I'm just listening to the boingsworld 22 podcast containíng a lengthy interview with Petro (German).

Petro confirmed the old rumor that Bill Gates didn't want a new Amiga system to compete with his PCs and so put pressure on the Gateway CEO. The Gateway CEO in turn put pressure on Jim Collas. Jim Collas didn't like the Gateway CEO patronising him and resigned. So it was not the affair with one of the Annex girls that brought him down...

After Jim Collas left the scene Petro wanted to buy the Amiga and already had a contract ready to be signed that sold him all Amiga for one dollar, but then McBill turned up with 3 Million bucks and so he got the acceptance.

McBill took some 70,000 $ from the Amiga account without informing the others, what Petro didn't like at all. Furthermore Petro was convinced that McBill and Fleecy and Co were not professional enough to work with them and so he resigned.
To avoid flurry among the community it was officially announced that he had retired.

It was a very interesting interview and took 1 hour and twenty minutes - to sad it was in German only, as it disclosed a lot of things that were completely new to me...
A really brilliant interview!

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Ciao

Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

@Dandy

Thanks for that interesting little piece of history.

But what's also true: The community hold Amiga alive. In some way...


And if something good happens, Amiga will return in some way back on stage (a small one)

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Sometimes we give people a lot of credit just because they're writing nice sentences even if it isn't adding up to much.

@Dandy

Thanks for the insights. I'm very interested in this story. Is there any way to have at least a partial translation?

Regards
g0blin

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@Birbo

Quote:

Birbo wrote: @Dandy Thanks for that interesting little piece of history.

You're welcome.

Quote:

Birbo wrote: But what's also true: The community hold Amiga alive. In some way...

Yeah that's what Petro also stated.
He said as long there is activity it is a good thing for such a niche market.

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Ciao

Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

If all that is true then maybe that is why Gateway cancelled the Siamese PCI Amiga project, although my understanding was different but only speculation.

Do not remember Petro's name ever being discussed at that time though in meetings with Jim Collas and Gateway, although this was a bit earlier. Still there is an alternative reason for all of this but of course Petro's explanation sounds more exciting, anybody confirmed with mr Gates.

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@g0blin

Quote:

g0blin wrote: @Dandy Thanks for the insights. I'm very interested in this story. Is there any way to have at least a partial translation? Regards g0blin

Ummmm - hmmmmm - I just finished the translation of the Wiehl Valley Railway webpage to the English language - so gimme a rest, please!

But next Friday is my last working day this year and if my family and dog permit I could try to write the interview down and to tranlate the most important parts.

Perhaps there's not so much work to do next week - then I could already start translating next week...

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Ciao

Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

@Dandy

Well, it's time for the Amiga to come back and show is power to their opponents.

This story really make me angry.
I would like to see again Amiga under a strong company with strong leadership and true business plans.

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retired

@Dandy

Quote:

I just finished the translation of the Wiehl Valley Railway webpage to the English language

No, you have not finished yet! You're ahead of time as the subtitile to the picture clearly states:
Quote:

Photo of the month December 2011: St. Nicholas sunk in the deep snow of the upper Berg county in 2010. As hard as the service was for machinery and personnel, the finer it was for the passengers!

That photo of the month was probably taken in 2010 and not in 2011, as there is hardly any snow anywhere yet...

Looking forward to a translation of the interview and I like quality over speed.

OldFart

EDIT: Cleared some spelling mistakes due to speed...

Last edited by OldFart on 02-Dec-2011 at 09:01 AM.

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Get wasted all the time
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@Dandy

Nice website! I've always liked the look of the German steam locomotives, there's always been a particular character about them...

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@Daedalus

Quote:

Daedalus wrote: @Dandy Nice website!

Thanks for the compliment - I'll pass it on to my railway mates!
EDIT:
For those interested:
Video reports from rides on the Wiehl Valley Railway

Quote:

Daedalus wrote: I've always liked the look of the German steam locomotives, there's always been a particular character about them...

Yeah - if you can, you should come over and take a ride!
It is an uncomparable feeling to smell the steam loco or to feel the heat from the firebox while standing in the drivers cab in front of all the controls...
Makes a granddad like me feel like a boy again...

Last edited by Dandy on 02-Dec-2011 at 12:47 PM.

_________________
Ciao

Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

@clusteruk
Never heard about Petro being interested in (or close to) buying Amiga either. I was never impressed by Petro but had he got hold of Amiga it would probably have ended up with a quick deal with MOS, which could have been very positive and avoided the split in the community.

-

What I did hear was that Petro got to manage the european sales to get rid of the remaining stock of A1200 etc. I also heard he almost gave it away for free.

Amiga inc (amino) complete Amiga collection also dissapeared under petro's management. It was last seen at a Genesi booth at a (french iirc) computer show.

While I was certainly not impressed with Fleecy and McBill ability to get something done with the Amiga I understand their frustration with Petro. A quote from Fleecy (while Petro was still working for them) "Petro, that rat".

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@Troels

In the end, it has been shown who the rats were.
Petro is a very friendly and likable guy with (still)
a lot of passion about Amiga.

cheers,
nexus

Last edited by nexus on 02-Dec-2011 at 11:38 AM.
Last edited by nexus on 02-Dec-2011 at 11:37 AM.

