From recent postings on the comp.sys.amiga.misc news group it seems that Fleecy Moss has left Amiga Inc. He is unable so say why due to his contract but it seems he was sacked. Wild speculation has ensued and in the last couple of days Dr. Allan Havemose has been on the newsgroup reassuring Amigans that OS 5 and OS 3.5 are still continuing. Dr. Havemose says the OS 3.5 pages on the Amiga Inc. website will be changed so it seems like the 3.5 spec may be under review. Rumour has it that Haage and Partner may be taking over the port. Many prominent Amigans and developers are upset by Fleecy's departure because he was their main contact with Amiga Inc.
All at SEAL thank Fleecy for his sterling work, in particular supporting the Amiga community and helping get OS3.5 off the ground. We wish him all the best for the future. See our interview with Fleecy further down the page...
As we had secretly been hinted at about three and a half months ago (well, someone had a hunch/wish), the new os partner for the Mitchy Amiga, is QNX. See their website - www.qnx.com for the announcement. QNX is apparently a very stable, multimedia capable, cross-platform os (it`s already available for a number of chips, including Pentium and PPC). Dr. Havemose said on IRC that he has known of them for years, and about 60% of their engineers are either ex or current Amigans. Put the QNX team together with Dr. H and another 20 people he`ll be employing over the next 6 months or so, and you have a dedicated team whacking together the best os ever seen (or heard... multimedia - geddit ??). Anyway, pathetic jokes aside, this sounds to us, and the guy that said it would be the best os to work into the Amiga ethos, like the best choice. Well done dudes !!
Settlers 2
Fantastic Dreams and Candy Factory Pro
ImageFX PPC module soon.
and maybe even Wipeout 2097!
That`s just the beginning.
CB are having a good couple of months...they've put the ultimate stupid question up on heir website... "Which is better - PPC or Amiga 2 ?"....Um, hello ?? Which is real, CB - Horses or Unicorns ??? Hmmmmm...
On the up-side, CB are taking suggestions for games to port from the PC to Amiga...head on over to www.clickboom.com to cast your wish. I'm hoping for a decent WW1 or WW2 flight-sim for PPC.
-Gary Storm
I have to disagree with Gary Slightly here, in my opinion Phase 5's wait-and-see attitude is very understandable - although OS 3.5 has been announced it remains to be seen what is going to be included and how it will be implemented. At the end of the day Phase 5 are still producing their current products and have introduced the BlizzardVision PPC which is as much as any other Amiga hardware company. I'm glad they are still considering Classic Amiga development.
-Robert Williams (Not associated with Phase 5, just happy owner of their products)
UK Phase 5 dealers White Knight and Blittersoft have semi-recently dropped the price of Phase 5's products too. This makes all the PPC and graphics cards more attractive but the A1200 cards look especialy good. You can transform your 1200 with an 040, PPC, fast SCSI and a graphics card for just over 400 pounds (less then �350 without SCSI). White Knight have a web-site now (yay!!), at http://welcome.to/white-knight for you to drool over PPCs`s.
Fleecy Moss has also been saying a (very) little about some plans for the next miggy ..."Mitchie". We appreciate Fleecy clearing some of the smog. His words pose many more answers than questions, though...especially concerning whether Amiga-Inc will be making any emulation of "Classic" Amiga's. Fleecy says that they won't, but some licensees may. They're very busy at the moment designing the next os, and applications. Check out an interview with Fleecy at the Amiga Web Awards site. Vote for us while you're there ! :)
CU Amiga Magazine, a bastion of the UK Amiga community, announced yesterday (13th August), that the magazine will cease publication with the October issue.
Phase 5's 2D/3D graphics card for their CyberStorm PPC accelerators is finally here, we have the full story with pictures of the board.
Latest rumour doing the rounds is that Phase 5 are going to be releasing ppc boards in a couple of months, without a native 68k processor on board. They will be using Haage & Partner 68k emulation instead. This may not be a good thing, if the ppc slows down too much. Although the boards will be much cheaper, We prefer the real 68k on board, to free up the ppc to get on with it's own thing. Time will tell.....
Update
This rumour was recently quashed by Ralph Schmidt, the Phase 5 PPC software guy, in his usual direct way on the PowerUP mailing list:
> On 11-Jul-98 Dyad_Roth Wrote: :-? > > ->i just read some 'disturbing' news on come.to/amigappc stating > that the ->blizzard ->will be discontinued as of now ... ARGH what > will this mean .. WILL the ->blizzardvisionppc come trough or will > we get upgrade plan to go to te new ppc ->card or what ? some sane > steady advice would be appreciated here please ... > > If you read the complete text, it says that the new cards will have > the G3 processor... and it might be a smart thing to use the same > GFX cards for the new PowerUps. ;) > This rumour is complete bullshit. --- Ralph Schmidt,laire@popmail.owl.de(private),NextMail welcome Phase5 ,laire@ufoo.phase5.de(work),NextMail welcome
Rhino has been informed that Tornado 3d (v2) is available and ppc happy, with speeds of 6 to 9 times faster than an 060. A free upgrade is available to existing users, and he says it looks really cool. Expect some 3d gfx from rhino as he plays :) Check out the Eyelight website.
Members of SEAL were at WoA '98 on the Friday for the big Amiga Inc. announcement, and for the show on the Saturday. We have a very comprehensive illustrated report written by Gary Storm on the show and the announcement.