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AMIEXPO MIDWEST
60 Exhibitors, New Products
By Royan and Brad Webb
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     More than 10,400 Amigans attended the July 28-30 AmiEXPO Midwest at the
Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago, crowding about 60 exhibitor booths to sample
the latest hardware and software.
     Not all the interesting products were available on the floor. Greg
Tibbs, an independent developer, showed The A1000 Rejuvenator to every
member of the press he could find. Designed to be plugged into an A1000
where the Writable Control Store circuit board normally goes, the
Rejuvenator is intended to give the A1000 the ability to use the new one-meg
Agnus chip and the new Denise chip. This would allow A1000 owners to have
all the features provided by the new chips, otherwise restricted to A500 and
A2000/2500 owners.
     We stopped by Greg's room to see if this board really did exist and if
it ran. There sat an Amiga 1000 with Greg's board, up and running. Using the
AVAIL command clearly showed the computer had one meg of chip RAM. While not
all the minor features of the board are yet working, we were pleased to see
it also provides a video slot. Greg's A1000 was running Flicker Fixer with
no problems.
     If this board does make it to market with all its features, it could
keep A1000s in the mainstream of Amiga computing for some time to come.
     At the official show, there were free seminars on topics ranging from a
hardware and expansion clinic to a desktop publishing software and hardware
panel. This expo featured six master classes taught by acknowledged experts
in their fields. Enrollment was limited so attendees could receive more
attention. Topics included video, music and publishing.
     Three keynote speakers, one each day, highlighted the event. Dr. Henry
Rubin, Commodore's chief operating officer, spoke Friday. While he had
little new to offer, he proved his courage by remaining after the talk for
an impromptu session with expo attendees. About 50 people took advantage of
the opportunity for a lively exchange.
     Saturday's keynoter was Tim Jenison of NewTek, discussing the Amiga and
video. Jenison gets the award for best entrance. He skated to the lectern,
pushed by a motor-driven propeller strapped to his back.
     On Sunday Amiga artist Jim Sachs described his life and times as one of
the Amiga's best known artists. His talk was illustrated by superb graphics
from his much delayed and eagerly awaited game 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
     Always an enjoyable feature, the AmiEXPO Theater was handled
differently this year. Instead of a small room with monitors constantly
running, the theater used the ballroom between seminars. Videos were shown
on a large-screen projection system so all could see.
     Abacus Software showed a large selection of its Amiga books and
software, including its recently released Virus Protection Toolbox.     
Advanced Gravis featured its line of joysticks, introducing the Mousestick,
said to give excellent control both for games and graphic work.
     The B-Side design people did a thriving trade in AmiEXPO T-shirts.
Their patterns had been designed on an Amiga 1000.
     Blue Ribbon Bakery, relatively new to the Amiga market, showed its
innovative MIDI program, Bars and Pipes, and the scheduling program called
Who! What! When! Where! It also provided scores of chocolate chip cookies
throughout the show.
     At the CLTD. booth was one of the show's hardware highlights. This was
the new Han-D-Scan, a hand-held scanner retailing for about $400. This is
the same sort of scanner that has become popular in the IBM and Mac worlds
in recent years. It drew much interest, as did the very fast integrated
publishing system with LazerXpress printer, and the new Kronos line of
autobooting hard drives.
     California Freeware had a booth for its collection of public domain
software and shareware.
     Centaur Software, makers of the Quasar Sound stereo sound sampler and
B.A.D disk optimizer, featured its paint program for children, Mypaint.
     Central Coast Software showed the latest in its file transfer programs,
Mac-2-Dos. Packaged with a Mac disk drive, the program lets Amiga users
access files written on Mac disks.
     CMI (Creative Microsystems) drew interest with its MultiPort board,
which allows adding another standard serial port to the Amiga, plus a
Mac-compatible serial port. Also promoted was the CMInet AppleTalk to Amiga
software.
     Digital Animation Productions had an intriguing booth. It advertised
two transputer-based products, a general purpose board running under the
Helios operating system and a very high resolution graphics board.
Unfortunately, on repeated trips to the booth, we were told the hardware was
experiencing problems and not running. We did see the graphics board running
long enough to show an impressive screen display, though a few lines were
scrambled.
