Show report: AAA 2003, Commodore Billboard back online

[System]

This weekend, the Amiga Alpe Adria 2003 took place in Udine, Italy - another station of Amiga OS4 on tour. The show was organized by Cloanto, well-known for a lot of Amiga programs and the emulator "Amiga Forever".  Jürgen Schober of Point Design had to make two OS4 presentations, because the room was totally overcrowded with more than 100 Amiga fans and journalists of daily press and computer magazines. We also had the chance to show our products in a 30-minute presentation. Best-seller of the present retailers Soft 3 and Virtual Works was the Catweasel MK3, that became the first choice accessory for many Amiga One owners because of it's high degree of integration into the hard- and software of the new Amiga.

A small Retro-computing museum right at the entrance of the showroom brought back joyful memories in the visitors. Rare items like an SX-64 in
best shape, a VIC-20 rev.1, and even a C65 prototype were shown. One of the first multi-computer games (today's networking games) was shown on two PET
computers that were connected through the serial ports. The home computer pioneer Altair 8800 from 1975 was the only none-Commodore computer.

The "Video Microwave", a Pegasos-board that was built in the case of a Sharp Microwave oven, was - at best - good for a laugh. The keyboard did not work at all, and it only took a few mouseclicks to make the computer with the MorphOS operating system crash. The reason for this could not be found in the short time of the show.

Commodore Billboard back online

Our good news for the fans of Commodore nostalgia almost got lost in the excitement surrounding Amiga OS4: The Commodore Billboard is back online! The initiator of the project, Søren Ladegaard (Denmark) had to drop the project due to lack of time in January 2003, and transferred the website to individual Computers. We're now sponsoring the website that can cause a lot of traffic with it's several hundred megabytes in size. During the past half year, the new webmaster Stefan Zelazny has converted the audio and video files to mpeg and mp3, so the website can be viewed on most platforms. For example, the Realplayer is not necessary any more.  Currently, the website is available under the address
www.commodorebillboard.de. The .com domain will be made available in the coming weeks. If you're interested in a local copy of the website, you can support us in paying for the high cost of the website by ordering the CD. It will be available in august this year from all our retail partners for about 15,-
EUR. The double-CD package also contains some surprises for Commodore-fans!

Links:
Amiga Alpe Adria 2003: http://www.aaa2003.org
Amiga OS4 on tour: http://www.oase.at/amigaos4ontour.html
Cloanto Software: http://www.cloanto.com
Point Design: http://www.pointdesign.at
Soft 3: http://www.soft3.net
Virtual Works: http://www.virtualworks.it

[lempkee]

superb news.... let us know when all the pictures and videos of the show  is out,.

cheers

[MarkTime]

The pegasos board was good for a laugh....WOW....that is funny.

'ya'll be crazy'

[TheMagicM]

"The "Video Microwave", a Pegasos-board that was built in the case of a Sharp Microwave oven, was - at best - good for a laugh. The keyboard did not work at all, and it only took a few mouseclicks to make the computer with the MorphOS operating system crash. The reason for this could not be found in the short time of the show."


Looks like the designer screwed up (whoever put that thing in a microwave).

[amigamad]

The desighner neveer screwed up the thing just overheated due to being cooked. :-D  :-D

[gary_c]

The situation was explained at ANN if anybody wants to wade through a long thread for it. Basically, the Pegasos-in-a-microwave was shipped by courier and set up by people not familiar with it. This thing was built for fun, basically, so getting a laugh is the point. (Of course, it's supposed to work, too.)

I suspect it got rattled around too much in transit and something loosened up. People at the show had to locate a keyboard a mouse, which weren't shipped with the computer. And it was running an old MOS version. Not exactly a recipe for a successful showing, but the report could have been more even-handed about it.

-- gary_c

[Palpatine]

I suspect it got rattled around too much in transit and something loosened up. People at the show had to locate a keyboard a mouse, which weren't shipped with the computer

Don't know what went wrong here, the microwave worked fine the week before at the Amiga Party in Maarssen, and the keyboard and mouse were included, packed them in and shipped it myself!

but the report could have been more even-handed about it.

Indeed.

Cheers,
Ron

[DaveP]

This has happened to me, so in this case I feel for Ron (Palpatine). I have shipped demos only to be utterly humiliated at the other end when systems don't start due to someone being clumsy during transit - or worse when the plug it into an ungrounded power supply.

In a more personal vein this has happened with all but an IBM thinkpad that got shipped to France, everything has required repair work, attention and time with a chip tool.

However, to not have someone on side at the show is an error of judgement. In these cases you MUST ensure that there is someone who can pull the plug on he demo due to "shipping damage". Otherwise you end up having to take the rough with the smooth - and to be quite honest the report could hav been worse - and Ive had worse at the hands of failed demos including stern words from a boss even though it was out of my hands.

So, grow thicker skin, learn the practical lessons and get it right next time :-)

[CodeSmith]

@Palpatine:
Well, as the saying goes, sh*t happens.  I've been there too, and I know how you feel.

What I now do when I need to demo anything, is to show up at least an hour early and test *everything* before "curtains up".  If you don't think stuff is going to work, be prepared to modify or even cancel the demo.  A cancelled demo doesn't look too good, but a botched demo looks far worse.  A good tip is not to hype the demo ahead of time, that way they might not even notice it got cancelled ;-)

Don't take it too badly, this is a valuable experience that might even save your job in the future  :-)

[m3x]

Just a little correction:

the Pagasos didn't worked as we switched it on.
After a little while, (we were busy with the presentations) we managed to open it and reconnect a loose cable, and after that both mouse and keyboard worked.

The system was a little instable, but people managed to have fun playing with it.

Ciao

Massimiliano Tretene,  S o f t 3

[Zorro]

Massimiliano Tretene wrote...

the Pagasos didn't worked as we switched it on.

What is the "Pagasos" ?!?
A new Amiga-like computer ?

Another one ??  Nooooooooooooo !!!!

 ;-)

Ciao Massimiliano.



Alessandro

[Varthall]

For the sake of correctness I'd like to comment a part of the news item, even if I guess that no one will be interested
Anyway, the multicomputer game on Pet wasn't displayed, and probably wouldn't run. Me and a friend of mine have checked a cable with a basic program, which didn't work. I still don't know if it was the program, the cable or the user port's fault. Anyway, we still had to transfer the game (called Flash Attack and written in assembly) on a tape, and this was going to be a hard job, as we have successfully transfered only basic programs so far. We were thinking to use a C128, also present on the show, for the transfer, but because of tiredness and lack of time we didn't tried it.
That day was already a busy day as there were some interesting presentations to follow, too
BTW the two Pets were linked by the "user port", which is in fact a parallel type port.
I hope we will able to show this game in a future fair here in Italy.

Also, a little news about AOS4 development which maybe hasn't been mentioned yet: Jürgen Schober has said  that Intuition has been converted and it's currently running on PPC, but it's still unstable so it hasn't been shown.

Varthall