23.Jan.2001
Christoph Dietz
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Interview with Bill McEwen
Christoph Dietz did an extended interview with Bill McEwen, president and CEO of AMIGA, Inc:
Bill McEwen
Amiga-News: In your latest Executive Update you announce that the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) would be a great fun for the Amiga community. But how would this be a great fun if Amiga Inc. is not a exhibitor there?
Bill McEwen: We were there. We had two companies showing Amiga enabled devices at the show. These meetings were private, but we were there :-)
Amiga-News: Can you tell us details about this devices and the companies behind?
Bill McEwen: No. We are under NDA with each of them. Announcements will follow soon.
Amiga-News: In an interview with Corinna Cohn you told the community that Amiga Inc. is low on money and our readers are now wondering if this means that Amiga Inc. is closing down. So why are you low on money?
Bill McEwen: We are far from closing down. It takes money to run this business, and we planned to raise money in summer of last year. Our timing was off, and the market had a big downturn. As of the time of the discussion we had not secured more funding.
Amiga-News: So I can assume that there is no financial shortness anymore?
Bill McEwen: We will continue to watch every dime very carefully, this is not a market to be crazy with your money.
Amiga-News: Can you tell us the names of Amiga Inc.'s investors?
Bill McEwen: The "Invisible Hand Corporation, LLC", and "Net Ventures, BV".
Amiga-News: What do these investors expect from Amiga?
Bill McEwen: To make money.
Amiga-News: They are not interested in the Amiga products to use in their own products?
Bill McEwen: They are investors not OEM's.
Amiga-News: Is going public an option for Amiga Inc.? Can we expect to buy stock options in the near future?
Bill McEwen: Public offering is not possible at this time. But you can expect to have opportunities to invest in the future with Amiga.
Amiga-News: Francis Charig told me (as published on amiga-news.de) that the AmigaDE will be ready in the first half of this year. Are you agreeing with this?
Bill McEwen: Yes. This is the plan.
Amiga-News: How and then (more exact) will AmigaDE hit the marked?
Bill McEwen: Initially in some OEM hardware platforms, and then it will get more functionality and be out in other hardware with software following.
Amiga-News: According to MeterNet they are only waiting for AmigaDE to release their Set-Top box. When do they get AmigaDE and will this version be the same as planned for release in the OEM hardware?
Bill McEwen: Yes, the initial release is for this type of hardware OEM.
Amiga-News: Also Francis spoke about memory protection and why TAO is not planning to implement MP into the operating system. But you already announced that Amiga Inc. is going to implement MP into AmigaDE. Is this plan up to date?
Bill McEwen: Tao is not, and they never were going to. This is consistent to what we have said since the beginning. Amiga is handling the MP. So the plan is the same that we have said since the beginning.
Amiga-News: Can we expect MP to be in the first versions of AmigaDE?
Bill McEwen: No, not in the first version. It has been planned for later.
Amiga-News: Why do you think MP is needed?
Bill McEwen: I personally think that this is better suited for the desktop and server market.
Amiga-News: What can AmigaDE developers expect to be added into the next SDK update?
Bill McEwen: Sound, 3d, and numerous other new tools and enhancements.
Amiga-News: When can they expect the next update?
Bill McEwen: Targeted for end of February - middle of March.
Amiga-News: More than 15.000 copies of SDK are sold. How many developers are registered? And how many of them are contributing software?
Bill McEwen: A little over 2,000 busy working.
Amiga-News: This means that at least 13.000 people only bought the SDK to support Amiga Inc. with some money or for to add the SDK to their treasury?
Bill McEwen: You asked how many are registered. We have thousands who are working and have not registered.
Amiga-News: Do you know a reason why they didn't register?
Bill McEwen: No. It is really up to them. We have also located two sites that have created SDK's that are pirated. I believe that we have shut them down now, but we know that several copies were downloaded before we stopped them.
Amiga-News: Which is the most amazing software contributed right now?
Bill McEwen: There are so many, I do not know where to begin. I would encourage people to look at the developer section of the web site to see many of the titles that are being worked on.
