Workshops
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Workshops
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On board was also Gwynne Thomas, who had worked for C= in Hong Kong and whose job at Amiga Tech was to look after the "parts supply" and to get production going.
Later we were joined by Gilles Bourdin, who had worked in the press department of C= and took this job at Amiga Tech., too. He had to "fight" with Petro about which logo we would choose and how many colors it should have (Gilles wanted the Amiga "tick" in 4 colors, Petro said it was too expensive, and Gilles would have to pay for it from his budget).....So the logos changed from time to time...I thought there were more important things...well.
Then there were guys in Braunschweig (Axel Kraemer, Andreas Steep)...They had a lot of CD32s to sell, and as you know, the A1200 was produced again under Escom....
There were a lot of questions: why the A1200 wasn't enhanced back then, like HD-floppy support etc.
The answer is quite easy...it wasn't possible to change "Paula" in a way that it could handle HD-drives. Not all the records from C= were available, so that one had to cut Paula in slices(!) to understand what was going on in the chip.
Basically, they were just glad to be able to sell the A1200 at all...we talked to Mitsumi about DD-drives, their prices etc.....of course, a HD-floppy drive was available for half the price of a DD one, which were hardly used anymore at all, but in the end, it had to work.
I don't think I have to say anything more, the different HD-drive kits from Vesalia, Amtrade etc. should be known.
At some later time we were able to offer the A4000T from C= production...Doc Peter and I wanted to set a low price to increase the market size...we were even asked by Petro whether we wanted it this way, or a higher price to avoid dumping the "few" machines. In the end, it was his view that we had nothing to give away....
So days went by, and I felt that the whole thing wasn't productive. Talks with Telenorma regarding installations, purchase of desktop machines, which we didn't get because there were none available or they were too expensive. Petro said we had a free hand, but in the end, we needed his approval. So orders of CPU boards or memory were delayed for 2 weeks because Petro was travelling abroad. We also had an order to purchase parts through Escom, whenever possible, but a 2MB Chip-RAM module was three times the price of the same part from Hirsch & Wolf, and it was quite a fight to convince him that Escom was not the "cheapest" vendor. An attempt to convince the sales dept. of Escom that a) hardly anyone needed 2MB PS/2 modules and that it would be b) reasonable to lower the price, before they had to write them off, was less than successful. In short, I bought them from Hirsch & Wolf. I received them and passed them on to Doc Peter, shortly before I departed. Later they must have grown legs, because weeks later, I was asked where they had disappeared to. Since I had passed them on correctly, it was nothing to do with me.
It was inevitable. My departure was not my choice, but looking back, I am glad about it, even though I was more than annoyed about the reasons. Escom had taken over a quantity of CD32s from C=, and chief Schmitt wanted to show them to a Spanish marketing chain (or rather, wanted me to show them). That's when I understood you couldn't rely on anybody and had to do everything you wanted done yourself. Anyway, the machines were sitting around unopened "somewhere" at Escom, according to Petro. I talked to a storeroom employee who knew where they were, and we arranged to meet an hour earlier on Monday, so that I could get one (I already had a monitor in the car). When Monday morning came, the employee was nowhere to be found and nobody knew about those CD32s...I finally got one from somewhere, but found that it was a French version with the wrong cables. I charged through all of Escom and through the Escom Shop including tech-department, but couldn't find an adapter. So I had to report that the presentation was cancelled. Of course, Schmitt was not pleased to hear this.
A few hours later (I still hadn't signed my contract of employment, because I still hadn't seen it after 4 weeks), Petro called me and started in on me. He wasn't content with my work, and I said the same to him. I said that Amiga Technologies would maybe last 1 or 2 years before they went down, if they kept on repeating mistakes. All to no avail, he either wasn't interested or capable of changing anything. They just wanted a scapegoat.
After this "loud" dialog, Doc Peter turned up and told Petro he wasn't happy either. Petro said he could leave as well if he didn't like his decisions.
He wanted me to show the abilities of my Amiga to some guests...but he didn't change his mind (years later he told me that it had been Schmitt's order......).
I told the personnel department to prepare my papers. Of course, they were surprised, since they didn't have the paperwork ready...they asked for my reason and suggested I see the works council...I said no, I just wanted to leave quickly...Petro tried to hold me to my period of notice...I said that I could get sick very quickly if he wouldn't let me go...we "agreed" that I could leave immediately and the next day I was gone.
To be continued...
