AmigaSoc does Cologne II: Computer 98

After visiting Cologne for the first time last year, we decided that it was something that we'd like to share with the rest of the Amiga community. In an attempt to bring the joys of Computer '98 to the UK masses, we organised a trip in order to keep costs down. It certainly seemed like a good idea at the time and there was lots of interest so we certainly succeeded in advertising the show to people. However, things never quite go according to plan, but looking back at it, I guess we got off pretty lightly.

Apart from all the nightmares associated with the general organisation of the trip, I thought that everything was well and truly sorted on this, the day we were to leave for Cologne. That's a mistake I made several times throughout the weekend, unfortunately. As luck would have it, the Northern Line was playing some nasty tricks which resulted in me arriving at the airport a whole three quarters of an hour late during which time the eager yet anxious group members were no doubt wondering if I had bagged their cash and booked a flight for the Bahamas.

A handful of the fortunate individuals who made it to Cologne in one piece after being dragged from the UK by AmigaSoc.

The show was easily as big as last year's. I'd also say that the percentage of Amiga-related stands was as high as last year (about 70%). It was more than evident that the majority of the people attending the show were Amiga fans. It was only the Amiga stands that generated the largest crowds, and even the German debut of Annex managed to pull in quite a crowd of people. The area previously allocated for the seminars last year was instead used for slightly less specific things like the occasional appearance of a gameshow host wannabe who proceeded to fire a volley of taxing questions like "what's your name ?" to members of the minimal audience and handed out various outdated PC games irrespective of whether or not they got it right.

We had been promised much for the show. In a fair few cases, these promises were fulfilled. However, the biggest disappointment had to have been the no show of DCE Computer's eagerly awaited and much talked about dual G3 accelerator board. They were planning to unveil it at the show, but unfortunately they couldn't get it ready in time and felt it better not to show it at all than to show a partially working version.

Greg Perry seizes the opportunity to plug his new baby while NewIcons guru Ash Thomas (right) leans in to take the credit for the NewIcons as supplied on the DOplus CD.

Greg Perry and Jon Potter inhabited a small corner of the Schatztruhe stand as they did last year. They launched the Magellan II update to the inimitable Directory Opus together with the DOplus CD, but Greg had to spend the entire day on Friday demonstrating it as Jon was slightly ill. The reason for Jon's illness was caused by a sudden burst of alcohol-induced temerity the previous night which drove him to try some of Thomas Svenson's "snus" (wet tobacco). You'd think he'd have known better having seen the effect it had on Digita's Jeremy Rihll and Amiga Format's Ben Vost last year. Fortunately, by the time Greg would have got back to his hotel room, Jon had already spared him the indignity of wading through a sea of vomit.

Jens Schonfeld had his latest invention, the Atlantis MPEG audio decoder on display at his stand (Individual Computers). As with all of Jens's inventions, the Atlantis doesn't connect to anything you'd expect it to. In fact, it connects to the floppy port (which is bad news if you've got an A4000T like mine which doesn't actually have one!). He also proudly declared that he was up until the early hours of the morning perfecting some of the Catweasel driver code and was keenly glancing around the show to find Simon Goodwin in order to prove it's worth. Simon wasn't around at the time, but I later heard that he did catch up with Jens and promptly managed to crash the software that he had spent so long perfecting. Fortuitously for the Amiga market, I still saw Jens guarding his stand on each of the subsequent days of the show rather than finding him hanging from the light fittings in the toilet.

Jens looks on in disbelief as Simon Goodwin the serial Catweasel crasher of old London town leaves disaster in his wake.

VillageTronic's Ariadne II ethernet card went on sale and at least two of the AmigaSoc clan eagerly snapped them up at the very reasonable price of around half that of the original Ariadne. I honestly don't know how many they shifted (judging by the fact that they ran out of manuals quite quickly, quite a few), but the fact that there was so much interest in them is indeed quite intriguing. Either lots of people have got PCs and want to ethernet them up to their Amigas, or they have taken the initiative that some of the AmigaSoc folk have done and taken their Amigas in to work so that they don't have to deal with quite so much with the truly dire Windows.

Paul Nolan only just managed to make it to Cologne thanks to some last minute organising by others. Unfortunately, although both he and his trusty QuickPak A4000T arrived intact to find a corner on the Schatztruhe stand waiting for them, people didn't seem that interested. I'm not quite sure why this was because Photogenics Ng is a tremendously impressive package, but Paul soon gave up and spent the rest of the weekend walking around the show looking like he'd just got out of bed.

