The thing I love about your channel is getting to hear voices of people who I didn't know who shaped my childhood. It feels like a personal service body of sorts
I think David still has all the magic business skills. Just backed the Kickstarter. I guess if you manage to sell 10000 obsolete Plus/4s you can sell anything. :D
This shows the mad world that was Commodore... Wish David had been given the opportunity and had grabbed hold of the Amiga,,,,,, hes a legend and could have saved the platform......... such a sad demise and an awful shitty end! Love the Amiga... AMIGA FOREVER
This is an endlessly compelling story and it seems that justice still hasn't been done. That revolving door of management has happened at places I have worked and it always leads to disaster every time the next 'Great I Am' arrives. Thank you for the continuing saga.
I met David a few years ago at a Retro event, he is a wonderful person and his first book is a fascinating read, I have backed his new book and hope to meet him again.
Loved this interview, backed the new KS and have the first book signed by David. Met him also, which was amazing, since seing him in Amiga mags in the early 90's... a true gent.
Great to hear this interview with David. I'm not sure their plan to resurrect the Amiga's fortunes would have worked, but it was a fascinating listen anyhow - and always a source of frustration how Escom effectively did nothing with it.
Wow just loved this tea break with David Pleasance Neil. What a fantastic insight into what happened at Commodore. I have had a Commodore 64 ( but changed it to a ZX Spectrum No regrets ) then had an A500 A500+ A600 (no Idea why ) A1200, CD32 but then moved over to Sega and the Mega Drive when Commdore Crash out. I find this interview fascinating as what was written in the computer Amiga media at the time or how I read it was it was David Pleasance was to blame for the downfall of Commodore UK. I remember an article in Amiga Format about the bidding. Neil this is a fascinating tea break thank you for sharing David Story just brilliant brilliant I wish David all the success with his Book. It's amazing to actually what you read in print and what actually went on back in the day.
I used to work for Escom at this time in a store, mostly selling PCs but I remember selling A1200s also. Being a massive Amiga fan it was cool to be part of that, but Escom were really uninterested in keeping the Amiga alive. I remember doing things like A1200 has a faulty A: drive and rewriting the tag to A1200 as faulty DF0: :-)
Jack was tough, but he kept things in order. Without him everything stagnated. Finally its death was sealed by Medhi Ali becoming CEO. If anyone killed Commodore it was Irving Gould.
@@6581punk yeah, Jack was no Steve Jobs who always knew what he was doing, either. Jack's Atari also died pathetically. C= was a pocket calculator maker that struck a mother lode in the electronics gold rush back then. But they never became more than a video console maker.
It may be easy to agree with him now, but if you were there in 1983-89 when Commodore 64 sales where phenomenal, that statement would have been hard to agree with.
I met David a couple of years ago in Cambridge as the Museum of Computing History, and got a copy of his book, which he kindly signed for me. I have also backed the Kick Starter.
Saw the name David Pleasance and couldn’t click quick enough. Always thought it a great shame that David’s plans never came to fruition, the Amiga story could’ve been so much better. I liked the analogy of being under Medi-cation I guess a few Commodore employees at the time must have felt that way. Great interview with a great man and I wish David all the best with book number two.
Just 1 day remains - David Pleasance shares his story of the fall of Commodore from his position on the inside of the company, soon to be published in his new book "From Vultures to Vampires". www.kickstarter.com/projects/469255657/from-vultures-to-vampires David's first book 'Commodore the Inside Story' is available here: downtimepublishing.com/collections/commodore-books
I remember being at some press event (I got in with CUAmiga as a friend was writing for them), and it was in the Wembley conference centre I believe. Anyway, it was at the time of the CD32 release and I remember getting quite drunk and asking a question to David in front of a huge crowd of people as to why the Amiga adverts for the CD32 were so bad compared to the competition (they felt like bad low budget ripoffs of the adverts for the other consoles out at the time) and why there was no new amiga computer. We all knew the end was coming, we all felt as if they had given up on the big box amiga and were only interested in the console version because they thought it was the only moneymaker. We just felt like they were doing a really bad job against the competition and we really wanted to see it work as we knew that if it did we might eventually see another big box amiga out of it.
oh ! that’s neat ! my idol, remember saw him on the editorial of Amiga format, commodore users in 1993, theses uk magazine in france were stunning !! only have one whsmith library in paris, he was so involved in these company. i saw him on amigabill twitch but he spoken so fast and no subtitles, could understand all, here have subs, awesome !!
