CommodoreUSA CEO Interview Answers

[Digiman]

No intent on contributing to linux, no intent in aros = no intent to buy your ****e.

And his opinions conveniently steer his products to PC Windows x86 motherboards with f**k all to do with even watered down "Amiga" machines running OS4. Apart from C64x case you could badge their products as ANY retro make. And to be honest Amiga Mini is more like an Atari Mega ST shrunk in the wash design-wise :roflmao:

(Mos and AROS are just Amiga like unofficial projects)

[Pyromania]

It sounds like Barry does not know that Minimig has been available and selling for years.

[vox]

It sounds like Barry does not know that Minimig has been available and selling for years.

Just for opposite example Natami finalization, Minimig AGA development with standard ARM add on and large memory with legal and preinstalled OS 3.9 + bunch of games could be cheap and nice Amiga comeback. Or FPGA 030 softcore for some FPGA expanded x86 board.

There are plenty ways to explore, but very little if you don`t wish to invest or develop. And that is the end of "Amiga comeback". Linux with Amiga Forever. As much Amiga as any device running UAE nicely and with a bit experienced user or Amiga Forever for it.

[Digiman]

For those people who are not excited by a linux pc, will you
genuinely have something of interest for them?
Yes, it’s called Windows, you may have heard of it. We are considering
providing that as an option beside Commodore OS. Ultimately, we are
OS agnostic, and don’t care if you go and install AROS or MacOSX on
our machines (at your own peril).

Says it all really, like a smelly old politician he purposefully misinterprets the question which clearly is asking for non x86 generic b0ll0x + Amiga sticker. More BS from Mr BS Altman. :laugh1:

[A1260]

I am converting it to rtf format and I came across this.

On UAE
Do you plan some sort of a help for UAE project in order to add
support for PowerPC to this application?
I am told very little would be gained from that as there is very little
PPC software that is not already available to us non-emulated.

Not sure if this is my question cut to shreds but my point was a PPC core emulation + WIN UAE = OS4 running on x86 PCs like the worthless crap they sell

edit:
my question is here....
Why are you not doing the only sensible option of funding
PowerPC 604 CPU emulation core for WinUAE option so Amiga
OS4 could be run on your generic cobbled together medium
power PC compatible?
I see you are under certain delusions and will leave it at that.

Leave it at what? You pathetic overpriced chinese bargain bucket PC with underwhelming 3d/audio performance with Amiga logo stuck on them?

The delusional one is you Mr BS extreme. As your tiny budget only allows fooling people into buying your overpriced badly built Windows PCs + Amiga sticker and AROS want nothing to do with you YOUR LAST HOPE OF EVER GAINING A TINY BIT OF RESPECT IS GONE WITH. WinUAE+PPC CORE + OS4 is the only way to add any legitimacy to your $1 website.

"While we have no immediate plans for an A500 replica, we will surely produce it one day."

And added to that gem of a reply all he wants to sell badly built ugly chinese wintel machines usingthe C=/Amiga name :roflmao:

so true so true.....

[Digiman]

Is Amiga x86 going to have fully licensed Amiga ROM in order
to legally emulate previous systems?
Amiga ROMs for game emulation are part of our license.

So will we get some Roms burnt on a DVD-R with hand written label by marker pen? Do deluxe models get Workbench adfs too? :lol:

btw Amiga Inc own Kickstart? Thought Gateway gave them permission not sale of ownership?

[Digiman]

Why are you putting Amiga logo on HTPC cases, where are the
Amiga look-a-like cases?
We want to go beyond pure retro for a look that can also appeal to
more to a mainstream audience. We don’t want to put all our eggs in
the replica basket. Think of the new Mustangs, Mini’s and Beetles, for
an idea of what is in our mind regarding re-styling or re-imagining of
classic models. Our new models will pay similar homage, and to do so
they need to be pizza shaped like the classics or today’s HTPC units.
We will also likely sell towers by years end, but leveraging the classic
Amiga form factors seems the most appealing and distinctive option at
the moment.

Commodore NEVER made a slim pizza box case dumbass, and a handful of towers. Amiga = 1000,500,3000,1200 and nothing else design-wise is Amiga. This rubbish is like an Atari Mega ST shrunk in the wash  :flame:

Like I said this a$$wipe wants to sell off the shelf crap from china with some Amiga stickers, nobs rejoice your overpriced "Amiga" is hear. :banana:

[Dr.Bongo]

Having read the reply I have to admit I'm now feeling a little sad. I understand that Cusa is a company and needs a profit to survive but, I can't honestly see where the expect to get that from. The 64 case was a nice niche thing but is no good for anything but the basics and all of there other stuff smacks of the earlier attempt at C= branded mp3 players. There's better out there for less.
The thing that really got to me though was the answer to my question, asking if any of them still use/own the classic machines. Basically his reply was that one member of the team has a couple kicking round the office as ornaments. I find it so sad that the current owners of the best brand of all time (in my opinion) doesn't actually understand what it's all about. Nobody who loves C= is going to buy their x86 stuff and the way they are going about things I'm sure that they will not attract anybody new.
I don't have a magic answer to what Cusa should be doing but, I'm very sure that this is not it.

Jack Tramiel must be turning over in his grave (too soon?)

[Nameless]

I first want to give Barry credit for answering all (or most) of the questions. He did seem to put some thought into his answers.

The problem is, none of those answers really solve the problem of what his vision of what an Amiga is, vs what everyone here, and a large percentage of former users, think.

It can be summed up in this line he gave: 'I think of the Amiga as more a concept, rather than it must be this hardware or this software'.

