[News] Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management | ANN.lu |
Posted on 18-Mar-2003 21:49 GMT by Anu Seilonen | 29 comments View flat View list |
OULU, FINLAND - March 18th, 2003 - Finnish Amiga Users Group published a translated interview with Bill Buck and Raquel Velasco of Genesi in their latest Saku e-zine. This interview was conducted on March 15th, 2003. For the benefit of the international audience, the original transcript of that interview is now released below. The Finnish Amiga Users Group would like to thank Bill and Raquel for taking the time to answer these questions.
Q: Could you both tell a little bit about yourself and your background.
I'm sure not everyone is familiar with you. And what's with you always
answering together? :-)
A: Well the best thing would be to read the interview from last year here:
http://www.amiga-news.de/archiv02/020417_interview_bb_pt.shtml
There is a picture of us there too... ;-)
Anyway, we are always together. We are married and we work together.
Sometimes the emails are from me and sometimes from Raquel.
Q: Before we go into some details that may interest our Finnish audience,
can you please give us a small status report on what Genesi is doing right
now, and what to expect in the coming weeks and months? What is your event
schedule for the spring?
A: We have spent the last three months bringing the Crossbee team onboard.
You can visit their website here www.crossbee.com. From Crossbee we not
only achieve an experienced management team, but we get the application
software too. This will be integrated into MorphOS and we will offer this
solution to very large institutional clients - hardware, OS, applications
and all tied in to smart cards. On top of this we will introduce further
applications. For example, if you consider the things we have done with the
wireless cameras and PDAs in Thendic-France and you combine this with the
things found here www.ceolia.com you will understand better our long term
direction. Incidentally, Ceolia is joining Genesi too... ;-)
The Pegasos development itself is focused on two key directions:
1. The digital terrestrial television STB running on a PPC and MorphOS.
2. The Pegasos II with the Marvell northbridge.
We will have Pegasos II six layer prototype boards available for our own
tests in less than three months. If things go well, we could be shipping
the Pegasos II much sooner than September, but we will hold to that date
for now.
MorphOS in the meanwhile will be further stabilized and broadened while
the Pegasos II comes to be. We are licensing many interesting things for
MorphOS. ProStation Audio for example will be bundled with the OS itself.
Q: Most of us have read about the Pegasos and the MorphOS. We know these
products and they are available for us to see. But there are other MorphOS
based products on your roadmap. Let's see if I can get them right: 1) the
eclipsis, a hand-held, 2) Psylent, standard Pegasos in a silent case, 3)
the mystery set-top box you have been contracted to do and, finally, 4) the
Pegasos 2. What is the status of these? Did I miss any?
A: The Psylent is basically finished and the new case looks good. You can
see the pictures at www.genesi-support.com. Our large STB project pushed
the eclipsis development back a little, but we are still moving ahead with
that. The Pegasos II we have discussed already.
Q: You also have some other products, such as the Cashboy and the Eyecam.
Could you give us a quick overview of those and what part, if any, they
play in your masterplan?
A: Well, the Cashboy is just a Point of Sale device. We learned about smart
cards with this product. The ComCam we used for the same experience. We
actually have a new product due at the end of the month that is related to
the Crossbee discussion above that uses the new ComCam. Smart cards come
into play in the next phase.
Q: There has been a lot of discussion concerning the Mai Logic Articia S
and the G4. What did you mean when you said the current 600 MHz G3 Pegasos
performs better with it than a 800 MHz G4? Were you referring to general
performace (on average perhaps) or some specific functions? What do you
make of counter-claims that Teron boards with G4 have been running some
Linux games significantly faster than their G3 counterparts - which sounds
pretty logical to a layman?
A: Of course, we meant running applications - any applications are actually
fine. The more the better and all executing simultaneously. Someone else
should define the test. We will happily participate as
expected/required/desired.
We have tested every platform developed by Mai, because we helped them.
We do know what we are saying... ;-)
Q: How about faster G3 processor modules for the Pegasos?
A: No, don't think so...
Q: What are the chances of us seeing more Pegasos boards before Pegasos 2?
Any hints on a possible Plexuscom deal?
A: :-) Cannot say, but the Plexuscom people are coming to Paris after
CeBIT.
Q: What is the status and future of MorphOS on 1) Teron boards (including
AmigaOne) and 2) the Phase 5 PowerPC boards? Any immediate plans for
shrink-wrapped MorphOS packages? Wouldn't a separate version for these
platforms make sense now that the Pegasos is sold out for the moment,
to get the attention of some additional developers and users?
