Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: amigakit on October 27, 2010, 11:52:09 PM
-
We arrived at the new hotel on the Friday afternoon. This year the hotel venue had changed locations a few blocks down the road. It was great improvement to have Amiwest hosted within a newly built hotel with modern facilities, including improved Wi-Fi, which had been a problem in previous Amiwest events. The conference rooms were spacious and fitted with modern facilities such as digital projectors. By the time we had arrived, one of the organisers, Chuck, had already laid out the exhibitor tables and prepared the room. Chuck is an unsung hero. He works tirelessly every year to ensure that Amiwest venue runs smoothly and his attention to detail was as good as ever this year.
The Amiwest Show started on the Friday evening with a technical clinic and meeting amongst key Amiga people and developers. It was good to meet our North American customers face-to-face, most of which we serve regularly throughout the year with orders and technical assistance through our website. Microbrew beer refreshments were offered around the room which helped those with jet-lag.
Our Technician was quickly put to work with upgrading an Amiga 4000 with a CF IDE hard disk we supplied previously. The A4000 had some problems: the symptoms initially proved troublesome to diagnose as it failed to start Cybergraphics card and was crashing due to a stack problem. After an hour, all of the data from the old noisy hard disk was transferred over to the silent CF drive and Workbench was configured. Success!
Our Technician then helped setup the SAM 460 board that would be on display the following day. There was a lot of people catching up with each other and plenty of tech-talk about everyone's favourite computer.
The evening's meeting went well and it was generally accepted that it was very useful for key Amiga people to get together and constuctively discuss future of AmigaOS 4. AmigaOS developer, Steven Solie, did a great job facilitating most of the discussions. Key AmigaOS and Timberwolf developers, Hans-Joerg and Thomas Frieden gave us an incitful overview of the hard work that they and the OS 4 team had put in over the last year. Trevor Dickinson, Director of A-EON introduced himself to many who had not met him previously. He described his passion for collecting Commodore machines including the numerous Amigas that he has acquired over the years. Ahead of the Saturday announcement, it was revealed at the meeting that the forthcoming AmigaOS 4.1 Classic will be distributed by AmigaKit and it would crucially support another AmigaKit product, ZorRAM. This was positively received by all present.
Once the SAM 460 was up and running, a small crowd got a preview demonstration. As the evening came to end, everyone left slowly for bed.
The Saturday was an early start for exhibitors and vendors. The doors opened at 10am and it was a rush to get breakfast and then setup the tables for the day before the crowds were permitted into the venue. When we had arrived, Carl Sassenrath from the original Amiga development team, had started to setup next to our table. He had brought many Amiga treasures from his development days at Commodore which he offered for sale during the show. He was at hand all day to talk about the prototypes and sign books and hardware for anyone that asked. Another original Amiga developer, Dale Luck also attended the show wearing a distinctive Boing Ball jacket. Both were asked many questions about their Commodore Amiga days and it was great link to the past especially as this year's Amiwest was a celebration of Amiga's 25th year.
Jens Schoenfeld, hardware guru from Individual Computers, showed the prototypes of both his new 68030 based A1200 and A600 accelerators. The progressive designs of both accelerators are highly tuned to squeeze as much performance as possible out of the CPU. Our Technician took the A600 accelerator for a test drive and was very suprised at how responsive the Amiga 600 was. It is quite amazing that new Classic Amiga hardware is available such as this in 2010. Expect both of these much-anticipated products to be available at AmigaKit shortly.
Various speakers contributed at the show addressing the crowds.
Trevor Dickinson introduced A-EON and the AmigaOne X1000. He was happy to field questions from the audience. He confirmed that Beta Testers of the X1000 would also receive limited edition "Beta Tester" enamel pin badge and a copy of the game BOH.
Struggling with a sore throat, Ben Hermans from Hyperion elaborated on where OS 4.1 was destined in future development and was assisted in answering questions by the Frieden brothers. He also explained interestingly that X1000 cores are fully partitionable so Linux could be run on one core at the same time as OS 4.1.
