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[News] First Pictures from Amigafest 2003!ANN.lu
Posted on 30-Aug-2003 17:20 GMT by Daniel Miller (Edited on 2003-08-30 20:05:00 GMT by Christian Kemp)27 comments
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These are some pictures from Amigafest in Dayton, Ohio, USA last weekend.
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 1 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 30-Aug-2003 15:44 GMT
Nice pics, specially the last one ;-)
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 2 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by bbrv on 30-Aug-2003 16:41 GMT
Thanks Daniel!

:-)

R&B
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 3 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Lando on 30-Aug-2003 17:42 GMT
Nice pictures, it looked like the show was quite busy, which is good to see :)
That girl in the last pic is very pretty too.
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 4 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 30-Aug-2003 21:17 GMT
Sorry in advance, but I couldn't resist this:

(From the photograph...)
>The young man in the T-shirt marked "Suicide Machine" had the typical reaction
>to seeing MorphOS and Pegasos for the first time

Was that:

A. Said "Duhhh!"
B. Vomited over the keyboard.
C. Committed suicide.

:-)

Another alternative caption for the FIRST picture is...

"Also appearing were the original developers of the Commodore VIC-20"
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 5 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 30-Aug-2003 21:18 GMT
Damn, I meant second picture!!!
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 6 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Daniel Miller on 30-Aug-2003 21:35 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Lando):
Computerfest was pretty busy. Amigafest was a smaller gathering inside Computerfest, and it was not quite as busy. It seems to me that these events, whether in California, Ohio, or Washington DC area, are in something of "survival mode." The Amiga community can't really sustain the attendance on its own, but has not yet folded itself into the retro scene of C-64s and Atari 8bits and Apple IIs and Sinclair ZX81s. So it is in a certain awkward limbo.

In my view Genesi senses this but furnishes support for these fading shows in an attempt to build a framework for the future. Genesi has done like 14 or 15 of these by now, not making any money or selling product, but rather networking, gaining knowhow, and making an infrastructure. The strategy has been to build this infrastructure in preparation for a mature, capable, low cost alternative computer system and/or STB which will be mass-marketed and sold via these and other channels. So Genesi's motives are business-related and not entirely altruistic, but it's still a win-win situation for the Amigans and user groups who like to organize and attend these shows.

A lot has happened in the last year, but even more has to occur in the year ahead. We got to get out of survival mode and get behind some new products!
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 7 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Daniel Miller on 30-Aug-2003 21:46 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (Darrin):
Darrin, I give you props for caption C, if only because that's the same gag that occurred to me after I actually read the page I had written. ;) I tell you seriously though, that almost everyone who witnessed Pegasos and MorphOS 1.4 was thoroughly awestruck, and I spin you not.

I should say I am not 100% sure what the guy's T-shirt says. I remember talking to him a bit but not reading his shirt. It looks from the picture like it might say "the Suicide Machine" though. Maybe it is some Christian fundamentalist slogan that I am misreading though. ;)
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 8 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 30-Aug-2003 22:42 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Daniel Miller):
Thanks Dan. :-)

It does look like it was a great show. Hell, how can hanging around with a bunch of Amiga users NOT be great? :-)

I'm sure MorphOS does look awsome, but I'll have to take your word for that (and the screenshop pics that do look fantastic) as I don't have any hardware to run it on myself and I never seem to be free to attend a convention. I don't know any Pegasos owners in Louisiana or Texas either.
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 9 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by bbrv on 31-Aug-2003 01:05 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Darrin):
Hi Darrin, there is at least one in Texas, two in Alabama and five in Florida...

You are surrounded.

Come out with your hands up!

;-)
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 10 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 31-Aug-2003 10:02 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (bbrv):
LOL.

<Darrin starts to raise a white flag, stops and thinks, then replaces it with a red & white chequerd flag!!!>

"You can take my AmigaOne when you pry it from my cold dead fingers!!!"

