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==  WOA '94 Report                                     By Mat Bettinson  ==
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                 World of Amiga Show at Wembley London '94

The sysops entourage including yours truely, arrived at the show on the
first day, early so we had some time to wander around before the crowds
arrived.  Still there was a considerable cue outside of die hard Amigans
who'd travelled to Wembley from all over the Europe and beyond.  Inside
most of the exhibitors had set up early too and I was initially surprised
at how many companies had turned out to exhibit their wares to the eager
for re-assurance Amiga owners.  Largely we weren't disappointed but later I
heard of people who were.  Each to his own.

Eighty Eight exhibtors turned out but after the initial wonder around I saw
it still wasn't enough to fill the Wembley Exhibition Hall leaving it look
like the small show that it really was.  Still it's quality, not quantity.
Perhaps the first thing that surprised us was that the entrance fee was
just a pound.  Most welcome, I would guess, as many of the people turning
out to the event would be prepared to pay extra for entrance and found they
had a few more pounds to spend inside the show.

Walking straight in, the first stand I saw held a few computers that the
public could use demonstrating some software.  YOWZA!  It was DOPUS 5!  Yep
and the kindly fellow Australian demonstrating it was non other than
Jonathan Potter himself.  The system is now multi-window and you can run
Dopus 5 as the default public screen.  Displays your drives as icons; when
first seeing this I thought it was on the workbench screen and I have to
say, I wouldn't have thought much improvement COULD be done to Dopus but
this is revolutionary!  Needless to say I hit Jonathan up for for a review
copy...  With luck you'll see a full review in AReport early in the new
year.

Moving on, Ramiga International were displaying the Raptor Plus rendering
at some ridiculous rate.  Multiprocessor MIPS RISC RS4600/133 Mhz beast...
Sigh.  They'll soon have these on a Trapdoor card for the 1200.  :-) Some
more VERY interesting products are the Ramiga Tower Systems: The Z7 A4000
Tower features 7 Zorro III slots, 2 Video slots and 5 PC slots, 6 5.25"
Drive bays and 4 3.5" bays.  The Z5 A1200 Tower comes with 5 Zorro II slows
and 3 5.25" bays and 5 3.5" bays.  Power supply and cables provided.  Not
clear on extra details or prices.  You can be sure I'll be find out ASAP! 
Ramiga were also displaying the Mongoose 50Mhz '030 1200 Trapdoor unit.
Go-faster boards for the 1200 were in great proliferation around the show
and getting cheaper.

The Silicon Studio was also on display at Ramigas stand.  Being a full
workstation kit based around the A4000T it's puzzling to know what they're
going to DO for A4000Ts since just a few were made.  Still THEY had one and
very nice it looked too!  :-) Seriously though, it consists of a fully
configured system being a 4000T with a Warp Engine, 16 MB of RAM, about 3GB
of storage etc but the actual card is capable of 20bit audio, 120dB dynamic
range and 128x oversampling.  These sort of figures indicate the whole
shebang is aimed at the professional studio being able to mix 16 channels
at once.  Nice to see yet more serious Amiga hardware.  Looks like a
winner.

The front part of the show seemed to be dedicated to the serious aspect of
the Amiga and it has to be said...  There was a greater presence in this
area than the low-end market that many are afraid C= UK will doom the
market to.

Opposite, Village-Tronic were shifting copies of OS 3.1 at a rapid rate of
knots when I walked in...  Reason?  All the other show exhibitors were
buying them to re-sell at the same show!  I kid you not!  The same was
occuring with the Picasso II-RTG 24 bit graphics boards which are back with
a vengeance after a disturbing dry spell in their production.  Practically
half the exhibitors had a stock of OS3.1 kits and Picassos so unfortunately
there were NO deals to be had with the Picasso going for 300 UK Pounds.
Most disturbing since they sold out of the entire first production run,
selling more units than an equivalent PC manufacturer might sell VGA cards
and yet the price is STILL nearly TEN TIMES the cost.  I feel that if they
had been 150 pounds or even 200 they would have shifted them ALL.  I asked
the director if they are considering making a Zorro III unit.  'Maybe...
We are seeing what happens to the Amiga.' which is fair comment, I guess,
but then the other manufacturers aren't holding back.  <growl> Still they
DID have 'Ariadne' a new Ethernet card which will be greeted with whoops
for joy.  Sana-II compatible and complete with Commodores Envoy, it's sure
to be a seller...  Again I couldn't get a price out of them at the time.  ?

