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The History of the Amiga Part 1: The Early Days Part 2: The Commodore Years Part 3: The P.C. Era |
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The History of the Amiga: Part 3 -
The Post-Commodore (PC) Era History is a beguiling mistress, rife with important, nay, crucial life lessons. For instance, thanks to Chernobyl, I now wear a radiation suit whenever I use the microwave. Yes, dear reader, I think I've proven my point. I'm happy to report that despite nuking countless burritos and even the occasional falafel, I've had nary a vomiting episode. At least not from the radiation. So, many thanks history, and to hell with what the neighbors think. As you may have deduced, it's time for the third and final installment of the History of the Amiga, an epic trilogy filled with intrigue, drama and even occasional blood sucking.
 Chernobyl. It radiates history. It’s the end of the Amiga World as we know it When we left off, Commodore had finally succumbed to bankruptcy thanks to their shortsighted and often paradoxical strategies. The downfall of Commodore had long been foreshadowed, but the Amiga world was nonetheless in a state of shock when the whole thing finally imploded like the proverbial fetid goat bag. What did it all mean? What was going to happen next? Was Amiga done for? These questions and many more filled Amiga user's heads like the beans in a three bean burrito. And believe me, there was no guacamole in site. Alas, as you will soon see, the post-Commodore era would be defined by false hope, broken promises and even the occasional Zombie Massacre. Oh, and a catchy dance number. There was much Gloom and even a little Doom. And though Amiga users occasionally were given reason to Quake in anticipation, ultimately, their hopes would be lost in the Myst. You see, the Amiga community may not have been the most fun at parties, but they were a loyal and resilient lot, and they refused to believe the Amiga saga had come to a close. So it was that news of a bidding war for the rights to the Amiga name and technology was followed obsessively by the Amiga faithful. It was soon learned that the interested parties included such lofty names as IBM, Dell, and Samsung. This gave Amiga users a flutter of hope. Surely one of these companies could succeed where Commodore had failed. A massive lumbering behemoth of a company behind the Amiga technology with all of their associated resources could be just what the Amiga needed, and the whole bankruptcy debacle might actually end up being a good thing. The Amiga community reluctantly decided they would relax, sip an herbal iced tea, and wait to see who the new owner would be. So they waited. And while they were waiting they waited some more. Soon they grew tired of waiting, so they did the only logical thing and waited. Eventually, the results were in. The new owner was..........Dell? IBM? Samsung? Connie Chung? No, it was Escom. Yes, Escom. The largely unknown German company had come out of nowhere, outbid the big boys and won the rights to Commodore and the Amiga. Amiga users, after they finished cleaning up the herbal iced tea which they'd spilled all over themselves, really had only one response to this: “Who the fuck is Escom?” There are two important points to make about
this response. First, the word fuck was universally pronounced with
the italics, and sometimes even an underline. Second, It’s a
question which hasn’t been satisfactorily answered to this day.
Disturbingly, Escom had indicated early on that they were only interested in the Commodore name and not the Amiga at all. To get what they were after, however, they had to bid on the whole damn fetid goat bag (as the saying goes). The Amiga community saw this as an ominous sign. By all indications, the Amiga now had an owner who wasn't even interested in the platform. Dark clouds began to form on the horizon. Admittedly, these went largely unnoticed behind the various other dark clouds that had already been cluttering up the Amiga horizon for years. Escom’s first official move was to separate the Commodore and Amiga brand names, and they would never be recombined to this day. (Escom's first unnoffical move is rumored to have been a rousing game of "slap the hooker", but this is largely seen as being possibly true). The reason they wanted the Commodore name in the first place was to use it to badge new PC’s and PC accessories. I’m not sure why this notion was worth millions of dollars to them, but hey, it must have sounded like a good idea at the time. In less time that it takes to saddle up a llama, Commodore branded PC’s, complete with a redesigned logo, appeared in Europe. Much to Escom’s surprise, they didn’t exactly jump off of store shelves. Meanwhile, there were some promising developments on the Amiga front. Despite fears that Escom would completely ignore their Amiga assets, Escom created a new subsidiary called Amiga Technologies to handle Amiga sales and development. The word “development” momentarily raised hopes among edgy goose-stepping Amiga fans. A Brobdingnagian advantage in technology had been the Amiga's ticket to the beau monde of techno-glitterati, but the PC world was gaining fast, and Amiga development could not afford to stagnate. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what it did. In retrospect it seems obvious that Escom was only concerned with dumping the huge inventory of Amiga hardware they’d acquired in the deal. Escom's Amiga “development” consisted of new ways to package the existing technology so they could get rid of it and recoup some of their investment. Gradually, and in keeping with this strategy, Amiga Technology branded A4000T’s and A1200’s began to appear.