Amiga-News: While the "World of Amiga 2000" in Cologne Fleecy announced that about 1.5 Mio units of AmigaDE are already sold. What is the market and when will the AmigaDE based products show up?
Bill McEwen: Products will begin showing up in March of this year.
Amiga-News: A press release from Thendic Electronic Components just crossed the wire that tells that "in September 2001 Thendric will release a modified Handheld-PC for the consumer market under the label 'Amiga(TM)'." Are they only licensing the Name "Amiga"? Or will they use AmigaDE?
Bill McEwen: There is only ONE owner of the Amiga name and Trademarks, Amiga Inc. We own the worldwide exclusive rights to all of the Amiga properties, that were once in the hands of Gateway. Thendic has licensed AmigaDE for their devices. We were not supposed to say anything for another month, but since they have announced, then it is true they are one of many new licensors of AmigaDE.
Amiga-News: And are there other products?
Bill McEwen: Several in the works and all over the office.
Amiga-News: How many copies of AmigaOS3.9 are sold? How close are we to an PPC-Version of AmigaOS 4.0?
Bill McEwen: OS 3.9 I do not know right now. We had several thousand out by before Christmas, and I have not seen the reports of the sales since that time. We should have some numbers up on the site soon. As far as meeting the sales requirements for the OS 4.0 PPC version, we are not even close. We are still evaluating the market need for this product, and I hope that we can show that there is a true market and business for 4.0, and even other versions in the future.
Amiga-News: When can we expect that the decision is made?
Bill McEwen: Working on it now.
Amiga-News: What are the improvements in the classic AmigaOS to legitimate the version jump to 4.x?
Bill McEwen: Once the decision has been made, then you will see a targeted feature list and then we will all know.
Amiga-News: Do you know about the status of development at Eyetech and bPlan?
Bill McEwen: I have been focused on other funding issues, and Fleecy has been working more closely with these developments.
Amiga-News: Will the AmigaOne be available in Q3/2001?
Bill McEwen: That is the plan.
Amiga-News: How can the Amiga community support Amiga Inc. at best?
Bill McEwen: The best way to directly help is the purchase of SDK's and other products. And the more people creating product for Amiga the better. We have recently received several new games for AmigaDE and they are great. It is really encouraging to see all of the development efforts underway, and the more people that we have developing the better.
Amiga-News: Are these games only converted from other platforms or are they completely new? Are they cutting edge in graphics, sound and idea?
Bill McEwen: All of the above.
Amiga-News: Bill, thank you for this interview!
Contact Information Amiga Inc.
World Headquarter
AMIGA, Inc.
34935 SE Douglas Street
Suite 210
Snoqualmie, WA 98065 (USA)
Phone +1-425-396-5660
Fax. +1-425-396-5671
email: bill@amiga.com
WWW: Amiga Inc.
[News message: 23. Jan. 2001, 01:48] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2001
Oliver Roberts
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WarpBMP.datatype Version 44.2 Released
Today Oliver Roberts released WarpBMP.datatype version 44.2. The datatype is
freeware and is available for different processors (68k,PPC/WarpOS,PPC/MorphOS).
[News message: 22. Jan. 2001, 20:42] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2001
AmigArt
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Earth 2140 Review by AmigArt
AmigaArt published a review of the new game Earth 2140.
[News message: 22. Jan. 2001, 20:42] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2001
Thomas Steiding via eMail
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Earth 2140 Update
There is an update for Earth 2140 for Amiga users available at the download page
of Epic-Interactive. This update adds support for Voodoo3 graphic accelerators.
[News message: 22. Jan. 2001, 19:42] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2001
Innovative on ANF
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VHI Studio in "Kodak Third Party Solutions Catalog"
Not only more and more Amiga users belong to the people convinced of our software's quality, but
recently also Kodak, who now included VHI Studio to the "Kodak Third Party Solutions Catalog".
Here you can find the entry in the
Kodak Third Party Solutions Catalog.
[News message: 22. Jan. 2001, 16:03] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2001
Innovative on ANF
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Ultraconv NG now Available form Innovative Again
RBM Digitaltechnik handed the international sales-rights back to Innovative.
