Veni, Vidi, VISCorp: We Came, We Saw, We Didn't Buy.

December 4, 1996

I've been absolutely dreading writing this column. I kept thinking "I'll wait until things slow down a bit."

Well, things are slowing down because things are slamming into a wall.

VISCorp is one of those unique companies, like Commodore, whom we need but strongly dislike. They've so far been arrogant, slow, incoherent, and generally not what the Amiga community wanted - and they were the ones we were waiting on to buy the Amiga technology out from under ESCOM's decomposing corpse.

That's over.

I can't reprint the BLOOMBERG Business News article here (as if copyright issues have ever stopped me in the past) but I'll summarize this startling but not entirely unexpected piece of news:

Remember September 19? Well, once upon a time, that initial contract that was written up and supposed to be done by August 19 - then postponed to September 19 - said that VISCorp was supposed to pay $20 million dollars by a certain date (sometime in October) to secure the purchase.

They didn't.

ESCOM's bankruptcy trustees cancelled the contract.

In October.

Now, this is November 30. Let's look real quick at the timeline:

July, 1996 - On August 19, come hell or high water, VISCorp will own the Amiga.
August 19 - On September 19, come hell or high water, VISCorp will own the Amiga.
September 18 - Jason Compton emerges to say "Don't panic, we're still in discussions."
Early October 1996 - ESCOM's bankruptcy trustees cancel the contract, thus taking VISCorp out of the running.
October 20 - Jason Compton takes the stage at AMICON and says "There's nothing new to report, it's all still proceeding."
November 14-16, 1996 - Carl Sassenrath storms out the door at VISCorp, pulling his name off the web site and explaining his actions on USENET, calling VISCorp the most screwed-up company he's ever worked for.
November 21-22, 1996 - a contact of mine indicates that Petro Tyschtenko is near tears in frustration over everything falling apart.
November 22, 1996 - Jason Compton says "There's nothing new to report, it's all still proceeding."
November 27, 1996 - Alex Amor posts on USENET some eerie rumors that there was collusion between VISCorp and ESCOM in April 1995 during the Commodore auction
November 28, 1996 - Bloomburg Business News reports that VISCorp has some unnamed competition for the Amiga assets.
November 30, 1996 - Bloomburg Business News reveals that VISCorp's position as front runner for the Amiga assets was cancelled back in October.
December 4, 1996 - Jason Compton announces, er, I'll get to that later.

Now, here's the funny part. VISCorp had to have known this in October. But instead they've let Jason Compton run wild telling everyone "oh everything's proceeding smoothly, due diligence, etc." knowing FULL WELL there is no "due diligence" involved anymore and it's not proceeding smoothly - it's OVER.

VISCorp could very well still buy the Amiga, but first they need to come up with the money. And they can't. In late October they told the SEC that they no longer make enough money to "fulfill business obligations" - i.e. buy the Amiga. Of course, they have that license to the Amiga technology that they got from ESCOM way back when, but they don't actually have product yet to show for it - and if they don't buy the Amiga, they lose that license as well and will have to renegotiate with whoever buys the Amiga next time around.

So. Here we are. We don't know who the current contenders for the Amiga are - Sony has been mentioned, but Sony was also the favorite in the various weird rumors back in 1994. (What would they want the Amiga for anyway? The PlayStation is already one hell of a box, what could five-year-old Amiga technology possibly add to that?) There's talk of some Chinese and Taiwanese buyers. I regret that I have no specifics, although I wouldn't mind one bit if QuikPak, Phase 5, or for that matter, Apple, walked away with the goodies. I have no idea if QuikPak, P5, or ANY Amiga company is even on that list. Chalk another one up to VISCorp's wonderful policy of telling us what's going on.

The plot thickens.

This from Alex Amor:

THE SELLOUT OF A JOURNALISTIC SOUL?
Jason had intimate knowledge of the dealings between CEI and Viscorp. He was and is aware of their duplicity, unethical acts, deceit and the conspiracy that took place between Viscorp and Escom to gain the assets Commodore. Jason Compton has been well aware of Viscorp's true intentions. I told him directly.

