The Ohio Junket
by Paul Sadlik

Months ago we hatched the plan. Come hell or high water, a bunch of us die hard Amiga fans (fanatics?) were going to invade the fair state of Ohio - to go to the Midwest Amiga Expo in Columbus. The more time transpired, the more folks joined the effort. By the week before the trip, our crew included: Bill Borsari, Walter Miles, Mike Skov, Brian Dunlap, Hans Wolff, Brian Koeting, Vicky Staubly, Todd Foster, Jerimy Campbell and myself.

With the exception of Jerimy, who was to help staff the Amiga Informer booth, we decided we needed some legitimate - or at least believable - pretense for getting into insider show activities. So our plan expanded to include a booth under the NCAUG banner for demoing and selling software created by local Amigans. On one side we were demonstrating and selling Udo Schuermann's "WebLord" web site compiler package. For more web authoring, we were selling John Tyler's "Ptolemy" web site image map making tool. Finally, Brian Koeting joined the trek to demonstrate and sell his "KidStop" children's education/entertainment software.

On the Road Again

By early Friday evening had landed in Columbus and began to find the dark secret of Columbus... they never eat out in that town! By eight o'clock, downtown had rolled up it's sidewalks and Ronald McDonald gone home for the day. After a good bit of driving around, we found the town's version of Georgetown and what looked like a nice little hole in the wall. In spite of discovering an apparent hygiene question and the service of microwaved food, the place was packed... this city needs a Clyde's or Capital City Brewery! :-)

The next morning, it was time to set up and get the show started. Petro addressed the crowd with a typically optimistic speech, announcing the new Amiga licensees. The hall was full of the Amiga fans and the die hard Amiga businesses: Nova Design, Wonder Computers, Finale Development, Aurora Works, Jason Compton, Paul Nolan (Siamese System), CompuQuick (an Ohio Amiga dealer), AsimWare, Micronik (A1200 towers), Eric Schwartz, Dale Larson, Amazing Computing, the Amiga Informer and a whole slew of user groups.

For me, the high lights of the show were the new version of AsimWare's MasterISO CD writing software (for CD-ROMs and Audio CD's) - even supporting timeline-style audio editing and CD-to-CD writing, questionable feats with most peecee apps. Nova Design was also selling copies of their new Aladdin4D 3D modeling software like hot cakes. While Finale was showing their InterNet news (New York) and Email software (Voodoo), their long awaited Web Browser (Web Cruiser) was a disappointing no-show. Some said they saw a beta running, but that it looked like it's development still had a way to go. Aurora Works was optimistic about the Amiga software market and showing off their new game under development, H-Bomb.

Generally speaking, the show seemed very well attended and the crowd was optimistic. Wandering around the show floor were folks like Andy Finkel (of Commodore fame and member of the ICOA TSC), Holger Kruse (Miami's developer), Joe Torre (Amiga Inc.), Dean Brown (DKB and ICOA TSC) and Greg Scott (President of National Amiga).

Hi Fabian

As the day wound down, people started gathering around the meeting room for the show banquet and Developer meeting. The official Amiga Inc. representation, Petro and Joe Torre, were talking with folks giving background on the corporate will. Clearly, Petro is anxious to get the ball rolling, while Joe seemed to reflect a Gateway reserve that the Amiga situation be fully understood, options analyzed and the best plan careful executed. That didn't prevent Joe and Petro from recording a video greeting for our friend Fabian, who couldn't make it... :-)

In the banquet, our bad food luck continued... Hans got a plate full of cold, uncooked pink chicken. What is it with food in that town? After the meal, Joe Torre, Kermit Woodall, Andy Finkel, Dean Brown and Fleecy Moss took the stage to present on the Amiga development situation. The meeting marked the official recognition of the ICOA as the Amiga developer association. Joe Torre also handed out a questionnaire for gauging developer interests in OS work. Then the meeting became a general question and answer session.

The majority of the discussion focused on a number of points:

What were Amiga Incorporated's plans for Amiga development? Organizationally, the panel seemed to make a point of separating Gateway from their subsidiaries Amiga Inc. and Amiga International. Amiga International being purely a marketing and distribution arm under Petro. Amiga Inc. was still in nascent stages, with staff and leadership still to be hired. So plans for Amiga development were disappointingly far from tangible. While other articles in the newsletter present the situation more directly, I'll note that while progress seems to be going painfully slowly (cautiously?), at least the course holds great promise... these don't seem to be the leanings of a company just interested in mindless set top boxes or holding some Amiga intellectual property rights.

• What would the ICOA's role be? There was much talk of trying to fill the shoes of the old C.A.T.S. (Commodore Applications & Technical Support) organization. To start with, the ICOA was designated as the body to coordinate and support Amiga software development with committees, joint standards and information sharing. By the time you read the this, a couple of ICOA "working groups" will have started the ball rolling (http://www.amiganet.org/icoa/WG/).

