Various news

7. An old pioneer on his way back from obscurity (by Nick Miller)

THE WEST AUSTRALIAN, 12. Januar 1999

COMPUTERS & COMMUNICATIONS

An old pioneer on way back from obscurity

By Nick Miller

The Commodore Amiga home computer could become the John Travolta of the computer world, thanks to PC selling giant Gateway 2000 Inc.
The company has taken the Amiga under its wing, hoping to revive the career of the former household name PC.

Gateway subsidiary Amiga International is marketing the old technology world-wide with renewed vigour, and another Gateway subsidiary, Amiga Inc. is working on a new cutting edge Amiga machine for the home market.
After the heady days of the late 80s and early 90s, when Steven Spielberg used the machines to mock up scenes in Jurassic Park, the Amiga has itself become a dinosaur
No new Amiga has been developed for almost eight years, and most users have abandoned the platform for PCs and Apple Macs.
But a turnaround is on the horizon, according to Amiga International chief Petro Tyschtschenko, who was in Perth last week to talk to the local Amiga users' club.
Mr Tyschtschenko was with Commodore when the first Amiga was produced.
He stuck with the Amiga through the bankruptcy of Commodore in 1994, then in 1995 the bankruptcy of Escom, which bought the Amiga trademarks and intellectual property.
He helped negotiate purchase of the Amiga technology by Gateway in March 1997 in a deal, which included a commitment from Gateway to invest strongly in the Amiga.
Since then Amiga International has consistently achieved a small profit for Gateway, selling Amiga chips and machines world-wide.
Last year, the company had revenue of $10million, selling mainly in Europe and the US, and finding business in India and Australia.
Does the Amiga really have a future? Mr Tyschtschenko said its traditional strengths had been in areas now grouped together and called multimedia.
Although the Amiga was a stand-out machine in its day; the PC and Apple Macintosh had caught up.

But the big pool of Amiga users who reluctantly left the machine would come back once the technology was updated, he said.
"This time we have lots of competitors, everyone wants to go in the same direction," he said. "Our system is very good, but a little bit dusty on some things."
"It was necessary to make a cut and start on a new generation."
Mr Tyschtschenko said it was difficult to sell the current Amiga A1200 machines to resellers. When they heard that it had only2MB of RAM, no CD-ROM and only a 14MHz processor, they concluded no one would want to buy one.
The new generation Amiga machine would use the latest processor, probably a Power PC chip. It would not be compatible with the old Amiga technology but would use the QNX real time operating system.
It would feature fully protected pre-emptive multi-tasking (also promised in the coming Macintosh OS X), true 32-bit performance, high performance OpenGL 3-D graphics and full Java support.
The architecture is expected to be finished in March 2000, with a launch after that.
Although there would be a workstation version, the machine would be pitched as a so-called "appliance computer" for the home which combined DVD entertainment, Internet and Pay-TV applications.
The new Amiga would sell for$US500
Mr Tyschtschenko said it might be difficult to attract software developers back to the platform, especially game developers who lost lots of money in the dying years of the old Amiga.
But if they saw the platform had potential, they would start work on the Amiga again, he said.