March 1997


A\Box: an Amiga-compatible super computer with awsome specifications. CU Amiga investigates this exciting new phenomena to find out what it will mean for your future.

How would you like one of these sitting on your desk? It's not an Amiga, it's not a Mac, it's not a PC. It's far ahead of all those machines: it's our impression of what Phase 5's stunning A\Box will look like when it rolls off the production line later this year. What you can't see from this picture is the absolutely awsome technical specification it boasts. Take a look at the Tech Specs panel for a run down of the best bits, but in short it's a beast of computer that sets out to deliver high end professional power to the masses. Realtime video editing, mind-blowing audio facilities, picture in picture displays and a lightning fast internal CPU and internal structure are all on the menu. And the price for all this and more? Phase 5 expect to give us all that for the amazingly low price of £1,300.

A\Box isn't a cheap do-it-all home computer to sit by the TV and run a few games and the occasional paint program. It has the potential to become a complete audio-visual workstation for the price of a low end PC. It's planned to run the Amiga's operating system, which should ensure compatibility with Amiga software. Perhaps best of all, it's been designed completely from the ground up, so unlike current PCs, its software won't waste valuable resources trying to get around limitations set by ancient hardware designs.

With a design like that, if it gets the software support and interest from third party hardware developers it could revolutionise a string of computer-based industries, working its way into TV and computer graphics production companies, music studios, professional video systems, DTP bureaus ... the list is endless. So far that's all speculation though. Whether or not it can fulfill its potential relys to a large degree on the actions of its creators, Phase 5. So where has this machine come from, and just what is the philosophy behind it all?

To those in the know, while the Phase 5 announcement of the A\BOX specification was stunning but it wasn't unsurprising. The German based Oberursel firm (near Frankfurt) has plodded on with developing high-powered expansion systems all through both of the two Amiga buy-out dramas.

A relatively recent newcomer to the Amiga market, they started out making the first Zorro III SCSI card, the Z3 Fastlane. However they moved swiftly on to producing the first 68030 card for the A1200 with DMA-SCSI capability. They were also first to provide 68060 accelerators for the Amiga. Their Blizzard range of accelerators also didn't stop at 30 and moved on up to the incredible 68060 with the Blizzard 1260. They also created the Amiga's first 64 bit graphics board with the CyberVision.

Statistically, Phase 5 shipped Amiga hardware products to the value of 5.5 million pounds in 1995 and since Christmas 1995 30,000 hardware products had been delivered. Their meteoric rise from a minor developer to a major player in the Amiga market lies firmly at the hands of the two owner/directors Gerald Carda and Wolf Dietrich racking up over 20 'product of the year' style awards from International Amiga journals. They've clinched their fair share of Superstar ratings in CU Amiga Magazine also. More recently and behind the scenes, Phase 5 have been working on a plan to move to the Amiga from the 680x0 CPU to the powerful RISC Power PC just like the Apple Macintosh has done. In fact Phase 5 are also Macintosh developers which explains some of their experience with this type of technology. At one stage, Phase 5 had an arrangement with Amiga Technologies to provide a drop-in Power PC upgrade for the ill-fated 'Walker'. Though Amiga Technologies wound down with the financial failure of Escom, Phase 5 continued to work on the Power PC. Recently Phase 5 started shipping the so-called 'Power Up' upgrades to Amiga developers. Initially an upgrade to Cyberstorm 68040/060 accelerators, even the later low-end A1200 units possess both an 680x0 CPU of some kind in addition to the mighty Power PC. This approach allows both professional and amateur Amiga developers to port their software gradually across to Power PC with a minimum of impact.

Phase action


Phase 5's outspoken MD, Wolf Dietrich, has never made any secret of the fact that they were prepared to go it alone with a next generation computer in the spirit of the Amiga, whatever the fate of the official Amiga hardware. They've been beavering away behind the scenes on their secret A\Box project for some time now. Wolf sums up his commitment to the A\Box thus.

The A\BOX project is the realisation of our vision of computing in the next century, which is driven by and dedicated to the vision of the Amiga itself. Oh yes, we do believe computers still can be real cool stuff.Ó

To get a feel for the kind of reception it will recieve, we spoke to a number of prominet players in the current Amiga scene. From our conversations with Amiga enthusiasts and software developers, the hardware specifications have certainly impressed. Almost everyone agrees that if the A\Box is delivered as Phase 5 promise, they would make the move across to the new platform. Understandably there's some reservation concerning vital details such as the degree of Amiga compatibility and third party developer support. Hopefully the machine can avoid the chicken and egg situation that other new platforms are faced with by being able to run the extensive catalogue of Amiga software at improved performance over real Amigas.

