|1-Amiga News. By BullyBeef Of NFA. »»»»»»»»»»«««««««««« Welcome to Amiga Technologies. The Amiga was officially re-launched by German mamufacturer and retailer Escom on May 30th 1995. Amiga technologies GmbH is the new title of a brand mew company, set up by Escom to market, develop and manufacture the Amiga. It's going to be based in Germany, with additional hardware research and development staff in Philadelphia in the USA, software development support staff in the UK and distribution headquarters in Holland. This was announced at a press conference in Frankfurt on the 30th May, presented by top representatives from Escom and the new Amiga technologies GmbH (this is an abbreviation similar to LTD, for limited company here in Britain). The General Manager, Distribution Manager, Product Development Director are all from the old Commodore organisation, though none of them had a kind word to say for the company that went broke just over a year ago. The new General Manager Petro Tyschtschenko was with Commodore in Germany for twelve years rising to Director International Material Management and Logistics, his new role will be to co-ordinate the resourcing, manufacturing, R+D, licencing and sales of the current range of Amigas and any future development. Dr.Peter Kittel will already be familiar to users of the Internet as over the last month he has released several fire fighting statements and press releases on-line. Having been with Commodore for 10 years he is now the man charged with the future development of the Amiga and will head up the R+D and support departments at the new Amiga Technologies headquarters in Bensheim in Germany. Bernard Van Tienen was head of Commodore in the Netherlands and is now in charge of Escom and Amiga Technologies' international production and distribution, as well as overseeing Escom UK and several key European countries. There are still two americans on the Amiga management team, at least one of whom will be familiar to Amiga magazine readers - Jeff Frank. Jeff was with Commodore for eight years and his last job was Director of Tachnology at the famous (or infamous) Norristown development headquarters. Escom have taken over and are maintaining this facility and Jeff Frank continues on in the same role for Amiga Technologies. the other American, Ed Goff is the legal eagle, who will be in charge of maintaining all the patents and copyrights, contracting third party development deals and licencing. New CD32. The CD32 is proving to be the most difficult prospect for production and sale, and although General Manager Petro Tyschtschenko claimed that they hope to get it back on the shelves for christmas Manfred Schmitt was less optimistic. He even went so far as to say that with the new Sony Playstation (and Sega Saturn) becoming available, a rethink of the design and capabilities of the CD32 might be in order, to increase its competitiveness against the new formats. This could set the release date back to sometime next year. They were keen to stress the importance of the CD32 to the future. Amiga technologies intend to use the CD32 as the basis for a low cost platform to sell and licence to cable and on-line entertainment and information companies to use as TV set-top boxes. These will be able to play games,movies, be connected to the TV enabling the owner to partake in interactive programming and go on-line in the internet in an easy to access livingroom environment. The fact that the CD32 was available and relatively cheap to manufacture was one of the original reasons why Escom was so interested in Commodore. A1200 and A4000T: On sale and upgraded. In september, the A4000T, will go back on sale. They have dropped the old style A4000 for the machine which Commodore only managed to produce 1000 of before going into liquidation and halting production. Escom have already got 25,000 firm orders for the A4000T in Europe and the USA all of which will be fulfilled by christmas. The big news on this high end front is that Amiga Technologies have signed a licence deal with Phase 5 to use there Cyberstorm expansion board version of the Motorola 68060 as the basis for the A4000T, and this version will go on sale before christmas. This has the new 60 Mhz processor, the last of the 68000 series, with storming performance. However because Escom are still testing the water for sales and tooling up for production there is likely to be a waiting list for these machines, so order if you have the cash but don't hold your breath for delivery! More good news was waiting for the Amiga A1200 and CD32. The 1200 will be back on sale by Autumn, with a new bundled software pack, for which Escom are about to enter negotiations with software houses. They have already signed up Scala MM300 for all new Amigas and AmigaDOS 3.1 will be standard. Although a price point has not yet been set for the re-launched 1200 Manfred Schmitt, Escom's chief executive said that he would like to see a machine for the home market retailing at about one third of the price of their current PC range. The cheapest current Escom PCs sell for just over £600 plus VAT, and if he is serious this could mean that the A1200 will go on sale including VAT for an unprecedented sum of under £250. Manfred Schmitt, Bernard VanTienen and Petro Tyschtschenko were all eager to stress that the new Amiga Technologies will operate with as low an operating overhead cost as possible, relying on low cost manufacturing and distribution, this being the key to low retail prices. Also, rather than selling them solely through Escom outlets (they have converted the former Rumbelows chain into Escom shops) they will continue to rely on current distributors in a further effort to keep prices and overheads to a minimum. They were reluctant to announce any official prices at Frankfurt though, because distribution deals still have to be worked out. The A1300 CD. The A1200 is due to be improved early next year with an EC030 processor and a fast Ram upgrade almost certainly on the cards, while a CD-ROM drive becomes a distinct possibility too. Because of their PC multi-media experience and the knowledge that CD is the games platform of the moment they are considering this very seriously. Also, because of the processor upgrade from an EC020 to the 030, Manfred Schmitt let slip that this machine is at least under development with the title of A1300. So fans of the fictional A1400 now have something concrete to talk about. According to Escom there will be no problem scourcing the necessary microprocessors for new Amigas despite many reports of a shortage of Motorola 68000s as that company concentrates on PowrePC production. Negotiations with Motorola have shown that they are very keen to see the Amiga continue to use their chips, since their current customer base solely consists of Apple and IBM and they very much like the idea of another competitor in the market buying and using their chips instead of Intel's. What is a `Set Top Box'? In all the furore over the Escom takeover of Commodore several new pieces of terminology have reared their ugly heads. One of the most frequent has been `set top box'. There is no mystery surrounding this. All it is is a computer or console designed to be part of the TV entertainment system which currently includes your video and possibly a stereo or surround sound system. Like the CDTV and the current Phillips CDi it is not intended to have a keyboard, but unlike these machines it is fully intended to interact with you not just by remote control keypad but also through the TV screen using touch sensitive technology. Because it can play video CDs and games it crosses into console territory but it will also allow you to link up to the Internet, carry out banking transactions, download movies (rather than going out and renting a CD or Video), engage in home shopping activities or do an interactive course of education on any subject you like. Among the many applications for such a device one of the most interesting is being able to participate with thousands, millions even, of other viewers on a cable TV show, using the set top box to communicate your commands to game show contest- ants, TV private detectives or whoever. At the Frankfurt press conference another ex Commodore employee, and a pretty famous one at that, former Development Director Don Gilbraith, was putting forward his version of a set top box using the CD32 as a cheap but very capable basis for implementing all of the above. The company is called Viscorp and they already have test machines in American homes. Although Europe has yet to become familiar with this technology it won't be long before it gets here. Soho? Another newish and easy to explain term is Soho. In London it means an area of town filled with strip shows and porn shops and the odd good pub. In New York it means `south of Houston' and its a good place to get mugged. But in computer terms it simply means small office, home office: people working from home and communicating with an office and the outside world via modem. It's a popular anagram used by computer sales- men and marketing bods at the moment because they reckon it's a big growth area for sales. Typed by Bullybeef/NFA.