstrate the requirements for a contemporary platform. In this respect, the TransAM could be considered to be the spiritual ancestor of the AmigaOne.
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Last Update: 1/11/2001
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