A: Well on the first matter we have tried publicly and privately there
to advance that effort. It has met with far too much disharmony and
unnecessary negativity. We won't touch this issues for a couple more
months... then we will try again.
The second idea is a good one. We are working on a new release for MorphOS
for the Phase5 products now. It will be released within the next couple of
months. We will not be charging for this release.
Q: What do you make of comparisons between Amiga and UNIX, both operating
systems that have been cloned? Would you consider MorphOS and AmigaOS to be
a bit like BSD and UNIX? What do you feel is MorphOS's or Genesi's claim to
its part in the Amiga community?
A: MorphOS is part of the Community. The other questions are really the
stuff for a beer or coffee on a sunny weekend afternoon... ;-)
Q: You have been supporting the demoscene in various ways. Here in Finland
you sent us something to see back in AltParty 2003 and I believe you have
mentioned the Assembly 2003 event in Helsinki in some of your postings.
Have you been in contact with the organizers yet? What are your plans
there? Did you know that Assembly has a history of sponsored compos?
Last year Nokia sponsored a Nokia 7650 Java development competition.
A: Yes, we have good contact with Mikko Virtanen. We should do the same
thing as Nokia!
Q: Okay, I know you know there are people out there who really don't like
you. Your communication style is quite unorthodox. Any comments on that?
A: :-)
Q: For my final question I'll skip the usual, and I'd like to reflect a bit
on the past before looking forward. The Finnish Amiga Users Group turns ten
this spring. When we started, Commodore was still around. During the decade
that followed, we've seen the world move on, but progress in the Amiga
community has been seriously lacking. We even saw you guys have a go at it
once at VIScorp. Now, finally, some progress is being made, but probably
not in the unified direction we all thought it would go ten years ago. The
community is also a bickering shadow of its former self. Any final thoughts
on that?
A: Well, this is 2003. What was before is not now and the sooner we can get
everyone focused on what is here NOW and what can done, we might be able to
create something NEW and BETTER.
Q: Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions!
More information about the Finnish Amiga Users Group and the Saku e-zine
can be found at http://saku.amigafin.org.
About Finnish Amiga Users Group
Finnish Amiga Users Group (officially Suomen Amiga-käyttäjät ry.) is a
registered, non-profit organization dedicated to helping Finnish Amiga
computer users by preserving and advancing the Amiga hobby and knowledge of
the Amiga computing platform in Finland. The group aims to reach its goals
through volunteer efforts such as organizing events and publishing an
e-zine called Saku.
|
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 1 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Not a Genesi Fan on 18-Mar-2003 21:34 GMT | It's certainly getting harder and harder to take Buck seriously.
When he's finally asked (in a nice way) about his abusive behaviour towards potential customers he just puts a smiley. Great.
You can say a lot about Amiga Inc., but they don't abuse people on amiga.org (as has been noted by several users who have been critical towards Genesi/Thendic).
The sooner they go under the better for this community. Hopefully Buck's arrogance will take care of this. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 2 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Alkis Tsapanidis on 18-Mar-2003 21:52 GMT | In reply to Comment 1 (Not a Genesi Fan): Actually, if they go under, they will MUCH after Amiga Inc. I can take bets on
that. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 3 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Amiga User (Not Blind) on 18-Mar-2003 21:53 GMT | In reply to Comment 1 (Not a Genesi Fan): I would rather read crap like that than read Moss and his amazing freinds on Amigaworld with the gay Q&A crap. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 4 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Not a Amiga inc fan on 18-Mar-2003 22:05 GMT | In reply to Comment 1 (Not a Genesi Fan): > You can say a lot about Amiga Inc., but they don't abuse people on amiga.org
No but those animals blamed delays on the terriorist attacks on sept 11, very nice people at Amiga inc blaming the deaths of innocent people on there delays.
Genesi suck so does Amiga inc |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 5 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Real AmigaFan on 18-Mar-2003 22:15 GMT | Genesi sucks |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 6 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Thomas W on 18-Mar-2003 22:35 GMT | In reply to Comment 4 (Not a Amiga inc fan): Well, Sept. 11th certainly had an impact on businesses around the world and especially so in the U.S.
This would however not single-handedly explain all delays. It's fair to assume that it had an impact though.