I really wish Escom hadn't interfered and David could have purchased all that was left of Amiga, who know what the World would be like now. If they ever invent time travel I am sure a load of us Amiga fans would go back and sort Escom out!
Graham Sivill The Amiga still would have had a hard time. The PC was frogleaping the Amiga by that time, with Intel CPUs doubling their power every other year. Graphics and sound also were catching up. The problem was that Commodore did too little research or development into better chipsets. The AGA came too little too late. And Intel and Microsoft were grabbing most of the PC market, so that other, incompatible systems had an ever harder time. Look at the early 80s: Every computer system had their own ecosystem and incompatible disk and tape formats. By the mid 90s that was gone completely. Everything was Windows and Intel, with a bit of Apple sprinkled in (and they were on the verge of bankruptcy at some point). And even Apple used pretty standard components by that time to be able to compete. The Amiga would have had to reinvent itself to be able to compete in this homogenizing market.
Hey there! Another great interview. Unfortunately, I didn't get to watch this until after the Kickstarter closed. Are additional pre-orders being taken for the physical edition of the book or are there plans to sell it in North America after its release? I'd definitely love to read it. Thanks.
Neil I spat out some tea when you chimed in that your Amiga money was going into brothels, priceless. Another great interview, you keep knocking them out of the park.
I recently ordered David's first book, and he was gracious enough to sign it and address it to me personally. It's a great book, and if you haven't already I'd highly recommend getting a copy while there's still some available at his website downtimepublishing.com
I didn't know about the case idea, I would've bought one of those, needed it for my A1200! I did know about Hombre from Dave. Shame it was going to be WinNT at the time. Still would love to see it running now.
This interview is brilliant. I definitely want a hard copy of the book after seeing this but cannot afford to back the kickstarter at this moment. Would i be able to buy a hard copy from somewhere at a later date???
I would suggest you keep an eye on DowntimePublishing.com - If David is to sell the book after the Kickstarter then that is most likely where it will happen.
40:00 - I disagree about Davids view on the future for "Amiga". The vampire is a piece of hardware that emulates another piece of hardware that nowadays can be fully emulated in software. So putting the vampire in a hi-fi stack wouldn't really be nessesary, and i'm not sure if hi-fi stacks are even a thing anymore anyway, as smart tv or alexa, google home seems to have taken over from that. I think the only way to "revive" Amiga would be get turn it into a virtual computer software platform (like pico8 for instance), gather a license of back catalogue games and collect them together and allow the "Amiga" to be played easily on any platform TV, Phone, Computer, Games Console - with no adittional hardware required. I know you can play Amiga emulated games on PC, but if that was packaged together so i could do that on my Xbox for instance, that would be pretty cool, and wouldn't require me to go out and buy an FPGA to plug into it. Make the Amiga a virtual platform with an integrated development enviroment and easy access to comminity published or existing games (just like pico8 does), and i think the Amiga could live on in that format, niche but alive. Please don't take what i have said as Amiga bashing, as i love the Amiga and i am professional game developer now and some of my first "real" programming was done on the Amiga (and i still own 2), but the hardware has had it's day, it's time to move on. For the Amiga to live on in any form, it would need to be as software, that a novice could easily play on their hardware of choice, and a software developer could easily develop and plubish content for, or even as educational value for young developers to learn how hardware works, and how to program video games.
I can't fault your logic Dave, FPGA is an expensive solution for a media centre at the moment. ARM is both cheap and efficient on power consumption, and can be packaged in a very small form factor that can be hidden away. The stack system form factor has declined as flat screen TV's gained popularity and the furniture we use reflected that (if we even use it any more, much is wall mounted). It would however be amazing if FPGA fell in price sufficiently to be part of every smart TV or become as cheap as the Pi to distribute, and then it can offer both our media streaming services and FPGA based emulation.
