Jeff Frank
Amiga Technologies GmbH
My name is Jeff Frank and I have been retained by Amiga Technologies GmbH
to provide technical assistance with respect to Engineering and
Manufacturing Amiga related products. Previously I have been with
Commodore International Ltd. for nearly nine years, primarily as Director
of Engineering.
I am sure you are all as happy as I to hear that the "Amiga" is indeed
alive and well!
Initially, most of our labours will be focused on resuming production of
the A4000 Tower and A1200 class products. In fact, the A4000 Tower will
be much like a new product introduction, considering that Commodore only
ever built 1000 units. The A4000 Tower and A1200 will feature the
AmigaDOS 3.1 Operating System which was not in wide release prior to
Commodore's demise. We will also pursue both tactical and strategic
enhancements to the Amiga product line over the months and years to come.
Tactically, our first and perhaps the most obvoius enhancement will be a
68060 processor upgrade to the A4000 Tower. We also believe that a
performance upgrade to the A1200 by moving from an EC020 to an EC030
processor as well as built in support for fast ram capability is a logical
step.
Strategically, we are looking into creating "Encapsulated Amiga
Environments" or Emulations for the IBM and Apple environments. Also,
potential ports of AmigaDOS to non-Amiga platforms will be assessed. We
feel that this is a way we may help the Amiga Technology to permeate other
Computing Environments. We will also consider merging architectures of
available RISC technologies and the Amiga technology.
We also feel very strongly that the "Amiga Technology" has applications in
many non-traditional computing environments, and we will vigorously pursue
relationships in order to promote the Amiga Technology. The Amiga
operating System "AmigaDOS" features a low overhead Kernel and efficient
use of memory, which makes it well suited to Multimedia and embedded
applications, such as interactive TV set-top boxes. The Amiga "AA" core
chipset features low-cost genlock support, high performance graphics and
animation capabilities, and direct support of broadcast quality PAL and
NTSC video standards making the technology ideal for video effects, video
production and interactive TV set-top boxes. We feel that the time is
right to establish this technology as a potential standard in these
embedded applications, particularly here in Europe where these
applications are just emerging and the participants can benefit from the
many mistakes made by similar vendors in North America. Strategically, we
will look toward advancing the core Amiga technology where possible and
practical.
In closing I would like to say that we are very excited about Amiga's
future.