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`27.Jul.2003` Evil (Kommentar)	QUAG: More pictures from the AmiWest 2003 Show Under the title link you'll find a number of new pictures from the AmiWest 2003 show which was held this weekend in Sacramento. The pictures are from the user group QUAG and thankfully subtitled. (ps) (Translation: cb) [News message: 27. Jul. 2003, 22:11] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`27.Jul.2003` Evil (Kommentar)	Polarboing: Interview with Fleecy Moss In the interview Fleecy Moss answers some questions around the AmiWest 2003 show. Fleecy was interviewed by Polarboing. (ps) (Translation: cb) [News message: 27. Jul. 2003, 19:54] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`27.Jul.2003` Daniel Miller live from AmiWest 2003 (ANF)	Daniel Miller's Amiwest 2003 Show Report Part II Before I leave a necessarily critical report of the MorphOS and Pegasos presentation on Saturday morning, I will do the single courtesy of stating that it was a setup-type problem that caused things to go haywire. As the presentation started there was an awkward several moments as the Pegasos which had just been hooked up to the projector failed to cooperate, requiring multiple reboots and typing in the open firmware command line. The presenters were unable to improvise effectively in the absence of stuff on the screen to click on and the presentation limped painfully on for about 15 minutes before ending rather prematurely. A speaker came energetically up to begin the presentation at first but the problems started when Voyager was clicked on but failed to load. There was a reboot, and then another but the Pegasos wasn't finding the hard-drive or something. There was a lot of feverish typing from different people at the command line but thins just weren't going right. The speaker wasn't improvising very well. Other guys fom the Genesi team were running back and forth to get CDs or check things or fleeing for their lives or who knows what. In all it was less than professional and it's a good thing they presented early in the day so there weren't more people present to witness all the problems. After 10 or 12 minutes of pain the machine was booting MorphOS 1.4 off the CD and Bill Buck himself got up to try to rescue the show. He demonstrated just a couple things, Voyager running a very pretty Flash or Shockwave animation of butterflies and a new "Zoom Feature" of MorphOS in which any little part of the screen may be blown up in a dynamically updated resizable window. You can open a bunch of zoom windows and they all display very quickly. If you set the focus of the zoom window on a video, you see the blown up section of the video displayed in the window just as fast as the video plays. You can magnify to 2 or 4 or 8 or 16 times or whatever and open as many zoom windows as you want. Bill stated that last week Genesi had obtained Marvell's approval to start using the G-4 in the new Pegasos 2 boards. Stated that he realized that MorphOS needed to be a bit farther along before being marketed to the average computer user. In this case however I felt that MorphOS was working fine. The problems in the presentation didn't have a whole heck of a lot to do with MorphOS. One of the presenters had commented that MorphOS 1.4 wasn't officially released, it was beta, and this was just the public introduction, but what little I saw looked fine to me. I should mention that it was Nate Downes who appeared to be the one that finally got things going off the boot-CD. This presentation didn't go well at all, we'll see how they do on Sunday. The OS4 demo on Saturday: this was a wonderfully executed presentation. Ray Zarling, graybearded Doctor of Matematics and long time Amiga believer conducted it, showing several Workbenchrelated features like window gradients, opaque window movement and right mouse click menus. Dr. Zarling was clearly a big Amiga fan, stating that "I waited 12 years to see the new OS. We can all see that it is real. I just can't wait for it to be finished." The window gradient feature had a lot of options and the user can also set the thickness of the window title bars and so on. He showed the opaque window movement, moving the windows very slowly to make the effect look good. If you move the windows quickly I think you would see unsightly updates. As Dr. Zarling pointed out, that is because this is on a 200 MHz PPC and might not be a problem on a 800 MHz processor. Dr. Zarling stressed that configurability was a key part of OS4. He stated that there much of the upper level stuff (like Workbench) which runs emulated now will be rewritten for the shipping version of OS4. He stated that "OS4 is the official Amiga PPC OS." He stated that what we were seeing did not use the 68K processor at all, it was all on the PPC. In question and answers after, I asked him to tell us about the machine running the demo. He stated that it was an Amiga 4000, I think he said with Cyberstorm PPC card. I asked about the use of the 68K processor and he said it was not being used at all except during the boot process to load up OS4 PPC..He stated that a brave owner could physically yank out the 68K processor after OS4 loaded and OS4 would continue to work, but he did not