Wayne wrote:
I also agree that while the Amiga community was dying on it's own due to neglect, the virulent "The Art of War" form of promotion injected by Bill Buck (and supported by others) into the fray is exactly what turned it from a morose death-watch into an unneccessary and stupid war.
I think you give Bill just to much credit on this one...
"Art of War" promotion, aka trolling&FUDing by corporate head-nuts and their minions was pretty much common long before BB took part.
Just look through the ann.lu-archives up to 2001 and you'll see what I mean. It's offcourse no secret that adding BB into this mix meant hitting critical mass, but you can't blame the last neutron any more than the other 400 trillion that form the nuklear explosion.
I must admit that I have absolutly no clue what went on online prior to 1998 or so (internet was danm expensive round here back than), but for me the troubles really started when GateWay announced they would slap "Amiga" on something completly different. It just wasn't clear anymore what Amiga was, and from thereon you had companies and groups each following their own paths and ideas (which often turned out to be just fantasy or scams).
Before that everybody agreed on that "we" wanted an A5000. There might have been discussions wether this should have AA,Nyx or just a PCI-GFX card, wether it should use PPC or maybe alpha, but the direction was clear.