It was around this time that a small company called VIScorp entered the scene. VIScorp had the crazy idea of licensing the Amiga technology to create a “set-top box”. It was 1995 and “set-top box” was one of the industry's latest buzz words. Nobody was quite sure what it meant, but they were pretty sure it would be “the next big thing” and it was sure to create “all kinds of new paradigms.” By all indications, a deal was reached, and VisCorp began work on their “set-top box”. It would sit on top of your TV, and well, yeah… it would do something apparently. Many Amiga users just shrugged at the notion, while others were just excited to see something new being associated with the Amiga name. Little did anyone know VIScorp’s idea would create an unexpected ripple effect and impact the future of the entire platform. One thing VISCorp had going for them was the hiring of Carl Sassenrath, a respected member of the Amiga development team during the latter part of the Commodore years. With Sassenrath on board, perhaps VISCorp had something after all...
Escom, meanwhile, was suffering significant losses. As it turned out, Commodore branded PC's weren't the key to making billions that they'd thought it would be. As 1996 rolled around, Escom announced they were closing their main offices in Germany and moving to the UK branch. This was seen as a bad sign. This was soon followed by the hiring of Petro Tyschtschenko, a portly public relations type and self-professed Amiga enthusiast, but not exactly someone who would turn the platform around. This too was seen as a bad sign. As Amiga fans braced for the worst, they were handed a surprise. Escom, perhaps in some kind of desperate attempt to save themselves from their impending doom, unveiled a new Amiga model called the Mind Walker (named after the first game Commodore published.) The Walker’s main feature seemed to be the most fucked up looking computer case in the history of computers that never ended up existing. Inside the case there really was nothing new. It was a repackaged 1200 with a few add-ons. But the bizarre case seemed to mollify some in the Amiga community. At least it was something, right?
Of considerably more interest, Petro Tyschtschenko announced a new system called the Power Amiga at the 2nd annual Video Toaster User Expo. It would run on a PPC chip (a 100mhz 604, the precursor to the G3) and feature a new version of AmigaOS. AmigaOS 4 would feature memory protection and virtual memory, two modern features that Windows had popularized that the current AmigaOS was sorely lacking. A "strategic alliance" (a term which Amiga users would become very familiar with in the future) was also proposed between Apple and Amiga Technologies allowing the Amiga to ease the transition from 68k to PPC, a transition the Mac had already made. "Proposed" is the key word in that sentence, of course, because nothing ever came of it, and Apple may not have even known about it. Petro confidently proclaimed that the Power Amiga would be finished in 1997 and be available soon after. To this day, nobody is sure whether the Power Amiga was just a crack-induced hallucination or if Petro really believed it was going to happen. Perhaps he’d had too much wine and in a flush of enthusiasm began promising the Amiga community what they wanted to hear so he could hear the applause. Needless to say, the Power Amiga never existed beyond Petro’s sweaty palpitating description of it. Not one line of code was written for the fabled new OS, and soon, Escom was announcing it was going bankrupt. The irony was not lost on the Amiga community.
