Path: kernighan.cs.umass.edu!barrett
From: markus@tiger.teuto.de (Markus Illenseer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: VisCorp Inc. Developer Meeting, Toulouse 05/19/1996
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Date: 24 May 1996 03:11:19 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
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Reply-To: markus@tiger.teuto.de (Markus Illenseer)
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Keywords: meeting, developer
X-Review-Number: Volume 1996 Number 13
Originator: barrett@knots.cs.umass.edu
PRODUCT NAME
VisCorp Inc. Developer Meeting Toulouse 05/19/1996
BRIEF DESCRIPTION
VisCorp meets the Amiga community to demonstrate their new
t-ED-nology and to hear their ideas about future of Amiga.
AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION
Name: Visual Information Service Corp. (VisCorp)
Address: 111 N. Canal Street, Suite 933
Chicago, Illinois 60606
USA
World Wide Web: http://www.vistv.com
LIST PRICE
About 250 million US dollar on stock exchange.
DEMO VERSION
Demo Version is available in Germany, Bensheim. Costs 40
million US dollars. Unregistered Version including Copyrights and
Trademarks. Excluding manpower.
SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
You don't need any special hardware to talk to VisCorp other
than any form of Internet connection such as a computer linked to a
modem.
As for software, your built-in brain is far more than you need
in order to communicate with VisCorp.
COPY PROTECTION
VisCorp has a terrible copy protection. It requires human
resources to understand their software.
MACHINE USED FOR TESTING
Amiga 3000. If you read my former reviews, you may simply add
an 8GB hard drive and a 10x CD-ROM to the list.
INSTALLATION
The installation of the software was done more than 2 decades
ago. I can't remember when I started to talk. The last update to be
able to talk in English and French was performed only a decade ago.
All went smoothly and I was able to talk to VisCorp immediately.
REVIEW
Ok, what is going on? Is this a review or an April Fools'
joke? Is this guy able actually to write something about the meeting?
What meeting at all? Who is VisCorp? What is VisCorp?
Let's start at the very beginning. Jack was unlucky. Dale
lucky. Amiga was born. Amiga did it. Amiga died. ESCOM bought
Amiga. ESCOM underestimated a non-existant Christmas business. Amiga
is open for sale. VisCorp made an agreement. VisCorp wanted to
contact the Amiga community to get ideas for the future of Amiga.
That was - in brief - what happened in the previous decade of
AMIGA history. Then last month, VisCorp surprised us in telling us
the horrible (?) news about that they bought Amiga Technology.
Actually nothing has been bought nor signed yet. There is as much as
an gentlemen agreement between Mr. Tychenko (AT) and Mr. Buck
(VisCorp), which now has to be fixed by lawyers and such people.
Whether this is a horrible, laughable, most interesting,
mesmerizing, joyful, or just boring story is up to you, the reader of
this review. I for sure will comment the situation, but will not and
cannot give you anything more than my opinion about the situation of
the future of the Amiga. I don't really intend to figure out weak or
strong points of VisCorp or AT, though they certainly do have them;
but if you carefully read the ongoing text, you will see some hints
how you can help to design an new Amiga.
HAPPENING
What happened during the meeting? As usual for such meetings,
the first two hours are dedicated to demonstrating and showing who,
what and why the company is the best, biggest and fastest company in
the market.
T-ED-NOLOGY
Bill Buck, CEO of VisCorp, used his time frame to clear things
up, to show his intentions, and to demonstrate ED. After wondering
what ED might be, I now know it is no more than my Amiga in a new
housing. Actually the demonstration unit was almost unusuable. Did
you ever tried to demonstrate anything using NTSC on a SECAM-only TV?
(SECAM is used in France and Japan). So ED was demonstrated by Bill in
black-and-white only. Wonderful. ED is able to send and receive FAX
and MAILS. Amazing. ED can dial. ED can talk ("No access under this
number. Twiet-tweet-twiet") . ED can use a remote control ("Now,
where is that ESC-key?!"). ED can show TV ("Use you imagination, we
have no channel 3 in france - if you know what channel 3 is..."). ED
can browse through CompuServe (text based, no icons). ED can play card
games. Lovely. ED is a Set-Top-Box. ED is -what?