That's why Ultraconv NG 4.0 is now again available directly from Innovative.
[News message: 22. Jan. 2001, 16:03] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2001
Ignatios Souvatzis via eMail
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ISDN now included in NetBSD/Amiga
The Zorro-bus connection for Siemens-chips (isic) are now included in NetBSD-current.
The subsystem is able to communicate with DSS1 (Euro-ISDN) mediate-stations. There are drivers for many PCI, PCMCIA,
ISA, ISAPNP, and Zorro-bus - ISDN devices.
At the moment there are drivers for the following Zorro-bus-devices available:
ISDN Master, ISDN Master II, ISDN Blaster.
We are still working on drivers for the ISDN Surfer and on tests with PCMCIA-devices for the A1200.
The subsystem will be available with release 1.6 of NetBSD. Additional help for configuration is available in
the documentation and from the manual
pages for isdn and isdnd.rc.
[News message: 22. Jan. 2001, 13:20] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2001
László Török
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MooVId Screenshot with 3ivX
László Török published a
screenshot of his AVI/MOV players MooVId showing
that the new format 3ivX is playable with MoVId. He didn't said when
a new version will be released.
[News message: 22. Jan. 2001, 01:43] [Comments: 0]
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22.Jan.2001
Amiga Future [News]
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MainPrefs Version 2.05 Released
MainPrefs by
Martin Elsner is a program to configurate your Amiga under OS3.5. With the program
you can manage your assigns, edit the User-Startup, set environment variables, and
start the preferences programs. In v2.05 some bugs have been fixed, new tools and
Spanish, French and Turkey catalogs have been added.
Download: mainprefs.lha - 67 KB
[News message: 22. Jan. 2001, 00:51] [Comments: 0]
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21.Jan.2001
Fun Time World
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Workbench 3.5 Guide by Peter Hutchison
On 20. January 2001 Peter Hutchison has released his
"Workbench 3.5 Guide" in Englisch language.
The guide covers the subject:
Reaction, preferences, Workbench, CacheCDFS, Internet, FastFileSystem,
ROM patches, printer drivers, PowerPC support, colour icons
and third party utilities.
Besides the online version (title link) there's an AmigaGuide version available
for download.
Download: AmigaOS35.lha
[News message: 21. Jan. 2001, 21:04] [Comments: 0]
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21.Jan.2001
Fun Time World
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Auction tool: AmiBud for eBay
On their homepage F1
Software announces an eBay client for the Amiga. There are currently no details
released, but a screenshot.
Everybody who has questions or comments regarding the software might mail to
amigastuff@onemain.com.
[News message: 21. Jan. 2001, 21:04] [Comments: 0]
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21.Jan.2001
ANN
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Finish user group 'Saku' with New URL
The WWW address of the "Finish Amiga Users Group", also known as 'Saku' which is the name
of their magazine, has changed. The address is now:
http://batman.jypoly.fi/~saku/english/.
[News message: 21. Jan. 2001, 19:50] [Comments: 0]
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21.Jan.2001
Czech Amiga News
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Review of the PC Version of Realsoft 3D v4
In the beginning of December 2000 Hyperion und Realsoft had
announced the port
of the 3D software package "Realsoft3D V4" for the Amiga
On 9. January 2001 a
review of the
PC version of Realsoft 3D V4 was released on
Planet3DArt that gives an impression
of the software.
(Real3D was originally developed for the Amiga. There was no update
since a longer period of time.)
[News message: 21. Jan. 2001, 19:50] [Comments: 0]
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21.Jan.2001
Michael Haider on ANF
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News about Linux-APUS/LinuxPPC
Michael Heider wrote:
As reported at Heise some days ago new kernels in version 2.4.0 are ready for
download at linux-apus.sourceforge.net
As this server might probably be permanently overloaded, I will also make the
precompiled kernel available for download on my homepage.
New to report after reading the .config file is that the driver for the
Cyberstorm MK III controller is included in this kernel.
Furthermore, there are again new programs to be found in the download area that
I have shifted to LinuxPPC.
Among others UAE in the version 0.8.15 (new: 68040 cpu emulation) and
Quanta+, a very good HTML page editor with own preview function.