• How would the ICOA deal with major, contentious platform issues? This was a recurring theme, as it seemed it could become a major test of the organization's abilities. Without any "teeth" to enforce chosen standards, how would the ICOA deal with questions like determining an platform RTG standard (choose CybergraphX, Picasso96 or make something else?), GUI systems, etc.? While a mechanism wasn't offered to deal with this, the panel suggested the model of open InterNet standard determination (RFC's, etc) and that developers would be strongly encouraged to cooperate for their own good and that of the platform.

  A positive footnote would be that the ICOA working groups page (the URL above) already lists a RTG group with members of the CyberGraphX and Picasso96 teams involved, so maybe we can expect to see an avoidance of peecee-ish partisan squabbling in that arena?

• What direction will OS development take? While Joe Torre was quite cautious, saying that development work had not been started yet, the topic appears to have been heavily considered. There will be a (probably software only) maintenance upgrade to the current 3.1 OS to a 3.5 version. He suggested that it would be a move everyone will "want to make", but didn't elaborate. Any major operating system changes would not be seen until a 4.0 release. Issues like RTG and new processor support would not be addressed until that point, at the earliest.

While no great decisions were made or revealed, the course of the meeting and tone of the questionnaire seemed to reflect a long range, directed interest in significant OS development. We are not going to be stuck with our old Workbench, 680x0 CPUs and AGA chips forever. As the Amiga OS has really come to be the defining characteristic of the platform (rather than the hardware), this is a good direction.

Boing Ball Levitation, Programmable Gate Arrays, Armor Piercing Missiles

As the banquet wound down, folks broke into separate parties and a group of "show regulars" gathered at the bar: the Washington group, Holger Kruse, Greg Scott, Darren Eveland, more folks from the Amiga IRC channel and other developers. To start with, Joe Torre revealed his obsession with Boing Balls... you know, the ORIGINAL Amiga Multimedia demo, a bouncing, rotating, boinging checkered ball... In reverence, Joe constructed an electronic, pneumatic "Boing Ball Levitator". You have to see the video tape.

Around this sculpture, we hashed over the subjects raised in the banquet/ICOA meeting - what was the reaction? Cautiously optimistic. Among the developers there was a sense of anxiety, like they are holding their breaths, waiting for a pick up in the marketplace. While there was a general disappointment that things seem to be moving so slowly, it seemed that everyone was encouraged by the positive directions that have been set. All of this is so much better than where we have been for the last three years.

As we got thrown out of the bar (closing time), Greg Scott invited everyone to raid the fridge in his hotel room. There the conversations got more interesting - testing my abilities to listen to two conversations at once. On one hand, Dean Brown had prototypes and samples of his Wildfire 060 board and the Inferno graphics card and was showing us the circuitry (really impressive engineering feats!), while Joe Torre was telling of his background in anti-tank missiles. This went on till Greg's refrigerator emptied in the wee hours of the morning... :-)

The next morning we had a late start... Eventually, a number of us gathered in another search for Columbus food. And yet another hour was wasted driving around Columbus wondering where these people eat out? With our only findings an old "Waffle House" and a single Big Boy-type establishment (with a 40 minute wait), we retreated to a lunch in the Hotel's overpriced restaurant. At least they made good milkshakes!

The second day in the show was more of the same We sold many copies of our software and went to seminars on the use ImageFX, Amiga web authoring and Brian's KidStop. By mid-afternoon, things started to wind down. One more time we would try to find food in Columbus. This time we had a native to guide us Washingtonians and IRC folks through miles of highways, interchanges and exits. Finally, at some unsuspecting Lone Star Steakhouse, we enjoyed our best meal of the trip... So much for local cuisine...

Before the night ended, we found ourselves visiting a drive-thru liquor store (would one of those be illegal in Virginia?) in addition to a stop for an aperitif at the hotel bar... the dropped-jaw, stunned look of the bartender was priceless as we asked for seven milkshakes... :-)

The remainder of the night was spent with a couple guys from a Texas InterNet Service Provider that used Amigas. They said this was their first Amiga convention and they were still in awe, having met people behind the names they had heard so long... Some of the fun of going to these shows.

Going Home

In the morning, we piled back into our purple van and were on our way for home. The ride was spent with more review of the show, Amiga Inc's slow progress and the nature of the ICOA. As we crossed into Maryland, we were greeted by spectacularly vibrant rainbows (plural), we decided it had to be a good omen for the Amiga.

The Amiga world has been through a lot, everyone is quite anxious for some progress and nothing can happen fast enough. Under these conditions, Gateway's cautious, studied and careful movement has been painful. Yet what was clearly evident during the show, mentioned during the ICOA banquet, and in our own personal experiences: the Amiga computer is quite peculiar in the strength of the Community that surrounds it. From the users that have remained in the face of Microsoft assimilation to the developers who count those patrons as friends rather than simple customers; a unique, dynamic core is waiting for Gateway to light the fuse...

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