     Elan Design showed the new Performer desktop presentation program
(reviewed in the September 1989 JUMPDISK). Elan also introduced InVision
Plus, an improved version of its "real time video affects system" that works
with A-Squared Systems' Live! frame grabber.
     Fuller Computer Systems offered its Project D disk copier and editor.
The product has been upgraded from earlier versions and includes several
utilities.
     Grafx Computing presented X-Shell, a user-friendly interface for the
X-Cad computer-aided drafting program formerly marketed by Haitex Resources.
Interestingly, Haitex was scheduled to appear at the show but did not do so.
The only other firm scheduled to be there who did not make it was startup
Visionary Ltd.
     Innerprise Software gathered an enthralled crowd of mostly younger
people with various game programs. Featured were Battle Squadron and
Outlander. We found the Tom and Jerry game enchanting. This is one of a
series of new games from Magic Bytes being presented by Innerprise.
     Another entrant in the hardware arena was Interactive Video Systems,
featuring Trumpcard and Trumpcard 500 hard disk controllers.
     Lake Forest Logic, just down the road from Chicago, sported the Disk
Mechanic package of utilities for getting the most from Amiga floppy and
hard drives.
     Lattice, makers of the first C language compiler for the Amiga, did a
thriving trade. It had to quick-ship in more copies of the popular compiler.
     Another new company in the Amiga market place, Lee Software, showed
Total Control Diet, billed as a "nutrition guide for the home." It also
introduced the professional version, PRO-NU.
     Memory and Storage Technology (MAST) showed a variety of hardware
peripherals for the Amiga. Like Lattice and some others, it sold out its
entire stock of some products during the show, indicating attendees came to
do more than just look.
     Micro Momentum gains the prize of most intimidating product name for
Uzzi Interface. Not an add-on weapons board, it is actually a rapid fire
mouse/joystick for "the serious gamer." Tele Tutor, a telecommunications
tutor for new modem users, is one of those ideas that make you wonder why no
one came up with it before.
     Displaying its program designed to back up copy-protected software was
Micro Systems International. They featured the latest revision of the
program, Raw Copy Version E.
     Not to be confused with Raw Copy is Micro-Systems Software, maker of
the excellence! word processor, and The Works! integrated software package.
MSS showed commitment to the Amiga market with one of the largest and best
manned booths in the show.
     Desktop publishing was well represented. Besides the hardware already
mentioned, there was the City Desk program from Microsearch. They showed an
enhanced 2.0 version.
     In the Soft-Logik Publishing Corp. booth, PageStream professional
desktop publishing program was shown, along with sample printouts of a
number of new font disks available for it.
     Gamers visited the Mindscape booth for a look at such ghoulish titles
as Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O' Fun, Hostage and Captain Blood.
     At the Mindware International booth, TASS, the "Thut Application
Support System" was a big topic. Mindware announced it was placing a subset
of TASS, which is a support library for AREXX programmers, into the public
domain. MI produces PageFlipper Plus F/X for animation, PageSync for
synchronizing music to video and other products.
     Another company with a large booth was NewTek, makers of Digi-View
Gold, probably the best known video digitizer for the Amiga. While the new
and capable Digi-Paint 3 HAM mode paint program was definitely for real, the
much talked about but never shipped Video Toaster was shown but not made
available.
     A game company as famous for its startup sequences as the games
themselves, Psygnosis Ltd. always seemed to have interested people at its
booth. Demo disks and posters were hot items.
     ReadySoft Inc., makers of the A-Max Macintosh emulator, drew much
interest with its magic box. Definitely one of the hottest Amiga hardware
add-ons of the year, A-Max lets the Amiga run Macintosh software.
Unfortunately, the official AmiEXPO program promised ReadySoft would be
showing the Space Ace game, but it was not in evidence except for a short
demo. Fall release is now planned.
     ASDG, makers of Professional ScanLab, was not present. However, the
program was represented by Sharp Electronics Corporation, which had a large
booth also featuring a line of color scanners. Many different sizes were on
display, including a hand-held model, retailing at $995. While the press kit
featured Mac computers, the products definitely work with Amigas thanks to
the relationship with ASDG.