Finally Carl Sassenrath announced that Rebol 3 had been ported to OS 4.1 since he has been donated a SAM440 machine. There was a cheer from the audience at that news. He then gave an overview of the Rebol language and explained how he came to develop it from early ideas.
The AmigaOne X1000 was on display in it's sleek black tower and running the latest AmigaOS 4.1 for visitors to test. Any product questions were answered by Trevor, Thomas and Hans-Joerg. The USA version of the AmigaOne keyboards and Boing Ball mice were also well received and eventually sold out over the course of the show. Walking around the room, it seemed as if every next gen Amiga on display had a matching Boing Ball equipped mouse and keyboard.
Minimig was also demonstrated nicely throughout the day by Joel Cholokians with a LCD flat screen and Boing Ball mouse.
Dave Morris organised the gaming event which I was told kept many visitors entertained.
Jamie Krueger, Bit By Bit Software, demonstrated the SDKBrowser 2.0 and GUI Builder. He talked about the work-in-progress of AVD. It certainly looks impressive with lots of potential and we hope it will be completed within the next year.
Sacramento Amiga Computer Club had officially licensed T-Shirts printed to mark the show and were selling them to the visitors. Our Technician couldn't resist and paid his $20. I urged him to get it signed by Carl and Dale but he missed the opportunity.
The whole show attracted over 100 visitors through out the course of the day from many different States and countries.
In typical Amiwest tradition, the Banquet followed the show at 7pm. Around 65 people paid for Banquet tickets this year which was the best turn-out since it's inception in 1998.
Every table had a bottle of Sassenrath Ranch red wine which was kindly donated by Carl. The meal was delicious as usual and well organised. The after dinner speaker this year was Trevor Dickinson who started his speech, tongue-in-cheek by showing the "Dancing Trevor" video that has been published on an Amiga forum, He then introduced the Banquet attendees to his passion for the Amiga and his many Commodore computer that he had collected over the years which were the catalyst for him becoming involved in the AmigaOne X1000 project. It was a fascinating presentation and many realised that Trevor is primarily a fellow Amiga enthusiast with a dream of a high specification Amiga. After his speech, the audience gave him a warm round of applause.
Despite his failing voice, Ben Hermans was also invited to talk and formally announced that AmigaKit will distribute the forthcoming AmigaOS 4.1 for Classic Amiga complete with ZorRAM support.
Customary awards were handed out by SACC President, Brian Deneen to Steven Solie, this years sponsors (AEON, Individual Computers and AmigaKit) and finally Carl Sassenrath.
Sunday's show was started with Ben Hermans taking the microphone on the show floor before he left to catch his plane home.
The day seemed to go very quickly with lots of people making last minute purchases. Our Technician helped a few users install their ZorRAM memory expansions in their Amigas. Once again the show was well organised with a pasta buffet laid on for sustenance throughout the day.
Bill Bosari interviewed exhibitors and broadcast the event across the internet to the wider audience. Every year Bill does a great job in ensuring that Amiwest has many virtual internet attendees.
A-EON generously decided to donate the X1000 tower for the raffle at the end of the show.
All too quickly, it was time to pack up to leave. Just before we did, Carl Sassenrath asked for an AmigaOne "Boing Ball" keyboard for his SAM440 computer.
We said our goodbyes and left for our evening meal with Trevor and Jens to meet a special guest, Amiga musician, Chris Huelsbeck. During the meal, he inspected the new X1000 motherboard and we reminiced on the many Amiga games he has composed great music for. After the meal Chris gave us an impromptu demo of his latest musical creations including a few of his remixes of classic tunes. Our Technician received a signed CD copy of his work- thanks Chris!
We would like to thank everyone who attended this year's Amiwest and especially Chuck, Brian, Bill and SACC members for organising this event. It was an enjoyable few days and we will be happy to continue attending and sponsoring the show in future years.
