South West Amiga Group (SWAG) – Meeting #2 – Sat 17th Sept 2016

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About

The South West Amiga Group (SWAG) originally formed in December 1997. They met once a month in Bristol to discuss their favourite computer. The group continued in various forms until 2005 when the group disbanded.

In 2016, riding the wave of renewed interest in the platform, the group has been resurrected, a new venue found and new events planned. Our first meeting was held in May this year, and following the success of that a second meeting is now planned.

SWAG embrace both classic and next generation machines, including all Amiga OS variants, MorphOS and AROS. This includes physical, emulated and FPGA based platforms. All are welcome – but remember … Only Amiga Makes it Possible


Meeting Details

Once again, we’ve arranged to hold our SWAG meeting in a rather special venue. Opened back in May, the SWAG meeting #2 will take place in the new Swindon Makerspace - http://www.swindon-makerspace.org/ - a fully refurbished building perfect for those wishing to tinker with new and old Amiga hardware and software.

The date of the second SWAG meeting is Saturday 17th September, from 12 noon until 4:00pm.

The Swindon Makerspace can be found at Unit 34, BSS House, Cheyney Manor, Swindon

There is free parking on site, while the venue offers free Wifi plus tea and coffee making facilities.


If You Arrive Early

If you get to the venue early you’ll find the Café Aroma on site, serving all day breakfasts and lunches. A large McDonald’s and the Swindon Designer Outlet Food Court are also only five minutes’ drive away.

Those who wish to explore the centre of Swindon could do a lot worse than visit the excellent Museum of Computing - http://www.museumofcomputing.org.uk


Meeting Content – Arcade Conversions

At this meeting we take a look at arcade conversions.

The Amiga was home to some truly terrible arcade conversions (Chase HQ and Street Fighter 2, for example), but it also played host to a mountain of absolute classic arcade replicas including Pang, Toki, Rodland, Rainbow Islands and many more.

Armed with the Amiga TOSEC, we’ll be putting an Amiga aside to play some of these classics of yesteryear (check out the SWAG Facebook group for the list of titles so far).


Meeting Content – Morph OS 3.9

If you’d like to see what an off-shoot Amiga OS looks like in action then come along to our September meeting where Amiga Richard will be demoing his Power PC G5 running Morph OS 3.9.

Find out if it’s the OS for you and have your questions answered.


Meeting Content – Ambian

We’ll have a Raspberry Pi 3 running the new Ambian installation. This is your chance to get your hands on it and see how well it works. Perhaps it’ll give you ideas for your own Pi Amiga emulation setup.


Meeting Content – 5-Player Dynablaster Bomberman

Such was the popularity of Dynablaster at our first SWAG meet we’ll be wheeling this classic out once again for more multiplayer bombing action.


For Further Information

If you’d like more information then please visit the official SWAG web site at http://www.southwestamiga.org.uk

You can also find us on:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/southwestamiga
Twitter - https://twitter.com/southwestamiga


And Finally

If you are planning on coming, please drop us an email to let us know. We need to get a rough idea of how many people to expect Also, if you’re planning on bringing any hardware (computers, screens etc.) then please detail that in your email.

SWAG can be contacted at: swag@southwestamiga.org.uk