It seems that the Amiga name is as robust as the computers that go along with it. Maple Valley, Wash.-based startup Amino Development Corp. has bought the rights to the pioneering but now obscure computer from San Diego-based Gateway Inc. for a rumoured US$5 million.

The startup, which was quick to change its name to Amiga Inc. following the sale, is headed by former Gateway marketing executive Bill McEwen. He left Gateway in August when the company decided not to pursue plans to develop the Amiga platform.

According to an executive update published on Amiga's Web page, the new company has acquired the Amiga trademarks and logos, all existing inventory and licences, all Web sites and registered domain names, the Amiga OS and all that is associated with the OS and the Amiga operation as it exists today.

Not included in the deal are the 47 Amiga patents Gateway acquired from a German bankruptcy court in 1997 for US$13 million. Gateway will maintain ownership of the patents, licensing them to the new company.

Amiga president Tom Schmidt and other Amiga employees will remain at Gateway, working on Internet development projects.

On the heels of the sale, newly formed Amiga Inc. announced a partnership with the Reading, England-based Tao Group, which develops software for home and mobile networks.

"After extensive research trawling of the markets, we found that Tao had the greatest similarities and strengths with our vision, and the capabilities to get the job done," stated McEwen.

As for what that job is, the release says the new Amiga team is "not going to make promises and create presentations and demos. (They) are going to produce products, services, and the rest of the world will know what (Amiga users) have already known" — presumably that Amigas are some of the best multimedia computers out there, despite going eight years without a motherboard or processor update.

At least, that's the opinion voiced by Bruce Richardson, president of Videolink Canada Inc., a Toronto-based company that sells and supports Amigas alongside a more mainstream line of products.

"The reason we still sell them is that on a computer with 16MB of RAM and a 25 MHz (CPU), I can do real-time broadcast video," he says.

Since 1982, when the original Amiga company was founded, that sort of system robustness has generated a fanatical user group that has followed the company through the thick and thin of five different ownership regimes.

"We're very religious about our platform," says Richardson. "We're kind of like Mac users."

The company was initially bought by Commodore International Ltd. which released the last available Amigas (the A4000 and the cheaper A1200) in 1992, before being forced into bankruptcy two years later.

Amiga was then sold to German company Escom AG. That company ran into trouble and the platform changed hands again, this time picked up by Gateway Inc. in a bid to increase its patent holdings.

Richardson would like the new Amiga team to update the eight-year-old Amiga motherboard. But he said with the new Tao Group partnership, the focus will more likely be on information appliances.

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