This claim will be judged TRUE if by 1 January 1997 an Amiga using any PowerPC chip as its main CPU is available for sale either by mail order or from retail dealers. For purposes of this claim, the Amiga must be made by Escom and must run some form of the AmigaOS; third party PPC accelerator boards or Escom made PPC based computers running other operating systems (except a computer capable of running multiple operating systems including AmigaOS) do not qualify.
Background- From PowerPC News May 23rd 1995
Escom AG, the Heppenheim, Germany-based computer manufacturer and retailer that has bought Commodore's technology and rights will produce a PowerPC-based machine next year. The company is also planning to support other operating systems including Windows NT, OS/2 and Mac OS.
The company will lay out its full technical plans for the Amiga next week, however on the face of it, it looks as if the company will produce a version of the Amiga based on the new PowerPC Hardware Reference Platform, which would let it run the foreign OS's without too much trouble.
The corollary of this is that, going with the HRP hardware platform would let the company license its operating system out to other PowerPC-based manufacturers. An Escom spokesman said the company intended that the licensing policy would be "as open as possible", though could not give details, as we went to press.
The company is focusing its efforts on retaining and growing the Amiga's traditional multimedia base. Production of the Amiga models 4000, 1200 and 600 will be restarted. Even the trusty Commodore 64 will be dragged out of retirement to server the East European market. Before the PowerPC machines appear, the company intends to bolster its top end with a machine based on the Motorola 68060 processor.
The company also intends to push Amiga technology into the set-top box arena and is talking of a PC-add in card that will let PC-users run Amiga applications.
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