![[Power PC Logo]](../images/ppcsmall.gif)
I spent the day today at the Universal City Hilton hotel for the 2nd annual Video Toaster User expo, which continues thru 04 Nov. 95
Here's a tiny recap - I'll have more to post later along with photos after I get the film developed and scan them.
In a half-hour speech to a packed ballroom of about 500 people, Petro Tyschtschenko (say "ta-SHEN-ko"), a very gung-ho and good English-speaking guy, pulled up a black cloth and revealed a brand new production Amiga 4000 Tower, and also showed, cased in lucite, no less, an actual A1200 motherboard produced by AmigaTech along with a German sales packed-A1200 full of bundled software.
Tyschtschenko is the President of Amiga Technolgies, GmbH, the wholly owned subsidiary of Escom, AG, and it's the new 40 person (so far) company formed to make Amiga personal computers. (Does anyone not know this yet? :) after Escom bought out Commodore.
He then, with much suspense, announced the next generation Amigas will use Motorola's PowerPC CPU and will be dubbed the Power Amiga.
Petro, along with his young Press Relations Guy, Gilles Bourdin, explained that Escom has already spent many times its initial $12 million investment in the intellectual properties of Commodore, whom they bought out earlier this year. That They know what the Amiga is, unlike Commodore's former top management, and that "We didn't just buy the Amiga for Christmas." He insisted that the Amiga is back and that development will carry on through the last of the 68xxx processors, the 68060, and then onto the PowerPC. He did not name any ship dates for Power Amigas of course, although scuttlebut says expect them in early '97.
Petro further said that so far, 15,000 new AT-made A1200s have been sold in Europe. Not just shipped, sold. To customers. And that over 80,000 more are backordered at dealers and are being made as fast as the factory can crank them out.
Amiga Tech GmbH is forming a strategic alliance with Apple Computer, since they have already been before where Amiga is going, from the 68k family of CPUs to the PPC.
After Petro spoke, Tim Jenison, Pres. of Newtek took the stage and gave a very moving, tearful speech in tribute to Jay Miner, father of the Amiga. This was a speech unlike anything I have ever heard Jenison give before. He was on the verge of tears many times as he recounted his early meetings in Los Gatos with Jay and the early Amiga engineering crew, showing them the first Digiview pictures, how Jay was constantly amazed and thrilled at the things developers were making his little creation do.
I took pictures at the press conference and also in the exhibits hall of various people and products and will scan and upload them in the next couple days, putting them on Portal in the Amiga Zone library and on Aminet, so look for them soon.
That's enough for now. I'm pooped.
Harv
harv@cup.portal.com
http://www.portal.com/~harv
He also gave profuse thanks to both George Robbins and Jeff Frank, ex-of-Commodore who are now working with Amiga Tech, and he gave them much praise for helping get the new 4000s and 1200s out on the market as soon as they did, which required the cooperation of companies in six different countries to accomplish. Robbins was also working at the AT/SMG booth on the exhibits floor.
There was no printed copy of the speech available. I asked for one. Perhaps someone else who was there will transcribe and repost the whole thing from a recording. Shrug.
I have just uploaded to Aminet and to Portal, two JPEG images which are composites of photos I took at the VTU expo and then scanned and tossed together using ImageFX 2.1. Look for the files "vtu951.jpeg" and "vtu952.jpeg" whenever they become available on Aminet or get them now on Portal if you're a customer there.
It's hard to believe that of the 500 people in the room where Petro gave his speech, I'm the only one who has so far come home to post about this.. but apparently so :)
Finally, I should invite you to visit the spankling newly redesigned Web pages of AMG,Inc. the publishers of Video Toaster User magazine and LIGHTWAVEPRO which I just installed. you'll find them at http://www.portal.com/~amg.
The graphic you'll see at the top of the main page was created by Mike Crossmire. If you have ever seen or used AmigaVision, it was Mike who was the artist at Imsatt Corp., who created all of those pretty little glyphs/icons that are used in AmigaVision's interface. A very talented guy.