Website: http://www.amigakit.com/catalog/amiwest.php
-
Thank you for this report!
-
Regarding the OS4.1 for classic Amiga, was there any discussion about availability of PPC cards? (Please, no trolls.)
-
@amigakit
Thanks for the overview. I would like to have attended this year, as I have in the past, but damned if I'm going to miss next year's Amiwest Show due to tight finances. I'm from SoCal, born and raised in Bellflower, not that Sacramento is right around the corner from there. But I could make a week of it staying with family as I work my way North to the Amiwest Show. I'll start saving now. :)
The Dawg
-
Thanks for the Glowing review for this years Amiwest the SACC does its best to get this show right and give it's all to making sure we can make all happy as we can. The New hotel was great and I hope we can be there for many years to come. Thank you for coming again it always great to see you at the show and we hope you can make it again..
I going to be getting the footage I shot and didn't get on the net as soon as I can sit down review it . editing is the long part but I got some great footage I feel...
Thank you Again for coming
See you all again next year
G Greene
SACC VP
-
I going to be getting the footage I shot and didn't get on the net as soon as I can sit down review it .
Oh, a race to see who can get his footage up first. ;)
editing is the long part...
Amen to that, George.
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
http://www.sccaners.org
-
If only there was an AmiEast...
-
Sounds like a killer show.
-
Takes me back to the days when I used to watch over a table at a local Amiga show. Just an end user of course but a knowledgeable one who used to tutor people at home. I quit once it turned from helping people with genuine problems to a course of action. eg step by step demonstration of what is on the workbench and what its for.
Much appreciated Amigakit and as for 4.1 for the classic I do believe that almost 30 euro still in my account is going to come in handy!
-
Oh, a race to see who can get his footage up first. ;)
Amen to that, George.
Truly,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
The Other Group of Amigoids
http://www.calweb.com/~rabel1/
Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network
http://www.sccaners.org
LoL you're digital I am still analog so you may will win as I have to work this week . but More of mine did go up as it was my cameras were tied to Bill's Web cast ..
CC
-
If only there was an AmiEast...
Not if people from The UK and Germany and Canada can make it NY should be much more easy then the trip they make lol
CC
-
Sounds like a killer show.
Between the cool new stuff the cool classic stuff and the home made beer one person brought and the Wine Carl donated I will say all had a great time. But that was kind of a first I think .. but we have some good times closing a Hotel bar at one time ..sadly this hotel has none .. We'll have to work on that .. lol
For old fart Geeks we still know how to have good time lol.
CC
-
It's too bad Jens doesn't make CD32 accelerators that use a modern PPC. With the announcement of OS4.1 for classics and the fact that the CD32 is the most available and *new* 'real' Amiga around, I'd even be tempted to buy it and I'm an AROS hold-out...
Also too bad is that he doesn't merge with the Natami team to create a 'whole' Amiga rather than just addons. He seems to be able to get productions runs executed in a timely manner and at reasonable costs unlike the delays we've seen from the FPGAArcade project. And that's no offense to MikeJ, but perhaps established customers (with higher volumes) get more priority obviously.
Thanks for the report.
-
If only there was an AmiEast...
+1
-
We really do need an east coast Amiga show!. there's seems to be enough of us!
+1
-
We would be happy to help any efforts for an East Coast show...
-
We would be happy to help any efforts for an East Coast show...
I don't know about the viability of this atm, but...
BillP has already tossed around the idea of Chicago.
Certainly either N.Y., L.A. or Chicago would be easier on travel costs, not to mention what "puddle jumping" flights do to the human body.
Maybe Cecilia might chime in here about what resources might be available in N.Y.
When we talk Chicago, of course, we're talking some instant A/V support due to Bill and some of the old Draco group.
#6
-
It's too bad Jens doesn't make CD32 accelerators that use a modern PPC. With the announcement of OS4.1 for classics and the fact that the CD32 is the most available and *new* 'real' Amiga around, I'd even be tempted to buy it and I'm an AROS hold-out...
