I also still have my old A3oooT in working order, I still love to work with it when I get the chance. One problem I would have now is to get a new mouse (should the old one go the way of all rodents). The reasons to buy something else for an upgrade were the prices for network boards and memory size. I had to switch when I had to build big software systems over and over again for my thesis, so I reached the limits of my patience. Wanting to buy some SGI hardware (as I wanted at that time, and still want today) was on the other side of the limit imposed by wallet contents.
Commodore let the ball slip and sucked its thumb when the graphics system needed some major reworking (to 8 bits, or 24/32 bits), which would need to re-factor some of the core systems. Well, given the state of affairs in the source code, which relied on some 'tricks' of the green hills compiler used to build the ROM system. Memory protection was not there, and also not possible. At least not without breaking about all code in existence. The good point about the system was that it was specialized and integrated, the bad thing then turned out to be that it was specialized and integrated.
It would be fun to re-create something like the old Amiga spirit again, not do some evolution but a revolution in the computer architecture. Fast, efficient and exciting. I'd like it, but sadly, this would not be possible these days. There would be too many patent landsharks around.
But well, this was a nice way and good topic to do my post #800. :beer