AmigaOne

From Free net encyclopedia

AmigaOne is a trademark used by U.K. computer vendor Eyetech Group to sell the Teron series of PowerPC mainboards designed by Taiwanese-American integrated circuit producer Mai Logic. The trademark "AmigaOne" is exclusively licensed from Amiga, Inc. to Eyetech for the purpose of reselling various third party hardware to AmigaOS 4 users.

Originally, AmigaOne was the name of a project for new Amiga hardware, managed by Eyetech and designed by the German company Escena GmbH. The AmigaOne motherboard was to be available in two models, the AmigaOne-1200 and the AmigaOne-4000. It was to have connectors for an optionally attached Amiga A1200 or an A4000 respectively, in order to utilise the old custom chips of an Amiga. This AmigaOne project was cancelled in 2001, mostly due to the inability to find or design a suitable northbridge chip.

Once the Escena design was consigned to the scrapheap, Eyetech looked around for an alternative route. The result was that they in 2002 decided to sell the Teron CX PowerPC evaluation motherboard as the AmigaOne SE. Later, the Teron PX was sold as the AmigaOne XE, followed by the Teron Mini being sold as the Micro-A1 (also known as µ-A1).

The main difference between the ATX-format AmigaOne SE and XE was that the AmigaOne SE had a soldered-on 600 MHz G3 PowerPC processor, whereas the AmigaOne XE used a CPU board attached to a MegArray connector on the motherboard. This MegArray connector, whilst physically compatible, is not electrically compatible with those on Apple Computer's Power Mac G4. There were G3 and G4 options with a maximum clock frequency of 800 MHz and 933MHz. The G4 module does not have any level 3 cache. The G4 CPU runs hotter and requires a better heatsink than that supplied on some machines. Consequently, the G4 is often underclocked to run at 800 MHz. The latest Teron model sold by Eyetech was the Teron Mini, or Micro-A1, series of motherboards, which were somewhat similar motherboards as the A1-XE but made in a Mini-ITX formfactor and with some additions, such as onboard graphics. The µ-A1 was offered in two configurations, under the Micro-A1 I (Industrial) and Micro-A1 C (Compact) labels.

From April 2004, these boards were shipped with a "developer prerelease" version of AmigaOS 4, which does not have all the features proposed for the full version.

The AmigaOne hardware is not currently being produced or for sale in any form, and it is unknown if Eyetech will make more available.

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Models and variants

PowerPC based
Model	Timescale	RAM (base)	OS Version	Additional Information
AmigaOne SE	2002 - 2004	Varies	(pre)4.0	ATX format motherboard
AmigaOne XE	2003 - 2004	Varies	(pre)4.0	ATX format motherboard
MicroA1 - C	2004 -	256 Mb	(pre)4.0	Mini-ITX format motherboard
MicroA1 - I	2004 -	256 Mb	(pre)4.0	Mini-ITX format motherboard