;-)
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 11 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by bbrv on 31-Aug-2003 10:10 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Darrin):
Keep it.

We will send you a bootable MorphOS CD....one day.

:-)
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 12 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 31-Aug-2003 10:29 GMT
In reply to Comment 11 (bbrv):
>We will send you a bootable MorphOS CD....one day.

AND a t-shirt??? Thanks, I may hold you to that :-)

Actually, I don't have an AmigaOne yet as I cancelled my pre-order as the A1 Earlybird/OS4 delivery dates kept slipping. I'll reorder when OS 4 comes out. Hell, I cant even order a Pegasos to play with while I wait as they're all gone!!! :-)
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 13 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 31-Aug-2003 10:32 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (bbrv):
>two in Alabama

When did they get electricity in Alabama???

<Darrin ducks>
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 14 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by bbrv on 31-Aug-2003 12:23 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Darrin):
Darrin, just an oversight on our part. You definitely need a MorphOS T-Shirt! :-)

Alabama is where Wayne Hunt and Dave Crawford are...Mr. Amiga.org and Mr. MorphZone. Power?! They have PegPower! :-)

R&B

P.S. Thanks again Daniel!
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 15 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 31-Aug-2003 14:27 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (bbrv):
Amigafest????? All I see is crappy pegasos boxes?
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 16 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Jupp3 on 31-Aug-2003 18:13 GMT
In reply to Comment 15 (Anonymous):
>amigafest????? All I see is crappy pegasos boxes?

Of course, you would prefer seeing NOTHING... :-)
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 17 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Eric S. on 01-Sep-2003 04:38 GMT
In reply to Comment 16 (Jupp3):
Guess you didn't see the A4000T and A1200 at the AmiTech booth. There was also a 'museum' of Amiga models A1000 and up. There were also a few Amithlon-based systems there. FWIW, the Pegasos/Morph system smoked an Amithlon machine (both with the same MHz CPU) on a side-by-side render test with Alladin 4D.

Oh, and Dan, the guy you list as an Amithlon user is actually an A1200 user.
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 18 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Eric S. on 01-Sep-2003 04:45 GMT
In reply to Comment 17 (Eric S.):
Forgot to mention - We (Amitech) made a strong effort to get an Amiga One system to the show, but it didn't really work out. Of course, at the show we saw an Amiga One owner from Indianapolis, who told us he would've glady brought in his system if he knew we wanted on there. That's the way things go sometimes.
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 19 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Daniel Miller on 01-Sep-2003 09:53 GMT
In reply to Comment 17 (Eric S.):
> Guess you didn't see the A4000T and A1200 at the AmiTech booth. There was
> also a 'museum' of Amiga models A1000 and up. There were also a few
> Amithlon-based systems there. FWIW, the Pegasos/Morph system smoked an
> Amithlon machine (both with the same MHz CPU) on a side-by-side render
> test with Alladin 4D.

That's right. In benchmarking that render, Pegasos and MorphOS performed better than the Amithlon machine with similar MHz. Ed Vishoot, the Amithlon system owner and something of a "power user," said that since the machines were similarly spec'd we were really measuring the relative peformance of the JITs.

In the interest of full-disclosure, we also benchmarked an Amithlon system at 1.6 GHz or something which rendered faster than Pegasos and MorphOS.

> Oh, and Dan, the guy you list as an Amithlon user is actually an A1200 user.

