On July 22nd, 1999 QNX Software Systems and phase 5 digital
products announced a strategic alliance that would have become an
alternative to the official Amiga solution of the time (MMC, Linux,
et-al). The agreement between the two companies was a result of the
abandoned alliance between QSSL and Amiga a few months earlier.
QSSL were no longer the official Amiga partner, but they still
recognised that the Amiga would form an ideal starting point for
their big push into the desktop market. Anxious to gain market
share, QSSL investigated a partnership with other Amiga developers,
finding phase 5 more than willing to become their hardware partner
in an attack on the Amiga community. Dan Dodge, CTO at QNX Software
Systems commented in the press announcement,
"Amiga developers will benefit in at least two
ways. First, they can use their existing Amiga computers to develop
next-generation multimedia applications based on the QNX Neutrino
OS. QNX application development will be completely self-hosted; no
PCs required. Second, they can run their legacy Amiga applications
and new QNX applications simultaneously, thanks to a powerful 68k
emulator from phase 5, which will provide Amiga OS 3.x
support."
As part of the deal, Phase 5 would produce a protoype of the new
Blizzard and Cyberstorn G4 boards that were in development
(due for release during the fourth quarter of 1999). These would be
sent to QSSL, who would use it to port their Neutrino OS. Finally
the QNX OS would be released free-of-charge as a 'gift' to the
Amiga community. It was indicated that the OS would be executable
on all Phase5 PowerPC accelerators (603, 604, and G4).
It was hoped that the two companies could channel a section of
the Amiga market into their own, namely the AMIRAGE K2 and the
consumer version of QNX. As events turned out, they would be
successful gaining a significant part of the Amiga market when
Gateway-Amiga cancelled the Amiga MCC. As a result of this, the
Phoenix group was set up to devise methods of promoting QNX in the
desktop market.
Unfortunately, the QNX for PowerUP port was never released, with
the untimely demise of Phase 5 at the beginning of 2000.
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