During the latter part of 1996, VisCorp negotiated with Escom to
buy the rights to the Amiga. There was even an official statement
by both companies stating they had sealed the agreement. As time
has told, this agreement was never officially signed and so the
ownership of the Amiga remained unknown for a while. From July to
December 1996, VisCorp continuously fought to gain the rights to
the Amiga. However, due to a lack of funding they were unable to
buy the rights and were forced to step down. Another bidder,
previously unknown stepped in- QuikPak. They had already had
experience with the Amiga, having manufactured units in North
America for Escom. A number of A4000-based systems were prototyped
and ready for release. However, at the last minute Gateway 2000
stepped in swept the Amiga from under them.
Even whilst Escom were still alive VisCorp wanted to develop it
as a set-top box machine to take advantage of the Internet. Their
ED system was all but finished,
displaying some groundbreaking ideas for the computer of the
future. Like Escom they were also interested in developing the
Amiga as a RISC based computer, but were leaving it to the likes of
Phase 5 to develop the technology required to fulfil this dream,
binning the Walkers design for not being anything new. As 1996
quickly rolled into 1997, it became obvious that they simply did
not have the financial muscle to buy the Amiga, or pay their own
bills to Almathera, the developers of Photogenics for their work on
the ED device, who went bankrupt consequently.
At one point Quikpak, the manufacturer of the Amiga systems in
America intended to buy the Amiga, before Gateway 2000 stepped in.
They were not interested in the stopgap solution of the Walker,
instead claiming they would develop the Amiga into a high-end
workstation based upon the Dec-Alpha processor. They were also
developing a series of stopgap solutions for the professional
multimedia market. Over the past few months they have been in
constant discussion with Gateway 2000 to approve their
Amiga-compatible systems and are marked as a developer of official
Amiga-compatible clones approved by Amiga International during
1998. As shown in the complete listing of Amiga systems, Quikpak
are ready to release a number of professional Amiga systems into
the world.
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