Oh, btw. regarding 9/11 - go se Bowling for Columbine if you haven't done so already. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 7 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by headnut on 18-Mar-2003 22:58 GMT | Oh yeah, and now Iraq-war comes in handy for A inc. eh? ;)
"Sorry for the delays but our stuff went to asia to fight for...erm oil" |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 8 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Anonymous on 19-Mar-2003 00:15 GMT | In reply to Comment 2 (Alkis Tsapanidis): It may be sooner than anyone one of us wants to amitt :( |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 9 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Anonymous on 19-Mar-2003 00:56 GMT | ---snip---
Q: There has been a lot of discussion concerning the Mai Logic Articia S and the G4. What did you mean when you said the current 600 MHz G3 Pegasos performs better with it than a 800 MHz G4? Were you referring to general performace (on average perhaps) or some specific functions? What do you make of counter-claims that Teron boards with G4 have been running some Linux games significantly faster than their G3 counterparts - which sounds pretty logical to a layman?
A: Of course, we meant running applications - any applications are actually fine. The more the better and all executing simultaneously. Someone else should define the test. We will happily participate as expected/required/desired.
---snip---
Talk about dodging the question! So Mr Buck, is a G3 faster than a G4 or not? or have you decided not to answer so as not to piss off your CPU supplier like you did your chipset supplier? |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 10 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Daniel Miller on 19-Mar-2003 01:50 GMT | This is a really great interview and we should thank the Finnish Amiga Users Group because they asked some important questions that had not been asked before!
Crossbee looks interesting if you check out the page. Genesi has a lot of things going, they are approaching things from different angles. It will be interesting to see how it all meshes together. Cashboy, MorphOS, Process Organization Management, STBs, "Eyecams?" I look forward to the next phase, but I hope we keep satisfying the folks who want to run MorphOS and Pegasos as a standard desktop computer.
As for the "MorphOS for the Phase 5 products," man you Finns outdid yourself by extracting a statement from BBRV on this burning issue. Many people have asked about this, and now BBRV says it'll be released at no charge within a couple months?! I hope they consulted with their programming team on that timing! But it is great news, all the same. This really stands to broaden the developer and user base for MorphOS. These are the most advanced Amiga users, those with the PPC accelerators, so now Genesi will grab them, at least those that want to be grabbed. Future developers and Pegasos owners...
As for this BBRV comment that Genesi tried to "advance the effort" for MorphOS for the Teron, you know this is news to me and I keep up with this stuff like a madman. I remember reading that MorphOS ran on the Amiga One, but it seemed like that happened almost accidentally. "Say, just for fun try loading MorphOS on that Amiga One." "Okay, well it works, what now?" Well, too bad they are not moving forward on marketing this, because it would be a nice choice for the owners of those systems, especially for those who bought Amiga Ones thinking they'd be running Amiga software by now. Too bad that they was no question about MorphOS for the Mac.
Lastly I applaud the closing comment that we should all focus on the positive and do things that are new and better. This is really the whole reason I am into the MorphOS scene in the first place, that it is a chance to do things that are new and better, and build on that great community and software that we shared. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 11 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by MarkTime on 19-Mar-2003 03:21 GMT | In reply to Comment 3 (Amiga User (Not Blind)): You know just for kicks I went to Amigaworld and looked at the 'who's online'
5 guests, 0 members...go over to Amiga.org, same time of the night...9 registered users 16 guests...total of 25.
5 times more people on Amiga.org.
That is not to say, that this one example is representative of everything day and night.
But after the first announcement of their little site, and the Q&A thing which was popular....now they are left with just a little cheerleading section, and you know its so, amazingly, fantastically....stupendously, with a captial B,
B-O-R-I-N-G over there.
Its like this:
post 1
Amiga rulez
post 2....
he he ya!
post 3,
poster 2 were you trolling?
post 4,
no, but if I offended, I am sorry
post 5
ya Amiga is cool. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 12 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by chesegrate on 19-Mar-2003 04:05 GMT | In reply to Comment 11 (MarkTime): >post 5
>ya Amiga is cool.
hehe ;)
post 6
amigaworld is so friendly, not like that evil amiga org
post 7
amiga inc is so cool..
post 8
do u think they will do a os4 of cyberstorm showing soon. I know it's ready they just don'thave the time to do it..
post 9
yeah come on do it!
post 10
hyperion rocks!
post 11
os4 development should not be discussed in apublic forum only developers know about it. hyperion have nearly finished it but if they show it evil mos team will steal all the ideas!
post 12
can't wait to be running my amigaone xe with 1.3ghz g4 with os4 in two weeks.
hyperion rocks!
post 13
inteligent post that has been removed by the fanatic mikeb
post 14
amiga inc rocks
post 15
MikeB posts his weekly fleecyworshipmasturbation coloum
post16
amiga inc fanatics applaud and congratulate amiga inc, amigaworld and each other. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 13 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Alex Klauke on 19-Mar-2003 05:45 GMT | In reply to Comment 6 (Thomas W): Wasn't there one important VC of AmigaInc. located in the WTC (or surrounding
buildings) that after 9/11 simply did not exist anymore?