Am-Power were demonstrating Aladdin 4D compiled with the Inmos Parallel C
compiler running on a mini-tower of Warp-III Inmos units.  Mr Ambigabathy
(!), the director, claimed that it was possible to reach 12,000 MIPS with
enough boards.  The rendering times with 6 CPUs were in the order of 10
times quicker than an A4000/040.  He said deals were being made with NewTek
to port Lightwave to the Warp-III platform.  Looks very promising and cost
effective.  TVI Interactive systems showed the teleview home-banking
product that uses a custom 2400 baud Modem and remote and a CD32 to provide
a plug and go solution...  Rumours were that words were being said to UK
companies to bring the unit to Europe.

Hi-Soft had a very pleasant surprise for the A1200 owning public.  They
demonstated a prototype of 'The Squirrel' a SCSI-2 Interface for the A1200
that fits into the PCMCIA slot and is capable of hitting 3MB/s with an '030
accelerated unit.  It's a normal PCMCIA card with a cable flowing out the
side sporting a 50W SCSI connector on the end.  Not sure exactly where this
unit will fit in the market as for the 69 UK pound asking price, SCSI
interfaces for the leading accelerator boards can be purchased and not tie
up the PCMCIA slot.  Still it's a nice unit based on the nippy 5380
controller chip and should be available early in the new year.

Power Computing, one of the largest Amiga hardware companies in the UK,
were selling their entire range including The Warp Engine, the 28 or 40Mhz
'040 accelerator for the A4000.  The price for this unit was astronomical
and at twelve hundred UK pounds it's a JOKE compared to the Phase 5
Cyberstorm I'll cover a little later.  The Tandem IDE/CD interface card for
Zorro equipped machines was shifting with many Amiga users opting to buy
el-cheapo PC CD-Roms rather than SCSI units.  They were also showing the
Power Super XL drive which can store 3.5MB of data on a a High density
floppy disk.  At 100 UK Pounds it's not cheap but making backups on such a
drive could work out quite cheap.  I expect it'll use the same Power
buffering technology since the Amiga can't handle the data rate the stock
mechanisms produce.  The full Viper range were shown but in my opinion,
they should be keenly avoided having a very bodgy logic interface leading
to disappointing performace. 

One stand I spent some time at was the Phase 5 stand.  Phase 5 are an
innovative German company responsible for the Blizzard range.  They've been
known to offer good value for money and their recent products are NO
exception.  The item that drew me to the stand quicker than Saddam to a
Scud was an an obtrusive logo on a large PGA chip.  *060* Yep...  It was
THERE and I *TOUCHED* it.  If I die tommorow I can rest at ease knowing I
forfilled my fantasy.  :-) Yep the Cyberstorm '060 is ONE HELL OF A BEAST.
Currently fitting only in an A4000, I hassled the Phase 5 blokes (who were
real cool guys) wether if I hacked apart my A3000, it would work.  They
said 'probably' so ...  Now to find the 950 quid to grab one quick smart! 
82 MIPS <froth> You read correct.  The Cyberstorm '060 is CHEAPER than ANY
40Mhz '040 based board so I don't think a great deal of Warp Engines were
purchased that day!  The units are to be availble in February and the CPU
can be quickly and easily changed from the 50Mhz to a 66Mhz when it becomes
availble.  It can be run now with an '040 at any rate.  Impressive. 
Apparently Motorolla are to manufacture a *90* MHz unit before too long. 
Ouch!  However, the bad news is that the CPU is missing 64 bit
multiplication and some other key instructions so a new exception library
is needed but Phase 5 have come to the rescue with some brilliant code
patching software.  First time that the CPU hits some unsupported
instructions they are patched to ones the '060 DOES support.  This was
demonstrated on the AIBB beach ball render test.  First time it ran there
was a noticable pause in the middle of the render but subsequent executions
blistered by without the pause.  Neat.  Fast?  Hell this thing was
rendering the beach ball before my machine would have STARTED.  I WANT ONE
NOW!  Sigh.

