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While I am going to leave it to the show organizers and the press to write
the appropriate articles about the Amiga Fest '96 that took place from the
29th of November to the 1st of December, I had to say a few words about the
show. As you can tell from my grin, the show was a great success! It was
tiring, but extremely satisfying to have been a part of Amiga Fest. James
Harrison, Aurora Work's head programmer, and I were there to represent Aurora Works.
We had to help out National Amiga because the throngs of people who turned up where much more than
expected! We barely had enough time to show our game demo, but the
feedback from Amiga users was very helpful and encouraging. I think the
turn-out took more than just National Amiga by surprise. Many high priced items such as
Cyberstorm MKIIs sporting '060s sold out the first day, although some
dealers managed to restock a few for the final day. Big sellers seemed to
be OS3.1, cdrom drives, accelerators, Cybergraphx, and Dopus 5.5.
Unfortunately, many people had to be turned away empty handed after enquiring about video cards
as all dealers were sold out.
There were many interesting and new products for sale such as Dopus 5.5, StormC++, Art Effect, AWeb2.1, Siamese ... the list goes on and on. There were also new innovations in beta form such as QuikPak's Amiga 5050T which is a 4000T with PCI slots running a Pentium and an Amiga in the same box. More interesting, however, was phase5's PowerUp boards running in several Amiga 4000 towers. It was amazing to see the first dual processor Amigas. For all of you who think that the PowerUp PPC project is just adding a super-fast co-processor, think again! The PPC and 060 were running their own tasks separately, both have access to fast ram and chip ram, and they can send messages to each other. The PowerUp program is for real ladies and gentlemen. Another fantastic bit of news was the phase5 announcement of the A/Box project. I had read the specs, but to hear the phase5 General Manager, Wolf Dietrich, explain the plans really made the idea sink home. If you have not read the news about the A/Box, I encourage you to read the announcement at phase5's site. If I am sounding in love with phase5, I have good reasons!
Now it is time to get back to business! Thanks to all who made the
show a success. I had a great time. There were many, many PC and Mac
people who stopped to gawk in awe at what a modern, accelerated Amiga could
accomplish. Now that we don't have to worry about the Amiga becoming just
a set-top box, we can move onwards and, if phase5's booth was any
indication, upwards! As the Amiga Fest organizers proclaimed at the end of
the show, now things are really happening!
-- James Ceraldi, 03 Dec 1996
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Last modified: 03 Jan 97