The world's getting a new Amiga for Christmas.

Yes, that Amiga – the seminal Commodore microcomputers that brought mouse-driven GUIs plus slick and speedy graphics to the masses from 1985 to 1996.

The Amiga was beloved by gamers, graphics pros and many an IT aficionado who just appreciated their speedy (for their time) Motorola 680x0 CPUs, multi-threading operating system and ability to work with images, sound and video.

The platform died when Commodore went bankrupt, but enthusiasm for the Amiga persisted and various clones and efforts to preserve AmigaOS continue to this day.

One such effort, from Apollo Accelerators, emerged last week: the company's forthcoming “Vampire V4” can work as a standalone Amiga or an accelerator for older Amigas.

Apollo's produced similar devices before, but says the V4 should outpace its older models thanks to its use of an Altera Cyclone V A5 FPGA to fill the role once played by Motorola silicon. There's also 512MB of RAM, 40-and-44-pin FastIDE connectors, Ethernet, a pair of USB ports and MicroSD for storage. Micro USB gets power to the board. Full specs can be had here [PDF].

Apollo hasn't set a price for the Vampire, but warns it will exceed that of previous models due to more expensive components. The company plans to make accelerator boards first, then get around the standalone systems. ®