@@RMCRetro Yeah, and i suppose everything i have said about software platform, wouldn't exclude things like the Vampire from existing, as any software in theory would also work on it, just as it probably should on any orginal hardware from the last century. But i think even if FPGA prices came down to pennies, there would stil be companies what would want to cut cost and not put them in their units (pennies x millions = millions of pennies). Anyway, both David and I don't have a crystal ball but time will tell. It's been great to hear David's insight into Commodore, info i was never aware of (and didn't care about) when i was younger and using their gear every day.
I think the idea of the product IP having any commercial worth at this point is probably nostalgia blindness. FPGAs *are* in every Smart TV, but not as emulators for 68K CPUs. There’s just no reason to code for an obsolete platform, if your aim is to create something new. It may be technically accessible, but even if it got financially competitive ... why? An emulated CPU will never be as fast or low-power as an ASIC, and there are plenty of architectures available in ASIC form, with all kinds of useful bolt-ons like MPEG decoding, crypto engines, OpenGL implementations, etc. How do you compete with that? What Advantage would it bring? It would appeal perhaps to Amiga fans who just want to say they’re using one to consume modern media, or veteran 68K coders who haven’t or wouldn’t move to ARM. Not that anyone would have survived as a marketable commercial developer had that been the case... Sadly, though it pains me to say, even the HiFi stack is a bygone. There are no longer multiple forms of media to consume. It’s all a bitstream now, from where is irrelevant. Have WiFi, have content. And though I am no longer young enough to be a family member, and have no children of my own, I don’t know how much of a role the living room still plays in family entertainment. It seems all I hear about is “the kids on their iPads” or whatever. Yeah, I don’t get it.
I agree, the idea that the Amiga IP or technologies still have anything of value to offer for modern use cases is rather misguided, to put it kindly. They tried to do something similar with "Amiga Anywhere" and it was just obvious to anyone paying attention that it was destined for miserable failure. I think there could be a market for an FPGA or ARM-based Amiga mini console pre-loaded with classics, and is a far more fitting way to keep the magic alive. I can't see it powering your smart fridge or central heating let alone a smart TV. It would find that a bit undignifying to the Amiga's legacy, frankly. Who cares these days what OS or silicon their smart devices run? David has some good stories but he seems more than a little out of touch. There's no doubt that Hombre could have been a game changer had it materialised at the right time, but to claim that nothing today still comes close is frankly nonsense.
Top bloke. I read his book and my only compliant is there wasn't more pages (not that I'm saving there wasn't enough, I just wanted to know more and more). I don't expect if CBM UK's bid for the Amiga succeeded that the Amiga would have carried on as a custom chip monster, but it could have developed nicely into a PC/Mac alternative.
@@Breakfast_of_Champions I think the Apple still had more chance to survive, since unlike the Commodore, they've somewhat successfully carved out multiple niches outside of computer geek circles, like the printing press, graphic artists and the like. Also a lot of home users preferred it (if they could afford it, of course) since it was more user friendly than the usual DOS/Win3xx combo. Amiga became more of a geek platform as time went by, and that's partly sealed its fate.
@@negirno But back in the early-ish 90's the Amiga was very much a home computer + games system, not really a geek system. But the release of Doom (and Wolfenstein 3D) on the PC was the doom of the Amiga, suddenly people were ditching their A500 and buying PCs in order to be able to play this amazing new game. The A1200 which should have been able to handle these games wasn't available in large enough numbers and then commodore filed for bankruptcy.
It has long seemed to me that they could have had an AGA-like in 1988, an AAA-like in 1990, and the Hombre in 1992, given how much small teams could achieve in those days. PlayStation 1 quality during the 16-bit hayday.
That's a lot of upgrading every 2 years 😉 Maybe AGA in 1988, AAA in 1992 and Hombre 1995/6 with big announcements a new Amiga is on the way to push against the PS1. A new Amiga with such large jumps in tech advancement every 2 years which have left many Amiga owners disgruntled and there would have been very little backwards compatibility every 2 years.
You would probably enjoy Dave Haynie’s comments on these projects in this forum I’ve linked. Scroll way down past other folks to get to the good stuff from Dave. groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/comp.sys.amiga.misc/bg3st8FSuhw
It's only libel if it's not true! It doesn't sound like David will have any trouble. Full respect to him for trying to be as honourable as possible in business, but it's very difficult to succeed that way, unfortunately. And I think the early 90s was when things were really becoming unscrupulous with the Chinese getting involved etc, and a gentleman's agreement meant increasingly less and less.