Again, I sympathize - if I thought they'd pay me enough money to make it worth selling my soul, I'd send a resume to Microsoft. But there's also something odd about this: wouldn't nifty rumors of collusion between VISCorp and ESCOM in April of 1995 look GREAT in Amiga Report? It didn't. Jason - nor anyone else - never so much as breathed a syllable of this, or else I'd have plastered it all over the place by now. That Jason KNEW - and not only said nothing, he went to work for those same people - says bad things. Amiga Report has also gone downhill in quality and quantity - partly understandable because of his work schedule, but still, there's plenty of others who'd gladly take the helm or do the editing work or whatever. In any case, Jason as VISCorp spokesperson is an absolute joke now - nobody trusts him and VISCorp won't tell him anything.

Which leads to my next question: if Bloomburg Business News can find these things out, why couldn't Jason Compton? Was he under some kind of pressure from VISCorp not to leak the truth? Even if it's something he could possibly have found out from OUTSIDE the company?

But the Jason Compton thing takes a turn later. Read on.

"VIScorp announced today that while conducting its due diligence for the planned acquisition of the assets of the former Amiga Technologies AG, its financial institutions and the management of Amiga agreed that the assets to be acquired were of significantly less value than the US$20 million which had been proposed. The original US$40 million offer included the guarantee of ESCOM distribution in Europe as well as several other features which disappeared with the ESCOM bankruptcy.

One of these items is the fact that one of the most valuable pieces of the inventory is currently encumbered in a complicated legal challenge to the ESCOM AG bankruptcy estate. Without the assurance that this piece could be delivered as a part of the package deal, VIScorp began to reconsider their offer."

"Further, it has been discovered that the intellectual property is being pirated daily by small and large companies alike. To combat this problem, VIScorp intends to partner with Mahr Leonard Management Company, a Dallas, Texas company specializing in patent infringement."

"Due to the above, VIScorp allowed its offer to expire on October 2, 1996, and lowered its bid shortly thereafter. Throughout all of this time a wholly-owned VIScorp German subsidiary continued to operate Amiga through Oct. 31, at its own expense and with the concurrence of the Trustee. This was done because VIScorp believed that Amiga was more valuable as an operating company and wanted it to retain this value. During this period VIScorp paid Amiga expenses, including salaries, and generated over $2 million in sales which were to be credited against the final sale price at a later date."

This VIScorp German subsidiary? I've never heard of it before today.

VIScorp continues to be interested in completing the acquisition of Amiga. It believes that the future of two-way, interactive television depends in large part on the installed base of Amiga users who currently access the Internet through their televisions and Amiga A1200 computers to reach thousands of available Amiga titles. It also believes the next step is to modify the operating system to further adapt the television market to the vast and developing resources being created by the Amiga world-wide development community - products which include games, entertainment, and information.

Because he's just issued his own release. This off USENET today:

"I'd just like everyone to know that as of December 16, 1996, I will no longer be employed by VIScorp in any fashion. I'll do the best I can to handle VIScorp inquiries until then, and will be posting a VIScorp press release which should answer a number of questions that to date have not been addressed to everyone's satisfaction.

Future VIScorp inquiries should be directed to David Rosen at drosen@ix.netcom.com."

In any case, VIScorp (and it appears, now, after it's all over, VIScorp is the proper capitalization) is left with no credibility in the Amiga world. Carl Sassenrath and Jason Compton have both resigned - it'll be very interesting to see what parting shots Jason makes. Jason has already remarked that Carl's parting shot wasn't something he necessarily would have done himself - that he had something different in mind. I'm wondering what goodies will be among the "questions that have not been addressed to everyone's satisfaction" - some Inner Truth about VIScorp, perhaps?

