A New Amiga Appears And Promptly Sells Out; More on The Way
- Apollo’s A6000 revives the Amiga A600 with a Vampire FPGA core, Apollo OS, USB, HD video, and Atari/Mac compatibility.
- 40 units sold out in a day; new batch arrives Oct. 13 for around $999 in five colors.
- Features include 2GB RAM, dual SD slots, RTG graphics, and legacy ports.
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Modern Retro: Shots Fired
The A6000, based on the A600, is a new Amiga from Apollo and promised as the most powerful Amiga yet. To live up to this claim, it uses an Apollo Vampire FPGA-based core to replicate rather than emulate the original hardware. A First Edition of 40 A6000s were recently released, and sold out within a day. Another batch is scheduled for release in October.
Apollo has made a name for itself for its range of Vampire CPUs, with the A6000 using the latest version. The company has also packed the A6000 with other mod cons, including multiple USB pots and HD video out. It also uses the Apollo OS, which is based on AROS and runs the original Amiga OS (version 3 and up) but with the capability to handle things like ethernet. The A6000 is even compatible with Atari and Mac operating systems.
“Back in the day, we all had the C64 but really wanted an Amiga,” Apollo member Manual Jesus posted under a promotional video. “By 1994 C= (Commodore) went belly up just around the time they were expected to unveil the next big thing. Apollo Team jacked the timeline and hacked the future to bring you the A6000 to pick up where the big C left off in 1994.”
Amiga, But Not in Name
Amiga as a brand has a storied history, with multiple companies now laying claim to it. As such, the A6000 can replicate certain aspects of the Amiga, but not the name. This hasn’t stopped the company from liberally name-dropping the brand on the official A6000 site, nor from aping the recent “alternate timeline” mission statement by Peri Fractic, who now owns and runs Commodore.
The A6000 echoes the look of the A600, which was released in 1992, but fills it with innovative tech that allows a degree of flexibility missing from the original Amiga. For starters, it features 2GB of RAM, and dual SD card slots for expanded storage. It also comes with an Apollo 68080 CPU (aka Vampire 4), RTG (retargetable graphics – effectively an Amiga video card) and full SAGA chipset support (which can also enhance graphics) are also included.
In terms of games, the A6000 can run software from a SD card; although there are also two USB ports for connecting other devices (such as an external floppy disk drive). Gamers who like to use older peripherals can also make use of two DB9 Amiga mouse/joyports, plus two USB-1 ports (mouse/Joypad with CD32 emulation).
Modern Retro Classics
The A6000 joins the ranks of other recent retro updates, including the Commodore Ultimate and Spectrum Next, as a modern interpretation of a classic computer. Although the A6000 is a long way behind these in terms of units sold, there is a demand for it, with a new run being made available via the official site on Oct. 13.
These won’t be pre-orders, either; if a unit is ordered, it will be delivered reasonably quickly. There will also be five color schemes to choose from, ranging from a classic black to a suitably retro orange. However, they’re likely to sell for $999, which does put them substantially higher in cost than the above modern retro computers.
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