CompuServe Messages

>I was at first rather suspicious of how the rights to Envoy were >transferred to your company. Knowing how cagey CBM has been about >networking efforts in the past, how did you manage to wrestle it from >them? The rights to Amiga Envoy haven't been transfered to my company — I've only been given a license to distribute software still owned and copyrighted by Commodore. I don't know that I would describe Commodore as having been "cagey about networking efforts." Certainly the engineers of the Amiga Networking Group tried to work with third parties and to encourage their products. All we wanted was for Amigas to be able to talk to the world, and we didn't much care how that happened. Perhaps there were some other obstructionists I wasn't aware of. As far as "wrestling" Amiga Envoy from C=, I didn't need to. Soon after leaving Commodore I heard that no further work was being done with Envoy, but that they wanted to release the software (which had been ready for a while). Since I knew there was no documentation and noone to write it, I started working on it. I expected that I would sell a stand-alone book about Amiga networking generally. It would also contain detailed instructions for Amiga Envoy. (I still plan to do an "Amiga Networking Handbook.") When I found out that I could license the software, I eventually decided that I wanted to make Envoy available inexpensively. >was able to promote and sell an Amiga networking product at >the same time he was working for Commodore. I know, you don't work there >any longer; the situations are different. I didn't receive any preferential treatment. I've always been the type who is careful (paranoid?) about possible conflicts of interest and the like. I may not be as financially well off as I otherwise could be, but I sleep better at night. 🙂 >But at $60, it's a steal and I can't imagine how you could be making any >money at it. 🙂 I hope you can pick up and maintain the AS225 TCP/IP >software, too. My hope is that everyone who needs Amiga peer-to-peer networking will be able to use Amiga Envoy. That's what it was made for. I also hope to be able to distribute AS225r2 in the near future, but licensing arangements are more complex since AS225 contains Berkeley code, etc. >I reported some 'ftp' bugs to CATS but I guess my developer fee doesn't >buy much these days. Well, it never did buy bug fixes. 🙂 >And did anyone ever make a SANA driver for the old Hydra board? You know, I think somebody did, but I really don't know how to track it down. >And I've forgotten what AmiLink is… can you refresh my memory? AmiLink is a recently announced product which uses floppy ports to provide a proprietary DMA networking solution. It uses standard Ethernet-type coax cable, T's and terminators, but is not compatible with Ethernet. I believe the announced price is list $119 each. It's been sold in Germany for a while, but they now have a US distributor (Spectronics). — Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing — INTERNET:dale@iam.com