Anyway, until now the whole economy did not fully recover from the attack yet,
it would be hard to believe that it had no impact on AmigaInc. (or any other
Amiga company) at all.
Ciao, Alex |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 14 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by mahen on 19-Mar-2003 05:48 GMT | Interesting interview...
No clarification about the G4 w/ Articia speed issues (G3 april 2 VS G4 without april) though,
but very good news :
1) MorphOS FREE for PPC boards owners
2) the Pegasos 2 shouldn't be late
I don't understand why you guys complain. Just for the sake of it I guess :)
Ah, prejudice.... :( |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 15 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Anonymous on 19-Mar-2003 06:14 GMT | In reply to Comment 14 (mahen): Wasn't MOS supposed to be open source in the first place? |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 16 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Anonymous on 19-Mar-2003 06:29 GMT | In reply to Comment 11 (MarkTime): Well, I went 5 minutes ago and they were congratulating their 500th member. Are we jealous, perhaps? |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 17 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by JoannaK on 19-Mar-2003 06:58 GMT | In reply to Comment 14 (mahen): It's a pitty that foreign people can't read entire (quarterly) e-magazine and comment it as a whole. This interview was only one article among others. There were also:
- Results of questionare to users (like what to purchase etc, 140+ verified replies)
- 2 game reviews + interview of Thomas Schulze
- Tests of Catweasel Mk 3, Sybway USB and Ibrowse 2.3
- 2 articles about Amiga One
- Article of Pegasos 1, 2 and 1/2 (aka dtv-stb)
- Article of Mui/Mos programming
- Story of Alt-Party, including picture of Jeff Minter (Llamasoft) using Pegasos :)
+ some others, sorry.. not enough energy to type them all here. You people learn Finnish.. It can't be much harder than us learning English :)
In the end.. IMHO Not so bad archievement from 11 year old user group that has couple hundred members in country of 5 million people. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 18 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Anonymous on 19-Mar-2003 07:26 GMT | In reply to Comment 17 (JoannaK): Sorry, there's 5 million of you and 500 million of us... :P |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 19 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Alex Klauke on 19-Mar-2003 07:34 GMT | > Q: What is the status and future of MorphOS on 1) Teron boards (including AmigaOne)
> Well on the first matter we have tried publicly and privately there to advance
> that effort. It has met with far too much disharmony and unnecessary negativity.
> We won't touch this issues for a couple more months... then we will try again.
Why don't you simply do what you expect from Hyperion? Buy a board and port
MorphOS. You don't need hardware documentation or such, do you? If you have
that good connections to Mai recently they will make you a good price on the
Teron, won't they? (from your statement it even seems that you have a Teron with
the latest Articia S) And what are $1000 on an AmigaOne when you spend hundred
times as much on trade shows?
Just curious, as I would like to try MOS on my AmigaOne ;-) But I do understand
that STB support is first, then Eclipsis, then PegII, only then there would be
time for supporting other hw... :-/
Ciao, Alex |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 20 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Amiga User (Not Blind) on 19-Mar-2003 07:37 GMT | Reply to comment 11 & 12
Just been reading some of the posts on Amigaworld and OMG i can not believe people could be that blind when it comes to Amiga inc and other Amiga companies. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 21 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Anonymous on 19-Mar-2003 09:11 GMT | In reply to Comment 15 (Anonymous): "Wasn't MOS supposed to be open source in the first place?"
In a word - no.
MorphOS was never supposed to be open source at any time. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 22 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Joël EHRET on 19-Mar-2003 09:24 GMT | In reply to Comment 19 (Alex Klauke): BPlan already said that they have set up without any problem a amigaone with morphOS (they just put the OpenFirmware in AmigaONE)
Bye :) |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 23 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Darrin on 19-Mar-2003 14:32 GMT | In reply to Comment 14 (mahen): >> 1) MorphOS FREE for PPC boards owners
My question is, it this really true or is this just an attempt to undermine sales of OS4 to Blizzard/Cyberstorm users in an attempt to prevent Hyperion recovering their development costs and thus abandon the whole OS4.x project?