The Amiga had traded one incompetent bankrupt company for another, and Escom had wasted two years of potential Amiga development during a crucial period when time could not afford to be wasted. Perhaps if another company had won the bidding, things would have been different. One thing was for certain, the Amiga was two years behind and back to square one. Curse of the Amiga... While the Amiga floated in limbo, the pc market continued to chug ahead. The much reviled Windows 3.1 had been a glorified program launcher and little else, but with the release of Windows 95, the PC finally had a real graphical OS with some powerful features. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was a step in the right direction. 1996 also saw the release of the first 3D card, dubbed Voodoo, by an upstart company named 3DFX. It would begin a new era in computer gaming, and put the PC far ahead of the Amiga as a games machine. As Escom entered the final stages of bankruptcy in July of 1996, it was announced that VISCorp was in negotiations to buy the Amiga. This was met with a great deal of skepticism. How could a tiny company like VISCorp who had never actually produced anything but rumors of a mythical “set-top box” be the next owner of the Amiga? VISCorp, treating the whole thing like a done deal, announced that they would cancel the Amiga Walker, and though it wasn’t mentioned specifically, the Power Amiga as well. They would continue to focus their energies on their “set-top box” idea, this time as the owner of the technology rather than a licenser. As a concession to panicking Amiga users, they also announced they would be willing to license AmigaOS to anyone who wanted to develop the Amiga technology. The whole thing left the Amiga community uneasy, but they were willing to go along with VisCORP for now. After all, Carl Sassanrath was there. He'd make sure the Amiga survived, right? As months passed, however, stories of VISCorps inability to even pay their own employees began to surface. Carl Sassenrath's name suddenly disappeared from the companies website one day. In October of 1997, VISCorp faded like an old man's sex drive, never to be heard from again. Soon after, Sassenrath publicly emailed the Amiga community, condemning VISCorp as being "worse than Commodore." VISCorp, it turned out, had been completely incompetent, in far over their head, and had done nothing more than waste more potential development time for the Amiga with their ill-conceived plans. And though they had disappeared, their legacy would live on in an unexpected way, as you’ll soon see.
For the time being, this meant the Amiga was still in need of a new owner, and Quikpak, the company who had built the Amiga 4000’s and 1200’s for Escom, stepped forward. This again, was not the kind of company the Amiga community was hoping for. Despite Quikpak’s promises that they would look into porting AmigaOS to DEC Alpha chips, it was doubtful that Quikpak had the resources to really bring the Amiga back. It was just another shoe-string company blowing smoke, something Amiga users were getting accustomed to. It was now 1997, 3 years since Commodore had gone bankrupt, and the Amiga platform was still in limbo. As PC’s continued to improve exponentially, the Amiga gathered dust. News began to leak that Dell and Gateway had become interested in the Amiga assets. This was seen as possibly being a good sign. After all, they were both huge companies with the resources and experience to make the Amiga a success again.Amiga users had long ago run out of herbal iced tea, and instead sipped at vodka with a bit of lime as they waited news on who the new owner would be. Eventually, the results were in. And the new owner was.........Quikpak? Dell? Connie Chung? No, it was Gateway. Yes, Gateway. This development, for the most part, was met with enthusiasm by the Amiga faithful. Gateway had the power to bring the Amiga back if they wanted to. The question was, did they want to? What Amiga users didn't realize at the time was that Gateway had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Internally, they had heard the industry abuzz over a new concept called the "set-top box". The conversation in the upper echelons of Gateway management probably went something like this: Gateway Executive #1: "I keep hearing set-top boxes are the next big thing. We'd better get one." Gateway Executive #2: "Aren't we supposed to think outside of the box though?" Gateway Executive #1: "I think that's just a figure of speech." Gateway Executive #2: "Oh, well we'd better get one then." The crux of all of this is that it was around this time that Gateway caught wind of VISCorp and the Amiga assets. They figured they were bidding on a budding set-top box development, and not an independent computer platform that still had an army of raving fans. So they bid, and they won. They figured they'd mess around a bit in R&D and see if this "set-top box" idea was viable. And then the emails started pouring in...
1998: Gateway to Doom Gateway was the new owner of the Amiga, but what
had they gotten themselves into? Word on the street was that
Gateway's relationship with Microsoft was not going swimmingly. Not
going swimmingly at all. So in an
attempt to piss off both Intel and Microsoft, Gateway set up a new
subsidiary, renaming Amiga Technologies to Amiga International.
Portly Amiga cheerleader Petro Tyschtschenko remained in charge of
the company.
Of course, this wasn't the kind of comeback Amiga
users had in mind. Let's face it, when all is said and done, who
cares if your electronic teapot is powered by Amiga? Amiga users
wanted a new desktop system. They wanted to be on top again, damn
it. Gateway wisely realized this, and didn't reveal their real plans
initially. At this point, Petro may have cackled evilly. It
was doubtful however. It just wasn't his style.
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