Also too bad is that he doesn't merge with the Natami team to create a 'whole' Amiga rather than just addons. He seems to be able to get productions runs executed in a timely manner and at reasonable costs unlike the delays we've seen from the FPGAArcade project. And that's no offense to MikeJ, but perhaps established customers (with higher volumes) get more priority obviously.
Thanks for the report.
Jens has been working on his own Amiga clone for a long time now, the Indivision boards are his replacements for Lisa and Denise. The full project is called the Clone-A.
-
I don't know about the viability of this atm, but...
BillP has already tossed around the idea of Chicago.
Certainly either N.Y., L.A. or Chicago would be easier on travel costs, not to mention what "puddle jumping" flights do to the human body.
Maybe Cecilia might chime in here about what resources might be available in N.Y.
When we talk Chicago, of course, we're talking some instant A/V support due to Bill and some of the old Draco group.
#6
Chicago would be AWESOME! I really would love to attend an Amiga show someday!
Count me in if this ever happens!
BTW, as orb85750 asked... Any chance of new PPC boards for A1200?
-
BTW, as orb85750 asked... Any chance of new PPC boards for A1200?
worth watching this thread (http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=32618&forum=33&start=80&viewmode=flat&order=0)
Feel free to offer any thoughts that might help shape the conversation. The more input...the better.
#6
-
If only there was an AmiEast...
I guess this make +3. We had shows in Philly and Vally Forge for years, way back when that had huge turn outs. I am sure there are enough us still here, all we need is some one with the energy to start this ball rolling.
-
I'm tempted.... My location is a pretty easy drive from NY, Atlanta, DC, or Florida.
I guess this make +3. We had shows in Philly and Vally Forge for years, way back when that had huge turn outs. I am sure there are enough us still here, all we need is some one with the energy to start this ball rolling.
-
Jens has been working on his own Amiga clone for a long time now, the Indivision boards are his replacements for Lisa and Denise. The full project is called the Clone-A.
Sounds like a plan. :cool:
-
Going by some of the poor uploaded videos that I have seen so far, I have actually noticed that in some scenes there was at least two guys with professional cameras mounted on tripods. Who were they? Where's their footage? Or have we seen it already? lol
-
Another +1 for an AmiEast...
And, well, if a Chicago show could be organised... There'd be a lot of new faces... Hell, I could take the train down...:)
I know Save2600 and I would be there... prob. a few AtariAge members, too....
At any rate, Thanks much AmigKit for the report, and for your continued Amiga support!!
:afro:
-
Going by some of the poor uploaded videos that I have seen so far, I have actually noticed that in some scenes there was at least two guys with professional cameras mounted on tripods. Who were they? Where's their footage? Or have we seen it already? lol
Read prior page of this thread.
#6
-
If only there was an AmiEast...
That could seriously work for me. Count me in on that if that becomes a reality. :hammer:
The Dawg
-
+1 for AmiEast. Last Amiga-related thing I went to was the MorphOS release party in DC, and that was how many years ago? Ha, I think I still have one of... what was his name? Bill Buck? One of his business cards, kickin' around somewhere, LOL.
I'd be willing to drive as far as New York, Chicago would be a little too far though, haha. And even though I haven't owned an Amiga in years, I still read these forums often enough that it would be nice to catch up. :)
-
Jens has been working on his own Amiga clone for a long time now, the Indivision boards are his replacements for Lisa and Denise. The full project is called the Clone-A.
Good to know from time to time news about the Indivision Aga... About the Clone-A it seems it's been really a long time they are working on it:
http://www.jschoenfeld.com/news/news119_e.htm
Great report, @Amikit. I would like to make you a question:
I have been waiting several months with the "promise" that the Indivision Aga would be for sale on september. I know it isn't your fault, but I think you could tell to some people here if you did any question about it to Jens or what do you know about it.
Thanks for your efforts.