RIYAN: Firstly can I thank you on behalf of RIYAN Productions for granting us this interview.
XAN: Thanks to you for giving me the opportunity to show and explain the product.
RIYAN: I am sure that the Readers and Amiga Population in the UK and the rest of the world will be surprised by your A1.2000. Can you tell us a little about yourself, and the company "Vision Design"?
XAN: I approached computers 15 ago, with a Spectrum+2 soon increased with a +D interface with 780K drive, creating graphics and adventure games with my brother. Later I started my studies as a cloth designer and moved my computer interests to an Amiga 1200 with a 030 accelerator and HD, but not for my job, just to experiment it as an alternative to the PC and not to fall like everybody in an imposed platform, but sadly my brother fell in "the dark side", but this opened me the opportunity of work for the video-tape industry when my brother got a job as graphic artist in a well known Spanish company
and they also needed a Designer for an innovative adventure in the Myst style, and that was my first job I made with an Amiga (Wordworth and Pagestream).
I continued designing games for various companies and at around the same time I felt disappointed with some computer devicesī designs, specially for drawing, so I started to develop my own light pen device (for the Amiga platform) and was introduced to Carlos Rodriguez, the RCCI ceo, who gave me the opportunity to create Vision design.
Vision Desing was created in 1999 to research for new markets, mainly we were thinking in the alternative computer market, but focused in efficiency for multimedia and ease of use, and of course, the Amiga was the first and seemed the best solution to sell a computer with great multimedia capabilities with a cheap cost, but also was evident that it needed an urgent actualization ( more speed, better graphic capabilities, easy access to modern devices, etc.) so I start thinking in create an Amiga for the future having in mind how Jay Miner (rest in peace) would like it, in other words, being loyal to the Amiga style.
RIYAN: You are actually part of RCCI a small Spanish PC business, why then the interest in the Amiga range of computers?
XAN: Because the experience we had with the PC equipment we are selling. Hard configurations, continuous problems, short benefit margins, very bad designed architecture, pathetic OS, etc...
RIYAN: Is your A1.2000 ...An Expanded Amiga1200 ...i.e.. Does it still contain the original motherboard etc.
XAN: Maybe I'm disappointing you, but this is only an original motherboard with some tricks and small boards attached to it. The costs of building a new board were beyond our financial possibilities, but anyway the standard board leave me the sufficient space to create what I had in mind. Maybe the only problem was the ancient architecture of some of the board components, like the IDE interface or the disk controller.
The components that conform the inners of the computer are:
- COMMODORE motherboard (last revision)
- Fast and buffered IDE interface
- Phase5 PPC board customised to let a selectable overclocking, to reach 300mHz on the 603 side and 33mHz on the 040 side (of course with convenient fans)
- Bvision graphic board, overclocked by software and cooled with a big fan that also cools the temperature inside the computer.
- Ultraslim 24x CDROM by MITSUMI or CYBERDRIVE with jack output.
- and now USB hub, thanks to the new SUBWAY controller.
RIYAN: Regarding the Above ...If yes then is the Hardware NEW or infact Second-hand or Refurbished
XAN: Of course all is new.
RIYAN: Several "Companies" in the past have posted information regarding Amiga compatible computers, however these have failed to materialise ....I can see a lot of people being sceptic regarding your announcements ....What can you say to convince these people that the A1.2000 will in fact be available for purchase?
XAN: I'm very sorry to say that this will not be really available, but for various and heavy reasons that everyone will understand:
The first reason is that this is not for starting to sell in January 2002, but for January 2000. This never materialised for the reasons that I will explain in the following points:
Firstly I have to explain that this project it's shown now to let all the Amiga community know of a secret project that never materialized but was interesting and that some company (like Merlancia, for example) could utilize for a new Amiga model now that they all are searching and publishing bizarre designs and towers. This is the reason that now you know about this project.
Secondly because of the lack of interest from Amiga Inc. to license and produce the machine or at least make us a special price for the 1200 motherboards we needed.
Also, the bankruptcy of Phase5 made impossible to obtain PPC boards in that time, the DCE boards, as everybody knows, came after several months.
Finally I have to say that my work for the videogame industry leave me with a totally lack of time to invest in this now, but I also think that this model is now outdated because the lack of power of this design, compared with the actual and near future hardware: How a 603 at 300 mHz with a permedia2 will compete with an Athlon at 1700 MHz with a Geforce3, or with a G5 at 2GHz with a Radeon2 and a DVD writer? sorry but this doesn't sound like an equalitarian fight.
But if someone wants to know if it is vapour-ware, I can tell everybody that I have 2 working prototypes for more than 2 years until now, with almost no faults. And the proposal was made to Amiga Inc.. in December 1999-January 2000, as Fleecy Moss can confirm you.
RIYAN: Your latest time for release is Jan. 2002 ...If so how many units will you have ready for shipping?
XAN: Like all past questions, this one is the consequence of misunderstanding. The initial expected release was going to be January-February 2000, but pending on the availability of PPC boards from Phase5 and the amount of mainboards Amiga Inc. were able to deliver.
RIYAN: The technical specs. for the A1.2000 With PPC 603E and 040 even including a 17" monitor (etc.) for the price of 999$ seems a remarkable low price ...Are you confident that you can produce the machine at this cost?
XAN: That was the point!. We wanted to compete against the PC and the MAC and that was the only way. And YES! we could achieve that price (although with very short benefits).
RIYAN: From your Web Site "We guarantee you that AmigaOS - WORKBENCH NEVER has to be reinstalled". Is this not a rather rash statement ...I have used Amiga's for a great many years, but have still had to reinstall Workbench a couple of times. How can you give this guarantee?
XAN: Well, I don't know how you utilize your Amiga or what programs or patches you install, but everybody knows that unlike the Windows systems, installing a Workbench and "normal" programs (desktop applications and games) doesn't destroy none of your system components and of course NEVER degrade the OS or the Workbench; and I have my own experience, not having to reinstall the Workbench NEVER had it not been by a change or crash of a hard disk.
RIYAN: Do you have/require a License Agreement with the parent AMIGA company to release the A1.2000
XAN: Yes, this was explained on previous questions.
RIYAN: You state that you are already working on the NG of A1.2000 and hope to include "DVD/CD-Rewriter and USB support". How viable is this and will you be writing your own drivers etc.
XAN: The USB support is now public, at that time was only a project. The CD writer or the DVD would use a normal IDE interface and the common recording programs would recognise and use the unit with no problems.
RIYAN: What are your thoughts on the current Amiga situation (AmigaOne/AmigaDE etc.)
XAN: Good question. To say it quickly and not extend too much the answer, the Amiga One is a total waste of time and money; actually there is not even one reason to want compatibility with the old chipset now that everything is rather well emulated, also, this ridiculous feature brings many design problems and increase substantially the costs. I would rather concentrate my efforts in a machine that would compete for years against the rest of the market, how?; well, bringing the best of what is available today and building a board expandible for the future.
The Merlancia proposals seems more interesting, but have a few weak points that we will see how they will solve, like the transfer rate of their AGP bus, the lack of drivers for the best graphic boards and specially a ram bus that will have no memory to attach in a few months.
A 400mhz board with a G5 socket, UWSCSI or ATA100 IDE, Firewire, DRAM, a DVD writer or a CDwriter-DVD combo, and an agreement with Nvidia or ATI to obtain the source code to program the drivers and put one of their cards in an AGP 4x slot, a well finished version of I-FUSION or VirtualPC in the bundle as an option, or the passibility of buy only the motherboard and let the user add the components as another option seems a good start. Expensive? sure, but Amiga was never cheap, and quality certainly isn't cheap. And definitively you'll agree with me that all amiga fans would buy a monster like that and professionals of the video or rendering markets would start to turn their eyes and open their mouths and remember when they started all with Amiga, a couple of years ago.
I know many important people in big companies that were Amiga users in the past, and ask me frequently how it is going the Amiga. I tell them what is happening, but they are not convinced until they see good software running in a good computer, not promises or emulators for PC.
The Amiga DE is a good concept, but has to prove that it will do something that others can't do (really interesting things, not board games) and that we need these things, time will tell.
RIYAN: Do you have a message to our readers (Hope for the future)
XAN: I am sorry that many people thought this is a fresh product, but as you may think again it was really good 2 years ago, but today it isn't very cool after all.
I wish the best to the Amiga Inc. team, but the first thing they should do is to resolve the Haage & Partner - Ralph Smith battle, otherwise both and everyone else who wants to have buyers for his products will loose much money.
For the rest, we must be close together in those hard times, because one day we will see a bright future very similar to the past. I am working in new ideas to achieve this, but I will tell you an other time, you will see.