Trust germans and dutch when you look to conduct a honest business, there's no way you will be disappointed.... Back then as well as today, apparently such things never change...
I think the problem with the Commodore Amiga is that by the time Commodore went out of business in early 1994, the PC in most ways surpassed the Amiga Technology. Sure you had AGA, but compared to SuperVGA at the time and also compared to the Sound Blaster AWE32 also at the time it was pretty much game over and PC's were so fast at this point with Pentium processors it was already too late. Then you have to also consider that Amiga games were still on floppy and PC's had CD-ROM drives which could hold 700 megabytes of data and people were using their PC's by 1996 to emulate the Amiga using Fellow. Then finally by 1996 having 3-D accelerators which are now called GPU's on a card in the PC to massively improve the graphics. I just think that Commodore was always going to be doomed and how can you keep going against the PC in which groups of companies were supporting with hardware upgrades and software upgrades with Windows 95, 98, Windows XP, etc... If I would go back in time to 1985-1986. I would tell David that the best way to win is to take on the PC market and create a Tandy situation. Make a small portable PC in the vain of the Amiga, and put on there their multitasking OS, and as well as the sound chip and VGA level technology and allow it to be hooked to a monitor or a TV. It would be a PC as small as possible in a keyboard like case, but allow the keyboard to be detached and changed out and allow for multiple joystick ports as well. The best thing is to make a small portable device that can be hooked up to a TV, so people wouldn't need to buy a monitor and lower that price significantly. Allow it to be compatible with MSDOS games and applications and sell it to the home market everywhere like the Commodore 64 and get that price as low as possible with as low as possible overhead while having a decent profit margin. Sell it as a computer that can do more, that can do everything IBM PC's can do, but also do what they can't do and sell it for under 1000 dollars if possible. Get that price close to Atari ST levels. Maybe even add in Intel clone processors, maybe even buy of the Intel clone companies. As far as the bus goes, allow the ISA cards to go in sideways like X64 servers do now and make it easy to upgrade. This is what I would do, make a computer that is IBM/PC compatible that is as least expensive as possible, but allow it to be up-gradable with the ISA bus (2 or 3 slots), extend CGA to allow VGA + hardware scrolling / onboard Blitter chip & upgraded Amiga sound and allow everything to be upgraded easily like dell does today.
Sorry, but what stupidity is this? Pleasance publishes a book that contains an alleged libel. He then asserts that the person who feels defamed should take it up with the person who wrote the chapter? What idiocy. It is HIS BOOK. He is the publisher! He is entirely responsible for anything contained within the book.
The thing I love about your channel is getting to hear voices of people who I didn't know who shaped my childhood. It feels like a personal service body of sorts
David Pleasance... what a true gentleman, The man that we all wish had been put in charge of Commodore when it needed it most. ♥
wasnt he the dcotor from the original halloween movie.
@@demonsty no that is donald pleasance.
I didn't expect 45 minutes to fly by so fast when clicking on this video. Great chat lads!
Cheers Jon!
I think David still has all the magic business skills. Just backed the Kickstarter. I guess if you manage to sell 10000 obsolete Plus/4s you can sell anything. :D
Id feel a chump if I bought one of those machines
This shows the mad world that was Commodore... Wish David had been given the opportunity and had grabbed hold of the Amiga,,,,,, hes a legend and could have saved the platform......... such a sad demise and an awful shitty end!
Love the Amiga...
AMIGA FOREVER
Fantastic interview. Met David at Zzap Live at the weekend. Absolute pleasure to talk to him, he is so humble.
This is an endlessly compelling story and it seems that justice still hasn't been done. That revolving door of management has happened at places I have worked and it always leads to disaster every time the next 'Great I Am' arrives. Thank you for the continuing saga.
I met David a few years ago at a Retro event, he is a wonderful person and his first book is a fascinating read, I have backed his new book and hope to meet him again.
Brilliant video for all Amiga fans.
I am not specifically an Amiga fan, but still find it brilliant! ;) :D
Loved this interview, backed the new KS and have the first book signed by David. Met him also, which was amazing, since seing him in Amiga mags in the early 90's... a true gent.
