Entry Level Amigans (cont'd)
By Sven Harvey

The PowerAmiga 500.

Why that name? Well AmigaOne is a good development name, but not a good marketing one. Having too many numerals confuses, and, say, AmigaOne 500 isn`t as easy to market as PowerAmiga 500.

What should the machine be like? An updated A500! Refer to the image to the right for a look at a sketch of such a machine. Click on the image to open another window containing a full sketch of the ideas presented here.

Realistically we are looking at an Xmas 2004 market at the earliest, so what would the machine need inside of it?

Remember - ease of marketing. PowerPC G4 (or equivalent IBM) running at 500Mhz would be fine - its not state of the art, but it doesn`t have to be, as long as it does the job (the faster the processor the better, but we have a price point to meet!) Add 512MB RAM (as I have a feeling trying to get RAM suitable for a general purpose machine in a smaller amount may be difficult by then), which again adds to the clarity of the marketing - PowerAmiga 500 has a 500Mhz processor and 512MB of RAM compared with the Amiga 500s 512KB!

A decent hard drive would need to be included, but like the RAM, a huge amount won`t be necessary. but what will be available? A 200Gb drive will be by far large enough, but thanks to the ever expanding x86 PC market (and its 64-bit replacements?), I`m guessing that will be the smallest drive available in decent amounts! As for basic abilities, it is going to have to beat the crap out of the PS2, X-Box and Gamecube and hold its own against the PS3, X-Box/2 and Gamecube 2, so EMU10K1 and a Radeon 9000 would be a good idea!

Multiple USB ports will be necessary, a couple of IEE1394 (firewire) ports for home video etc. would be a good idea. A major expansion port, a cross between the trapdoor slot of the A1200 and the expansion port of a CD32 would be a good idea, allowing the unit to be mounted in an expandable tower casing.