³Mikro-Data '91 report
²---------------------

³By Estrup/Static Bytes.
¹
The  Mikro-Data  91 took place from the
23rd to the 27th of October 1991 in the
Bella  Center, Amager, Denmark.  It's a
big exhibition with mostly PC hard- and
software, but also Amigas are present.

I visited the show on Saturday the 26th
of  October,  together with Krueger and
Vention  of  Kefrens.   As they finally
arrived  (nice driving), we entered the
show.  Of course we immediately went to
the  Commodore  stand.   There  was  an
A2000, an A500, a CDTV (with some small
lamers   playing  (F)Lemmings  all  the
time)  and  the new A500 Plus.  Vention
had brought his new Keftro, but as NONE
of  the  Amigas  had fastmem, it didn't
work.   But  of  course, the slide from
Lowlife  91  worked,  even on A500 Plus
with  Kickstart  2.0 (Hi Martin, elsker
du ogsaa den nye Kickstart??).

At  this  stand,  we  met  a  guy  from
Deadlock,  who seemed to be copying and
watching demos and intros all the time.
At  least,  he  was there every time we
returned  there.  We also met some guys
from  Balance,  who  seemed to be ready
with  quite a lot of productions in the
near future.  There were a lot of other
scene-guys there, but I didn't get hold
of  which groups they were in.  Nothing
seemed to be released at the show, why?
Are you guys really that busy with your
Aars-demos?

Well, now that we'd gone there, we also
wanted to see the rest of the show.  It
seemed   to  be  the  usual:   Lots  of
companies  showing  the same stuff.  Of
course,  there  was some nice hardware,
like  monitors  with resolutions making
even  MY  eyes  go  crazy,  but nothing
REALLY  special.   In  fact,  the  most
remarkable  thing  was  the  Virtuality
show.   Still,  the  games seem to be a
bit  too  simple,  but  of course, this
will add a whole new dimension to games
in the future.
Another   interesting   thing   was   a
competition,  which  has  actually been
going   on   for   some  months.   It's
arranged  by  the company Olivetti, and
the   rules  are  very  simple:   Start
typing numbers from 1 onwards, and type
as  many as possible in 5 minutes.  The
world  record  is  781, and my personal
best   is  371  or  379.   BUT...   The
program    used   is   not   the   same
everywhere.  The program I used about a
month ago was "easy", as you could just
try  again,  if  you  typed wrong.  The
version  used at the show was much more
difficult, as you had to start all over
from  1  again (and of course the timer
didn't  as  well)  if  you typed wrong.
Strange...
Not    only   hardware   and   software
companies  had stands.  Also some mags,
like  the  Danish mag, COMputer.  I (Or
we,   Vention   and   I)   had  a  long
discussion with some guys from this mag
about  using system routines, using the
hardware  directly and stuff like that.
And  check this out:  As I asked one of
the  guys,  why  they didn't write more
about  demos (because they are the only
programs  showing  what  the  Amiga  is
capable   of   doing),   he   answered:
"Because  of  the  low  quality  of the
demos.    Take   the  vectordemos,  for
example.       I've      seen     lotsa
vector-routines,  but  not  one of them
was  faster  than my own."!!!  (Typical
coder  chat!   But  I think the man has
never tried to finish an intro with his
routines,  he got only 100 disks of his
own sources - Ed)

As  you might've noticed, I didn't like
the   show  that  much.   No  releases,
nothing  really revolutionary, just the
usual   stuff.    Anyway,  it  was  not
exactly  LAME,  but it sure wasn't very
good either.