Klaus Burkert
workplace at Village Tronic est. 1998

Klaus Burkert (* March 2, 1967, in Rotenburg/Wümme, Lower Saxony; † April 4, 2001, in Hanover) was a kind and helpful person throughout his life. Computer hardware and software were his passion, which later became his profession and calling.

In 1981, he started with a Commodore VIC-20, for which he also developed games. This was followed by the C64 and SX64, but Amiga computers particularly captured his interest.

In 1991, he published reviews of Amiga products in the computer magazine c't. In 1992, he wrote an article in the Amiga Magazin about tuning and expanding PC cards.

After an unsuccessful attempt at studying at the University of Passau am Inn, he began working at Village Tronic Computer in late 1992 as a full-time developer, designing Amiga expansions.

He played a key role in the development of the following products, particularly in logic and driver programming:

• Domino (before his full-time employment at VT)
• PicassoII (Amiga)
• Pablo (video encoder for PicassoII)
• Ariadne (Amiga)
• NuBus↔PCI Bridge for MP3xx (Mac)
• PicassoII+ (redesign of PicassoII, Amiga)
• Picasso IV (Amiga)
• Paloma (TV/video-in for PicassoIV and Mac)
• 3D Overdrive (Mac)
• PabloII (video encoder for PicassoIV and Mac)
• AriadneII (Amiga)
• Paraglide (3D add-on for PicassoIV)

From 1998 onward, he primarily worked on developing drivers for Macintosh PCI graphics cards.

In May 2000, he joined Metabox AG in Hildesheim, where he initially worked with Thomas Rudloff (formerly of Phase5) on the development of Macintosh PowerPC processor cards. He soon transitioned to the development of the Metabox 1000.

On the morning of April 2, 2001, he suffered a heart attack, the symptoms of which only became apparent later during a meeting. For further surgical treatment, he was transferred to the Hannover Medical School on Wednesday, April 4, 2001, where he suffered another heart attack during the operation and passed away.

He was laid to rest the following week in the cemetery of his hometown, Ahausen, in the presence of his family, many friends, colleagues, and companions.