The mood was dark, that April. The worst Christmas season sales in Commodore history had left the company with $350 million in losses.  Most of the staff was thinking "what next", at least with increasing levels of seriousness. I had been away for a long weekend, in Texas, out there interviewing for positions with Mizar and Compaq, "just to see." Commodore Management had suggested that, if we found new jobs, we should accept them. I brought my camcorder to Texas with me...

Upon returning to Commodore that Tuesday (April 26 th ), I decided to bring along my camcorder; I had fully charged batteries, and the K-Mart in West Goshen just happened to have 8mm tapes in stock. What happened next, on that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday, make up the video that I eventually called "The Deathbed Vigil and other tales of digital angst." As I shot this, it became clear that there was a story here, maybe a bit more than just a home movie. And with this, I would have some answer, at least a partial one, for those who would inevitably ask "why?"

The DVD

The print of this video is from my original S-VHS master tape, restored digitally as well as I could. The editing on that tape was done on an Amiga 3000+ with a SuperGen 2000, GVP TBCplus, and Scala's MM400/EE100 software. I thought about doing an all-digital re-edit, and maybe will some day, but this one preserves the best of what I could do, on an Amiga, back in 1994. And shows some of what's possible today, in desktop video publishing, eight years later, as the whole DVD was authoring and published on a plain old desktop computer.

And then there's the additional content. The extra scenes come from a digital transfer of the original Video8 tapes, stuff that didn't fit in the original, due to both time (the 2-hour VHS limit was firm) and content. The music video is just a re-edit of the "Chicken-Lips Blues" shot, but with animation. Just for fun; the film itself is so dark, I wanted to lighten up a bit here and there.  The new "Impact" video is also with that in mind; I wanted Amiga fans themselves to help say how they felt the Amiga changed things: their lives, the world, or anything in-between.

Continuing on, there's the Photo Album. This is a series of about 200 still photos, from the early days of Commodore to the present, most of which actually came from a photo album of mine. There are DevCons, parties, travel photos, etc. Back to the C128 days, post-Commodore fun at Metabox, the annual "Haynie Summer Party", etc.