Amiga Kit Amiga Store


History of Amiga Kit


In the beginning...

Amiga Kit was formed in June 2004 with the mission statement to innovate, produce and supply new hardware, software and peripherals exclusively for the Amiga computer market.

During this gradual period of decline for the Amiga computer, there were many established retailers and manufacturers closing down. A lot of companies that did not shut their doors, were either inactive or focussing their commercial efforts on wider mainstream and more lucrative computer markets, diversifying out of the Amiga sector. Just before the Amiga Kit project commenced, a comprehensive review of the Amiga market was conducted. The range, functionality and quality of Amiga products retailed by the remaining Amiga resellers was analysed and the conclusion drawn that greater innovation and availability in the market was required.

It was further concluded that an exclusive store dedicated to the Amiga computer would urgently need to be established offering a wide range of third party and in-house produced products for reasonable prices.

Product supply to the bespoke Amiga market place was a challenge to overcome. The Amiga uses an array of custom hardware and peripherals so conventional computer hardware could not be often sourced from mainstream distibutors. The few remaining offerings of stock that were being sold by retailers were old inventory manufactured from former years. Once this specialist Amiga "kit" was sold through, the supply would quickly cease. Success for the Amiga Kit project would quite often depend on having to design, manufacture and assemble product in-house. Third party agents would be required to manufacture more complex products, financed organically from the sales on the Amiga store.

In 2005, Amiga Kit entered into negotiations with the Eyetech Group to acquire their inventory and continue to serve their former Amiga customers. After the conclusion of the deal, the Eyetech website was redirected to the www.amigakit.com domain and the Eyetech product inventory was integrated into the store database for resale.

During 2005, Amiga Kit started to distribute products from Individual Computers (Germany).

The Pegasos II with MorphOS was made available from the website in 2005 and later supplemented by the Efika. Both products were from German manufacturer, BPlan.

Over the subsequent years Amiga Kit have acquired stock from many former Amiga resellers, distributors and manufacturers which enhanced the range of items that could be supplied. Often inventory was part assembled or just components so it required complete manufacture requiring specialist tools and processes in house.

In 2006 Amiga Kit started distributing Cloanto's Amiga Forever software emulation package.

In 2007 pre-configured Amiga computer systems were offered for sale on the store. These were built to customer specifications, offered in traditional desktop form factor or tower case configuration.

During 2008 Amiga Kit provided reseller support to Italian company, ACube Systems s.r.l who launched their SAM 440 range of motherboards. Complete systems were offered on the webstore to end users. Amiga Kit also started to sell the AmigaOS 4.0 boxed product.

Also in 2008, the remaining Amiga inventory of High Street Micro was acquired.

January 2009 also saw the formation of a new department named Amiga Kit Technical Services, responsible for hardware technical activities such as computer assembly, servicing, repairs and hardware product design and development.

In early January 2009, A-EON Technology CVBA approached and selected Amiga Kit to manage distribution of their newly introduced AmigaOne X1000 system to a closed beta test team. Amiga Kit undertook the project to design and produce the Boing Ball branded tower case, keyboard and mouse for sale to AmigaOne X1000 beta testers.

After two years beta test, 2011 saw the the AmigaOne X1000 complete system going onto sale and Amiga Kit handling assembly, sales and worldwide distribution to the public (The Inquirer and Techcrunch news articles from 24th October 2011). A-EON Technology co-founder, Trevor Dickinson made reference to Amiga Kit's role in the AmigaOne X1000 project in a subsequent interview: "Without their help and assistance the AmigaOne X1000 roll out would not have occurred. They took a leading role in helping to design the complete Amiga X1000 system including the officially licensed, custom designed case together with the official "Boing Ball" keyboard and mouse. They have been crucial to the success of the AmigaOne X1000 and will continue to act as A-EON's lead distributor." (Interview with Trevor Dickinson from 26th August 2014).

Hyperion Entertainment licenced ROMs to Amiga Kit for manufacturing in 2012, revoking that licence later in July 2017.

In October 2014, Cloanto Italia s.r.l announced that "well-known Amiga reseller" AmigaKit was to produce ROMs and Workbench disk sets under their "Amiga Forever Classic Support" range (Amiga Forever Classic Support - Workbench 3.1 Update [2], [3] and AmigaOS 3.1 is now available on diskettes again)

The successor to the AmigaOne X1000 was announced as the AmigaOne X5000 by A-EON Technology Ltd. Once again Amiga Kit was given the role of worldwide distributor to beta testers in 2015 and later in 2016 (continuing to present day).

