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Oh, I think it's obvious that he's passionate about his Amigaone endeavor. But you said you doubted the endeavor could go bankrupt, and you said that he won't mind loosing the money spent, and Jim can't see a reason to why the X5000 and Tabor could fail. I'm not particularly convinced any of you are right about what you say.

There has been a long delay between decisions and released OS4 supported products. The X1000 was an example of that. The X5000 project has had at least a 2.5 year lead time, but I believe the ideas about it could have spawned further back when the X1000 entered the market already, and the Tabor as well. Back when it was clear the PA6T based machines was a dead end, but they could sell enough of them to make money. One "big box" and one cheaper entry model.

But years has passed. And as I said above, I think it's very possible that any assumptions about potential sales of new machines made back then based on X1000 sales could be completely erroneous today. Much has happened (or when it comes to OS4 - nothing at all). It could be that the market for mediocre, extremely expensive PPC HW for OS4 could be both saturated and vaporized today. I think this is kind of plausible actually.

AeonKit is obviuosly sitting on a big pile of pre-paid, produced motherboards. The X5000 is like the X1000 all over again, no significant improvements, the same 2005 level HW just slightly less insanely priced, and the Tabor has a severe design screw-up that definitely will impact both its performance and its marketability. If big piles of these motherboards remains unsold, or sold at a significant loss just to realize some of the money invested in it, then I think AeonKit would have to be *very* passionate about their "hobby" to start all over again and design yet another set of PPC motherboards. If not, it means the end of line for OS4 HW.

But to me it looks pretty much like OS4 has reached its own end of line on its own already. When Ben Hermans peddling of €30 digital download copies for Emulators dries up, then what? Well, I guess we'll have the answers to all these questions in just a year or two...