Hi Kronos,
I love that crusty the clown icon you use btw,
cracks me up every time.

OK, i think you have the misconception that
Amiga will charge OEM's to sell Amiga capable
boards. That simply isnt true. The licenseing
is free to anyone and all they must do is
ensure the bios is flashed with the Amiga
specific bits n bytes. It is part of the OS
as a whole and won't run without it. This is
also why the OS must be shipped together with
the boards. Because a portion of the OS itself
must be on the bios (even if its just a few k)
the OS will need to have it there or your Amiga
system just wont run and you can't go about
selling bits of the OS without the rest.
That's why you either buy the OS for your
PPC system and have your rom flashed or you
opt for a non-Amiga PPC system and buy a
kit later on to allow AmigaOS to run. Which
i personally think will ship with a CD and
a flashed rom. Just pop in the new bios and
slap in the CD. And it won't interfere with
your linux setup at all. Unless of course
your such a geek that you've gone and
customized your bios as well.

This is also a far cry from the M$ 'tactics'
that some people have thrown out. Amiga
places no other limitations other than if
the OEM plans to distribute any portion of
thier OS that they must ship it as a
complete and intact OS. I think this
is acceptable and if linux were my main
OS i wouldnt have any troubles at all
getting a PPC mobo without the Amiga
specifics in the bios. You can't do this
with much ease in todays wintel market,
even after the lawsuits.

Even then i'd consider picking up the flashed
bios and CD at a later date. $100 dosnt sound
too high to me. Heck it could come out for less
if things ever do get rolling along. Who
can say 100% one way or the other. If your
a linux guru and you just got to have the
linux PPC system then maybe while your
dropping $550 for that mobo you might drop
an extra $50 for the flashed bios and CD just
because AmigaOS is another alternative to the
universally hated standard.
Anyway i will probably be putting linux in
my A1 as well. Which shouldnt be much
trouble. Strike that, i know i'll put linux
in the system. Dual boot is just cool.

Ivan.