• Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    redrumloa
    Posts: 1424 from 2003/4/13
    Quote:

    Red and I both had long discussions with Barry. I think Jim even visited him in person.
    He was NOT a scam artist, he was an enthusiast who wanted to revive both the Commodore and Amiga names.
    His PC based C64 is a collector's item (and it has a really NICE quality keyboard).
    I believe that if he had lived long enough, we would have seen Aeon based models for OS4 and MorphOS, PC models for AROS, and we'd have models carrying the Amiga name, not just AmigaOne.

    He WAS serious.


    I did indeed meet him in person once as he was local to me. Dammy came over the same day as it was only a couple hour drive for him. When people first started posting about CUSA on Amiga.org I had the same initial knee-jerk reaction as most, I mocked it. There was just too much history of spoof/scam companies. Barry initially joined AO and blasted back, but then offered to have me come over to his house and see for myself. I took up the invitation. After that meeting I exchanged emails a couple times.

    He had a couple systems that were clearly just rebranded all in one PCs, such as the new Vic. The 64x barebones prototype was there and I was able to check it out first hand. It looked very good. At first glance it looks exactly like a C64. It looks so good that to this day tech articles referencing the original C64 often mistakenly show a 64x picture. The keyboard was quite nice too.

    He also showed us his email server. There were literally 10s of thousands of positive emails after his media news blitzed happened. He told of about 2 deals in the works. One deal came true, the advertisement in the Tron Bluray. The other never did, distribution at Best Buy. Dammy left that meeting much more positive than me, he was excited. I left neutral but content that it was certainly no scam.

    He was trying. I think he made a number of missteps along the way and I told him so. Mainly I think he really botched the 64x launch badly for a good number of reasons. But, he had real product that was actually shipped as advertised.

    [ Edited by redrumloa 05.09.2018 - 11:53 ]
  • »05.09.18 - 15:49
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