AMIGA 'Walker'

Why 'Walker'?

Hm. Tough one. Elder brother to the 'Surfer'? Small step for AMIGA, giant leap for AMIGAkind? The name is not fixed yet, we plan to do a competition to name the machine together with leading AMIGA magazines.

Why such a design for the 'Walker' (33 KB) ?

It's a "like-it-or-not"-design which hopefully many people will proudly put on top of their desktops instead of hiding it away, for the strong dislikers the motherboard may be sold separately. Anyway, the design is not boring!

What does the 'Walker' sport internally ?

  • CPU MC68(EC?)030, clocked at 40 Megahertz in asynchronous design
  • FPU socket
  • realtime clock onboard
  • 2 SIMM sockets for RAM expansion up to 96 MB
  • 1 (or maybe 2) MB Chip RAM and 4 MB Fast RAM planned for shipping
  • new, powerful expansion slot allowing CPU / Zorro / PCI / Video slots
  • flexibility and modularity as major design goals
  • standard "LPX" PC board size and drillings
  • external keyboard, mouse/joystick and keyboard jacks at the front
  • SuperIO chip included featuring (in addition to the old interfaces):
  • enhanced parallel port (EPP), bidirectional, 24-bit support for printer.device possible due to speedier operation
  • faster serial port with FIFO buffer
  • MIDI (not specified yet for Out, In or Through)
  • EIDE interface for hard- and CD-ROM-drives
  • floppy interface for PC HD floppies

    • What is the trick with the 'Walker' case?

    In the base version, it consists of a bottom and a top part. The bottom part takes the mainboard and diverse connectors. The top part contains the drives, mainly the CD-ROM. In between, you can put a middle part. A daughterboard plugs into the expansion connector of the mainboard and carries standard CPU and/or Zorro and/or Video and/or PCI slots or whatever else might be created. Many different types of daughterboards can be envisioned, for example only with PCI slots or with one CPU slot and two combined Zorro/Video slots. Depending on the daughterboard, the middle part can be of varying heights, all the way up to a full tower.

    When is the 'Walker' scheduled to arrive on the market?

    We're planning to ship at the end of summer, hopefully around or shortly after the 'CeBIT Home' trade fair.

    What will the 'Walker' cost?

    Due to the somewhat 'speculative' ;-) PC market for components, the price of the 'Walker' cannot be fixed yet, because it largely depends on PC mass market components like CD-ROMs, floppy drives, SIMMs, etc., whose prices are subject to change due to tidal, financial, social, rural or whatever events.

    What does the AMIGA community and the press (JPEG, 141 KB) think about the 'Walker'?

    From PowerPC News, Mar 20th 1996: Vol. 3, No.47, Article 1501:

    ESCOM, SHOWING NEW AMIGAWALKER, TO DO POWERPC AMIGA A YEAR FROM NOW.
    (March 20th 1996) Escom AG's hot offering for Hannover was a modular stackable machine called the AmigaWalker, which sports a shiny silver design "like a spaceship." Costing about $1,000, it uses a 40MHz 68030 with 5Mb and CD-ROM drive as standard, and will be available in the summer. The PowerPC-based Amiga will not be out until Hannover CeBit next year, but the company is definitely going ahead with the Amiga-derived television set-top box and says it does have orders for such a device, although it won't name customers.
    (c) PowerPC News - free by mailing add@aptdata.co.uk

    · New AMIGA Prototype: The 'Walker' Page
    · New AMIGA Prototype: Project 'Walker'
    · New AMIGA Prototype: The 'Walker' Project
    · New AMIGA Prototype: Frequently Asked Questions about 'Walker'

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    Send comments to <webmaster@amiga.de> - Date: 11.04.96