After and before ED-time, Bill of course stated to the
Amiga-dedicated public more about his ideas of the future of the
Amiga. Here is a list of the things he stated and which are more or
less open to you to decide whether they are possible.
New OS Version for 4Q96
No Walker before Christmas 1996.
Support on WWW.
Negotiations with AT ongoing. Not yet finished (date: 05/19/96).
In 1997 we will sell more Amiga than anytime before.
ALPHA Chip a possible future of Amiga. Negotiation ongoing.
We believe in AmigaOS. We believe in you [Amiga community].
Reading this, I get a feeling about a deja vu. All this -
slightly different in the content - was stated by Mr. Schmidt and Mr.
Trychenko from ESCOM and AT last year. The fact that the ALPHA chip
was mentioned made people upset - it made VisCorp look like they
didn't made their homework in investigating what AT - and other
companies like phase5 - already did so far.
After Bill, Carl Sassenrath entered the stage. His speech was
more or less enthusiastic. Carl is one of the very old Amiga freaks
and formerly worked at Commodore. He was mainly involved in the
design and implementation of the CDTV and CD32. Since then he worked
for 3DGO and Apple (consulting). It seems he has seen quite a lot of
interesting places in his career. Carl demonstrated his idea of the
future of the AMIGA as a computer as well as the AMIGA as a base for a
very good set-top-box. A prototype of the shown ED used Amiga
technology. Even not ready, the board shown to the public carried
AMIGA chips on it to make it possible to run AmigaDOS and more. The
only outstanding news on the board was a big hole for the 4MB ROM
module and the connector for possible piggy-pack boards housing
ISDN/ethernet, SCSI and much more other I/O and graphic technology.
Trying to use Carl's enthusiastic featuring, David Rosen,
marketing, explained how VisCorp believes to revive AMIGA and how to
distribute it - the only chance they have is the retailers' channel.
Eric Laffont, organiser of the meeting, only recently working
for VisCorp, tried to show the results of the Internet questionnaire
asking Amiga and other users to state their ideas and usage of
AMIGA. The numbers were more or less usable even though they were of
course focused on AMIGA anyway. Over 90% of the users replying use
their AMIGA for more than 6 years. 22% of the replies came from the
US, followed by Canada and Europe. From the 17% of the replies from
europe, 8% alone came from germany. (Please remember that Internet in
the US and Canada is far better available than in europe). 40% of the
replies use a pure AMIGA. Another 30% own an AGA Amiga (A1200 or A4000)
and 30% have an A3000/A4000 with graphic boards and other add-on
cards. The Top-5 of "What a future Amiga must have:" was:
1. Amiga is way too weak in performance
2. Graphics are poor.
3. Amiga is too expensive.
4. 16-bit audio is a must.
5. PCI should be considered.
All in all, I agree with all points above, with exception of the
audio. I don't need Audio. But then again, I am not the normal Amiga
user. I am missing other standard features like Ethernet or fast
serial interfaces.
After Lunch the stage was seperated into Developer conference
and retailer conference. It seems most of us concentrated onto the
devlopers conference.
DEVCON
After more than 2 hours discussion, flames,
talking-to-the-corner, why-french-don't-speak-english,
why-english-don't-speak-french (and why I speak all three :-) -
PowerPC vs. ALPHA, Amiga vs. PC, costs vs. usage, ED vs. Amiga, we
more or less agreed with Carl Sassenrath, Don Gilbreath and David
Rosen to fix up the following list as a MUST-HAVE. MUST-CONSIDER
MUST-DO/ANNOUNCE:
CE approval for all Amiga and other hardware
When ED available?
A1200 for UK and other countries
060 vs. PowerPC
who will write new OS?
[AmigaOS on PowerPV vs ALPHA] (been deleted from the board by
Carl after big discussion. No more ALPHA. We concentrate on PowerPC
now :-)
what tools for PowerPC available?
what tools for ED available?
japanse tools available? (and other localisation of course)
standard library tools available?
object oriented standard tool interface/iff (the usual MUI vs.