Besides, there will be new and shifted programs regularly appearing on my homepage,
taken from the Linux user magazine, .
[News message: 21. Jan. 2001, 18:21] [Comments: 0]
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20.Jan.2001
gamespy.com
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Interview with Ben Hermans
James Hill of gamespy.com had an interesting interview with Ben Hermans of
Hyperion Entertainments
about their Linux ports.
[News message: 20. Jan. 2001, 23:12] [Comments: 0]
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20.Jan.2001
Bernd Gmeineder on ANF
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Fire & Ice - Now Legal and Free at AMI Sector One
AMI Sector One has the following interesting news:
First of all the company 'Jester Interactive' which owns the copyrights of many older Amiga games,
has granted us permission to post many of the games from the cult company 'Graftgold' for free download on our site:
The first free game that is available is 'Fire & Ice' which should ring a bell to every Amiga-Fan.
Furthermore more commercial games and PD classics like 'Magic Forest 2', 'Seek & Destroy', 'Mayhem', and many more
have been made available. The first version of the new 'Amiga Applications Compendium' has been put online. This allows the
user to search for more than 300 Amiga applications, companies and developers.
Nostalgic disk magazines and cheat disks put a nice finish to this year's first update.
[News message: 20. Jan. 2001, 18:58] [Comments: 0]
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20.Jan.2001
amiga.org
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'The Best Of The Amiga Scene CD' for Free at mp3.com
Fredrik, also known as ORG* of X-TRADE ^ BoB, and two friends compiled an Audio CD containing the best
Amiga Songs ever five years ago. The CD sold well but now there are only two left and so it was decided
to make the songs available for free download at MP3.
Not all songs are already available, but they will be as fast as possible. Enjoy!
[News message: 20. Jan. 2001, 18:54] [Comments: 0]
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20.Jan.2001
amiga.org
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Looking for AmigaDE-Developers
#Developer needs YOU! If you are a AmigaDE developer come to the IRC channel #Developer on
Amiganet (see title link). If you are sick of off-topic news in mailing lists, but like to
share your knowledge about coding, #Developer is the place to be. More information about IRC and
Amiganet can be found here.
[News message: 20. Jan. 2001, 18:54] [Comments: 0]
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20.Jan.2001
Amiga Flame
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Amiga Flame: Top 10 of the Games 2000 Determined
Every year the online gaming magazine 'Amiga Flame' starts a poll to determine the best games of the
year and then compiles a top 10 hit-list. The results of 2000 are now computed. Here now the games in
reversed order:
- 10. Virtual Ball Fighters by Xteam Software Solution
- 09. Tales From Heaven by Darkage Software
- 08. Code Name Squad by Digital Dreams Entertainment
- 07. Foundation: Gold Edition by Paul Burkey (Epic Interactive)
- 06. Exodus: The Last War by Blittersoft
- 05. Bubble Heoes by Arcadia Developments (Crystal Interactive Software)
- 04. Simon The Sorcerer II by Adventure Soft (Epic Interactive)
- 03. Earth 2140 by Topware (Epic Interactive)
- 02. Nightlong by Trecision (clickBOOM)
- 01. Heretic II by Hyperion (Titan Computer)
[News message: 20. Jan. 2001, 18:54] [Comments: 0]
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20.Jan.2001
Extraterrestrial developers via eMail
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New Crusader-Clone in Development - Demo Available
The team arround 'Extraterrestrial Developing' is currently working on a Crusader clone.
The first demo version 0.2b of the game called 'Silencer' is ready for download.
The game runs on a 640x480 screen with 256 colors and needs 16MB RAM and 15MB on the harddrive.
The team is still looking for a distributor.
[News message: 20. Jan. 2001, 17:52] [Comments: 0]
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20.Jan.2001
Olaf Koebnik via eMail
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Amiga Arena News
'Weltendaemmerung' a new strategy game by UAC Design is online. In the game the user plays a character
called Robert Ungar. He must try to stand against the creatures of Dr.Coypu. To achieve this he must
gain control over a army of mutants...
[News message: 20. Jan. 2001, 17:52] [Comments: 0]
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