#Philadelphia Inquirer
14 messages in this thread
Pleasance's respect for the Amiga engineers is fine, but I'm sure you realize
that the one's he's thinking about are no longer with Commodore.
Whom do you have in mind?
Damn near all of us. From 20+ Software Engineers, there are now 2. I'm
pretty sure the last of the people working on the new chipset has left.
Many systems people is gone, though a couple of key people remain there —
with the exception of Dave, the systems group probably fared best in
Engineering.
Dale L. Larson Intangible Assets Manufacturing (info@iam.com)
"That's the best part about being crazy. You see things no one else can see."
With Dave Haynie and Jeff Porter leaving, plus almost all the key software (OS)
engineers, there's hardly anybody left at all. The remaining folks are just
there as caretakers should anyone buy the technology and want to find out
something about it. But as far as moving the Amiga technology forward, that is
(IMHO) an insurmountable task.
Paul.
Come on.. why is that?
Are you saying that a new owner of the technology can't hire engineers to
continue the work that has already been done? Are you saying that the
engineers that are at Scala will not be 'accessible'?
Slow yes, insurmountable not hardly.
-mark=
Otto Pilot Engaged..
In any engineering, much more so at Commodore, there is some extent to
which the stuff in the heads of the engineers who started a project is
irreplacable. The time it takes a new engineer (or team of engineers) to
duplicate that original effort can be a serious problem. It's going to
cost a lot more than just hiring the same number of engineers that there
once were, and its going to take a lot longer than it would have without
the interuption — if it would have taken six months to put out AAA with
the engineering team that was in place, it might take a brand new, larger
and better-funded engineering team 18 months. [These are purely made up
numbers for illustrative purposes ]
Scala has contractual obligations to its partners. The engineers at Scala
are pretty damn busy with things that have nothing to do with the Amiga.
There are no spare resources there in the near future. In theory, they
could be bought, but the price might well be too high.
Dale L. Larson Intangible Assets Manufacturing (info@iam.com)
"That's the best part about being crazy. You see things no one else can see."
Dale,
You know of course that I work for Scala right? 🙂
I am not denying that a new engineering team would not take more time to
move projects along. That is a obvious to anyone who knows anything about
engineering and software design.
I railed at the comment that moving the Amiga forward was an
insurmountable problem. It clearly isn't. Whoever gets this technology
will be getting it to move it, or parts of it ahead. Otherwise why buy it
to begin with? It is egotistic to believe that only the Commodore
engineers could move Amiga projects forward. Simply not true and not fair
to the many talented people out there.
My only reference to Scala was based on these people being accessible, not
necessarily free to do work for such a owner of the technology. There is
a difference Dale.
As far as Scala's engineers commitment to their partners and such go,
well, I can't really comment on that, other than to say they are
definately busy. 🙂
-mark=
Otto Pilot Engaged..
Yes I know you work for Scala in VA. The engineering types are in PA.
🙂
Insurmountable in theory and not worth the amount of money it would take
aren't the same thing. But it is a semantic difference.
Realistically, if I handed you everything it would take to produce AAA
Amigas, how many of them do you think you would sell? Remember, you have
to charge a lot more than the PowerPC and Pentium systems because you
can't use most of the commodity parts and have custom parts that you can't
get a really high volume on. The market for AAA Amigas is no larger than
that for AA Amigas — though it might slow the downsizing of the market.
So how much R&D money is it worth?
I'm not saying its impossible. I'm not even saying it would be stupid.
I'm just saying that I wouldn't be suprised at all to never see any
serious revisions to produce new Amiga desk top computers. All bets are
off, of course, for what happens with any specialty systems.
Dale L. Larson Intangible Assets Manufacturing (info@iam.com)
"That's the best part about being crazy. You see things no one else can see."
>I'm just saying that I wouldn't be suprised at all to never see any
>serious revisions to produce new Amiga desk top computers. All bets are
>off, of course, for what happens with any specialty systems.
It sounds like we shouldn't be concerned who buys the Amiga since from
what you are saying there isn't likely to be any new Amiga desktop
computers anyway. Is that correct? If it is, why be concerned about who
buys the Amiga, assume the Amiga is now nothing more than a chipset in
something else, and just go buy a PC. I guess I haven't gotten to that
point yet.
Richard -> AutoPilot on the A1000, the only Amiga without the C= logo.
>it is egotistic to believe that only the Commodore engineers could move
Amiga projects forward
But then, we ALL know that Paul H. was the cornerstone on which the
Amiga foundation was laid, don't we?… <g,r,d>
"The problem with owning an Amiga is that it lets you think."
Mr. C
I'm saying that the Amiga technology uses chip processes that are out of date
for one thing. I'm saying that simply too much time has been lost in the past
few years. Basically, if "Amiga" continues, it will essentially have to be a
brand new computer with little relation to the current products.
I think the "value" of buying Amiga technology now would be to use it as is in
embedded applications, and maybe to build some more 1200s and 4000s to take
advantage of remaining (but dwindling) demand in Europe.
PMFJI here, but:
"Amiga technology uses chip processes that are out of date." Unless
you're referring to the manufacturing processes which are inconsequential,
I have to ask: Are you kidding? Fast as a Pentium is, strong as OS/2 is,
good as SVGA is, to date the PC world _still_ hasn't even figured out the
Video Interrupt Chip, so old that it pre-dates the Amiga itself (like I
have to tell _you_ this), yet so _intrinsic_ to the nature of a (shudder)
Windowed environment that We Who Must Use Other Platforms can't _imagine_
why closing a requester-window should leave a blank spot on the screen
that has to be re-drawn.
I'd say it's the PC world that's about ten years behind…. Maybe IBM
will get off its petrified butt and design a new desktop computer with an
_integrated_ hardware/software design, like the Amiga had … something
like OS/2 on a PS/2 … uhh … never mind….
"The problem with owning an Amiga is that it lets you think."
Mr. C
I loved that msg! The "blank spot" you're referring to is annoying! I'm
forced to uze a PC on OS/2 and Winslows sometimes!
As for the VIC chip, I'm very familiar with it from my C-64 days!
BTW: DID anyone know that Q-link (the C-64/128 ONLY online service) is
STILL in existence from America OnLine, with a fully graphical interface!
All make mistakes,only a winslows user persists in his error -cicero,44BC
Nathan Jones, via amiga autopilot. –FLAME ON!–
Nathan,
I knew Q-Link was still around. It's not the thriving community it once was
though; C64 users have moved on to better systems. 🙂
Malcolm