Don't bother answering, I believe the answer is "both". |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 24 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Alkis Tsapanidis on 19-Mar-2003 16:22 GMT | In reply to Comment 9 (Anonymous): Reread that announcement. He never claimed that a G3 is faster than a G4.
He claimed that a G3 Pegasos with April 2 is faster than a G4 Teron.
That's QUITE a difference... |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 25 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Alkis Tsapanidis on 19-Mar-2003 16:26 GMT | In reply to Comment 23 (Darrin): True and no... It's free for many reasons I cannot state here. Mainly support
ones, nothing else. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 26 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Kronos on 19-Mar-2003 17:06 GMT | In reply to Comment 13 (Alex Klauke): @Alex
That is not the point ...
McBill tried to use 9/11 as an excuse for AInc's failure to deliever OS4/A1
in October 01. It is no secret that both projects had allready been canned
by H&P and Eyetech/Escena bach than, that there was allmost no work done on
OS4 and the A1 was in a completly non-functioning form.
IF the projects had been "on schedule an rocking" in September they would have
have been in final betatesting, and 9/11 would have next to no effect on them. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 27 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by Anonymous on 19-Mar-2003 18:49 GMT | In reply to Comment 24 (Alkis Tsapanidis): @Alkis:
"Reread that announcement. He never claimed that a G3 is faster than a G4.
He claimed that a G3 Pegasos with April 2 is faster than a G4 Teron.
That's QUITE a difference..."
He still did not answer the question - All Pegasos machines have 600MHz G3s, and all G4 Terons have 800MHz G4s. So, he claims that a 600MHz G3 with an April 2 is faster than an 800MHz G4 without one (since both motherboards, as far as the system bus is concerned, are pretty similar except for the April 2). What I want to know is, what tests did he run to show this? I'm sure that one can carefully write a program that runs faster on a 600MHz G3+A2 than on an 800MHz G4, but if I run any 10 "real" PPC programs (applications, not artificial benchmarks), will the G3+A2 consistently (or at least 6 out of 10) beat the G4? *that* is what he claims, and that is what I want to know. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 28 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by samface on 24-Mar-2003 18:20 GMT | In reply to Comment 12 (chesegrate): Well, it's YOUR problem if their positive attitude is bothering YOU, not theirs. If they feel like having a site free from you doom and nay sayers, who cares? I mean, I would understand your reaction if we were talking about a nazi or racist website rather than "a bit too naive and positive towards Amiga Inc." website.
Let them, shut up, get a life. In that order. |
|
Finnish Amiga Users Group Interviews Genesi Management : Comment 29 of 29 | ANN.lu |
Posted by samface on 24-Mar-2003 18:33 GMT | --- 8< ---
Q: What is the status and future of MorphOS on 1) Teron boards (including AmigaOne) and 2) the Phase 5 PowerPC boards? Any immediate plans for shrink-wrapped MorphOS packages? Wouldn't a separate version for these platforms make sense now that the Pegasos is sold out for the moment, to get the attention of some additional developers and users?
A: Well on the first matter we have tried publicly and privately there to advance that effort. It has met with far too much disharmony and unnecessary negativity. We won't touch this issues for a couple more months... then we will try again.
The second idea is a good one. We are working on a new release for MorphOS for the Phase5 products now. It will be released within the next couple of months. We will not be charging for this release.
--- >8 ---
Well, there is one small little detail that I don't understand; why not just purchase a Teron board and make a version of MorphOS for it? Why would they need anyone's permission for that? Shouldn't that even be ten times easier than a Phase5 accelerator board version since MorphOS already supports the MAI chipset? What I *really* don't understand is; how could Hyperion, Amiga Inc., or Eyetech possibly stand in their way of doing this? Are you not allowed to develop whatever software you want for your AmigaOne or Teron boards? |
|
Anonymous, there are 29 items in your selection |
|
- User Menu
-
- About ANN archives
- The ANN archives is powered by #AmigaZeux. It was updated daily (news last: 22-Oct-2004; comments last: 18-May-2005).
ANN.lu was created, previously owned and maintained by Christian Kemp, www.ckemp.com.
- Contribute
- Not possible at this time!
- Search ANN archives
- Advanced search
- Hosting
- ANN.lu was hosted by Dreamhost. Sign up through this link, mention "ckemp" as referrer and he will get a 10% commission on any account you purchase.
Please show your appreciation for any past, present and future work on ANN.lu by making a contribution via PayPal.
|