www.theoldcomputer.com

PIOS 1- TransAM



Developer: PIOS
Announcement: 1997

During the dark days of 1996 the Amiga sunk to an all-time low. Escom had entered liquidation, cancelling any development plans that were underway. To keep the Amiga spirit alive, a new company was created by the former employees of Amiga Technologies. Under the name, PIOS systems and led by Dave Haynie, one of the Amigas engineers during the Commodore era, they set about creating an Amiga style computer using the latest hardware. Rather than making the mistake of completely redesigning the entire system from the ground up, they combined some of the movers in the hardware and software industry to create a powerful machine with a great deal of software support.

The TransAM was the Amiga-oriented version of the PIOS One (unlike the Maxxtrem and Keenya that were aimed at the Mac market). Its name reflected the machines ideology, it was a TRANSitional Amiga system that would move the Amiga market onto the PowerPC without the baggage of legacy hardware.

The company released an initial specification list during 1997, but this was replaced by an updated version in February 1998.


Early PIOS One Specification List

Soon after the PIOS One's announcement, PIOS provided a brief description of the system hardware.
Motherboard ATX sized motherboard
CPU board slot for a number of CPU's
CPU PPC603e 133MHz or 200MHz with 512k level 2 cache
Graphics Trio S3 PCI graphics card, 2MB VRAM
Sound 16 bit MIDI ports
Internal sound input for CD and AUX
Memory 16MB of DIMM memory
Drives Seagate 2.1Gb E-IDE
8x IDE CD-ROM
HD floppy drive controller
SCSI-2 host adapter CPU board
Slots 5 PCI, 3 ISA
Ports 2 x RS232 high speed serial
2 x RS442 "geoport"
Bidirectional Parallel
PS/2 mouse
Apple desktop bus port (Maxxtrem)
PS/2 keyboard port
2 x gameport (for joysticks etc)
2x USB

TransAM-200

Several news articles indicated that PIOS would also release a 200MHz model. This would be shipped with:
CPU 603p 200 MHz
RAM 16 MB
Graphics PCI 2 Mb SVGA card
L2 Cache 512 KB
Drives EIDE Harddisk, 2.5 GB
12x ATAPI CD-ROM
HD floppy disk
Software pOS
BeOS
Linux
MetroWerks Codewarrior Lite for BeOS
An Office software package
Expected price £978

Hardware
The hardware schematics and feature list were in a constant state of flux. The final feature list, dated February 1998, provides a detailed diagram and additional information on the board:

PIOS One System
Source: The PIOS One System Specification v1.97
Hardware Hardware Notes
CPU PowerPC 603 & 604

G3 & G4 expected to be used at a later date
Support for mult-processing using compatible operating systems.
This would allow the use of two older processors for maximum efficiency.
Flash ROM Up to 1MB of flash ROM
RAM 168-pin unbuffered 64-bit DIMM modules
Sound Aureal AU8820 on the PCI Bus The AU8820 offers multichannel music synthesis based on samples stored in main memory, MIDI, game port, and
digital I/O expansion.

The Aureal chip is an audio processor, which generates sounds using an industry-standard AC97 CODEC.
Interfaces 5 PCI (two 64-bit slots, three 32-bit)
Two ISA slots (absent in Maxxtrem system)
Two port USB
EIDE/ATA-2 controller
SCSI-2
SCC Interface (two ports)
ADB Interface
Digital Audio I/O port (DAI/O)
'Macintosh-compatible' RS-422 Serial
Standard RS-422 The Hydra chip, designed by Apple for the PowerPC Platform, adds support for SCSI-2 host adaptor integration, as well as CHRP compatibility and additional serial interfaces.

The Macintosh-compatible serial connector, based on the RS-422 standard, is a 9-pin mini-DIN socket.

The faster RS-422 ports can be used for some kinds of printers, multichannel MIDI devices, modems, and
cheap networking.

Each of the serial ports has individual read and write DMA channels, to offload the CPU and avoid any latency problems.
Keyboard interface PS/2, USB, or ADB keyboards

Operating System
Rather than creating their own operating system as Phase 5 had promised with the A\Box, PIOS decided to link into the momentum of alternative operating systems that were available at the time (BeOS, MacOS, and Linux). The desire to build upon the remains of the Amiga market was quite strong, given the companies Amiga background, resulting in discussions with Viscorp to create an AmigaOS PPC. However, the delay in Escom's liquidation resulted in the cancellation of this idea and the adoption of pOS.