In June 2016, Amiga Kit adds Retro 7-bit's product range to the Amiga store.

In October 2018, Amiga Kit completed the acquisition of the well known AmigaSys software distribution. Development of the software was restarted. AmigaSys has been a complete system distribution available since 2003.

In April 2019, Leaman Computing Ltd sold the Amiga Kit business as a going concern to AmigaKit Ltd.

In September 2019, Amiga Kit confirmed that it had acquired the AK-Datatypes package from longstanding Amiga developer, Andreas Kleinert. (Amiga Kit Acquires AK-Dataypes, September 7th 2017) and restarted development. AK-Datatypes were integrated into the latest development version of AmigaSys.

In September 2020, Amiga Kit acquired the well known Amibench trading platform from the original owner, Mark Wilson who first launched it in 1997. A reimplementation of the famous website was put into development.


The many facets of Amiga Kit

The amigakit.com web store is the customer facing part of the operation, however behind the scenes there are many other facets to the organisation.

  computer system assembly
  computer repairs and upgrades
  software development
  hardware design and manufacture such as peripherals, adapters, expansions, cables
  third party distribution
  end-user order processing and logistics
  product design and branding

All these activities have been solely focussed in the Amiga computer market, including the "Classic" and "Next Generation" group of products.



Software Development

Over the years, Amiga Kit has developed in house a lot of new Amiga software. Many of the titles are being used today in products with the most popular being EasyADF, EasyNet and OS-Install.

In 2004 work was started on the EasyNet project. It's aim was to provide the Amiga with networking and Internet software. It featured an Internet Live Update function and has continued to supply users with updates over the years.

In 2005 Amiga Kit started supplying self-booting hard drives with the OS-Install software pre-installed. OS-Install was developed to simplify the installation and recovery of the Operating System for end-users significantly (review of OS-Install on Epsilon's blog). In latter years, work was conducted with partners to develop from scratch an original set of DOS commands that can be supplied on the self-booting drives to stream line the installation process even further. Work is still ongoing to expand these commands in features above and beyond the feature set of the original DOS commands supplied by the former defunct Commodore company in the early nineties.

Following on from the OS-Install software development work, an adapted version was used for the EasyADF self-booting disk.

In 2011, Amiga Kit provided funding to enable development of AmigaOS 4.1 to the Classic Amiga for the first time. In a public statment, Hyperion Entertainment described how "AmigaKit was also instrumental in funding the AmigaOS 4.1 update for the Classics" (May 7th 2011) and Amiga Kit entered into an exclusive worldwide agreement to manufacture and distribute AmigaOS 4.1 Classic ( AmigaOS 4.1 for Classics imminent, May 7th 2011). This exclusive agreement lasts until 2021.

In 2013, Amiga Kit secured an exclusive distribution agreement for AMITCP 4 with the original developers, NSDi. The agreement resulted in AMITCP 4 being available once again for commercial sale integrated into the a new EasyNet Professional Edition package. (AmigaKit Secures AMITCP 4 Distribution Agreement, September 2nd 2013)

Later in 2013, Amiga Kit added wireless network scanning to EasyNet and EasyNet Pro. This was the first time that this feature was available for Amiga (EasyNet Tutorial: Configuring Prism2v2 Wireless Settings).

In 2014, Amiga Kit developed the server side infrastructure and client that the AMIStore App Store and AmiSphere platform is based upon, used by A-EON Technology Ltd (A-EON).

From 2015 to the present day, Amiga Kit has contributed to A-EON's successful Amiga Developer programme by providing software project management resource.

The Amiga Kit offices have hosted two A-EON Developer Conferences to date in 2016 and June 2017.

In 2017, Amiga Kit secured reached an agreement with the Apollo Team to distribute innovative new Amiga FPGA accelerators based on the Apollo Core. (Apollo Accelerator On Sale, May 28th 2017)



Hardware Development

Over the years, Amiga Kit has both commissioned and directly manufactured bespoke Amiga hardware, ranging from full computer systems to small adapters.

The Amiga Kit Technical Workshop has assembled custom new Amiga 1200 Tower systems, desktop A1200 computers, AmigaOne X1000s and more recently AmigaOne X5000 built to the customer's requirements.

To enable even more expansions to be retrofitted into Classic Amiga systems, we have had to design and develop a series of backplates, brackets, adapters and specialist cables.

