>>> I've met Ali Dixon from XMOS too - he was happy to refer to the
>>> X1000 as "vapourware". :)

>> I remember you've told about that incident already elsewhere in
>> December 2011 :-) And as events have turned out some weeks later,
>> he was wrong.

> At $3000+, [...] a few... ehrm, "brave" ones [...] would [...] buy
> something like it today [...].

Exactly that's what happened.

> it's not up for sale.

True, it's not up for sale *right now*, but it was up for sale in the past and there is sufficient proof that it has been purchased by people back then. The term "vapourware" does not mean something is not up for sale right now, but does mean that something has never been up for sale (and probably will never be).

> There has been 2 (or three?) small batches produced

To date it's been just one single batch ("First Contact") sold to regular customers:

http://www.a-eon.com/news/25-01-2012.html

> probably pre-payment as well

Yes, this is a known and admitted fact:

"Will the money be taken stright away or only at shipping? - AmigaKit will take a deposit, final payment will be required before delivery."
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=34475&forum=33&start=20#634850

> It relies entirely on a CPU that never reached a commercial phase

AFAIK, the PA6T-1682M went from sample to production level somewhen between late 2007 and early 2008. Whether the PA6T chips in possession of A-Eon are sample or production level chips I don't know. If my timeline of events resembles the truth it should be production level ones.

> so is the potential production volumes of the motherboard in question

True, the number of Nemo boards that can be produced for the X1000 is limited by the number of PA6T chips they have in possession. I don't know what that number is and so don't you. Of course we can speculate about that number, but that won't affect my opinion about the X1000's (non-)vapourware status.

> even if it would have customers, which it hasn't [...].
> and wouldn't have had even if it were, since they are asking
> more than $3,000

Some sentences before you stated that is has "a few... ehrm, "brave"" customers paying that price. So which one is it?

> since it's not out for sale

It was out for sale, and the people who purchased it are existing customers, according to my definition of that term at least. Even if there was no further batch to ever be sold to new customers, this wouldn't make the already existing customers non-existent. There's even someone attempting to put up a (non-exclusive) list of existing X1000 customers:

http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbmessage.pl/amiga/217870.shtml

> this piece of 2005 specced HW.

I think it's more like 2007-specced hardware. The graphics card it comes with was released in 2008 btw.

> for anyone developing real products, for real markets (like XMOS
> does), this is just as much a *none-product* as vapor is

I don't share your definition of the term "vapourware", and thus I still think Ali Dixon was proved wrong. The difference between him and you is that he made his "vapourware" statement prior to the X1000 being put up for sale to regular customers whereas you keep on making it even now.