September 19, 2011Old School Game Blog

ACube Systems: The AmigaOne 500 Revealed

The AmigaOne 500 Logo (http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=7)In my previous post on this blog,  I wrote about the top-secret announcement from ACube Systems. Today it’s the 19th of September and the secret has been revealed!

Please read on for the official press release:

Mon, 19 Sep 2011

FILE N. 1: A new AmigaOne for all Amiga users

Bassano del Grappa (Italy) – 19 September 2011.

ACube Systems is honoured to present the first AmigaOne since 2005: the AmigaOne 500.

This is a complete system like the Amiga 500 was, a computer you can use right out of the box.

The AmigaOne 500 brings modern features to AmigaOS: DDR2 memory, USB2, PCI Express, SATA2, Gigabit ethernet…

The AmigaOne 500, based on our Sam460 board has the following features:

  • CPU at 1.15 GHz
  • 2 GB DDR2 RAM
  • 500 GB HD
  • DVD RW
  • PCI SATA 3512 controller
  • AmigaOne Mouse
  • Stickers for keyboard customization

Availability: 26th september

For more info www.acube-systems.biz/

As you can see from the press release, the secret was the AmigaOne 500 machine. This computer is based on the SAM460 motherboard and it comes in this case:

The AmigaOne 500
The AmigaOne 500 fra ACube Systems (http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=7)

Seems like Mr. Holwerda from Amigaworld.net was spot-on with his guess. He wrote the following: “This doesn’t seem like much of a mystery to me. With the X1000 around the corner, it only makes sense to introduce a SAM-powered AmigaOne named X500 – and who better to build and assemble it than ACube.”

Congratulations on nailing it, Mr. Holwerda! Well done. 🙂

It’s worth mentioning that both Coder from The Bucket Diary and yours truly were hoping for a low-cost, entry-level alternative to the currently available AmigaOS 4 compatible hardware and the upcoming AmigaOne X1000. We must therefore ask the question of how much this new AmigaOne 500 will cost? According to ACube Systems, the computer will set you back 878 EUR or 1062 EUR including VAT. Although it is cheaper than the AmigaOne X1000, we’re talking about a lot of money here. I had hoped for some hardware that would be cheaper than this, which in turn could bring more users to the AmigaOS platform. Still, I must say that it is a cool product featuring the best AmigaOS 4 compatible motherboard available on the market today.

Another aspect of this announcement is that there’s now an official line-up of AmigaOne computers coming from A-EON Technology and ACube Systems. Maybe there’ll be more hardware of various forms in this series in the near future? If you read the press release carefully, you’ll see that the headline starts with “File N. 1”..

The AmigaOne 500 splash from ACube Systems (http://www.acube-systems.biz/)
FILE N. 1

So, what do you think? What are your thoughts on today’s announcement from ACube Systems? Are you planning to buy the new AmigaOne 500?

14 comments

  1. Please be kind, I’m still learning about Amigas 🙂

    So, would one purchase an AmigaOne 500 in order to use it as a replacement desktop for everyday use, but instead of using Windows or Linux on a PC, or OSX on a Mac, you use AmigaOS4 on an AmigaOne 500?

    When I first read the press release I thought – wow, that’s expensive to use as a way to play old Amiga games – but then I realised that Amiga’s were also legitimate business machines for doing day-to-day tasks and multimedia gear.

    I’ve only used my Amiga 500 to play games, so that probably colours my thoughts on the platform!!

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    • Hi mate!

      The AmigaOne 500 is a modern computer that is compatible with AmigaOS 4. It is an alternative to the mainstream operating systems out there. You’ve also got the upcoming AmigaOne X1000 which is much more powerful. There are also standalone AmigaOS 4 compatible motherboards for sale (Samantha-series). All boards are equipped with a PPC CPU.

      The OS is very responsive, take up little space on your hard drive and can multitask very effeciently. You can do everything from browsing the Internet, listen to radio through streaming, watch videos, listen to MP3’s, play games and do productive stuff. Even though it works well, the OS doesn’t have support for everything yet. You can encounter some problems while browsing for example and there’s not a good office suite available (as far as I know). If you want to check it out further, I highly recommend a video from TechGuruUK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1RsvEm7UrU
      This guy shows you some parts of AmigaOS 4.. 😉 Enjoy!

      The machine is horribly expensive if one only wants to play the old Amiga games, watch demos or fiddle around with programs like AMOS and Deluxe Paint. If one wants this, an Amiga 1200 with a nice turbo-card should do the trick. 🙂 There are also new FPGA-implementations on the way, like the FPGA Arcade (runs the Amiga), Natami and a new version of the Minimig. All great stuff. Well worth checking out! 🙂

      Hope this was of help, mate. 🙂

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  2. It is really good to see new hardware is still coming. Eventually it could lead to cheaper hardware. At least there is hardware. 🙂 I am sure there will be a lot of negative comments again on this new hardware. Just the price is something the comment on if you want to point out something but for the rest I am really happy new hardware is still being made.

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    • It would be great if this will lead to cheaper hardware becoming available, but only time can tell I guess. 🙂 As you wrote, it’s great that hardware is available for purchase. I remember the time between the release of the AmigaOne systems and the SAM when nothing was being produced.

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  3. I am happy to see that ACube introduces a complete computer system to the market. This is hopefully only the beginning of a positive trend. Now AmigaOS 4 users can’t complain about the lack of available hardware anymore. The biggest problem with the new generation Amigas and AmigaOS 4 is that almost noone seems to make good and clean software for it. Let’s hope this will change in the near future. The Amiga community needs fresh developers who are willing to make software from scratch and not only porting stuff from other platforms. Only this way the power of the new generation Amiga systems can be shown to the world. Someone needs to create something unique that’s not available to other platforms! Create powerful and fast software! This used to be the strength of the Amiga. A port of Open Office or Firefox won’t impress anyone, at least not me. 😉

    I also think the name AmigaOne 500 is a bit misleading, especially when they’ve decided to use a rather standarized desktop case. In my opinion they should have chosen to use a design more related to the original A500. The Fantasy case would have been a good choice, for example:

    I’m sure they could get a lot more attention around the AmigaOne 500 if it was shipped in a case like that. I don’t think it would cost a fortune to produce it either. Both the cases and keyboards could be produced by a Chinese company. ACube should also communicate better with the Amiga community. Why didn’t they just create a poll on their WEB site asking people about what they would have prefered? For instance: “What type of cabinet would you like to see the AmigaOne 500 be delivered with? 1. Standard ATX type… 2. A500 type… 3. Other (describe)…

    Anyway, I wish all the best of luck to ACube. May you sell a lot of AmigaOne 500 systems so we can se an increase of Amiga users and developers!

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  4. Of course you have more software when using SDL to port but I just would love to see some more original software. Take advantage of what OS4 has to offer.

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