demonstrate this capability. This presentation was conducted toward the back of the convention hall at the stand of Computer Connection where Amga Ones were for sale. One of the best illustrations of te spirit of the Amiga community at Amiwest was the "Mr. Zoil" booth, where Glenn Fuller demonstrated the Amiga work of his son Ben, who died in 2002. Ben Fuller was known mainly for Project D, a disk coper, backup program and multipurpose tool which had some success during the Amiga's heyday in the late eightes and early nineties. Mr. Fuller stated that the last known version of Project D was from 1994. He said that Ben went on to do work on other computer systems but never gave up on what he considered "the Amiga vision." Mr. Fuller explained that he and Ben attended Amiga conventions as a father and son activity,and he came to enjoy them very much. He said that if this were to be the last Amiwest owing to fading interest, he wanted to be here. But I told him what the event organizers told me, that things were going better than last year and interest seemed to be increasing, so it should not be a worry that ths is the last. This will probably be my last report, because I am losing hotel Internet access at noon. I should touch on a few things, here and there. First, Mr. Hardware came all the way from New York City to sell Amiga wares. It was a brilliant move because they turned out to be the only all-around vendor here, and they are doing a lot of business. Umm, it was great of Jens Schönfeld and Ben Hermans and Bill Buck and Raquel Velasco to come all the way from Europe to support the show. Although I was critical of Saturday's Pegasos presentation I should point out that the Pegsasos stand is getting a lot of visitors, and people really enjoy sitting down and using MorphOS and playing BirdieShoot and Quake and Software Tycoon. The Super Bundle has been released and I got my free copy (thanks). Unfortunately I will have to wait until I get home in 8 or 9 days to see what all is on this three CD set. Everyone seems to get along very well at these conventions, in spite of the online flaming that we see so much of. Bill Buck sat next to Ben Hermans at the panel last night and said how coexistence was possible even when there was no cooperation, unfortunately the two men didn't hug. ;) The banquet was delicious and the Sacramento Amiga user group SACC really did a fine job of everything. I would like to thank those who edited and translated my reports, I would do this myself but the connection and software here at the hotel is not really suited for smooth work. There is another Amiga Show next month, a minishow at Computerfest in Dayton Ohio next month and we have something coming up in Washington DC area in October. These shows are a lot of fun and I recommend interested people to come check them out. Tschüss! (ps) [News message: 27. Jul. 2003, 19:19] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`27.Jul.2003` Daniel Miller live from AmiWest (ANF)	Daniel Miller's AmiWest 2003 Show Report Part I This is the Sacramento's 5th Amiwest, but my first. I used frequent flyer miles to get a free flight to San Francisco, from there I took trains through scenic northern California to Sacramento where I took a taxi to the Holiday Inn. On Monday I rent a car and head to Reno, later Yosemite, but for now the Amiga scene is on my mind. This is supposed to be the biggest Amiga-oriented convention in the USA but we'll see what Nova Design and Genesi pull off in Washington DC this October. Right now it's Amiwest in Sacramento. I arrive late on Friday. In front of me in the line at the hotel check-in desk is John Harris, the author of the arcade classic Frogger. Looking around further I see that two medium halls have been reserved for Amiwest. The halls open on each other to make a larger. There is a smaller enclosed room also reserved, maybe that is the banquet hall. It's late on Friday and the show has not opened, but there are people still setting up. There are four Pegasoses on a long table. Nate Downes, one of Genesi's reps from Florida, works feverishly on a fifth. He says he's tired but he's determined to get ImageFX successfully set up for Kermit Woodall of Nova Design to demonstrate. I see some other familiar faces. Someone points out Ben Hermans of Hyperion Entertainment to me, which is a surprise. He hadn't announced his appearance. Maybe we will finally see OS4 on the Amiga One as opposd to an Amiga 4000. Or maybe not.. I hear that Jens Schönfeld, famed Amiga hardware maker is here, and Jeri Elsorth, Commodore One engineer and geek fantasy girl arrives in the morning. There is an historical sequence of old Amiga models on tables throughout the room. The event organizers want to illustrate the past, and the future. There's a 3000 and a 600. The machines and their peripherals are yellowing and stained from age. There might be a crack here and there. It has been a long time since these rolled off the manufacturing lines. At the hotel nightclub it's Big Band Night. Three couples gyrate kinetically on the dance floor as a six piece brass and sax ensemble, drummer, and bassist accompany a xylophonist. It's jazz and swing and the singer joins in as the happy music rushes out the bar entrance into