Looking for Jamie Purdon of Digi-Paint fame

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Hi all. I am doing an article for Amiga Addict on Digi-Paint and was hoping to interview its author, Jamie Purdon. Does anyone here know where I might find him? My search so far has proved less than fruitful.

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I've spent almost an hour looking and have only found 3 posts he made in 1989-1990 on comp.sys.amiga.

One post of his is kind of interesting filled with weird insinuations and drama concerning Black Belt Systems' HAM-E.

Jamie Purdon
Jan 9, 1990, 3:19:12 AM

> This is interesting. About two years ago, I had a talk
> with Tim Jennison. I had a HAM paint program started.
> Since NewTek only had Digi-View and no hint of a paint
> program, I decided to run it by Mr. Jennison. In our
> conversation, I said that I had this program that would be
> an excellent complement to thier only current product.
> (i.e. Digi-View). All I needed was information about the
> format of their pictures both the old format which was just
> a bitmap dump and the newer IFF stuff. Tims' response was
> that HAM was far too slow for a paint program and if I
> wanted to pursue it I should bug Electronic Arts. It's a
> heck of a coincidence that about seven months later they
> came out with Digi-Paint. Hmmmm.

Yes, this IS interesting. (BTW: Didn't you mean THREE years ago?)
Now please consider the following:

The spring of 1986 was when I first saw DigiView. I went to a local
(is "in the next county" local?) Amiga dealer's for a demonstration.
I was impressed. I bought a disk (remember when dealers would sell
just *one* floppy?) and saved rgb file samples and some HAM pictures
to try on my new "ham editor" (paint program).

In June (or was it July?) of 1986, I talked with Tim Jennison about
marketting my paint program. He turned me down. But that didn't stop
me from finishing my effort. I split my time between finishing the
code and organizing a (self) marketting effort. You may even have
seen my advertisement for a program named HamBone. It was in Amazing
Computing, (1986) Volume 1 Number 8 on page 39.

Months later, in early-September, Tim Jennison called me back. By the
end of the month, we had worked out a mutually agreeable arrangement
for development and marketting. I don't know what one thing convinced
him to reconsider selling my program for me. It could have been any
of a number of things. As I (also) recall, he had grave doubts as to
the speed potential of any code written to use HAM mode. However, he
did see a working demo of my program.

(After my agreement with NewTek, I cancelled all arrangements for
HamBone marketting. The Amazing advertisement shouldn't have been run
- a deadline was missed. In any case, "HamBone" is no longer
available.)

One of my points is: DigiPaint is *my program*. I was working hard
on this product before NewTek became involved. Most of the original
version, and all of DigiPaint3, was coded entirely by me. The
internal algorithms were all designed by me, Tim should get credit for
the graphical user interface. Steve Kell (NewTek) helped with the
original version's coding. Steve Speier (NewTek) helped with debugging
DigiPaint3. I do not know Don White, nor do I think I ever talked to
a Don White about a paint program. I resent Don White's "gee what a
coincidence" implications.


> Now, it appears that they were given specs and came
> across with positive statements about HAM-E then two weeks
> later announced that they had 'been working on a simialar
> board for some time now'?

So what? Why not consider "similar board" to mean "video adapter" and
leave it at that? I've been working with NewTek for over three years.
We take great pains to NOT use other peoples' ideas. If/When NewTek's
"similar board" should go on the market you'll find that it is very
different from (and probably much more elegant than) the HAM-E design.
Why should NewTek tell anyone about their designs or research? I
consider BlackBelt quite lucky to have found out that NewTek is even
working on something similar.

> I may not understand the situation clearly, but it sounds
> prudent not to include Mr Jennison in conversations about
> new products.


Again, I resent your implication. I'd suggest the opposite: If
you're working on an idea that's "up NewTek's alley" - then by all
means contact them. (Although this does sound like a sneaky way to
try to find out what they're currently researching..


Jamie Purdon
DigiPaint Author

The whole thread is worth a scan.

That said, I can't find Jamie Purdon online beyond these three old message board posts. In one he's only mentioned. In a case like this, it might be better to look for some of his ex-colleagues and do the search sideways...

Was kind of neat that in one of his message signatures he had his BIX account name. BIX was a really old competitor to the likes of GEnie, Quantumlink, Compuserve, etc. that a few Amigans used back in the day.

Another Purdon post from Dec 29, 1990
Pardon mentioned

Note: to be honest I also started looking at online obituaries, but it's always possible some folks die before even being logged online like the way they often are today if they are ever put into the funeral home systems. Fact is I don't know where he would have been based which makes it harder. (Was he near NewTek in Texas? No idea.)

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Thanks for all that effort, very interesting bit of conversation that you found.

I always forget to scan the usegroups and other older technologies that would have been more active back in the 90’s. I have thought that he might have passed. My last article was on Sculpt-Animate 4D by Dr. Eric Graham and he was at university in 1966, which means he is deep into his 70’s by now