Interview with Mick Tinker, Access Innovation Ltd. Access Innovation (formerly Index Information) has become one of the largest players in the Amiga market, with products like the Access, the BoXer and the InsideOut. The announcement of the BoXer price a while ago shocked a lot of people. Many may question the viability of the BoXer after the WOA announcement as well. Read what Mick Tinker have to say about it all below... Q) Information has been a rather low profile company in the amiga market until now. Most people don't know you very well. Could you tell us a bit about your company, past, present and future? A) We decided to start trading under a new company which more reflects what we do, so we are now "Access Innovation Ltd". We are still developing exactly the same products and going in the same direction. About Access Innovation Ltd/Index Information Ltd. (a bit lazy after a long weekend!) Q) The Boxer motherboard will be released at 479. This caused a lot of controversy at the internet, and a lot of people were very angry. Why was the price set so high? When do you believe it will go down in price? A) The price will go down with time. The price (which includes 17.5% VAT) reflects the relatively high price of building low volume compared to PC production levels. The aim of the motherboard was to lower the overall system cost and this it certainly achieves compared to the A4000T. There are some major components that will steadily be falling in price over time and also with time lower cost sources of components can be found. We are certainly not pricing it to recover development fees as quickly as possible, the price reflects our build cost, I take a long term view of the Amiga market. Q) Amiga Inc announced their plans on the WOA recently. What do you think about these plans? How do you it will affect the BoXer sales? Is the InsideOut a part of the "Bridge" system? Do you know much about the new "super-chip"? A) The plans for the super-chip are good, as are the changes to the operating system as they are necessary to support the new chip. The problem we had was that they effectively left out the "Classic Amiga", this we have been addressing and I sat down with Phase 5 and Harge & Partner on Saturday evening to put together a plan to address these issues, the outline of these plans was presented to Amiga Inc on Sunday and they agreed. Showing the outline plan to dealers and developers during Sunday gave a positive response so it looks like everyone will be pulling together. We have more discussions over the next week or so, however I am confident that we can reach a plan that not only ensures the survival of the Classic Amiga, but ensures that it has a future. The future plans for PowerPC are still intact and we have included plans for Amiga OS to be upgraded in much the same way as they had been planned by Amiga Inc. This is an industry initiative, but Amiga Inc will provide full support. There is unlikely to be any effect on BoXeR sales. Yes, the Siamese PCI (the combination of Siamese and the InsideOut) is the "bridge system" (however the term "bridge system" will be dropped by Amiga Inc., and the x86 based machine will be a development system for the future super-chip machine, the term "bridge system" was confusing). Q) The Black Box systems from Blittersoft with the Boxer motherboard will be available in august. Will the bare motherboard be available at the same time? A) Yes. Until we get sufficient volume shipping there will not be many bare motherboards around as system builders are likely to pre-order the bulk of production. Q) You have invested a lot of money into the development of the Boxer. How many unit do you have to sell to be satisfied? How many units do you need to sell to recoup costs? How is the response from retailers? Do you have many pre orders? A) I won't say what the target volume is, however I am confident that 50% of production will be on commercial applications and from the dealer response we are more limited by production volumes than by problems in getting the sales. The bottom line is that we are likely to be the only retail Amiga shipping for several months and that alone should ensure that the demand is high. We are licensing the BoXeR design out to other companies and would welcome a further licensee for the BoXer in Europe or Asia. Q) What do you think about the competition, the DCE A5000, DCE A6000 and the new "A4000-like" motherboard from QuikPak? A) Not a threat. Q) The Access was released a few months ago. Have sales reached your expectations so far? A) Yes. I am always surprised by the number of high volume uses there are for the Amiga in kiosk type applications. We are licensing custom versions to some large users. We are looking for other manufacturers interested in licensing the design to help increase production volumes. Q) Some time ago you announced a cooperation with Phase 5 regarding a PPC card for the Boxer. Will this still be released, with the new direction of Amiga Inc? A) See above. Also we are looking to accelerate the introduction of PPC, probably looking as soon as practical to ship boards without a 68k, but with a PPC and 68k emulator. This solution will not give a performance boost for 68k applications , however it will reduce the overall cost but it will assist with the migration to PPC software. Q) Phase 5 has been criticized for their arrogant attitude towards their customers and other developers in the Amiga market. What's your impression of them? A) They have their own views on the direction of the market and they don't like being influenced by others. Q) A lot of people suggested PCI slots in the Boxer. Why wasn't this implemented? A) We would have had to add to the cost of the BoXeR and delay its shipping by a few months, by waiting a little longer we will have chance to take the PCI Target logic developed for the InsideOut and extend it to a PCI host for use on the BoXeR, this will be more flexible and cheaper to implement. We wanted to ensure that the market for Z2/Z3 boards wasn't killed over night so Z3 was important, equally we didn't want to ship PCI without a fully implemented AutoConfig and full support for a wide range of cards, this takes time. Q) When the Boxer is finished, what are your plans? Have the WOA announcement changed much? A) The announcement hasn't particularly changed our existing plans for the BoXeR, we will be producing another generation in about 1 year. Q) What was the hardest part in designing the Boxer? Anything you are unsatisfied with? What do you think is the best feature of the Boxer? A) Hardest part is actually that we have implemented it in a different way to the Access and to power up the board required writing software to program the logic and Flash ROM through JTAG (a special type of serial control for programming and testing large semiconductor devices). The Buster was difficult because the BoXeR is based around 68040 bus signals and timings, while the Buster was designed for the slower 68030 signals used on the A4000, we are likely to integrated the Buster in our own logic in the near future (probably before the board ships). Q) I noticed that the Black Box from Blittersoft will use Ultra DMA HD's. Will the Boxer take advantage of the 33 MB/sec mode on these HD's? A) No. Q) Are you in close contact with Amiga Inc? Do you think they got what it takes to bring the Amiga back into the mainstream? A) For one reason or another we speak or email each other most weeks. Copyright (C) Vidar Langberget 1998.