David is such a good raconteur, I could listen to him for days! 🙂
Great to hear this interview with David. I'm not sure their plan to resurrect the Amiga's fortunes would have worked, but it was a fascinating listen anyhow - and always a source of frustration how Escom effectively did nothing with it.
Wow just loved this tea break with David Pleasance Neil. What a fantastic insight into what happened at Commodore. I have had a Commodore 64 ( but changed it to a ZX Spectrum No regrets ) then had an A500 A500+ A600 (no Idea why ) A1200, CD32 but then moved over to Sega and the Mega Drive when Commdore Crash out. I find this interview fascinating as what was written in the computer Amiga media at the time or how I read it was it was David Pleasance was to blame for the downfall of Commodore UK. I remember an article in Amiga Format about the bidding. Neil this is a fascinating tea break thank you for sharing David Story just brilliant brilliant I wish David all the success with his Book. It's amazing to actually what you read in print and what actually went on back in the day.
I used to work for Escom at this time in a store, mostly selling PCs but I remember selling A1200s also. Being a massive Amiga fan it was cool to be part of that, but Escom were really uninterested in keeping the Amiga alive. I remember doing things like A1200 has a faulty A: drive and rewriting the tag to A1200 as faulty DF0: :-)
What a great chat/interview and an awesome guest. Always enjoy hearing what David has to say about the Commodore days. :D
Just wonderful, most interesting, thank you very much!
He knew in 1983 that C= was destined for failure - finally, some honesty and things were even worse than I suspected all along. Great interview!
Jack was tough, but he kept things in order. Without him everything stagnated. Finally its death was sealed by Medhi Ali becoming CEO. If anyone killed Commodore it was Irving Gould.
@@6581punk yeah, Jack was no Steve Jobs who always knew what he was doing, either. Jack's Atari also died pathetically. C= was a pocket calculator maker that struck a mother lode in the electronics gold rush back then. But they never became more than a video console maker.
@@Breakfast_of_Champions I don't think Jobs always knew what he was doing, either.
It may be easy to agree with him now, but if you were there in 1983-89 when Commodore 64 sales where phenomenal, that statement would have been hard to agree with.
I met David a couple of years ago in Cambridge as the Museum of Computing History, and got a copy of his book, which he kindly signed for me. I have also backed the Kick Starter.
Saw the name David Pleasance and couldn’t click quick enough. Always thought it a great shame that David’s plans never came to fruition, the Amiga story could’ve been so much better. I liked the analogy of being under Medi-cation I guess a few Commodore employees at the time must have felt that way. Great interview with a great man and I wish David all the best with book number two.
Backed the Amiga Lovers Bumper Bundle. The first book is an amazing read can't wait for this.
What a great interview!
Great interview, David is such a nice guy and so interesting.
Always good to hear David talk!
Just 1 day remains - David Pleasance shares his story of the fall of Commodore from his position on the inside of the company, soon to be published in his new book "From Vultures to Vampires". www.kickstarter.com/projects/469255657/from-vultures-to-vampires
David's first book 'Commodore the Inside Story' is available here: downtimepublishing.com/collections/commodore-books
I remember being at some press event (I got in with CUAmiga as a friend was writing for them), and it was in the Wembley conference centre I believe. Anyway, it was at the time of the CD32 release and I remember getting quite drunk and asking a question to David in front of a huge crowd of people as to why the Amiga adverts for the CD32 were so bad compared to the competition (they felt like bad low budget ripoffs of the adverts for the other consoles out at the time) and why there was no new amiga computer. We all knew the end was coming, we all felt as if they had given up on the big box amiga and were only interested in the console version because they thought it was the only moneymaker. We just felt like they were doing a really bad job against the competition and we really wanted to see it work as we knew that if it did we might eventually see another big box amiga out of it.
oh ! that’s neat ! my idol, remember saw him on the editorial of Amiga format, commodore users in 1993, theses uk magazine in france were stunning !! only have one whsmith library in paris, he was so involved in these company. i saw him on amigabill twitch but he spoken so fast and no subtitles, could understand all, here have subs, awesome !!
I really wish Escom hadn't interfered and David could have purchased all that was left of Amiga, who know what the World would be like now. If they ever invent time travel I am sure a load of us Amiga fans would go back and sort Escom out!