The guys from Epic once more demonstrated their unperturbed commitment to the Amiga market. They actually made their journey by car. Their stand was only slightly smaller than the one they usually have at Hammersmith, but they seemed to fit right in. The sad thing is that because they always have so much stuff to bring with them, it takes them absolutely ages to set their stand up and pack it away at the end of each day. Therefore we almost never get the chance to have a chat to them outside show time. It has to be said that it's not just us that owe them a few drinks, it's the Amiga community as a whole!

Kermit Woodall and Corrina Cohn proudly take their place at the Amiga Inc. stand. We can now exclusively reveal that Kermit has a secret desire to be a gameshow host.

The Amiga Inc. stand sported a huge video wall this year (powered by two A1200s of course). I'm sure it'll prove very useful if they manage to bring it along to Hammersmith with them next year! They used it to provide a series of demonstrations of packages like Fantastic Dreams, Wildfire, and ImageFX as well as showing footage of Friday's press conference and the obligatory Annex videos. Nicole Gottfried and another more silent employee of Amiga International spent much of the show handing out free "Powered by Amiga" stickers to the crowds along with "Meeting Pearls III" CDs (which I'm sure Angela Schmidt would have been delighted about).

Titan computer were demonstrating their latest titles including the follow up to "Elastic Dreams", "Fantastic Dreams" and their "Tomb Raider" clone, "Claws of the Devil". Although the game itself seemed reasonable enough, the atrociously raytraced image of what appeared to be a busty woman was just too horrible to put into words.

Surprisingly, Phase 5 were not at the show. Their stand last year was fantastic. Clearly the announcement at Hammersmith had coloured their vision of the future. Someone, it seems, had urinated on the fire that they had lit. We later learned that they were otherwise engaged. A Mac show was on at the same time as Computer 98, and Phase 5 made their priorities very clear after the bloody nose they got from Amiga Inc. at Hammersmith.

Fleecy Moss was conspicuous by his absence as was Marylin Flint. Fleecy's no show was put down to the fact that there was still some legal red tape concerning his immigration to the US from the UK which prevented him from going anywhere else. Obviously, we know what the real reason was, so it looks like the rest of the Amiga Inc. clan did a pretty good job of keeping tight-lipped about the whole messy situation. We didn't ask about Marylin whose name badge had somehow migrated to Darreck's wife.

I did get the chance to meet Bill McEwan for the first time. It has to be said that he came across as being a very nice chap. I'm not sure what his Amiga background is (if any) but that's rather irrelevent given his enthusiasm to take on the job. Throughout the press conference, I noticed him nodding almost to himself as Jeff or Allan were stressing points about their commitment to the Amiga. At the end of the day on Saturday he was presented with a video preview of Explorer 2260, which he eagerly popped into the video recorder and throughout watching it cited bits that interested him. He also politely acknowledged us whenever we passed by the stand, which is probably quite a mammoth task given all the other people that he must meet throughout these shows.

The usual guests were also in attendance: Jeroen Vermulen and Hans Guiit of Merapi "it's not quite done but nearly" fame, Dr. Peter Kittel from PIOS (although I never got the chance to speak to him for more than a few seconds, and curiously enough couldn't find him again for the rest of the show), Kermit Woodall and Corrina Cohn (who were also staying in the same hotel as the rest of us), Cloanto's Michael Battilana, Tony Mees (the European UGN co-ordinator), and a long list of UK people such as Alan Redhouse from Eyetech, David Law from Weird Science and Paul Carrington from Vulcan. Digita's Jeremy Rihll, HiQ's Steve Jones and Access Innovations's Mick Tinker were not around this year. I guess Mick is keeping a low profile in case people start pointing the finger when looking for an alternative reason why the "November boxes" have become "February boxes"!

On Friday evening, the press conference was held in the same hall as the previous year where the big announcement was that there was nothing big to announce. Fortunately, Amiga Inc. actually had something to show us this time. After the ever tedious and now commonplace "this is what we want to do" series of PowerPoint slides, they finally got to the point: they were about to announce the new OS. At last. The OS in question is QNX, a UNIX-derived, micro-kernel Operating System with a most impressive spec. As a curious bit of trivia, QNX is actually the OS that was used to run Escom UK's EPOS systems throughout that year. Apart from that particular use, Jeff Schindler listed an impressive collection of organisations who rely on QNX, including NASA. What further evidence do we need that this system is rock-solid ?

Jeff Schindler tops up his drink in preparation for the hammering that he's so used to getting on these occasions. As it turns out, he didn't seem to need it this time round.

Allan Havermose briefly took over to explain how it would be used to form the basis of the next Amiga Operating System. He approached the subject from the point of view of the developer by making specific references to providing a stable and open environment for developers to utilise the full potential of the new system. The way he pitched it seemed about right to me, and certainly the direct opposite to the "look how pretty it'll be" approach favoured by his colleagues. I found his attitude quite impressive in this respect. What he said actually made sense and it even seemed as though he hadn't just prepared the talk on the plane over from the US. I guess having been an Amiga developer himself (and no doubt having experienced Commodore from that perspective) has indeed given him a set of parameters to get the job done the way the developer community needs it.

