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 BBS: BitStream BBS
Date: 09-09-94 (16:28)             Number: 32086
From: ASHA DEVELDER                Refer#: NONE
  To: ALL                           Recvd: NO  
Subj: Pleasance Interview 1 of       Conf: (65) Amiga USA
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        Here's the latest off of Compuserve (note tagline....I didn't edit
this one!!):

Here is an article that will appear in the next issue of the ICPUG Journal
in England, to be published in about two weeks.  The JOURNAL is one of the
best technical journals for Commodore products still being published.


COMMODORE - THE FUTURE

INTERVIEW WITH DAVID PLEASANCE

John and Janet Bickerstaff

Tuesday 6th September 1994. We arranged to meet David Pleasance, Joint
Managing-Director of Commodore, at the European Computer Trade Show in
London. This is what he had to tell us.

Management Buy-Out
We are, in fact, about two weeks behind what our schedule was. We had
planned to announce the successful management buy-out of the assets of
Commodore International and Commodore Electronics at the ECTS. The reason
why we are two weeks late is that two weeks ago Colin Proudfoot and I were
in New York with Coopers & Lybrand (who are acting for us), one of our
investment people, the Liquidator and the Liquidator's lawyers, for a
meeting which took approximately five hours, which you can take as a
positive sign that the Liquidator is taking us very seriously. The purpose
of that meeting was two fold. One was to
establish finally what can and cannot be delivered in terms of what is
available for sale. The second reason for the meeting was to determine
exactly how our bid was to be structured to make it easier for the lawyers.
To say that the situation with Commodore and all the subsidiary companies
is complex is a major understatement. All the companies have
cross-shareholdings and trading arrangements.

The net result is that we were told (and it came as a major surprise to us)
that the Liquidator could not, as previously promised, deliver to us all of
the component parts inventory which is currently in the Phillipines, and
that formed a very major part of our business plan to enable us to bring
products to market for Christmas.

That meant that we had to come back to the UK, get in touch with all the
component suppliers from around the world, find out whether they would
supply us, find out how much it would cost to get our product put to the
front of the queue, how much for air freight, work out how many machines we
can built and the profit on them. In other words we had to draw up a
completely new business plan in order to satisfy our investors, and that we
have done in just two weeks, but we are two weeks behind on what we had
originally planned.

Coopers & Lybrand have now drafted an unconditional draft agreement, which
is what the lawyers asked for, and that effectively says, this is our
offer, this is what we want and, subject to you delivering this to us, we
will pay you. That will be delivered to the Liquidator today. We have put
on the bid a validity period of ten working days to come back with an
answer.

However, life was never meant to be simple, the US courts have yet to
decide whether they wish to intervene. They have the option of letting the
Bahamas do it, doing it in conjunction with the Bahamas, or taking it
themselves, which is very unlikely. We should know within ten working days
from today whether we have got this or not. We are very confident about it
because we know that the other players are doing, but nothing is certain in
life.

(Part Two to follow)

Asha.DeVelder.... Internet: asha.develder@209-216-5.genesplicer.org

 * ....<- Grains Of Salt.  Take As Needed With Above Message.
---
 * Origin: Don't bite my finger; Look where I'm pointing! (1:209/216.5)
===========================================================================
 BBS: BitStream BBS
Date: 09-09-94 (16:29)             Number: 32087
From: ASHA DEVELDER                Refer#: NONE
  To: ALL                           Recvd: NO  
Subj: Pleasance Interview 2 of       Conf: (65) Amiga USA
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        Here's part 2:

Research and Development
The seventeen Commodore engineers currently residing in Norristown, US, are
extremely happy to work with us, and we have budgeted to immediately take
them back up to sixty/sixty-five people. The way that we will run the R & D
Centre is that there will be a team of about fifteen people, who will be
looking after current technology. Their role will be to support existing
products and to manufacture derivatives, and new products from our present
architecture. The remainder will be working on new technology, and that is
exclusively RISC. We have canned that AAA project completely, and the
reason is that although the chips are virtually finished, there is no
operating system, and this would take eighteen months to bring to the
market. In addition, we will be bringing Chris Ludwig over to the UK
permanently, and he will head up a team of about twenty people whose sole
job in life will be to support developers. This will be a major step
forward to strengthen our relationship with the developers. Within six
months we will have development systems for the RISC product and those
systems will go selectively to the development community. I intend to loan
them the machines until they have developed products and, when they start
to sell these products, I expect them to pay me for the machines. For the
first time we will have developers able to work on new software before the
hardware hits the market.

Current Technology
We intend to establish sub-license agreements with companies who make third
party products and who have ancillary products who are not in competition
with us. We have established a good relationship with NewTek and Scala, and
we intend to allow them to use our hardware in whatever manner they see fit
to sell more systems. We will be prepared to work very closely with anybody
who wants to develop third party peripherals that will help us to sell
Amigas, and that again is a complete change of attitude from Commodore in
the past.

Marketing
We expect to have products coming to market around the middle to end of
November and, because of the component part situation, we will have less
CD32s and A1200s that we wanted to meet demand, but we will major more on
A4000s. This gives us the opportunity in the UK to support the independent
dealers and we will feed them the bulk of the products and likewise in
European countries.

New Products - Amiga card for the PC
There will be no new products this side of Christmas for obvious reasons.
As soon after Christmas as we can, we will have the CD drive for the A1200
and the expansion box for the CD32, and then within a few months we will
have new products using existing technology. One of those products is
almost certainly going to be an Amiga on a PC card. This will probably be a
sub-license deal with another manufacturer. This could be a very
substantial business because everybody who has a PC wants to turn it into a
multimedia machine and an Amiga on a card could be a very cost-effective
solution.

The Way Forward
We will be having a forum in the UK, and one in the US, very quickly after
we have got the company and that forum will basically be to talk with
everybody saying, look we have got a blank piece of paper, we can go in any
direction you like, tell us what you want so that we can all swim in the
same direction. This forum will be for anyone interested in the future of
the Amiga.

Change of Name
The company name will almost certainly be Amiga International and we will
not be using the name Commodore anywhere. The new company will be based at
Maidenhead. The products will be manufactured in the UK, possibly by ICL,
who can provide warranty and support.

Shows
We are doing the Motor Show. There is part of the Motor Show called Future
World and that is at the NEC at Birmingham from the 18th to the 30th
October. What they have got is the Motor Show, the Ideal Home Exhibition,
and Future World on at the same time. One ticket gets you into all three
shows. Future World contains a ride which was manufactured for BMW for last
year's Motor Show in Frankfurt. This ride
takes you through a series of shop windows with live people working in them
(a bit like the Epcot Centre). It carries two thousand people an hour and
we have a stand right where everybody gets off this ride. 800,000 to a
million visitors are expected at this show.

***************************************************************************

        There you go guys....not much, but it's something!

Asha.DeVelder.... Internet: asha.develder@209-216-5.genesplicer.org

 * The universe is simple - it's the explanation that's complex.
---
 * Origin: Don't bite my finger; Look where I'm pointing! (1:209/216.5)