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dye 'em black!

@nexus
I don't think of anyone of the involved people as rats but knowing what we know today I wouldn't trust any of them either.

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I don't believe to petro.
Amiga died because of its 80s former strength (architecture) was its main weakness in the 90s.
Bill Gates sold software for every winning horse it could have been on the market.
pc, ppc, mc68x. Software.
He even published amiga basic for amiga...
I think petro has simply made an interview. And a piece like this, obviously, is the main hot dish: "we've always said it! gates is the devil!"
I don't think so. I thought so in the early 90s when i was a teen. Today i think gates wanted money.
And petro has done nothing good. As collas, mcewen and co...

@Dandy

IIRC Petro tried to cancel all Amiga clones at first but when it was very late and all the projects were cancelled and access to custom chips was difficult he someway allowed it.

Boxer, DCE Amiga5000, InsideOut, Access and other clones could have given quite a lot of "life" to our dear computer. First Boxer model was quite nice with active ISA slots, 33% faster chipram access and 040/060 socket onboard. I had some friends who were going to buy it. ISA slots allowed connecting cheap NE2000 network cards and even some (slow, but better than AGA for hi-res) ISA gfx cards (Ateo used an ISA VGA card running at 14Mhz IIRC). Amiga was no longer "modern" but when Boxed was going to be released it would have given quite a lot of "life".

What a pity. It's interesting that the best who handled Amiga was Commodore. Escom restarted production but the new A1200 were more expensive than the ones sold 2 years earlier and they basically did nothing. Gateway was even worse, killing AmigaOS in favour of "AmigaAnywhere". Next owners were unable to expand the user base with stupid licensing and low-end hardware ideas.

Last edited by Crumb on 02-Dec-2011 at 12:33 PM.

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@rebraist

Quote:

rebraist wrote: ... Bill Gates sold software for every winning horse it could have been on the market. pc, ppc, mc68x. Software. He even published amiga basic for amiga ...

So - according to your words - Amiga was a "winning horse" back then.

In blatant contrary to amiga basic by M$ - this primitive interpreter wasn't even capable of multitasking - just like Mr. Gates's PCs back then...

_________________
Ciao

Dandy
__________________________________________
If someone enjoys marching to military music, then I already despise him.
He got his brain accidently - the bone marrow in his back would have been sufficient for him!
(Albert Einstein)

@Dandy

Now we have proof ... BILLY did it!

Boy, how I am gonna upset the man if met him in my lifetime

Maybe, at ESCOM / GATEWAY times Amiga was still feasible competition.
Not to Bills new PC, to his new Windows 95 or 98 which were still crap.
If OS 3.9 was done before Win95 and OS 4.2 before XP

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@rebraist

Quote:

I don't believe to petro. Amiga died because of its 80s former strength (architecture) was its main weakness in the 90s. Bill Gates sold software for every winning horse it could have been on the market. pc, ppc, mc68x. Software. He even published amiga basic for amiga... I think petro has simply made an interview. And a piece like this, obviously, is the main hot dish: "we've always said it! gates is the devil!" I don't think so. I thought so in the early 90s when i was a teen. Today i think gates wanted money. And petro has done nothing good. As collas, mcewen and co...

Blaming others is easy strategy. Well, yes, AGA was too late, and after it they didn`t know what to do. CD32 is more cutdown A1200 then revolution and strongest standard Classic A4000 was what 25Mhz? Honours go to all producers of expansions!

Bill Gates purchased both MS DOS and NT kernel, two winning horses.

He made just Amiga Basic that disappeared after OS 1.x
Even love to see Basic on 16-bit computers (only sadness for not having SinclairQL
is not being able to play with microdrives and SuperBASIC)

Well, Bill just didn`t sell it to all. NT 4 only briefly supported PPC and not fully, Windows never worked on PPC Macs (or now PPC Amigas

So he killed support to all to focus on x86.

Who won the day? Similarly, not even IBM or Intel.

My prize goes to Cyrix, AMD, even VIA CPU and board manufacturers and all producers of ISA, VLB, PCI and PCI-E cards that made Wintel winner offering more, faster, cheaper.

Intel survived with licences and Pentium, Pentium III, Pentium IV winners and Windows came to quite decent XP and 7. Sadly, all the others died, even MacOS and Linux are survivors on global level. Pretty, different and better ... but when people think of computers, they think of Windows.

But then again ... being looking and feeling different is BONUS, yes trully,
as someone commented major strenght of X1000 is being "exra special expensive geek differentOS" platform

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@Dandy

Quote:

Jim Collas didn't like the Gateway CEO patronising him and resigned. So it was not the affair with one of the Annex girls that brought him down...

I don't believe this. I have heard from VERY reliable sources this what happened. Of course, the same sources say that Gateway was happy too have this excuse at the time.

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Well it makes sense, Gateway was a massive company back then and attempting to revive the Amiga must have at least registered at Microsoft.
I don't see why Petro would be lying, I hope the new Viva Amiga documentary will interview him, and maybe explore this in more detail.

Last edited by Akiko on 02-Dec-2011 at 02:17 PM.

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