Dan Dodge, one of the co-founders of QSSL (the developers of QNX) with a hair cut not unlike that of a Lego man was invited along to explain just why QNX is a suitable successor to the current implementation of AmigaDOS we all know and love. Surprisingly enough, he wasn't a sales guy, either. He knew his stuff, and he believed in it. That was quite refreshing. He wasn't afraid to go into technical details, and in fact spent quite some time with them. People were left in no doubt as to what QNX was capable of. Dan then went on to demonstrate some of the features of QNX to the masses. First, he showed their MicroGUI, Photon (ostensibly like X-Windows but clearly not quite as chunky codewise) with the very standard virtual desktop feature that's been done on just about every X-Windows (and Amiga) platform for the last five years. Disturbingly enough, the audience seemed unjustifiably impressed by this. I was already starting to think that the demonstration was going to be effectively a demonstration of what X-Windows can do, but then things started to get interesting. He showed applications running on two separate machines (albeit not Amigas) being migrated (only in display terms, though -in essence, Siamese style) across machines and back again. He showed a QNX port of Doom having it's window displayed in two halves across the two different displays (each running in a different screen resolution). This is the sort of thing that the Mac has been envied for in the past. Finally, the thing that however insignificant seemed to bring home the fact that QNX wasn't just a minority Operating System being rebadged with a Boing ball was a simplistic web browser with full Javascript capability -something we've still yet to achieve in several years of browser development.

While Dan was busily demonstrating the wonders of QNX, I did happen to glance across to the table where the rest of the Amiga Inc./International people sat to see what their reactions were. Allan Havermose was grinning like a Cheshire cat throughout the entire presentation so it was clear that he too believed in QNX. Sadly, Petro's expression wasn't quite as pleasing. He looked thoroughly miserable throughout. Quite why this was, I couldn't say, and to be honest I'd rather not speculate.

Naturally, there's always something that dampens the excitement of such things. The new "wonder chip" that they harped on about so much at Hammersmith didn't seem to be the focus of their enthusiasm any more. In fact, there was a strong indication that they were no longer interested in that chip (or more likely that the chip manufacturers are no longer interested in them). This whole situation smacks of the Viscorp style of saying "yes, it's signed and sealed" when in fact it isn't. In short, they still haven't decided on a processor. It was however pointed out by one of the other AmigaSoc guests that the fact that they haven't tied themselves to a particular processor when there are better solutions already available is a good thing. Still, I can't help feeling a little dubious.

Another news gem that was formally passed on the press and public was that the whole issue of A4000s for the US market has now been resolved, although not before time. Jeff mentioned that he did invite the inimitable Bernard Hembach (pioneer of the whole situation) along to the press conference, but he was too busy to attend. Corrina Cohn (the ImageFX artist) quipped that he was probably shutting down an orphanage or something.

Kermit Woodall turns himself around to show us his best side while Corrina Cohn demonstrates that she brushes with Colgate. Paul Nolan proves once more that maybe "Photogenics" wasn't quite the right name to give to a package written by him.

After the excitement of the press conference, we rapidly discovered the minor difficulty with having a huge train of Amigans with you. That problem being "where the heck you go to eat in the evenings ?" Given our experiences of group meals in dodgy restaurants last year, we stuck to the more familiar surroundings of one of the local Brewhauses especially given the daunting task of trying to get enough taxis to ship thirty odd people somewhere and back. When we arrived, we were greeted by a waiter whose entire English vocabulary consisted of quotes from 1950s B-Movies. Many were the times when he wanted to squeeze some plates of food onto our table and could only attract our attention by calling "Mayday! Mayday!". He did occasionally manage to drop in a few more classics like "To be or not to be". Being the jolly and observant chap he was, he happened to notice the "Powered by Amiga" Boing ball on Kermit and Corrina's polo shirts and then proceeded to make various enquiries as to whether we were a bowling team on tour or something. Fortunately, we managed to explain our true intentions without having to resort to saying "Open the pod bay doors, Hal".

Computer '98 was another show to be remembered. Although some of the products I was on the edge of my seat waiting for weren't around, the fact that the show is still predominantly Amiga is a breath of fresh air. Although some of the exhibitors didn't have a very good time of it, others such as Epic were very pleased with the outcome. It's more likely that people will remember the show because of the QNX announcement than anything else as most of the new developments (and in truth there weren't that many) were fairly low key. Having said that, the majority of the people who visited for the first time this year plan to go again next year, so what better recommendation is there than that ?