Graham Sivill The Amiga still would have had a hard time. The PC was frogleaping the Amiga by that time, with Intel CPUs doubling their power every other year. Graphics and sound also were catching up. The problem was that Commodore did too little research or development into better chipsets. The AGA came too little too late. And Intel and Microsoft were grabbing most of the PC market, so that other, incompatible systems had an ever harder time. Look at the early 80s: Every computer system had their own ecosystem and incompatible disk and tape formats. By the mid 90s that was gone completely. Everything was Windows and Intel, with a bit of Apple sprinkled in (and they were on the verge of bankruptcy at some point). And even Apple used pretty standard components by that time to be able to compete. The Amiga would have had to reinvent itself to be able to compete in this homogenizing market.
What an excellent interview.
I love these interviews! Well done as usual.
Hey there! Another great interview.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to watch this until after the Kickstarter closed. Are additional pre-orders being taken for the physical edition of the book or are there plans to sell it in North America after its release? I'd definitely love to read it.
Thanks.
David has a website at downtimepublishing.com so have a check there perhaps
This is fascinating but also so depressing and frustrating.
Great content seeing what went on behind the scenes.
Neil I spat out some tea when you chimed in that your Amiga money was going into brothels, priceless. Another great interview, you keep knocking them out of the park.
Defeat snatched from the jaws of Victory! I believe I got that from Dave Hayne.
really nice to hear those things from david pleasance.
I recently ordered David's first book, and he was gracious enough to sign it and address it to me personally. It's a great book, and if you haven't already I'd highly recommend getting a copy while there's still some available at his website downtimepublishing.com
david is a great guy!
Every time I hear this C= story, I start tearing up... what a pity
What a great and impressive guy David is.. you can see why he did well.
A "Trevor Trove" of memories.
amazing
I didn't know about the case idea, I would've bought one of those, needed it for my A1200!
I did know about Hombre from Dave. Shame it was going to be WinNT at the time. Still would love to see it running now.
Great video, thanks. How compatible is the Vampire 4 with Amiga 500/2000s?
Fantastic interview!
This interview is brilliant. I definitely want a hard copy of the book after seeing this but cannot afford to back the kickstarter at this moment. Would i be able to buy a hard copy from somewhere at a later date???
I would suggest you keep an eye on DowntimePublishing.com - If David is to sell the book after the Kickstarter then that is most likely where it will happen.
@@RMCRetro Thanks, will do.
40:00 - I disagree about Davids view on the future for "Amiga". The vampire is a piece of hardware that emulates another piece of hardware that nowadays can be fully emulated in software. So putting the vampire in a hi-fi stack wouldn't really be nessesary, and i'm not sure if hi-fi stacks are even a thing anymore anyway, as smart tv or alexa, google home seems to have taken over from that. I think the only way to "revive" Amiga would be get turn it into a virtual computer software platform (like pico8 for instance), gather a license of back catalogue games and collect them together and allow the "Amiga" to be played easily on any platform TV, Phone, Computer, Games Console - with no adittional hardware required. I know you can play Amiga emulated games on PC, but if that was packaged together so i could do that on my Xbox for instance, that would be pretty cool, and wouldn't require me to go out and buy an FPGA to plug into it. Make the Amiga a virtual platform with an integrated development enviroment and easy access to comminity published or existing games (just like pico8 does), and i think the Amiga could live on in that format, niche but alive. Please don't take what i have said as Amiga bashing, as i love the Amiga and i am professional game developer now and some of my first "real" programming was done on the Amiga (and i still own 2), but the hardware has had it's day, it's time to move on. For the Amiga to live on in any form, it would need to be as software, that a novice could easily play on their hardware of choice, and a software developer could easily develop and plubish content for, or even as educational value for young developers to learn how hardware works, and how to program video games.
I can't fault your logic Dave, FPGA is an expensive solution for a media centre at the moment. ARM is both cheap and efficient on power consumption, and can be packaged in a very small form factor that can be hidden away. The stack system form factor has declined as flat screen TV's gained popularity and the furniture we use reflected that (if we even use it any more, much is wall mounted). It would however be amazing if FPGA fell in price sufficiently to be part of every smart TV or become as cheap as the Pi to distribute, and then it can offer both our media streaming services and FPGA based emulation.