     Though primarily known as an MS/DOS and Macintosh company, Sierra
On-Line showed its presence in the Amiga community with many of its most
popular games on display. Sierra indicated it is rewriting games to take
full advantage of the Amiga's features.
     Spirit Technology Corp, famous for inside-the-case memory expansion
boards for the A1000 and A500, showed its line to interested visitors. The
featured product seemed to be the 512K RAM replacement for the A501 module.
     One of the leading hardware manufacturers for the Amiga line is Supra
Corp. It promoted a line of hard drives and the only internal modem for the
A2000 we know about.
     The ScanLock broadcast quality genlock was the star of the Vidtech
International booth. This genlock is available both in NTSC and PAL models.
     The booth that may have garnered the most interest was from startup
Intuitive Technologies. It introduced the Ultracard program, which brings
Hypercard capabilities to the Amiga. Billed as having all the capabilities
of Mac Hypercard, plus extra features unique to the Amiga, the booth was
busy every time we wandered by. Jay Miner, termed the "father of the Amiga,"
spent most of the show in the booth promoting the product and explaining how
significant he felt it was for the Amiga market. Unfortunately for us, our
review copy was defective, so we have been unable as of yet to put Ultracard
through its paces.
     Do-it-yourselfers could find raw material aplenty at the Semitech Inc.
booth, which had piles of memory and other chips available in what seemed to
be an unlimited variety.
     WordPerfect Corp. was there in force with one of the larger booths.
After its recent near pullout from the Amiga market, this probably reassured
a number of Amiga users. The company conducted classes in the booth and
seemed to have no problems finding interested students. Graduates left
sporting white WordPerfect baseball caps.
     Xetec, Inc. featured its FastTrak hard drive system. One of the fastest
hard drives available, it impressed passersby with rapid displays of
graphics loaded from disk.
     One of the first font design and publishing companies was the Zuma
Group. It emphasized its new TV*SHOW 2.0 and TV*TEXT Professional products.
     While it had no hardware or software product to sell, the American
People/Link booth drew crowds anyway. Plink is a national computer
telecommunications network located in Chicago and is home to a large
body of Amiga on-line activity.
     AmiEXPO is more than just a chance for software and hardware vendors to
display wares. There were several booths manned by various user groups, many
selling public domain disks, recruiting members, promoting newsletters and
the like. Amiga Computer Enthusiasts (A.C.E.), a Chicago area group, was
there in force, as was the multi-brand Chicago Computer Society. From a
little farther afield in St. Charles, IL, came the Fox Valley Amiga Users'
Group (Fox Valley Amuse). Just to add a little name confusion, the New York
Amiga Users, also known as Amuse, was present too. One of the larger and
more active users' groups, it is the sponsor of AmiEXPO and is responsible
for the initial push that launched the AmiEXPOs.
     New York Amuse had one of the most popular hardware peripherals at the
show, the special Amiga beverage mug complete with user's manual. The mug
was co-sponsored by the public domain software group The Software Distillery
and even has a bottle opener in the bottom.
     Finally, many people stopped by the Gateway Amiga Users' Group booth
for their "I Love My Amiga" T shirt iron-ons.
     As always there were various retail organizations present and open for
business. Creative Computers had a large booth and large crowds as well. The
ever interesting gang at Comp-U-Save was there, but gone were the rubber
chickens and insults of the past. "Dr. Oxide" informed us they could have
sold all the autographed rubber chickens they wanted if only they had any.
Chicago and Illinois retailers on hand included DigitalWorld from Addison,
Microtech Solutions, Inc. of Aurora and Micro Ed Enterprises, Inc. from
downtown Chicago.
     Several Amiga magazines had booths and took the opportunity to meet
readers and sign up new subscribers. Near the entrance was the large
AmigaWorld booth. It is the official publication sponsor of the show.
AmigoTimes, Amiga Plus, Amazing Computing, Compute!, Transactor and Amiga
User International were present. Representing disk-based magazines, AMNews
featured its issue 1.4, and JUMPDISK offered its July and August issues.
     Overall, this was a fine AmiEXPO. The Chicago show clearly demonstrates
the strength of the Amiga community in the Midwest. We look forward to
attending more in the future.

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