#Xetex CDx File System
14 messages in this thread
ANNOUNCEMENT
Oberursel, Germany 2. July 1994
GTI Grenville Trading International GmbH of Oberursel, Germany is pleased to
announce that they have acquired with immeadiate effect the world-wide
copyright and marketing rights to the CDx File System from Xetec Inc.
All distribution, customer support and future development of the product will
be handled directly by GTI in Germany. A number of enhancements to the product
are currently being considered and will be announced
in due course.
GTI has successfully marketed the German-version of CDx over the past few
months and will be releasing an enhanced english Version within the next month
or so.
All registered CDx users are welcome to take advantage of the GTI CDx Hotline.
German speakers please call (Germany) + 49 6171 – 78066. English speakers
please contact by FAX on + 49 6171 8302 or by mail (address below).
Existing dealers will be receiving mail from us in the next few weeks but are
welcome to call our dealer hotline on + 49 6171 85937 (English or German – FAX
number as above).
GTI is Germany's leading specialist distributor of Amiga CD-ROM & Amiga CD32
software & peripherals &
is proud to offer dealers worldwide the very latest in Amiga CD technology.
GTI Grenville Trading International GmbH
Zimmersmuhlenweg 73
61440 OBERURSEL, Germany.
So I guess this means Xetec is belly-up too. Another U.S. Amiga co bites
the dust.
Lets see…
CBM,
Gold Disk (no great loss)
New Horizons/CCS
Caligary,
Axiom,*
Moonlighter,
Progressive Peripherals,
SAS,
GVP has gone part time,
I'm sure others can add to the list…
If the courts don't do it at this July 25 mark there won't be any
developers left (the C= technical team is already scattered to the four
winds….)
* Axiom is contacting current Pixel Pro users by mail and phone trying for
a last minute win-fall in the Amiga market while the president of the
company had said that after they release Pixel Pro 2.0 they are closing
the doors.
wmc – via Autopilot!
>CBM,
Being bought out…which is good
>Gold Disk (no great loss)
Always stunk hard…no great loss is right
> New Horizons/CCS
ProWrite was replaced by Final Copy years ago and for good reasons…
>Caligary,
Never could figure out how to price their software with LightWave around
>Axiom,*
They still have a lot of work to do on the new pixel…
>Moonlighter
WHAT!!! Intelligent Designs is the SAME PEOPLE as Moonlighter. They
moved to a new store, changed the name and incorporation so they could
expand for the 90s!!! All of their products are available and selling and
they are involved in a Quicken port for the Amiga and a lot of other
things. They are HARDLY out of the market…
>Progressive Peripherals,
Burnt up years ago…long before CBM woes…
>SAS,
Will be back with new development…just holding off for now…
>GVP has gone part time,
GVP hasn't been a staple of Pro Amiga users for 2 years. Now they make
bad PC video cards. No loss here.
>If the courts don't do it at this July 25 mark there won't be any
>developers left (the C= technical team is already scattered to the four
>winds….)
Ahh but those four winds are blowing the right way…:}
Just offering my humble opinions….
Grant Boucher – Amblin Imaging
"It's hard to believe grown-ups do this for a living."
Grant,
You said and I quote, "Now they make bad PC video cards."
Umm, actually Magni made that card. GVP is just bundling software and
marketing.
Regards,
John Chang
Technical Support Manager
Scala, Inc.
Hi there !
No, Xetec is certainly NOT belly-up !!! As their largest customer we just
arranged to purchase the product rights from them.
As I understand it, the CDx File System was only a small part of Xetec's
business.
In any case the product & commitment to the product is certainly not dying !!
By the way, Paravision tell me they are now shipping the SX-1 interfaces for
the CD32 – hope to have them in a few days.
The first Communicators should also be reaching us in the next 3-4 days.
Cheers
Richard
As one of Xetec's first customers of their CDROM drives and filesystem,
I'm curious how you are going to handle upgrades for those of us here in
the states. It's not really a big deal because the latest upgrade I
received was 2.0 and it works fine with my NEC-3X, but curious what will
happen for the future.
