---

Today Fabio Trotta asked Filip Dab-Mirowski from Matay some questions about the present and the future. Matay brought us the first AMIGA 4K PCI Bus Board: Prometheus.

1. Hi Filip, how long are you an AMIGA User ?

I have been using Amiga since 1992. It was an A500+ and its graphics totally knocked me out (previously I had a C-64).

2. What is your personal reason to use an AMIGA ?

My main reason for using Amiga is its operating system. No other system is for me so flexible, easy to use and customisable, while being as stable and efficient at the same time.

3. What are you doing, if you are not working on AMIGA projects ?

I am a law student at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw. I also like travelling. Unfortunately, due to my work and studies I have recently had little time for anything else.

4. What are your favourite games at the moment ?

I like Shogo and Payback seems interesting too (I look forward to the PPC version). But I have no time to finish these games. The last one was Heretic2 a few months ago .

5. What machine do you use at home ?

My current machine is A4000T with Cyberstorm 604e 060/50, 64 MB RAM, Prometheus, Voodoo3 and NE2000 network card.

6. What was the aim, for which Matay was founded ?

The main reason was Prometheus. The situation required the research of the card to be carried on by a physically existing company. We also had to prepare field for the upcoming product, buy parts, establish contacts with other companies, etc. It cannot be done by a private person. Another important reason was a strong need in the Polish market for a company that would sell foreign software for affordable prices and that would have a wide variety of products to offer on demand. Here Matay met the Polish customers' expectations and after a year of functioning is quite recognisable and appreciated among them.

7. How long does Matay exist now ?

Exactly since September 1st, 2000.

8. How many persons are working for Matay at the moment ?

There are five people plus some co-operating persons that work temporarily on contracts, like programmers writing drivers.

9. What is exactly your job for Matay ?

Well... I am the one in the shadow .

Truly speaking, I deal with communication and co-ordination between us and our co-operating companies, I look for new contacts and possibilities of expansion. I also supervise the drivers progress and other company projects.

10. Your Prometheus Board is really well, did you have reached everything you planned to get into it ?

There are a few things I would like to implement in Prometheus to make it better and more powerful for its users. We have some ideas and I think in a short time we will offer our customers a possibility of reprogramming the card chips' logic. We also have some ideas that I cannot tell you about, you should understand why .

11. You are an official Partner from AMIGA Inc. now, what are you doing now to run AMIGA OS 4.0 on your hardware ?

The most important issue, from this point of view, is the new PPC card. Without it, AmigaOS4.x will not be able to run anyway. We are directly engaged in the development of the new system and have an insight into the progress. Therefore, the Prometheus users will be able to use many, also quite modern, PCI cards with their Amigas long before other PCI bridge users.

12. What can we hope to see next from Matay ?

More and more drivers in the first place. Fully AmigaOS4 compatible PPC cards are the next goal. And in a wider prospect - who knows? - maybe a new Prometheus model?

13. What do you think about the actual AMIGA market ?

It is much smaller than it was but still exists and, what is the most surprising - is still able to mobilise its forces and produce new projects like new games, programs, hardware. Thanks to AmigaOS4 (and finally AmigaOS5), the whole market will be transformed to join the mainstream new computer world, with much wider development prospects for both Amiga users and companies.

14. Are there any differences from the polish market to the german, beside the german market is perhaps much bigger ? Are the users others than here ?

Back in 1999, the Polish Amiga market was estimated for as much as 30 thousand users. Today the number is not much above 6000. Despite that, it still has some potential, there are active companies that can produce hardware and software. It is hard to say about differences. In the past, the Polish market was infamous for its piracy, today the situation looks much similar to that in Western countries. It should be noticed that the intellectual property has been protected by law in our country only since the year 1993. It took some time to make computer users aware of the fact that piracy harms not only authors but also users themselves.

15. Do you think that AMIGA Inc. do it right with the actual way ?

Yes. I think there is no better way in the situation we have. We should remember that what AmigaDE is aimed at is a metamorphosis of our market, an attempt to remove the terrible gap between the classic Amiga and modern PC market achievements. It is the only solution for survival of our market and small world of Amiga computers.

16. That`s all for now, do you have any comment for our community ?

Please support Amiga companies if you can. If we stay together, we will be able to survive hard times and then we will together welcome a new computer universe of AmigaDE.

Thanks for the time you spend into answering my questions, and i wish you much luck with forthcoming projects.

Thank you very much in my own name and in behalf of all people from Matay.
You can reach our website at http://www.matay.pl.