Also due in February is the Cybervision 64.  A Zorro III 64-bit graphics
card available in 2 or 4MB of RAM.  Hardware Planr-to-Chunky pixel
conversion using RoXXler chip, proper electronic switching of Amiga video
output.  Digital shared memory/video bus so that MPEG and JPEG cards can be
added later.  Seemless Monitor installing into the OS display database etc.
This card looks NICE and the best bit?  It's the SAME PRICE AS THE PICASSO!
Phase 5 are doing the card for 285 UK Pounds NOW if you'll wait for
delivery until February...  Sheesh.  Is the Pope Catholic?  I could really
get to like these Phase 5 blokes!

BlitterSoft and Utilities Unlimited were demonstrating their latest pride:
Infact Jim Drew himself was demonstration the e586DX Emulation module for
the famous Emplant card.  It was shown running Windoze software which
seemed a bit odd...  Surely they want someone to BUY the thing?  :-)
Seriously, it's claimed that you can run DOS, OS/2, NT, Windoze and even
Chicago on the board but it wasn't possible for me to tell if the
demonstration was working at a useable speed.  :-(

Almathera ia another sucessful and diligent UK based company that
specialises in CD compilations of PD, CD32 projects and ripping my ideas
off.  (oops!) released Photogenics at the show.  This looked VERY
impressive indeed and a couple of friends walked off with copies.  It's a
very good 24-bit paint program and image processor that's very impressive
in it's speed of operation and ease of use.  Something I'm going to look at
more closely though it's aimed more at users of HAM8 rather than 24 bit
board users.  Has a potentially massive market with it's real time HAM8
paint modes.  It cause quite a stir and it wasn't the only Almathera stir.
They were selling Nakamitchi 7 CD changers for 350 UK pounds and sold the
lot very quickly.  Instantaneously would be more accurate...  Interesting.
Naturally NewTek were there, pushing stand-alone Lightwave 3D.  Difference
is the pamphlets are saying 'MUTLI-PLATFORM' with words like PC and SGI
written on it.  Ouch.  I guess it had to happen.  NewTek moving into the
real world.  Brings a tear to your eye doesn't it?  Still luckily there's
the usual group of pamphlet pushing VERY lovely girls to comfort me.  :-)

Digital Processing Systems were showing the PAR DPS doing amazing things
like playing live video off HD.  Their stall was packed all day which is no
surprise considering the fantasic animations they were displaying...  The
Studio 16 was also present but not being on demo as far as I could see.  Of
couse all the UK Amiga magazines turned out in force for stands being CU
Amiga, Amiga Format and the bevvy of Pargon publications but Internet and
Comms Today was conspicuously missing.  JAM, the amateur Amiga produced
Amiga fanzine was there and attracting some attention amongst the
Amigaphiles who didn't know it existed.  It SHOULD be ON the shelf in my
most humble of opinions.

It was noticed by some aquaintances that they weren't approached by a
single UK magazine during the duration of the show.  Dave Collins of the
Multi-media machine stand said, 'Sales were fairly slow on Friday but on
the Saturday the French arrived and promptly bought everything we had'.
The Multi-Media Machine provides a CD authoring service entirely for the
Amiga market and also makes custom Multi-media presentations in stand-up
cabinets plus pub games machines.  A young company that's thriving on the
Amiga scene primarily because they've diversified using Amiga technology to
the full.  Seemed that it took some time for everyone to realise they were
flogging CDs loaded with Amiga games for a fiver each.  When they DID...

Not one English magazine approached us but many of the French magazines
came to see us and the other exhibitors' said Dave.  This seemed indicitive
of the attitude of the English Magazines.  Aimed squarly at the low-end of
the market showing no interest in the higher end.  The large turn-out of
professionals investigating the high end hardware explains why the American
Amiga World magazine is regarded as the best choice in such circles. 
ICPUG, the Commodore user club, stashed right next to the door; displayed a
linear progression of Commodore models with the PET taking the most
prominent position with many people peering closely at the ancient item of
Commodore history.  I was surprised how many people didn't KNOW what it
was.  Maybe I'm getting old?  :-)

The show Theatre held a variety of public demonstrations and seminars by
various companies throughout the day though I didn't have time to see them.
Finally the central Amiga stage held a variety of performaces throughout
the day but just as they were firing up, the sysops retired to the bar and
began to drink themselves senseless before embarrasing themselves at the
Developers Conference...  Which is another matter entirely.

All in all, I feel it was a good show.  Good turn out of exhibitors with
new products dispite the uncertain future of the platform.  There was
certainly no lack of confidence to be seen.  These companies wouldn't
bother if they didn't think that everything wasn't going to come though.