// John (Speeding on the Information Superhighway)
\X/ Mercury@ins.infonet.net
Well we hope we can handle updates better than most American firms do in
Germany !!
Firstly we will only offer major updates. Secondly our policy is not to make
money from updates but to give the user the support he has already paid for.
(In Germany
we have been offering Cdx Updates at 0 $ plus the cost of postage). We see it
this way – any user of CDx is also a potential customer for all the other CD's
we distribute. In any case if we manage to offer updates at no charge it also
means that we can allow dealers to update on our behalf (especially as up to
now all Cdx updates have required an original disc to be usable). Finally we
hope to tie up some good dealers in the States who will work with us to give
the best service.
Until then, and in any case we are always reachable here (e.g.)
Cheers
Richard
Well, for the U.S. its as good as belly-up. Since I can't log onto their
BBS for updates they are as good as gone. (I'm not about to try
transatlantic file downloading…)
And I've not had real easy times getting support for German made products
with no rep over here – like th early days of MFC-II card. The best I got
for a manual was a nice glossy German one and a mimeographed poorly
translated english one with all the illustrations missing.
PrespecTechnics out of Quebec did their best to keep me supported during
some software bugs in the drivers, but the cross-aatlantic multi-week
delays were not pleasant. Nobody's fault, just an artifact of distance
and market size.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Hi !
If you need a CDx Update just give your serial number and (so long as you are
registered) we will send you one at no cost. the current version is 2.01.
German consumers have had to get used to being virtually ignored by American
companies (with a few exceptions) over the years as far as updates are
concerned. Most American companies cannot even be bothered to offer a German
version of their product and then complain that sales over here are poor. I do
not think German versions of software will sell well in the States either !!
The companies who have managed to get a good tie-up over here (e.g
Inovatronics) have done very well in the German market). The others who choice
to ignore non-english speaking Europe do not deserve to do well !! The Amiga
World is by no means restricted to english speakers !!!
In any case we will do our best to support where we can.
Cheers
Richard
Richard,
I have the 2.01 upgrade (or so it says on the label). And I am
registered. It would be comforting if you could arrange a support area in
Amiga Vendor.
BTW, one thing I asked about when I got the last CDXupdate was if they
could add the ability for the Audio player to have a skip forward by
index. For example, I use a production music library that has each track
divided into indexed sub-tracks for the rull lenght version, the 1 minute,
version, 30 second version, 10 second version, and sometimes just a rythm
and chords sub-mix version. The CD Player interface dutifully showes the
index values but there is no "index forware" and "index backward" as there
is with "track forward" and "track backward".
One other thing: I tried Asim CDFS for a day. They have a nicer PhotoCD
interface. Their Audio CD handling is not as nice as yours. Also, they
take up over twice the memory of your software, and when I terminate
theirs and eject the CD, there is more memory that is not returned to the
system than with CDx. So, that and the Audio handling keep me on the CDx
instead at the moment.
wmc – via Autopilot!
CDx is 2.01! Well, the last version I had was 1.65. I used to have
troubles with CDx software while booting my machine… The CD was not
recognized by the system, unless I did a diskchange cd0: or I remove &
insert the caddie again. Now I'm using AsimCDFS 2.0 to pilot our Xetec
drives. Is it worth getting hold of CDx 2.01, or is AsimCDFS better? I'm
also using a Toshiba drive.
Fred.
Frederic Botton from Paris, France
fbotton@cix.compulink.co.uk
Wayne –
Time to learn German! ;}
Garry Nelson
And, on the 67th day, Amiga Shall Rise From The Grave…
I've paid my dues with French and Spanish. Thats enough for this life.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Wayne,
We plan on sticking arounde, even beyond the due date. As to the Commodore
engineers. You can find a number of them not to far from West Chester, and now
known as the Scala R&D Group.
Regards,
John Chang
Technical Support Manager
Scala, Inc.