hpf1s3c07/|\ THE ATARI-SHOW IN DUESSELDORF /|\ c08 by Higgie/LimeWare c09It was Saturday Nov. 30th 1996 and my alarm clock was ringing at 4 o'clock in the morning. What a noise! I just went to bed four hours ago. What a yerk am I to torture myself this way? There are much more advanced methods to cause my early dead. (Smoking?) What can be so important that somebody like me (young, attractive,smart,...) gets up that early? Atari was calling! Who? Read my lips! f2c08 A T A R I ! f1c09Do you remember this company that once build the 800XL, ST/E, TT and Falcon computers and also the stunning VCS 2600, Lynx and Jaguar games. After 4 years it was the first Atari-Show in Germany. Neither was it the company itself that organized the show nor has it even been present. Atari quitted producing the latest products Falcon and Jaguar some time ago and concentrates its activities on selling licences for products and copyrights. It was the c08ST-Computer/Atari-Inside c09magazine who invited about 40 firms, software developers, magazines and special interest groups. The show was located in Neuss near Düsseldorf in the western parts of Germany and took place on the 30th of November and 1st of December 1996. c07 PRESENTING THE HADES c09About c084000 people c09took the chance to get in touch with most of the companies who still support the Atari market as there was for example MW-electronic who presented the f2c08Hadesc09f1, a new TOS based machine with 68040 or 68060 CPU, four PCI slots, IDE and SCSI-bus, etc.. The Hades is built and distributed by a triumvirate of one swiss and two german companies. f4Incredible its performance speed. f1Under some applications running on a Hades and a 130 Mhz Pentium in comparison the Hades is even c08two times faster. c07 THE MUSIC SECTOR c09MW-electronic also presented a stereo-HD-recording card for Hades and Atari TT, so that stand alone HD-recording is not any longer a domain of the Falcon with its on board audio interfaces. The guys from Soundpool, the most aktive company in music-software for Falcon, had the latest versions of their Audiotracker and CD-Recorder programms with them and also presented their self developed CD-Labeling-Kit. c10The biggest disappointment c09to me was C-Lab. The company that got the licences to produce the Falcon after Atari left the (sinking?) ship. They have not been present at the show as it seems that their concept of selling the Falcon as a Music-Computer in musicstores only failed and also Steinberg quitted updating the Cubase-Audio16 HD-Recording/Sequencer- Software for the Falcon as they now seem eager pushing people into the PC and Macintosh market. And so it is not even sure if Steinberg will support the new HD-recording card, which is double tragic as it was this firm to let the Atari grow important on the musical sector. Soundpool hopefully will fill this gap. c07 VARIOUS c09Software Service Seidel used the show to present their first own developed hardware, a card which provides a normal Atari-ST with c0812 MB FastRam. c09Woller & Link a company based in Berlin introduced hardware and software to make an Atari computer run with a Connectix QuickCam. Usefull for having an online screen conference via Internet for example or just to use the incoming pictures from the camera for a screenblanker. For the future it is planned to make the interface and software work with the color version of the QuickCam. Hardware freaks used the show to get some of the rare pieces that Best Electronics brought from California/USA. Also vintage fans had their chance to take some fine things home. Like VCS2600 consoles for the joke of 9,-DM or some 800XL which were sold out before we even arrived. c08 SUMMING UP c09A friend of mine who bought himself a 64bit Jaguar console for c0899,- DM c09stated that to him this show appeared a bit as a fleamarket were firms tried to get rid of their stock. Somehow it seems to be true but on the other hand there have been some new impressive developments like the Hades that could give the Atari market a positive push for the future. As I said before it was a great disappointment not to see C-Lab at the show as they seem to let the Falcon die for a second time. The big trend on the Atari market can be seen as the f4c10"GoodBye!" f1c09to original Atari hardware and the welcome to a boom of Atari/TOS software emulations on Windows, Mac and Unix machines like MagicMac, MagicPC and TOS2Win or hardware emulations like the Janus. This gives the TOS and most of the TOSbased software the chance to survive but also leads many people away from the still able to compete Atari hardware.