@@RMCRetro Yeah, and i suppose everything i have said about software platform, wouldn't exclude things like the Vampire from existing, as any software in theory would also work on it, just as it probably should on any orginal hardware from the last century. But i think even if FPGA prices came down to pennies, there would stil be companies what would want to cut cost and not put them in their units (pennies x millions = millions of pennies). Anyway, both David and I don't have a crystal ball but time will tell. It's been great to hear David's insight into Commodore, info i was never aware of (and didn't care about) when i was younger and using their gear every day.
I think the idea of the product IP having any commercial worth at this point is probably nostalgia blindness.
FPGAs *are* in every Smart TV, but not as emulators for 68K CPUs. There’s just no reason to code for an obsolete platform, if your aim is to create something new. It may be technically accessible, but even if it got financially competitive ... why? An emulated CPU will never be as fast or low-power as an ASIC, and there are plenty of architectures available in ASIC form, with all kinds of useful bolt-ons like MPEG decoding, crypto engines, OpenGL implementations, etc. How do you compete with that? What Advantage would it bring?
It would appeal perhaps to Amiga fans who just want to say they’re using one to consume modern media, or veteran 68K coders who haven’t or wouldn’t move to ARM. Not that anyone would have survived as a marketable commercial developer had that been the case...
Sadly, though it pains me to say, even the HiFi stack is a bygone. There are no longer multiple forms of media to consume. It’s all a bitstream now, from where is irrelevant. Have WiFi, have content. And though I am no longer young enough to be a family member, and have no children of my own, I don’t know how much of a role the living room still plays in family entertainment. It seems all I hear about is “the kids on their iPads” or whatever.
Yeah, I don’t get it.
I agree, the idea that the Amiga IP or technologies still have anything of value to offer for modern use cases is rather misguided, to put it kindly. They tried to do something similar with "Amiga Anywhere" and it was just obvious to anyone paying attention that it was destined for miserable failure. I think there could be a market for an FPGA or ARM-based Amiga mini console pre-loaded with classics, and is a far more fitting way to keep the magic alive. I can't see it powering your smart fridge or central heating let alone a smart TV. It would find that a bit undignifying to the Amiga's legacy, frankly. Who cares these days what OS or silicon their smart devices run? David has some good stories but he seems more than a little out of touch. There's no doubt that Hombre could have been a game changer had it materialised at the right time, but to claim that nothing today still comes close is frankly nonsense.
I love that guy. If ONLY he had of got ahead of Petro on this, David would have done amazing things with the Amiga.
16:33 So, basically... make the business into an OEM supply business. Given where the PC market went, that made a HELL of a lot of sense.
Top bloke. I read his book and my only compliant is there wasn't more pages (not that I'm saving there wasn't enough, I just wanted to know more and more). I don't expect if CBM UK's bid for the Amiga succeeded that the Amiga would have carried on as a custom chip monster, but it could have developed nicely into a PC/Mac alternative.
Apple itself almost didn't make it. Without Steve Jobs' expertise and his return it's very questionable.
@@Breakfast_of_Champions I think the Apple still had more chance to survive, since unlike the Commodore, they've somewhat successfully carved out multiple niches outside of computer geek circles, like the printing press, graphic artists and the like. Also a lot of home users preferred it (if they could afford it, of course) since it was more user friendly than the usual DOS/Win3xx combo. Amiga became more of a geek platform as time went by, and that's partly sealed its fate.
@@negirno But back in the early-ish 90's the Amiga was very much a home computer + games system, not really a geek system. But the release of Doom (and Wolfenstein 3D) on the PC was the doom of the Amiga, suddenly people were ditching their A500 and buying PCs in order to be able to play this amazing new game. The A1200 which should have been able to handle these games wasn't available in large enough numbers and then commodore filed for bankruptcy.
Twas a pleasance to watch this RTB. 😀
It has long seemed to me that they could have had an AGA-like in 1988, an AAA-like in 1990, and the Hombre in 1992, given how much small teams could achieve in those days. PlayStation 1 quality during the 16-bit hayday.
That's a lot of upgrading every 2 years 😉 Maybe AGA in 1988, AAA in 1992 and Hombre 1995/6 with big announcements a new Amiga is on the way to push against the PS1.