TransAM 2001
Since the specifications for the TransAM were released during 1996 the computer marketplace has changed quite considerably. However, the PIOS One design was bought back into the limelight in April 2001 for a final time. At this point in time it was used as an example of Amiga Inc's current plans for AmigaOS 4 and the AmigaOne. Amiga sought to educate Amiga users on the alternative solutions that they can provide and demonstrate the requirements for a contemporary platform. The TransAM could be considered to be the spiritual ancestor of the AmigaOne.

Source:

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http://amiga.emugaming.com/pios/transam.html

From PIOS to Met@box
This brief interview with Dave Haynie of Met@Box was found on a mailing list. It remains unchanged apart from alterations to paragraphs and highlighting questions in bold.

> just wondering, what happened to company called Pios, when there is no web site. Is pios now known as metabox?

Basically. At the shareholders' meeting on August 19, the shareholders voted to change the name from PIOS Computer, AG to Met@box Infonet, AG. The primary reason for this was beyond our control -- the trademark lawyer PIOS retained in Germany failed to discover that another company had applied for the PIOS trademark, roughly two week before we filed.

> And why so change after so much long time spent on Pios One development.

Again, it's beyond our control.

> Is Pios One computer project cancelled?

No. However, we are not large enough to do everything at once. Since the beginning of the PIOS One project, we've been, in some way or another, either chasing or being chased by the MacOS. PIOS' main income has been PowerMac "clones" (using Motorola and UMAX motherboard, and first others', then our own CPU modules). This market is, soon enough, coming to a permanent end, as there are roughly 25,000 UMAX motherboards left, they're the last ones in the business of making these, the only with a license, and they are not continuing in the Power Mac market. Because of this, and Apple's former decision not to license, we're caught without a large market product. The PIOS One, with MacOS, could have had a broad enough appeal to very likely follow up and even expand on our MacOS business. Without it, we have BeOS and Liunx -- both fine operating systems, but not necessarily large enough markets, today, to carry us on this single product.

Meanwhile, we negotiated exclusive rights to a unique data-over-television broadcast system, working in conjunction with the German telecom group that funded the original research on this. They approached us about building a low-cost player, ironically very similar in concept to the PowerAmiga machine we had envisioned while working for Amiga Technologies.

This is now the Met@box, and it's the product our investors are the most excited about, thus the number one priority. The machine-formerly-known-as-PIOS-One is not cancelled, but won't get additional work until the Met@box work is done, hopefully early this fall (at least on the hardware side). I have been assured by the highest level management that there's still interest in completing the PIOS One. While this additional and unforseen delay is unfortunate for all the fans of the work we're trying to do with the high-end systems, obviously building a new system to our ruin serves no one.

> Will be Pios/Metabox interested in AmigaOS NG?

Quite. The Met@box currently runs Liunx, but something like AmigaOS NG would probably have been a much better choice, had that been an option. We also looked at using the BeOS here, but Be, Inc. clearly doesn't understand the licensing differences between a $500 set-top computer and a $1500 desktop. We couldn't affored BeOS here, and quite frankly, the networking support in Liunx, more critical than you might think for the way it handles its unique networking tricks, is more mature under Liunx anyway.

Most of us are Amiga fans from long ago, still, and we're certainly interested in the directions that AmigaOS NG will take. Given the flexibility of the PIOS One architecture, it's quite possible that we could support any and all CPU/MMC/etc. magic they're planning for the Amiga NG reference platform. This could give us the first system on the market, if we get the details in time. Obviously, it has to stand as a sound business decision.

And as much as I'm sad to delay the One again, I'm also glad to see the company working to stay alive. After years of stupid management decisions at Commodore, I'm certainly more than prepared to make the right decisions, even if they're not the easiest ones for me personally.

--

Dave Haynie | V.P. Technology, PIOS Computer | http://www.metabox.de

Be Dev #2024 | NB851 Powered! | Amiga 2000, 3000, 4000, PIOS One

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http://amiga.emugaming.com/pios/metapios.html