DTP designs




Individuals involved in various areas of Amiga computing have expressed great enthusiasm for the hardware power directed at their particular interests. Larry Hickmott from LH Publishing had some particular thoughts about the A\Box and its potential as a desktop publishing system;

The A/Box should revolutionise DTP for Amiga owners. Gone will be the ever so slow AGA 8-bit screens to be replaced by a flexible system where you can choose a display up to 24-bits containing video data in RGB, CMYK, YUV formats. Combine this with the processing power of such a beast, its unified memory system, and anyone involved in DTP or graphics work will at last have a machine to take care of the most demanding tasks providing Amiga software is still available to run on it when the A/Box is released. I can't wait... - Larry Hickmott, LH Publishing.


This strikes a chord at CU Amiga also since like other magazine publishers, we are limited to using Macintosh computers. The Macintosh running the industry standard DTP software, Quark Express, has entrenched the machine into a profitable niche. However the Mac hardware is fairly primitive and the operating system is a less productive non-multitasking affair. The A\Box will have video display hardware and networking capabilities to put even the top of the range Power Mac to shame, and for a better price according to Phase 5. What's more, there'll be an Amiga style operating system to boot, increasing productivity through multitasking and a better user interface. All that's needed then is a port of Quark Express or at least some other DTP package with the same level of power. It remains to be seen if the A\Box will captivate the big developers in the same way that it has Amiga enthusiasts.

Things are already looking good, though, with the Amiga's major remaining developers keenly interested in porting their packages initially to the PowerUp upgrades for standard Amigas and then later to the A\Box. Kermit Woodall of Nova Design Inc., creators of the superb ImageFX image processing software had this to say;

The announced hardware specifications are exciting. Speaking as just another Amiga owner I think the biggest issues will be Amiga compatibility - either true compatibility or design philosophies. We are considering porting ImageFX to the A\Box but it's still too early to know what move Nova Design might make. - Kermit Woodall, Nova Design.

Kermit reflects many of our concerns but finishes on a positive note by going on to say;

We're also quite interested in backing Phase 5's Power Up PPC board. This board addresses current Amigas quite nicely. We look forward to these as well since they can provide a path for present Amigas to achieve PPC speeds without sacrificing backwards compatibility.


Share alike


With the A\Box's basic compatibility with the Amiga and the existing enthusiasts base, shareware authors should find it straightforward to port and create new software on the platform. Understandably the developers we asked voiced concerns over developers tools being made available. In particular Magic User Interface was mentioned. If developer's support material such the MUI graphical user interface library is ported to the A\Box then the same high level of Amiga shareware support is virtually guaranteed. We tracked down the author of MUI, Stefan Stuntz, to ask him about a port to the A\Box.

As far as MUI goes, I do intend to port MUI to every important successor of AmigaOS. - Stefan Stuntz, author of Magic User Interface (MUI)


The question is, will others follow suit? It's assumed that Phase 5's Amiga graphics retarg system, CyberGraphX, will form the basis of the graphics API (Application Programmers Interface). This should ensure compatibility with the Amiga's existing 24-bit capable software with CyberGraphX compatibility. Programmers contracted to Phase 5 have already extended the AmigaOS datatypes capability to 24 bit for example.

The capability of the A\Box to house very fast high-end Power PC CPUs and even multiple CPUs and the incredible graphics specification (and video output), means that Phase 5 could target the graphics workstation market the Amiga once dominated. Silicon Graphics workstations may be seen as being too expensive and with an inferior operating system, not to mention the lack of third party PD tools that Amiga compatibility brings to the task.

Even if Phase 5's Amiga compatible OS fails to gain support in this niche, Wolf Dietrich told us that they were working on organising the drivers to allow a major flavour of Unix (probably Linux) to run on the A\Box. Again with its superb networking capability and built-in 'Firewire' high speed communications, it could at least find a foothold as everything from the basis of a professional 'render farm' to a stand-alone graphics workstation to an Internet server. Phase 5 appear to be hedging their bets wisely in this regard.

This is the kind of machine which I can believe in for the future. Phase 5 may not be the fastest in bringing a product to the market, but they always did what they announced. - Michael Hohmann, Ex Developer Support Manager for Amiga Technologies
Funny thing about the A-Box is that for years I used to 'design' dream machines like it in my mind. It is truly a dream machine... - Carl Sassenrath - Creator of Amiga 'Exec', Ex Software head of VIScorp (see news)


Techical Specications of the A\BOX: