Things in the past were quite different though, as the latest in technology was in many cases also the latest in prices, or rather, the highest in prices, so a quick buy was usually out of the question. I remember my father taking a picture of my mother and me in front of our new color television back in the early 70s. Those were the things you did back then, preserving those moments for eternity as you finally had saved enough to go out and by that new TV or stereo system. And if you didn’t take them as a memento of that glorious occasion that your family household was now part of the club of new technology owners, you probably took the picture because you noticed that the film roll in your camera was almost full, so you could snap one or two last photos before getting the pictures from your Summer vacation developed.

It is such a picture I noticed on eBay a few weeks ago. Someone had found an old 70s photo of a Commodore PET along with a 3040 disk drive and put it up for sale. I bought it on the spot as it was one of those things that describe exactly what I mentioned above: someone wanted to make sure that that moment in his or her life was captured for eternity, that moment when they probably first had a computer in their house.
It’s clear that it was not taken for any professional use (i.e. in a magazine) as you can see the reflection of the flash in the window and the room itself looks like it’s from a small studio apartment with the bedroom and living room all being basically the same room.

I’ve looked for clues as to where and when the picture was take, but alas, the papers next to the disk drive show some writing, but the image is not sharp enough to make out what’s written on them. Perhaps this was a picture taken by someone who worked at Commodore and this was his or her flat and the scribbling on the paper might me something work related.
They could afford a 3040 disk drive, and these peripherals were quote pricey back in the day, so perhaps indeed, this was someone’s computer from work or someone who could afford their first glimps of the world of computers at home.

What gives us a clue as to the “where” is the model of the PET machine. It’s marked CBM and not PET, and looking closely at the text on the right, it sais “Computer 3032”. So, the picture was most likely made in Europe because in the late 70s Philips was producing a system called the “Programm-Entwicklungs-Terminal”, and had owned the trademark rights to the name PET. To prevent a possible lawsuit, Commodore removed the PET name from their 2001 series computers, and renamed them in Europe as the CBM 3001 series.

Still, all this makes me cast my mind back to those early days, the time I got my first computer, the time we were in awe when someone mentioned that in the future, computers would have megabytes of memory, the time that we went and played at one of our friends’ house because he or she just happened to have the newest game or one of those new computers, the time that the era of the computer was about to begin.

So, most of the longer multi-player game session were done via LAN or a null-modem.
Now multi-player via LAN is something most of us can relate to but multi-player over a null-modem or serial link? Surely that would just be a 2-player game with each player playing on his own machine? Well, it turns out that’s not the case and it was on the Commodore Amiga that you could play some of the best serial link games ever (Knights of the Sky, Populous 2, …), with the absolute best of the best and most innovative game being Super Skidmarks 2 on the Amiga 1200.

I am specifying here the model of the Amiga, as running the game on a 500 gave you a split-screen mode for two, three or four players, where you can use either keys, or a joystick adaptor in the parallel port, which was nice, but running it on the 1200 unleashed something never seen before in the realm of multi-player gaming…
Using the power of the 1200, your Amiga could handle eight vehicles, which meant that the fun got even better with more intense racing.
But the best bit, and this made it a landmark in game history, was the widescreen (or Super View as it was called) link mode.
With two Amiga machines and a null-modem cable (but only one version of the game), the course would split itself over the two monitors, allowing you to see all the track, all the time.

On Amiga 500 systems the first two screens show what it would like, with split screens on each monitor, and only part of the track where your cars are being shown.  On Amiga 1200 systems, the screen could be split into 3, so you could have more players competing on a single screen, with the other players shown on the other screen and they could even be running the game on the Amiga 500.

The cool thing of course, was when you used 2 Amiga 1200 systems and raced in Super View mode, with the entire track visible over the two monitors.

This meant that 8 people could play the game at the same time, resulting in epic game nights, possible swearing sessions, the occasional drink spilled on the floor because of all the excitement and that awesome feeling that you witnessed some magical gaming moments, right then and there!

Regular readers of the blog will remember the article “Music AMIGA Maestro” of November in which I look back at the early days of the duo behind the 90s chart sensation SNAP!, who started out on the Amiga.
So for today’s article, I continue along the Amiga music route and I take a look at the people behind the surprise Amiga generated hit single of 1992: Some Justice by Urban Shakedown.

It started when Gavin King and Claudio Guissani were in college and overheared someone talking about this amazing demo featuring sampled music from Bomb the Bass and SNAP!’s The Power. When the duo saw this demo running on an Amiga 500 they were blown away “We just couldn’t believe that this computer was making these sounds”, recalls Claudio.
The two guys had always been interested in producing music, but the tracks they used to play when they deejayed at the local clubs all seemed to be produced on racks of high-end equipment, which meant that their dreams of creating their own music were well above the budget of two college students. This all changed when after hearing and seeing what the Amiga could do, they both decided to buy one themselves.

Having experimented with the capabilities of the Amiga, the duo went on to purchase some other hardware and software (MED 3.0, Audiomaster II, TechnoSound and a Zoom 9030 effects processor) and since they both were DJ’s, they already had the needed mixing equipment like the Newmark and Phonic DJ mixers.
Using their vast record collection (hey, they were DJ’s), they started by sampling some of the songs and sounds from the albums using AudioMaster II. They sampled at around 25KHz and then modeled and tuned them so they fit together nicely. Using MED 3.0, they then started constructing the actual track. With one Amiga running MED 3.0 and the other running AudioMaster II, they built up the backbone of the track with breakbeats and custom-made drum patterns.

To illustrate further that making music on a computer was much more hard-labor back in those days compared to today, is the fact that the duo decided against the use of OctaMED and used MED 3.0 instead. With OctaMED, they could have produced their 8-track songs on just the one machine, but because this application would reduce the overall quality of the sounds and samples, they instead created 4 tracks on one machine and then 4 tracks on the other. To keep them in sync, they didn’t use any fancy time-lock or synchronization hardware but just did it in a very hands-on way: Gavin would put in a four-bar ‘click-track’ (a simple series of bleeps in a 4/4 pattern) at the start of the song, whilst Claudio would put in a three-bar track at the start of the sequence on his machine. Gavin then starts his sequence and Claudio starts his on the second bar of the click-track. It was then just a matter of Claudio adjusting the timing until the two machines are perfectly in sync.

With their tracks ready, they recorded them directly on DATs with little or no post production going into the final mix (except for the use of the Zoom 9030 to add some extra depth to some of the samples) and then it’s of to the press to get the 12” singles produced and out into the record stores… and into the charts!

Who am I to refuse some classic retro computer time to my two little geeks, so off we went to make some sprites. Contrary to last time, I quickly made an Excel spreadsheet that they could use to draw their sprites (last time, it was all manual labor, including the calculation of the different DATAs). The Excel sheet displayed the 24×21 sprite grid and by typing in 1’s into the different cells (which would then color red), they could draw their new sprites and Excel would do the math.

My oldest daughter decided to make a little red heart, and my youngest designed a unicorn.

Then it was off to the SX-64 where they typed in the different DATA sections into the program we made last time and then… RUN.

The heart and unicorn floated across the screen. That was enough retro computer for one day for them, so whilst they were playing in the garden, I could play some classic AD&D RPGs… time to go on a quest in the “Savage Frontier” – with a nice beer!

To get my hands dirty and see what could be the price for those collectible games, I started with my own collection. Now I do not own such a big games collection (I prefer collecting the hardware on which to run them), but some of the games I have here, especially the SSI AD&D games do fetch quite some money on eBay.  Expect to pay anywhere between Euro/Dollar 40-50 for a copy with a box in good shape and all contents complete.
But surely, these cannot be the top prices people pay for Commodore games, so on with the search to find the holy grail of Commodore games.

I remembered that in the 30th anniversary Commodore 64 special issue of Retro Gamer, they featured a listing of a couple of hundred C64 games and their rarity.  A quick glance at this list shows that some games, that I know but have never seen in their original box (just copies or versions on the various emulators), are indeed high up on the rarity list (Avenger, Elvira 2, Gauntlet III, …)
So much so, that collectors are willing to go well above the Euro/Dollar 100 mark for a good copy.  One other such notorious game is the Great Giana Sisters, that most of you will know, was pulled from the store shelves once Nintendo got wind of it being a bit too similar to their flagship plumber’s game: Mario.

I should point out though, that when looking at the rarity of the games, you have to take the PAL/NTSC split into consideration as well. Some games were initially released in the US in the NTSC format and then some time later repackaged and sold in their PAL versions in Europe (i.e. as did US Gold) and vice versa.  This can make a PAL version (or NTSC version) that much rarer than its counterpart.

Now the next question is… what’s their worth. It all depends on what a potential buyer/collector is willing to pay but a good resource that can help you out with this is “The Rarity Guide”. According to this list, the highest valued C64 game (so far) is Castles of Dr. Creep (Broderbund), which has a “new in box” value of $280,00.  Not bad… not bad at all.

Digging through some of the C64 forums (which is also a good idea to get some indication of the value of your games), there was mention of other C64 games that even went above the $500 mark!
These were a new sealed Ultima II in the early C64 only version (for $521) and a sealed Space Taxi (supposedly for roughly $600).
What strikes me though, is that Space Taxi in Europe was not that rare, so it just goes to show that the value of a game is not always related to its rarity.  Nonetheless, for the time being, it takes 1st place in our “most expensive C64 games”.

Do you know of any other rare/highly priced C64 games? Post them in the comments at the bottom of this article!

Sure enough, many demos have been released for the Amiga, but what made this particular demo stand out of the crowd?
I believe many factors contributed to its infamous status. First of all, the whole demo just breathes “MTV Generation”, as it looks and sounds like a video clip that could have been aired on TV back in those days.
Next to that, it was not just a demo with computer graphics like bouncing balls or clever rendered images. It contains something like full-motion video, with two young girls performing the latest dance moves (and sporting early 90s fashion). The graphics looked too good to be just computer drawn or generated, no there was some magic at work here.

Another thing that makes it an amazing demo is that is runs fast and smooth on a mere 7 MHz CPU (the speed of the A500) with 1 Mb of memory. Even given the fact that the Amiga was a fantastic powerhouse when it came to graphics processing, it still seems out of this world that a video clip style demo like this one could run on this hardware.
To top it off, and the real clincher I guess, was that this amazing technical feat could be stored on just 2 floppy disks… no more, no less.

I’ve never found a real complete description of the technique Spaceballs used to convert the actual real footage of the dancing girls (*) to the vector dancers in the demo. It’s even rumored that they sold their technology (which is no surprise as it is the forerunner of what Macromedia would do a couple of years later with its Flash technology).

A couple of years ago, a sort of “the making of” was put on YouTube, showing how the Spaceballs team recorded the footage that would go on to become a part of the Amiga demoscene history, but it didn’t go into the details of the actual rendering process.

Nonetheless, from what I’ve been able to piece together and from what is known from their earlier demo “State of the Art” (as was disclosed on Spaceballs RAW Diskmag #5) which utilized a similar albeit more rudimentary technique, is this:

At the core, the demo consists of an animplayer (which is an image sequence playback program) that takes its data and calculates the graphics data at runtime, resulting in a line drawer to create the polygons and blitter to fill them.
To do this, they took their footage, and had it displayed fame per frame as a bitmap. Now they would not store these bitmaps but rather have a coder outline the image and store this basic data to disk. The lines could then be created at runtime as mentioned above, requiring very little disk space. This was of course a lot of hard work, so for the “9 Fingers” demo, one of the Spaceballs coders Paul Endresen aka Lone Starr (who was the boyfriend of one of the dancers in the clip) wrote a bitmap to vector routine to automate this process.
Sounds pretty straightforward now, but one must not forget that this was done 20 years ago, right at the beginning of real computer animation.

Further proof that the techniques in this demo were groundbreaking is the fact that Paul Endresen went on to Funcom and contributed to the SNES game Winter Gold which utilizes this same technique to convert actual footage in computer graphics (the dancers on the selection screen do look remarkably the same as those from the “State of the Art” demo).

(*) On the RAW diskmag issue #5, there’s an interview with Jannicke Selmer-Olsen, one of the dancers in 9 Fingers / State of the Art. Not only was she Paul’s girlfriend at that time, she was also an accomplished dancer, having won the Norwegian disco dancing championship.

You can download the diskmag here and view it with an Amiga emulator like WinUAE, WinFellow or Amiga Forever.

When I completed the game, I rushed out to the computer shop to see if they had any other AD&D games for sale and sure enough, they had Curse of the Azure Bonds (CotAB). Along with the game, I purchased the novel by Kate Novak and Jeff Grub and was totally blown away to see this game relive some of the moments of the book (which I read in just a few days). All the characters, locations and even some of the events were familiar (just like the protagonists in the novel, your party of adventurers in the CotAB game was faced with the same challenges as they had in the book).

This was for me, if I wasn’t already hooked for the full 100% to the genre, the thing that clinched it for me: The perfect translation of the wonderful worlds created in the Forgotten Realms saga (and Dragonlance for the Krynn games) to a system like the C64.

Typical box contents of an AD&D game: disks, books and a translation wheel you had to use to answer a question before you could play the game (copy protection)

Now for those of you not familiar with RPG games, the original concept was more a pen and paper style game, with one player preparing a dungeon and setting up a storyline (he’s called the dungeon master or DM), and the other players creating their characters with given abilities and entering the dungeon governed by the DM. The DM would unleash hordes of monsters, set traps and hide treasure that the other players would have to discover. Now since there’s no real ‘board’, most of it depends on the capabilities of the DM to make it into a challenging game as the outcomes of the encounters were decided by the roll of the dice and the game itself unfolded by the storytelling of the DM. Many DM guides have been published over the years, allowing the players to get a better feel for the fantasy world they were playing in and of course, aiding in the storytelling for the DM.

In the computerized version of the RPG, you basically started out with a party of up to six player characters that you could choose yourself. The characters could be of various races (human, elf, dwarf, …) and class (paladin, thief, ranger, …). Depending on these combinations, your characters started out with a certain amount of hit points (how much of a beating you can take), armor class (shielding basically) and several other attributes like dexterity, intelligence, etc. All of this influenced the strengths and the capabilities of your party in handling the various events you had to face in the game (part of the fun for me was to complete the game again with a party made up of different characters and see if I could perform better than the previous try).
The neat thing about the SSI AD&D games was that you could transfer characters from a previous game to the new one, so if you started out with a party in Champions of Krynn, you could re-use them in the sequel, Death Knights of Krynn, so you could continue the adventure with your favorite characters.
The interface of the game (the techie bit), had the main adventuring action using a first person perspective. In the top left window you could view the current location, with the status panel on the right and the commands along the bottom. Through these commands, you could select a wide range of actions and tasks including spell-casting, swapping weapons, or resting and memorizing spells.

During combat (there usually is a lot of combat in fantasy games), the screen display changed: the right half of the screen is became the status panel, and the left half displayed an overhead view of the combat.
The game engine is referred to as the “Gold Box” engine (as the games traditionally came packed in gold-colored boxes).

Although the screenshots above may look dated by today’s modern RPG standards, you must not forget that although the games were published on PC, Amiga and various other more powerful platforms than the C64 as well, I still think the C64 versions were the best. Call it nostalgia, but to cram a whole world of role-playing, that even offered a dash of non-linear gameplay (*) on just 3 double-sided disks and have it executed wonderfully on a 64K system, is nothing short of magic to me.

Next to these epic AD&D RPGs, SSI developed a whole range of games that were either more action or strategy based, but all set in the same mysterious worlds of the Dragonlance and Krynn sagas. Games like Dragonstrike had you fighting hordes of enemy dragonriders high up in the skies of Krynn amidst the flying citadels. The game Hillsfar was set just before the events in CoTAB and just after those of the prequel, Pool of Radiance (PoR), and focused on exploring the great city of Hillsfar. The cool thing was that you could use one of your characters from PoR or CoTAB to play the game.

If strategy and war games was more your thing, you could play War of the Lance and lead the armies of good against the evil hordes that came out of Neraka and its surroundings. Your band of heroes could go on magical quests to find the golden dragons to aid you in your battles. Your emissaries could go to the neutral lands and try to convince their leaders to join your cause (if you played it right, you could even get some of the countries that would normally be considered “evil” in the world of Krynn to side with you – I remember for instance have the goblins of Throtyl and the minotaurs of Mithas as my allies).

As time went by, SSI (sold to Mindscape in 1994) sadly decided to stop making the games for the C64 and only continued these for the Amiga, PC, and other more “modern” platforms. This meant that certain series saw their volumes spread across several platforms, with PoR, CoTAB and Secret of the Silver Blades running on the C64 (and other platforms) and then the fourth volume, Pools of Darkness not being released on the C64 anymore. Luckily, many were still being released for the Amiga (like Eye of the Beholder I and II) so there still was a large base of games to enjoy on the Commodore platforms, and I’ve been trying to collect every single SSI AD&D that’s been released for the Commodore platform ever since I started my Commodore collection. So far, I have them all; except for 2 titles that elude me and that I’ve never seen on eBay and the likes. The PC versions, sure they’re on sale, but the Amiga ones, no these seem almost like a myth. The games are called Pools of Darkness and Dark Queen of Krynn (Volumes 4 and Volumes 3 of the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance sagas). If you have them and want to part with them, then be sure to get in touch with me… the spaces on the shelf are reserved!

The Savage Frontier Saga, with the 2nd volume not being released on the C64

As mentioned already, the games were always set in some kind of mystical world, that had been created by writers like Novak and Grubb, but perhaps the best known writers duo for the stories set in the worlds of dragons and wizards, is Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Between them, they’ve probably written hundreds of books, and I can strongly recommend them if you want to immerse yourself more into this realm of fantasy.

And if like me, you’re an avid board game fan, be sure to check out some of the games that have an AD&D themed setting. Lords of Waterdeep for me is a must play as it combines solid gameplay with a great AD&D theme.

And now, it’s time for me to play some AD&D!

(*) The games featured a flavor of non-linear gameplay, with hidden side adventures like in CoTAB with the grand “Meeting of the Beholders” in which you had to face (for those familiar with the monsters in these games): 8 Rakshasa, 10 High Priests, 10 Drow Lords, and 15 Beholders in a single room.
Death Knights of Krynn gave you, when you completed the game, a secret passage in the mountains leading to a maze that was described as follows in the clue book:
“Congratulations! You’ve completed the quest and Lord Soth has been banished from Krynn. But there’s one more challenge to undertake. In the upper left hand corner of the map, a path has opened through the mountains…
One of SSI’s game authors has earned a reputation for designing ‘killer’ mazes and encounters. Do you remember the brain parasites in Buck Rogers, or the rescue of the nomad princess in Pool of Radiance? Customarily, we’ve toned down these encounters before the publication of the games.
This time is different.
This time we encouraged him to go ahead and do his worst. Good luck.”

Dragonlance Series

Forgotten Realms Series

Legend Series

More games set in the AD&D world

Starting with Commodore (Germany) in 1982 he quickly moved up the corporate ladder and became the Director of International Material Management and Logistic in 1986. He was first responsible for Europe and than for the world wide Logistic Operation.
After Commodore’s bankruptcy in 1994, he played the pivotal role in assuring that the Amiga computer line would continue and he would follow this up by becoming President of Amiga Technologies.

To this day, Petro is keeping up with the Amiga scene so it is only fitting that this Commodore Amiga legend gets his spot in the Hall of Fame

The Commodore years

Robby: Could you tell us a little more about your years at Commodore as it looks like a fascinating career path: starting in 1982 when Commodore was at its peak with the C64 being released, you were the sales logistics & purchasing manager for Commodore Germany and you climbed the corporate ladder becoming Commodore’s global logistics manager until Commodore filed for bankruptcy in 1994.

Petro: You will find a lot of details about this story in my book, which hopefully will be finished end of this year. I have designed a website, unfortunately only in German language, but you can find some more details on this site: petros-memoiren-1982-bis-2001.de
I started in 1982 with Commodore GmbH in Germany, was first responsible for Purchasing and Logistic for the German Subsidiary as a Director of Logistic. I changed than into the European Area, build up a Central warehouse in the Netherlands and was then, until the bankruptcy of Commodore, Director of worldwide Logistic.

Robby: How did you see Commodore change over those 12 years?

Petro: There were not a lot of changes… We all worked like hell. Very motivated. No time to think about bad things, only fighting for the good things.

Robby: How did you see the competition from Atari (i.e. the STs), Apple and the up and coming DOS market?

Petro: To be honest, Atari was no competition, Apple more so, but Apple was at this time not very strong and fought for survival. Commodore was much better.  Apple always gave us a hard time through pricing. We did not like to lose money, what Apple definitely was doing at this time.

Robby: What’s in your view, the most groundbreaking Amiga innovation?

Petro: The whole AMIGA development was a revolution. No-one in the market could compete with our OS and the video functions at that time.

Robby: How have your years at Commodore influenced you?

Petro: I was travelling a lot and for the first time in my live I was in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Thailand. This changed of course my feelings and my mind a lot. Before that I was most of my time only in Germany and sometimes in other countries of Europe. I learned a lot: other cultures, another way of thinking and trained in the English language. I learned how to travel and how to organize the meetings.

Robby: What is, in your opinion, next to the fact that Commodore made the best selling computer of all-time with the C64, the greatest achievement of Commodore?

Petro: Amiga A500 and Amiga A1200 of course. But before that, the VIC 20 from Commodore which was the entry into the new computer century.

Robby: What is the funniest moment you had at Commodore?

Petro: The funniest moment was when I met Jack Tramiel. We built up a very close relationship and I was many times with him for dinner. He also came from the eastern part of Europe, like my family, that was a binding fact… Nice times… Jack was a great guy!

Robby: What is the saddest moment you had at Commodore?

Petro: The saddest moment was when I was informed by Mehdi Ali, that the company would go down… I could not believe this. We have had then the last supper in New York with some other Directors of the top management.

Robby: If you could go back in time, what would be the one thing above all others, that you would like to have changed in the course of Commodore’s history?

Petro: One of the things that hurt us a lot was the PC development. If I could go back in time, I would have fased out the PC line much sooner and had focused solely on the AMIGA Line and Commodore’s C64 developments. Also I would have supported the software development with third parties a lot of more and more intensive. Software was a poor issue in Commodore’s and Amiga’s history.

The post-Commodore years

Robby: From your speech given at the Video Toaster Expo Conference back in ’95, I read “In August 1994, almost one year before the 21st of April, when ESCOM AG took over the rights of Commodore, Manfred Schmitt, Chairman at ESCOM AG, told me “Petro, I want the Amiga”. From this day on, I was in charge of setting up the deal that the Amiga Community was waiting for: Taking over the rights and patents of Commodore International and give the Amiga a new home. It was a very difficult task, the situation with Commodore was complicated and many companies were also interested in getting the baby. But our strategy to keep silent about what we did helped us to be faster and more efficient. Nobody knew about ESCOM before the deal was completed.”
How did your relationship with ESCOM come about, so that they considered you the person to set up the deal?

Petro: During the Commodore times I was very powerful in organizing the products, being the logistic director for the Far East. Manfred Schmitt was at this time a potential German distributor. Commodore Products where always short in supply. One time I had allocated large quantities of C64 to Manfred, which saved him a lot of the business and generated him revenue. This story and my action was something he always respected and never forgot. He called me, because he trusted me a lot and asked me to work for him to seal the deal with the bankruptcy courts in New York.

Robby: You became the President of Amiga Technologies GmbH, a 100% subsidiary of ESCOM AG. What would you consider to be the greatest achievement in that period.

Petro: The biggest achievement was my strategy, to ramp up A1200 production for the European Market and the A4000 Production for the US market. The best plan is nothing if you cannot perform and convert into action and reality. I have performed my plans very successful and generated a lot of profit and revenue for AMIGA Technologies. Amiga Technologies could survive without ESCOM and would have no financial problems.

Robby: In July 1996, a year after ESCOM acquired Commodore’s assets, it had to file for bankruptcy as well. Do you think the A1200 and A4000T would have had a chance in the market had ESCOM survived longer?

Petro: I do not think so. The products where still advanced at that time, but new products should’ve been developed as soon as possible. The technology in the computer industry gets old very fast and needs a permanent R&D.

Robby: ESCOM’s Amiga assets were acquired by Gateway. What was your role in that undertaking?

Petro: I had managed the whole deal. When ESCOM went into bankruptcy, me as a President and General Manger had also apply for bankruptcy, but I could continue my business, without ESCOM. So I made an agreement with the liquidator and promised him to continue generating revenue. Which I have done and in between I was looking for an investor. I was approaching many companies, even Motorola and Apple, until I found Gateway. I informed the liquidator and we did all contracts with Gateway and Gateway took over the whole company including the intellectual properties, myself and the complete inventory for USD 14.000.000.

Robby: Would an acquisition by VisCorp have proven better for Amiga (thinking of the fact that Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen was a shareholder of VisCorp)?

Petro: You should know that Viscorp had a good chance. In the end there was not enough funding available. My understanding is that VisCorp has nothing to do with Microsoft, that’s a new story for me.

Robby: What made the VisCorp deal not go through? Is there some truth to the rumor that Microsoft put pressure on Gateway to clinch the deal?

Petro: As I just explained, it was the fact of missing funding. After 5 years Gateway received from my side permanently funds, which I generated out of the existing Amiga inventory. I have had revenue and my cost was very low… But the revenue gets less and less, because of a lack of new developments. So Gateway started to spend also money for AMIGA. Jim Collas built up the US head office, hired new staff and looked for new premises.
Jim was a very good manager and with the powerful Gateway behind us, Amiga could raise again from the ashes like a star. But then somebody stopped him and he gave up and cancelled his contract. I do not know the story behind it, but soon Gateway asked me to find a new investor for Amiga. I suggested myself and Gateway agreed and some contracts were already drafted, but my investment was not that high and then Bill McEven showed up and made the deal.

Robby: In the interview I did with Dave Haynie, he states: ” The Amiga people, I think, are a little exhausted. It’s been one broken promise after another. I tried to get something going, didn’t actually make any promises until we had Amiga Technologies going, backed by the second largest PC company in Germany at the time (ESCOM), and then that big company manages to kill themselves. Then more of the random promises. Then Gateway promises something, but drops the project. And that was the last serious effort. They’ve also made some bad decisions, like PowerPC, that seemed to have become a kind of religion in the Amiga community.”
It seems he wasn’t too keen on the whole 1200 and 4000T and especially not on the PowerPC approach. How do you look back at the PowerPC and Amiga venture?

Petro: The most important issue was finding a new future technology for AMIGA, and at that time Apple also was on Power PC. There was some strategy from third parties on Power PC, but Amiga never performed under my direction on the Power PC platform. I was only building up the Amiga OS from 3.1 to 3.5.

Robby: Recently you sold of a sizeable stock of A1200s. All factory sealed and in storage all these years. This was quite the buzz in the Amiga community. Did you expect this?

Petro: My Indian friend called me and asked me if I needed back some AMIGA A1200 Magic Packs and I announced this on facebook. I had not expect such a great respon! The quantities I imported (under 100 units) have sold without any profit, just to activate the Amiga Community. In the end I have lost a few bucks and earned a lot of work to handle this deal properly. Anyway, I have done this for the community and 150 Euro was a good price for everybody.

Robby: I’ve been told you hold one of the two existing Amiga Walker prototypes, the last “real” Amiga. Can you tell a little more about this machine? It was going to be an A1200 replacement but what was the main impetus for this machine?

Petro: The development was started in the time of ESCOM, because we needed a new machine for our survival. It was a similar technology as the A1200 but with a CD Rom drive and USB Connector and a 30 processor instead of the 20.

Robby: How do you see the future of Amiga (AmigaOS, machines by Commodore USA, …)

Petro: Amiga is a retro computer and only for a small existing community which is mostly made up of collectors. It is like the old timers in the automotive industry: Exciting, a nice hobby. For business activities the time is over. As a dealer you can only handle this Amiga business as a one man show and on low cost.
I do not think that there is an investor spending a lot of money to revive AMIGA!

Robby: What does the future hold in store for you?

Petro: I am not a dealer. I am getting 70 years old on April 16th. To keep me young, I am handling a small export business with “Made in Germany” products and doing a social job free of charge for cancer patients all around the word and transporting as an on board courier human stem cells from one hospital to another for cancer patients to help them.

Robby: And on that note, Petro, many thanks for the interview and I wish you all the best and success and thank you for having kept the Amiga flame burning!

The event started at 10 AM and sure enough, the bargain hunters were already queuing at the entrance well before the doors opened. Most of them were looking to find that really cool piece of vintage furniture, ornament or oddity at a thrift store price (and that would be less than 50% of what you’d expect to pay at a vintage shop in some of Belgium’s fine antiques and vintage shops as for instance in the “Kloosterstraat” in Antwerp)

If you have enough space, why not put this 70s kids fair rocket in your living room

Of course, I wasn’t there for the furniture (although a cool 70s chair is always nice), I was there to see if I could find some hidden retro tech gems just like I did two years ago.
Sure enough, it seemed some of the thrift stores had been keeping their best retro tech for that day, as the first shop already greeted me with a (sadly) non-working TRS-80 Model 4 at 30 Euro. It powered up, but then the screen only produced garbage… pity as it would have been a bargain.

The next store produced one of the late 70s PONG clones but at a price of 50 Euro, that was a bit too steep. Seemed like that particular thrift store had been looking up their inventory on eBay as they had a Videopac G7200 priced at 450 Euro. OK it was boxed, OK it was complete, OK was a G7200, OK it looked in perfect condition, but I had to take their word on it that it functioned. I tried to bring the price down, but this early in the morning they had their hopes set that there would be a buyer willing to pay the asking price.

Moving on to the next store, I had the best bargain of the day. They were selling a box of C64 goodies containing a C64, a datasette, some tapes and… a 1581 floppy drive… and all this for just 50 Euro. Needless to say, I bought it then and there!

Picking up some further things left and right, I went back the store selling the G7200 and sure enough, they had already dropped the price to 350. An hour later it would be 250. I tried to bring it down to 200 (as I wasn’t 100% sure it would work), but they didn’t want to go to that price. In hindsight, 250 is a very decent price for a complete G7200 system in its original box, but since I already had one, I just couldn’t see myself paying that for a 2nd system.

So with a trunk full of retro goodies (and a cool wooden game called “Carambole” for just 10 Euro – at the games fair Spiel in Essen these things sell for well over 100 Euro) we enjoyed a wonderful weekend at the coast.

I love thrift store bargain hunting!

But perhaps the strangest and most wonderful use of the 65xx outside of its traditional habitat of computers and peripherals was that which happened in 1977, and it was in a pizza restaurant!
Nolan Bushnell, Atari’s founder, had created a place of wonders, where parents could enjoy a quick meal whilst their kids could play, enjoy themselves and have fun on the numerous arcade systems and VCS’s that were scattered all over the restaurant. It was a place where kids could act like kids without someone asking them to be quiet.

Nolan had founded the Chuck E. Cheese’s Pizza Time Theatre, where next to the cheap food and Atari arcades, everyone could enjoy a Disney styled animatronics show, featuring Chuck E. Cheese and his merry friends. It’s in this animatronics show, that we find the 6502 processor, acting as the “brain” of the numerous displays.

As Larry Emmons (Atari’s head of R&D) recalls in the book “Atari Inc. – Business is fun”, by Marty Goldberg and Curt Vendel (which is a must read for any retro computer enthusiast) :
“We did all the animatronics for the first Pizza Time at Cyan (Cyan Engineering being Atari’s think tank). A generalized computer board, based on the 6502 processor was used for each ‘display’. The audio and computer info was recorded onto a Teac 4 track semi-professional tape recorder with a PDP-11/70. Playing the tape produced all entertainment in a synchronized way. The mechanical things were all pneumatically actuated using mechanical music technology or modern air cylinders. It worked great and was reliable. There was no mini-computer, only streaming data from the tape and distributed 6502 controllers.”

Going through some turbulent times, and a name change, the concept still lives on in more than 500 locations. And although the shows have changed and are using modern technology, I can’t help but feel nostalgic that back in the 70s and 80s, you could enjoy a slice of pizza with a slice of MOS Technology.