BOOPSIE war came up...)
It was a very interesting discussion for both sides. If there
wasn't this deja vu again. I had a very similar meeting with AT
during the Cologne "Computer '95" show in November 1995. We discussed
almost every topic there as well. The Toulouse meeting had one BIG
advantage: we were 95% true developers and only few dealers
complaining about availability of this and that and could concentrate
on the AMIGA.
The above list is by far not complete, but this is a start.
Many ideas have been mentioned in the discussion and the later
"Cocktail" party. For instance I brought up the idea that VisCorp
should concentrate on the AmigaOS - which is what separates the AMIGA
from other platforms - and use 3rd party boards, which are available
now, have support now and actually proved their functionality already
now. Unfortunately it seems that VisCorp only very recently started to
investigate into Motorola PowerPC technology for example, and into
other interesting market.
I am sorry not beeing able to write more about the content of
the meeting, but the discussion on the UseNet about the future of
AMIGA are a mirror of what's been discussed on the meeting. Just on
another niveau.
DOCUMENTATION
The meeting came without any documentation. Everything
required to find the place was either to be found on the Web sites or
on a street map. After the inscription by email, I received a
questionnaire form in 90 chars/line (unusable on my Amiga and my other
machines) asking my for this and that. I thought I would receive a
plan or a nice guide where to find the place of interest in a town I
last was 20 years ago not speaking of it being french (yes, I am
european :-). Alas, I only got the address.
I found it. Obviously this was the first meeting of this sale
VisCorp started in europe.
The rest of the documentation was readable as well as
understood in three languages: english, french and spanish. No
german. I didn't understand any french people speaking english. This
a reason why Amiga has built-in localisation for the OS and the
applications?
LIKES
I like the easy-going-ness of VisCorp. They can work
successfully if they go on like this.
I like the idea of beeing a successful company without ever
having sold anything. This is amazing.
DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS
I dislike some ideas. I want the Amiga to be something able to
compete with standards. You cannot do this with a set-top-box. Nor can
you with m68k-based machines.
VisCorp must negotiate with Motorola about PowerPC. They also
MUST talk with Phase5 and PIOS-AG to possibly go together. They must
try to let the AMIGA evolve - but together with people who might know
more than they do.
Be international. Make meetings and investigations
everywhere. Try to figure out how to sell AMIGA through the
retailer channel.
COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS
The only other product I can compare VisCorp with, is AMIGA
TECHNOLOGY. I am more than happy to see true AMIGA developers at
VisCorp. AT had aquired former Commodore members, but none of them
really designed any AMIGA in the past. ESCOM did a great job in trying
to start buisiness - they invested far, far more than just 40 million
US dollars some people stated - and failed not because AMIGA failed,
but their own PC market did. This is an outstanding situation on the
struggling market - let's hope VisCorp does it better.
BUGS
I was unable to understand french people speaking english.
This could be improved for the next version. Also Bill Buck is only
able to command "Ein Bier bitte" (one beer please) in german, I wish
him to be able to command more than that in the future :)
Other bugs available, but unproved and unreproducable yet.
VENDOR SUPPORT
VisCorp has only a support through WWW. Nothing noticeable on
the pages yet.
WARRANTY
The product is not yet stable or fixed. It's in alpha state.
CONCLUSIONS
Is a fair product. Must be improved and guided.
I give it 3 out of 5 stars. Can be improved by 1/2 star by
aquiring AMIGA completely, another 1/2 star by selling any AMIGA by
end of this year, and a full star by producing and selling a
KillerAmiga.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Copyright 1996 Markus Illenseer
This review represents my honest opinion; your mileage may
vary, so tell me about it! If you use this review in any way -
republishing for example - the author requests at least a copy of the
used media. Commercial reuse is prohibited unless written permission
is given.
You can contact the author at:
Markus Illenseer
Rathenaustr. 75
33102 Paderborn
GERMANY
markus@tiger.teuto.de
http://www.teuto.de/~markus
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