Many items of hardware have been branded with the Amiga Kit name or logo, here are some notable ones:

  4-way IDE Interface for Amiga 4000 (2006)

  ZorRAM™ A4000™ (2010): an affordable 128MB or 256MB Zorro III memory expansion card. This was produced when old technology DKB3128 cards were being resold on the second hand market for eye-watering sums of money. ZorRAM was introduced by Amiga Kit as a low cost expansion, using modern new components.

  Kickstart ROM switcher (2010)

  Automatic Mouse Joystick switch (2010)

  MAS Player Evolution (2012): a re-implementation of the popular MAS Player MP3 decoder and player add-on. Plugs into the Amiga's parallel port.

  Arcade Evolution (2013): a new Amiga Kit branded joystick with arcade components for extra durability - ideal for Amiga video gamers!

  4-way Clockport Expander (2017)

  Amiga Kit A1200™ LED Adapter board (2017)

  Amiga Kit A600™ 1MB Memory Expansion board Revision 2 (2018)


Shows and Events

Amiga Kit has been a long time sponsor of the AmiWest show in Sacramento, California, USA. It has both sponsored and attended this West Coast event every year since 2006 to present day.

In the UK, Amiga Kit attended and exhibited at the Big Bash shows (Peterborough), MAG Bash (Coventry), Amiga 25th Show (Bletchley Park), Amiga 30th Show (Peterborough), Play (Blackpool) and Play Expo (Manchester) events.

In Italy, Amiga Kit helped sponsor and attended a few Pianeta Amiga shows in both Empoli and the last time in Bologna. (A day in the (vintage) life - report from Pianeta Amiga 2009)

In 2010 Amiga Kit also attended the Amiga 25th Anniversary event in Essen, Germany.

In October 2017, Amiga Kit sponsored and attended the AmiWest show. That same month Amiga Kit exhibited at the Amiga 32 Anniversary event in Neuss, Germany.

During January 2018 Amiga Kit sponsored and exhibited at the Amiga Ireland show in Athlone.

November 2018, Amiga Kit was represented and had a table at the World of Commodore show in Toronto, Canada. Amiga Kit branded pens were given out free to visitors to Amiga Kit's table.

In addition to shows, Amiga Kit has supported Amiga user groups in the UK by attending large meetings arranged by Amiga North Thames, Midlands Amiga Group and Linconshire Amiga Group.

In January 2019 Amiga Kit once again sponsored and exhibited at the Amiga Ireland show in Athlone. A week later Amiga Kit also attended the South West Amiga Group show in Chipping Sodbury.

In January 2020 Amiga Kit returned to Amiga Ireland as a show sponsor and exhibitor. A week later Amiga Kit also attended the South West Amiga Group show in Chipping Sodbury.

Marketing the Amiga Kit brand over the years

Amiga Kit has sponsored Amiga community websites such as the popular Amiga.org™ and AmigaWorld.net forums and the Amibench.org trading site.

Since the early years, Amiga Kit has regulary published full page advertisements in magazines such as Total Amiga Magazine and Amiga Future.

The Amiga Kit websites, marketing and printed adverts have had a few slogans since 2004 such as "AmigaKit.com - the Amiga store", "AmigaKit.com Amiga Shop", "amigakit.com - your Amiga store", "amigakit.com Amiga store - we ship worldwide", and more recently "Amiga Kit Amiga Store" and "1st Choice for Amiga".




Websites of Amiga Kit

Amiga Kit operates a network of various websites serving customers worldwide.

The domains operated by Amiga Kit are as follows:
amigakit.com, amigakit.com.au, amigakit.co.uk, amigakit.eu, amigakit.nl, amigakit.shop, amigakit.store, amigakit.us, amiga.store, amigastore.com, amigastore.us, amigastore.org, amiga-store.us, amiga-store.com, amiga-store.net, amigastore.co.uk, amiga-store.co.uk, amigastore.net, amigastore.nl, amigastore.biz, amiga-store.biz, amiga-store.eu, amikit.com, amiga.shop, amigashop.com, amigashop.net, amigashop.co.uk, amiga-shop.co.uk, amiga-shop.com, amiga-shop.biz, amigashop.eu, amigashop.nl, amiga-shop.eu, amiga.shopping, theamigastore.com


Copyright © 2020 AmigaKit Ltd. Amiga Kit, Amiga Store, A600, A1200 and A4000 are registered trade marks of AmigaKit Ltd in the United Kingdom and trade marks used in other territories worldwide.