The d'AMIGA Developer
Workstation
Developer: Amiga Inc.
URL: www.amiga.com
Launched: July 2000
Price on release: UKP £600-700 |
The Amiga Dev Box is the first hardware product to be released
by Amiga in five years. As the name suggests, this is a developer
system to familiarize programmers with the new environment and
provide a stream of software for the consumer release towards the
4th quarter (Winter) 2001.
Contrary to expectation, the Dev Box is based upon an
x86-compatible processor rather than PowerPC. The Amiga market may
have been heading towards PowerPC for the last few years but Amiga
Inc. have made it clear that it would add to the cost of
distribution and alienate a large percentage of the general
computer market. The good news is that there is not a single Intel
or Microsoft label in sight! The emphasis has been placed upon
providing cheap hardware that would retail for under £600. A
low-spec AMD 500MHz K6-2 has been chosen to encourage developers to
write for existing hardware rather than become reliant upon raw
processing power. The beta version of the Amiga SDK will run as a hosted environment in Red
Hat 6.1 and can be launched via the Linux Shell.
Specifications
The current system specifications are:
| Processor |
AMD K6-II 500 mhz |
| Motherboard |
Gigabyte GA-5AX (a change from the earlier Tyan motherboard
with 2x AGP slot) |
| Graphics |
Matrox Dual Head G400 video card (a change from the earlier
NVidia GeForce Prophet 3D announcement) |
| Sound |
Creative SoundBlaster PCI 16 |
| Memory |
128Mb RAM (early announcements limited memory to 64Mb, this has
now changed) |
| Storage |
40x CD-ROM drive, 1.44 floppy, 10Gb hard drive (earlier
indications suggested 13Gb and 20Gb) |
| Networking |
Linksys NC100 v2.0 network card |
| Case Design |
ATX form-factor |
Admittedly these specifications are hardly cutting edge. The
current emphasis is on cheap hardware that will encourage
developers writing slim, efficient code that does not require the
latest hardware to run.
The developer kit can also be bought as a software-only option
through the purchase of the Amiga SDK for
$99. Numerous third-party manufacturers are also offering their own
custom version of the Amiga Dev Box.
Related Links
Detailed press release of the
d'Amiga
d'Amiga Press Release
d'Amiga released in North America
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