Now we wait. While we have no clue which companies are now in the running - shades of April 1995, where our future was in the hands of faceless PC clone companies - we can just sit here, play Alien Breed, and wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Meanwhile, as for the rest of us, the idea of "pooling money and buying it ourselves" is really getting some notice on USENET. Several people have made suggestions to that effect. Maybe, just maybe, we'll see something come of it.

In other news, a tiny piece of evidence has surfaced hinting that, just maybe, Christian Bauer really did swipe stuff to write Shapeshifter. Apparently, since getting a BeBox, he's decided not to do any more Shapeshifter. There's a survey on Aminet, to plead with him to write a PowerShapeshifter of some kind - either for BeBox or for Phase 5 PowerUp - and so far there's no indication that he's interested. It would logically follow that if he'd swiped code to write the original Shapeshifter, he wouldn't be interested in writing Power Shapeshifter until someone else writes a similar product so he can swipe. It's just anecdotal, though - he may just be tired of looking at Mac innards or something to that effect.

(Discovered a thing that might be helpful for some people: if your Shapeshifter keeps coming up in grayscale, even if you set it to color last time, try reinstalling System so it has a complete set of Monitors extensions - LC Monitors Extension, IIsi Monitors Extension, etc. - and then keep moving them to the desktop one at a time and rebooting until you find the one that works. My 1200 [with a IIsi ROM] started booting System 7.5 in vibrant color when I gave it the LC Monitors Extension.)

Now some good news:

Technicians at the Rumor Mill have finally learned the cause of the Block 880 error.

You know the routine: a floppy disk suddenly starts complaining about that one block, usually during a write, usually on an A500 or A2000, or on an older floppy drive, or on a disk that came from someone else's A500 or A2000. It's always Block 880, and occasionally, on a big file, blocks 881, 882, and beyond. If the file manages to write successfully, the disk still complains - but a quick whip-through with a disk fixer seems to solve it - for awhile.

Well, one of our technicians had been experiencing this with his early-1994 A1200's internal - and external - floppy drives. First he blamed it on me - I'd had the problem on my A500 way back when, and when a disk written on my 500 was put in his machine, he'd get similar errors on his own disks soon afterward. Finally it got to the point where almost all his disks 880'd on him.

One day he got to feeling technical, and had found a container of sewing machine oil, and was taking apart and oiling and cleaning every mechanical thing he owned. He dismantled the 1200 (for the tenth time that day - yes, he's weird, he wrote "KORN" across his 1200's vents, and when he showed it to me, he said "Look! I made it beautiful!") and took the floppy drive apart, cleaned all the dust bunnies and dead things out of there, put a drop of oil on a couple of key components (careful not to get it on the heads), put it back together - and was stunned at the result.

The 880 errors disappeared completely. Even the drive noise changed in pitch - that Chinon track-stepping sound was suddenly much healthier. Several disks that had been problematic were suddenly OK. He gave similar treatment to his external drives, and his 880 problems were solved. He does report that, if the drive hasn't been cleaned in awhile, the errors return - but a quick cleaning makes them go away for another few months.

Disk cleaner kits are not enough, he says - dirt gets into the moving parts, not just on the heads, and it's that dirt that gets parts out of alignment enough to make it unreliable. The 880 errors are reported most often by people with older machines, and often blamed on 2.0 ROMs in A500s and A2000s - although I saw the error myself back in my 1.3 days. It makes sense if you think about it, that older machines with new ROMs will have dirty floppy drives, that machines using disks that were written on dirty floppy drives might also have problems, and might even get more dirt into the mechanism and not just on the heads.

Of course, the Rumor Mill claims no responsibility if you destroy your floppy drive. I have that technician working on a more detailed write-up of the procedure, with the intention of posting it to Aminet - but you're still at your own risk. If it works, let me know. If it doesn't work, let me know.

Well, that's it for this special edition. Keep your eyes open for nifty rumors. Oh, and keep your eyes open for the Amiga Format Christmas issue - that's all I'll say for now.

Till next time, fellow cephalopods.