Rebirth of the Amiga?

Amiga International, the arm of Gateway 2000 that now controls the Amigatechnologies originally developed by Commodore, announced today that it hasa licensing agreement with Phase 5 to develop a new PowerPC-based computerrunning the Amiga OS 3.1.

"We are glad to see that with phase 5 digital products another important developer and manufacturer in the AMIGA market shows his commitment towardsthe Amiga OS 3.1", said Petro Tyschtschenko of AMIGA International, Inc. "As Phase 5 has led the development of PowerPC products for the Amiga, thisis an important agreement which will give a momentum to the future development of Amiga and Amiga-compatible systems, an expectation which isalso supported by the cooperation of the different licensees of our Amigatechnology."

That's right, folks: the Amiga is back, whatever that means. The Amiga waspopular in the late 1980's because of its great support for standard videoformats. Recently, however, PCs and Macintoshes have surpassed the Amigain this area. Also, Commodore declared bankruptcy years ago, sending theAmiga technologies into a tailspin until they were picked up by Gateway2000 last year.

The new Amiga machines will support up to four 200-300 MHz processors. Afour processor 200 MHz system will run only $2000, while the 300 MHzconfiguration will cost about $3500. Both are expected sometime late thisyear.

The announcement comes during Amiga 98, an Amiga tradeshow in St. Louis