the hotel lobby. The next morning at break fast I run into John Harris again. Overnight I remmbered that he wrote not only Frogger, but also Jawbreaker for the Atari 8bit, one of the greatest games ever for that line of computers. I tell him how great it was, with the toothbrush animation and all and he tels me a bit of the history behind it. Jawbreaker! He explains that he will give the first seminar this morning on his current focus: Amiga DE. John Harris gave the first presentation. He talked about his work on Amiga DE. He demonstrated his Gobbler game, his WordSearch game, his calculator program and his Solitaire, spnding a particular amount of time showing the versatility of his Solitaire, which runs in different resolutions depending on the handheld unit. On DE itself he joked that the original concept of "runs anywhere now means runs nowhere" owing to failed business deals and runtime modules whch have not materialized for the various handheld devices. But he still loves the technology of DE and thinks it will eventually be successful it's "just taking a little longer than they thought." His calculator program is advanced, and he talked about how valuable the cooperation was between hm and the math professor who helped him write it. Asked whether DE stuff would ever run on a Palm Pilot he said a Palm Pilot version was unlikely since Tao stuff doesn't run on 68K processors.He said it might happen on the new Palm Pilots running on ARM processors. To be continued ... (ps) [News message: 27. Jul. 2003, 09:07] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`26.Jul.2003` ANN	First pictures from the AmiWest 2003 Under the title link you will find the first pictures by Douglas McLaughlin from the AmiWest 2003 show. (ps) [News message: 26. Jul. 2003, 18:46] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`25.Jul.2003` Amiga Inc. (ANF)	AmigaOS4.0 to be demonstrated at AmiWest July 25, 2003 - Amiga Inc, in conjunction with Hyperion Entertainment and Computer Connection of California will be demonstrating the current state of AmigaOS 4.0 at the up-and-coming Amiga show in Sacramento, California. Please read the complete PR here or under the title link. AmigaOS4.0 to be demonstrated at AmiWest July 25, 2003 - Amiga Inc, in conjunction with Hyperion Entertainment and Computer Connection of California will be demonstrating the current state of AmigaOS4.0 at the up-and-coming Amiga show in Sacramento, California. Louie Dituri of Computer Connection, an Amiga dealer since 1988, will demonstrate AmigaOS4.0 running natively on a Cyberstorm PPC A4000. A lot of progress has been made in moving 68k modules to PPC-native since the end of the European AmigaOS on Tour roadshow as well as the default look evolving still further. Computer Connection have also donated an AmigaOne as a raffle prize and, additionally, will be demonstrating AmigaOnes running Linux. A representative of Hyperion Entertainment, the project manager for AmigaOS4.0, will be on hand to answer questions on the product. In addition, John Harris, a renowned AmigaDE developer (and the creator of the classic Frogger and Jawbreaker games), will be present at the Computer Connection stand to show off a variety of AmigaDE applications. We urge all Amigans attending the show to flock to the Computer Connection stand and see the future of the Amiga Platform. No rumours, no spin, no hype, just the real deal! About Amiga: Amiga Inc. established itself in 1985 as the premier provider of multi-media technologies to the world. Today Amiga continues leading the way in multi-media by providing language independent technologies to developers for writing and porting applications to a new multi-media platform that is hardware agnostic. Amiga Anywhere, powered with intent(TM) from the Tao Group, enables applications to run unchanged on a broad range of processors including ARM, StrongARM, Intel X-Scale, OMAP, MIPS, Intel x86, Motorola 68K and Hitachi SH. It can run hosted on a wide variety of operating systems including Windows CE .NET, Windows 9x, 2000, Windows XP, Linux, and Embedded Linux. AmigaDE Player and applications can be purchased at www.amiga-anywhere.com. About Hyperion: Hyperion Entertainment is a privately held Belgian-German company, founded in March of 1999. The company specialises in 3D graphics and the conversion of top-quality entertainment software from Windows to niche-platforms including Amiga, Linux (x86,PPC) and MacOS (OS 9/X). Hyperion Entertainment has undertaken contract-work in the field of 3D graphics for companies such as Monolith (www.lith.com) and has developed a mature, fast, small foot-print technology to bring 3D graphics to low power digital devices such as PDA's and STB's. Hyperion is currently working on AmigaOS 4.0, a vastly enhanced PPC native incarnation of the groundbreaking multimedia OS introduced by Commodore in 1985. About Computer Connection: Computer Connection has been serving the needs of the Amiga, Toaster and Flyer community in the US since 1988. For more information, visit www.compamiga.com or send an email to dituri@comp-connection.com. (ps) [News message: 25. Jul. 2003, 16:28] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]

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