The Wakefield Spring Show '98 took place at the Thornes Park Athletics Stadium on 16th and 17th May 1998. The photographs presented here were all taken on Saturday, 16th May and were used in a report which appeared in RISC User 11:6.
The captions used here are based on the ones that appeared in the magazine, with further comments in italics. The report was laid out using Ovation Pro, and can be found elsewhere on this CD.
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The queue of people waiting to get in stretched far beyond the entrance for long after the opening time |
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Overview of the hall |
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Overview of the hall |
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IMS' Peanut laptop |
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The biggest surprise of the show was the discovery that Innovative Media Solutions was working on an extremely attractive-looking RISC OS laptop computer, for launch later in the year |
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Project Avante (Vantage) in action |
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On the software front, undoubtedly the most exciting development was the new ArtWorks-killer vector graphics suite, code-named Project Avante, which was being demonstrated by Astute Graphics |
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A screenshot of a prototype Phoebe 2100 |
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Phoebe was reserved for viewing by Clan members only |
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The Clan-only Phoebe 2100 viewing area, which contained a number of yellow machines |
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Acorn's central stand contained Acorn-based products such as the Samsung Thinko and the NetFax NaxPort 100 |
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Acorn demonstrated the use of both RISC OS and Windows applications on NCs |
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A very blurry picture of the Java area of Acorn's stand |
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The Argo stand took its usual form of a Cybership |
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Beebug launched the new OCR package, Sleuth 3 |
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Dave Clare chats over the counter of his stand with Mike Matson |
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Mike Williams, Editor of Acorn Publisher and first Editor of RISC User, manning his Akalat Publishing stand |
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The R-Comp stand was constantly busy |
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The Irlam Instruments stand, featuring Videodesk |
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A sad time for The Datafile: this was their last ever appearance at an Acorn show (proprietor Dave McCartney is seated) |
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Even though it was Cup Final day on the Saturday, and scorching hot weather, the spacious hall was packed to bursting point with visitors |
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This is the last photograph ever taken of esteemed RISC User contributor Graham Crow (seated at the right), who died on 31st May, exactly a fortnight after this show took place. His obituary appeared in the same issue of RISC User as the show report |
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Dalriada Data Technology's stand, featuring WebSpider |
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On the Ball: TV presenter Johnny Ball presided over the Eesox stand on the Saturday. Star of BBC TV computer programmes in the 80s, his appearance at the show was an entertaining surprise |
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The Wakefield Acorn Computer Group Secretary, Chris Hughes, escapes from a close encounter with Mr Ball... |
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...This plump punter (RISC User Editor Richard Hallas) didn't get away quite so lightly, however! (Not everyone gets the chance to shake hands with their heroes from Play School!) |
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Desktop Projects demonstrated the use of both RISC OS and Windows applications on an NC hooked up to a central server |
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