A new Amiga with such large jumps in tech advancement every 2 years which have left many Amiga owners disgruntled and there would have been very little backwards compatibility every 2 years.
You would probably enjoy Dave Haynie’s comments on these projects in this forum I’ve linked. Scroll way down past other folks to get to the good stuff from Dave. groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/comp.sys.amiga.misc/bg3st8FSuhw
It's only libel if it's not true! It doesn't sound like David will have any trouble. Full respect to him for trying to be as honourable as possible in business, but it's very difficult to succeed that way, unfortunately. And I think the early 90s was when things were really becoming unscrupulous with the Chinese getting involved etc, and a gentleman's agreement meant increasingly less and less.
Nice one guys! Sadly I was too late to back though being so close to payday. Any chance it might be available to buy after the kickstarter?
If it is I would guess it will appear at downtimepublishing.com so keep an eye on that one
@@RMCRetro thanks Neil 👍
We need more Trevor's in the world!
Bah, missed the kickstarter :(
Deja Vu...I'm sure we've seen this one, or something similar, before? I think I'm just going crazy
This is so sad....
Trust germans and dutch when you look to conduct a honest business, there's no way you will be disappointed.... Back then as well as today, apparently such things never change...
I think the problem with the Commodore Amiga is that by the time Commodore went out of business in early 1994, the PC in most ways surpassed the Amiga Technology. Sure you had AGA, but compared to SuperVGA at the time and also compared to the Sound Blaster AWE32 also at the time it was pretty much game over and PC's were so fast at this point with Pentium processors it was already too late. Then you have to also consider that Amiga games were still on floppy and PC's had CD-ROM drives which could hold 700 megabytes of data and people were using their PC's by 1996 to emulate the Amiga using Fellow. Then finally by 1996 having 3-D accelerators which are now called GPU's on a card in the PC to massively improve the graphics.
I just think that Commodore was always going to be doomed and how can you keep going against the PC in which groups of companies were supporting with hardware upgrades and software upgrades with Windows 95, 98, Windows XP, etc...
If I would go back in time to 1985-1986. I would tell David that the best way to win is to take on the PC market and create a Tandy situation. Make a small portable PC in the vain of the Amiga, and put on there their multitasking OS, and as well as the sound chip and VGA level technology and allow it to be hooked to a monitor or a TV. It would be a PC as small as possible in a keyboard like case, but allow the keyboard to be detached and changed out and allow for multiple joystick ports as well.
The best thing is to make a small portable device that can be hooked up to a TV, so people wouldn't need to buy a monitor and lower that price significantly. Allow it to be compatible with MSDOS games and applications and sell it to the home market everywhere like the Commodore 64 and get that price as low as possible with as low as possible overhead while having a decent profit margin.
Sell it as a computer that can do more, that can do everything IBM PC's can do, but also do what they can't do and sell it for under 1000 dollars if possible. Get that price close to Atari ST levels.
Maybe even add in Intel clone processors, maybe even buy of the Intel clone companies.
As far as the bus goes, allow the ISA cards to go in sideways like X64 servers do now and make it easy to upgrade.
This is what I would do, make a computer that is IBM/PC compatible that is as least expensive as possible, but allow it to be up-gradable with the ISA bus (2 or 3 slots), extend CGA to allow VGA + hardware scrolling / onboard Blitter chip & upgraded Amiga sound and allow everything to be upgraded easily like dell does today.
Just backed. I am no. 980 :)
Just in time! Nice to see David cross the finish line with just over 1000 backers there
Yes Sir, he made it. And a big thank you to you @RetroManCave for letting us know.
Good to see some in-video adds; you deserve every chance to generate additional revenue of your great work!
Thank you Mr T for not pitying this fool
The Sony Playstation 1 is a lot better system than Amiga CD32. You have to accept that they beated you fair and square. It is part of doing business.
Sadly there are still vultures around.
The death of #commodore sounds like a good book
27:45 You underestimate Chinese Business "Ethics", Sir... :-/
What if . . .
Sorry, but what stupidity is this? Pleasance publishes a book that contains an alleged libel. He then asserts that the person who feels defamed should take it up with the person who wrote the chapter? What idiocy. It is HIS BOOK. He is the publisher! He is entirely responsible for anything contained within the book.