I don't think that is the same, or similar, mindset to anyone who owned an Amiga in the past. I could use that same logic to say almost anything is an Amiga. My mac mini has a lot of nice features, it could be considered high performance and has a lot of entertainment value... is it an Amiga? I think my HP Touchpad is cool... should I just all of a sudden say it's an Amiga? You get the point.

Unless CUSA somehow gets around that licensing agreement, so they can either port AOS, or provide an OS with Amiga-like elements, I think they'll never get the support of former Amiga users. In my opinion they really should have never used the Amiga license without such an agreement in place first. They might as well just called their lineup Commodore PCs (which admittedly failed when Commodore Gaming tried it).

I wish I followed this earlier, as I would have added my own questions. But one key one which wasn't touched upon so much, but brought up briefly with FPGAs... why assume it has to be an expensive FPGA device? Why does CUSA think there is no market for such retro devices? They must be aware of Jeri Ellsworth's 'C-64 on a chip'. That is the way they should have went for their Amiga products (again, in my opinion).

As for Roms, I have heard various things. On the CUSA site they seem to indicate they will use the AROS rom. But I guess they could get around some legalities if they got a license from Cloanto instead. End users may still need to use WB 3.1 though to run certain programs, so not sure how they plan to get around that. Unless they just say to download AROS, download AROS roms, and... well, hope whatever they want to run, works.

[A1260]

Is Amiga x86 going to have fully licensed Amiga ROM in order
to legally emulate previous systems?
Amiga ROMs for game emulation are part of our license.

So will we get some Roms burnt on a DVD-R with hand written label by marker pen? Do deluxe models get Workbench adfs too? :lol:

btw Amiga Inc own Kickstart? Thought Gateway gave them permission not sale of ownership?

:roflmao:

[Darrin]

What is your opinion about the FPGA projects that are
recreating the old 8-bit and 16-bit machines on hardware FPGA
emulation?
As I said earlier, I like the Natami and Minimig projects and think they
are very interesting, and for that reason alone would like to bring
them under the Commodore umbrella some day.
Perhaps an FPGA PCIe card could be utilised as options on our
machines. There are certainly a lot out there, but they are too
expensive to provide as standard. Even then, one would argue that
emulation is preferable though.

So he has no idea what a standalone FPGA Minimig does except that he'd like to shut it down and fully control it under his umbrella.

[Digiman]

"It must be also realised that the majority of Amiga owners were solely
games players, using their Amigas in a similar fashion to consoles, and
while they may have used the machines for some other purposes now
and then, do not have any particular allegiance to the operating
system or chips in the machine, but loved the brand just the same. "

WRONG!

1. As many home users bought Dpaint as people with PCs at home bought spreadsheet programs.

2. Even only games playing Amigans KNEW Shadow o.t. Beast was better than ST/SNES versions because of them custom chips.

[Duce]

If the majority of Amiga owners were game players, I sure wasn't one of them.
I used my systems 99% for productivity and creative purposes.

Not trying to beat a dead horse here, but need to say what I forgot to say earlier.

Kudos to Barry for going through with it.

Cheers to Transition for getting the Q&A done and posted while jerk offs like me say nasty things about the whole deal being a farce.  At the end of the day Transition, people only chide you if they feel your site is being milked for PR purposes, or in some instances your integrity and the integrity of A.org is being tread on.  Nothing personal, buddy - in time I'm sure you might even see it as a backhanded form of respect, lol.

[billt]

What do you (or any of your employees with computer
hardware/systems backgrounds) think of this computer/OS
architecture?
From what I can understand, it sounds wonderful, but would likely be
outdated before it ever came to fruition.

I assume that THIS in the question was a link to something interesting. What was THIS?

[persia]

@Nameless

OS4 and MOS are both the equivalent of MacOS 9.  They are as far as you can go with the original operating system.  The point where there is no patching able to make the operating system modern, the cost of rewriting AmigaOS to run on top of a Linux kernel, like Apple did with a BSD kernel, is too high and the payback is too small.  A decade or two in stagnation is too much to recover from.

C=USA is not in the retro business, except as it sells machines.  Yes the handful of us who still love and appreciate AmigaOS or the original C64 may not buy their products, but somebody who had a C64 as a child and hasn't seen or used one in many years might.  I've been thinking about getting the C64x, loading Windows 8 on it and using it as a conversation piece.  A bit of kitsch...  A souvenir of the early computer days that has some use.

[billt]

Why should we ask any questions to a producer/assembler of a
regular PC computer when the only connection between this
system and Amiga is by UAE?
We are re-releasing computers bearing the famous Commodore and
AMIGA brands that many people cut-their-teeth with and loved.

But they are not re-releasing computers. They are re-using names. The computers have nothing else whatsoever to do with their name predecessors, so I just can't see this as re-releasing anything.

We don’t want to put all our eggs in the replica basket.

They did one replica, the C64. There's not ANY "Amiga" eggs in this basket at all. Mustangs, Minis and Beetles are at least inspired by their classic designs. Other than for the C64 casework, I don't see any related inspiration at all. I agree that they need to go with the times, and today things are different than back in Amiga Classic days. Giant towers are out, tiny Mini-ITX is in. But saying that their designs are inspired by the classics is a bit of a stretch. It's like when I was trying to figure out how the first new Dodge Chargers related to the classic Charger. It just didn't. The last year or two they've at least made it better, but I still don't see the lineage. The Challenger I'd call a success in being inspired by the classic lineage, but they kindof lost it with the Charger.

He said a number of times that there are no discussions with Hyperion or etc. I'd like to know if CommodoreUSA has made legitimate attempts to contact Hyperion or other named companies in the questions to initiate such discussions, or if they are so disinterested in such things that no contact has been attempted and CUSA do not intend to try.