Show report
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Show report
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For the last seven years running, the Gateway Amiga Show was again held in St. Louis between March, 30th and April 2nd. Thanks go out to Bob and Diana Sharp for once again putting together a very successful show.
There were many notable things going on at this years show. Between the festivities around Petro Tyschenko`s retirement and the anticipated announcements by Bill McEwen, many Amiga dealers were busy peddling their wares.
Jens Schonfeld of Individual Computers showed a prototype of his new VarIO card. It is a zorro II card with a serial, parallel and a PS/2 connector and A1200 type clock expansion ports for things such as the Silversurfer. The card itself can be added to other cards as an expansion without using the zorro connector.
Mr Hardware had a "PC on a card", which has a complete PC with 3D Graphics card, sound card, USB, Ethernet and much more on a single card. They used the resource hog game UNREAL as a demo, which ran very well. The card is great for people that have little room left in thier office, but still need a PC.
The largest booth was taken by first time visitors Merlancia. They had a pile of A1200`s that went clear to the cieling. By the end of the show about two-thirds of those were gone. Visitors to the Merlancia booth were greeted with two cases of ice cold beer. Many new Amiga models were announced, it remains to be seen which of those we will ever actually see.
Novadesign didn`t announce any new products, but they did announce that they would remain loyal to the Amiga platform. Something that we Amigans always like to hear.
The User Group Network (UGN) also made it possible that all Amigans, no matter where they are could activly participate in the show itself. With webcam, IRC and streaming audio they brought the show the Amigans worldwide. Like in previous shows the UGN webcam blimp flew around the show. Too bad that the ceiling here was much lower than in previous show making the blimp sometimes an annoyance.
Petro thanked the Amiga community for thier trust and support, with a truck load of pizzas. It is the first time that I can remember that one can east to ones heart content at a show. Thank you Petro! As always, Petro would wander around the show and pass his pens, pins, matches and other Amiga aticles from his almost legendary deep pockets. Once an Amigan, always an Amigan.
Amiga pioneer hardware guru Dave Haynie was also present. He showed on a projection screen his Film about the last few days at Commodore, "The Deathbed Vigil". He said that he searched for the original master footage in his garage- a place where most things Davve searches seems to disappear to. Before long many diverse computer parts has Dave`s autugraph on them.
Later on Saturday night during the banquet, Petro was roasted according to good old american tradition. There were many jokes, and some amiga developers - especially Bohus Blahut have seemingly great talent for a second career as a stand-up comic. Kermit Woodall showed a short film about Petro that he made with his products ImageFX and Aladdin4D. The best part of his film the dancing Ali McBeal baby with a Petro head! No one, including Petro was able to stop laughing for quite some time.
Then the long awaited presentation by Bill McEwen and the "earth-shattering" news that Amiga Inc. was to reveal. Bill McEwen announced a partnership with Sharp to develop content for thier PDA that should hit the shelves for the Christmas season. According to Gary Peake Sharp was very impressed with Aminet. Developers that have the SDK can take programs from Aminet and port the to Sharp`s PDA and Amiga will make them available to Sharp vi online stores. A real tangible chance for developers the to each mo ney with Amiga programs in a whole new market. Such programs for PDA`s and have very low development costs and according to to the agreement with Sharp 60% of the sales price will will go directly to the developer. A real opportunity when you think about the millions of PDA users that daily download millions of programs.
Mant of you may ask yourselves, what das the PDA business have to do with the "Amiga"? All of these PDA devices will be using the AmigaDE. this market will allow the AmigaDE to be distributed at a much faster rate and achieve a higher degree of arket penetration that could ever be hoped for in the traditional computer desktop market. In Japan alone the market is huge, just waiting to be tapped into. The tamagotchi crazy of a few years ago is a good example of this.
Then Bill McEwen announced the decision to port the existing AmigaOS to PPC as AmigaOS 4.0. This decision was well recieved by almost all that attended the banquet. AmigaOS and AmigaDE will be developed until they both converge into a single, yet seperate unit. AmigaOS 4.0 will not run on the existing Phase5 PPC boards, but on the new AmigaONE hardware developed by Eyetech. Accroding to Alan Redhouse the AmigaONE board will be available by the end of Juli together with the first version of AmigaOS 4.0 - w hich by that time only partially will be ported to native PPC code. Step by step, like Apple did years ago, the AmigaOS will be brought over to native PPC code in form of Boing Bags until the port is complete. Alan Redhouse said, " The AmigaONE is not a Boxer, it will be available".
According to Haage and Partner the 68K emulation was nearly completed two years ago. A final adjustment to the specific hardware can quickly be done. The only downside is the EXEC. If the EXEC is not in native PPC code then the emulation will not be able to achieve any kind of acceptable speed. Amiga Inc. seems to be aware of this, so therefore the EXEC is probably the only thing that will be in native PPC code with the initial release of AmigaOS 4.0.
On the next day, Bill McEwen admitted that the decision to port the OS to the PPC was not an easy one. He described himself as a true-capitalist and said that he will not likely earn any money (initially) with this port - however he said that he recognizes that he Amiga community needs it. Many developers and dealers hardly have anything new to sell and thier numbers are dwindeling. The current Amiga market needs new products. With the porting of the OS dealers and developers are given new opportunites to revive the market.
As a user of two Cyberstorm PPC cards myself, I am totally in agreement with the direction that Amiga Inc. is now taking. It is time that a new generation of Amiga hardware is developed. We kann not allow ourselves to be held back because of to many compromises for the sake of compatibility. It doesn`t matter if it is G-Rex, Mediator, Prometheous or whatever - the Amiga hardware is dated. Sooner or later this hardware will fail - and thier are no replacements. I love my Amiga`s, don`t get me wrong. I will continue to use and cherish them. However, I think with a fresh new OS and hardware the "Amiga" will have a chance to again take its rightful spot among the best - and be recognized as such.
Jerry Withers <amiga@mediaone.net>
