For some strange reason, Hyperion Entertainment seems only willing to support rare, expensive and hard-to-find hardware for AmigaOS4.x.
There is a list of supported Hardware on their website.
Basically, there are two companies currently making hardware they support: Acube (with their line of SAM motherboards), bringing up the low-end and A-Eon for the highend. A-Eon’s X1000 will set someone back over $3000 USD, and even the least expensive SAM Motherboard, when RAM, OS software and other things are added, will be over $500 USD at the VERY least. (Fully built SAM systems can be had for about $800 USD and up)
The remainder of the supported hardware come down to Eyetech’s original AmigaOne SE/XE and Micro-A1C motherboards, the bPlan Pegasos II motherboard and Phase5/DCE accelerators for the A1200 and ZorroIII Commodore/Escom machines.
I was about to give up on ever being able to run Amiga OS4.x when I stumbled across an Eyetech AmigaOne XE (the G3 800Mhz model) on eBay in 2013. With great enthusiasm, I bid and won the motherboard:
It came with 1GB of RAM, the original AmigaOS4.0 developer install CD and lots of paperwork. It was missing some hardware modifications that others had gotten, known as the UDMA and USB fixes. I read on intuitionbase.com, that plug-in cards for IDE/SATA and USB connections could be used in place of these.
I put the motherboard into a PC case recently vacated, to use with the ATX power supply (650W). I had also picked up some other expansions, but besides the Creative Soundblaster 128, I didn’t really need them for the initial install.
The CD wouldn’t boot correctly into a GUI environment, so my first job was to register the CD key on the Hyperion Website. This gave me access to downloads and updates for OS4.0. I ended up downloading an ISO file for Amiga OS4.0Final. This CD finally got me into the main install UI:
Unfortunately, after the install and removing the CD, a reboots only went into black screens afterwards. I didn’t want to have to use the CD to boot (like some A1000 floppy-only rebooting throwback), so I had to find another solution.
That came later …
(to be continued)
Mambo's Amiga Blog 