Okay, I fixed it. As for the "Amiga museum" I should have some more pictures later and I'll see about uploading them. I didn't really seem to have any good pictures of that or I would have put them up.
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 20 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Joe "Floid" Kanowitz on 01-Sep-2003 10:15 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Daniel Miller):
Sheesh, it's a band...

http://www.piercedpark.com/music/SuicideMachine.htm

When comparing PPC to Amithlon, don't forget that the PowerPC probably picks up a 'free 50MHz' or so for greater IPC and/or other small efficiencies of the design - of course, in tradeoff for not scaling past a GHz until recently - and atop that, the x86 box has to make a few endianness conversions that the PPC code won't have to worry about. So one would hope a PPC JIT would 'smoke' it (real-world confirmation is good; people tend to do their workloads there, after all), but the interesting part would be 'by how much?'
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 21 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Joe "Floid" Kanowitz on 01-Sep-2003 10:34 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (Joe "Floid" Kanowitz):
(Doh)

...because with that information, we could derive the actual value proposition for PPC versus the inefficient-but-cheap-at-high-clock x86 side of things. For people with legacy software to run. (Was the Peg-beating machine 1.6GHz (1900+), or a 1600+? They're both around $50 on Pricewatch now, so it'd be charitable to call it around $200 with a nice mainboard and heatsink/fan. The Peg's RAM is probably more expensive, while the AMD will have you more concerned with an expensive power supply... but if the Athlon barely edged it out, at least that shows things within $100 of 'roughly comparable.')
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 22 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Kronos on 01-Sep-2003 10:55 GMT
In reply to Comment 21 (Joe "Floid" Kanowitz):
Don't forget 20Euro for a heatsink/fan + 20Euro for the Aspirin,
or 50Euro for a good heatsink/fan .....
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 23 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Joe "Floid" Kanowitz on 01-Sep-2003 13:26 GMT
In reply to Comment 22 (Kronos):
Kronos said,
> Don't forget 20Euro for a heatsink/fan + 20Euro for the Aspirin,
> or 50Euro for a good heatsink/fan .....

Hate to say it, but that was charitably included in the $200, like I said. Pricewatch shows I could get a reasonable mainboard for something around US$40 these days, and the chip for $44 or $53... not including shipping, but still closer to $150 with the HSF. If you tried to get all three pieces at once from a retail storefront, I could imagine $200. (Never looked to see what CompUSA or Best Buy get for mainboards.)

The $40 boards are, of course, mostly KT133As using plain SDRAM (though there was a KT266 in there), and I imagine these are still getting more markup by places that don't see enough turnover to treat them obsolete. If I move up to my opinion of 'reputable' (EPoX), one of their designs is out there for $55.

...and if I went up to something *in* the $100 range, it'd have so many extra features that I'd be getting called out over that.

If it makes you feel better, you can tack on another $20-$30 for a retail network card, and the same again for Firewire... though I can't remember if Amithlon ever grew support for the latter anyway. And tack on $sizeof(infinity)+1 if you accept that new licenses of Amithlon are of questionable legal repute. (Yep, still up for sale: http://www.vmc.de/amithlon/eng_ami_cost.html)
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 24 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Daniel Miller on 01-Sep-2003 16:29 GMT
In reply to Comment 23 (Joe "Floid" Kanowitz):
The modern X86 system is going to cost you more by the month for its entire life span because it consumes more power. So you can detect it in your light bill. The latest Pentium4s consume 100 watts. The processor in Pegasos consumes 5 to 8 watts depending if it's idle or running a DIVX or whatever. So the monthly power cost differential ought to be considered.
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 25 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Daniel Miller on 01-Sep-2003 16:42 GMT
Here's another picture that shows some of the classic Amiga systems that were on display at Amigafest. That's Eric Schwartz and the 1084 (or 1080 or 2002 or whatever) in the foreground is showing his animations.

http://linux.tc3net.com/daclmi/af_comp.gif
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 26 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Joe "Floid" Kanowitz on 01-Sep-2003 17:37 GMT
In reply to Comment 24 (Daniel Miller):
Daniel Miller said,
> The modern X86 system is going to cost you more by the month for its
> entire life span because it consumes more power. So you can detect it
> in your light bill.

Quite true. So if you must, tack on the extra $15-$30 of converting two or three more bulbs in the house to compact fluorescent to compensate. ;)

(As beastly as that P4 - currently the hottest desktop chip out there - is, isn't that still a peak number? Your heatsink must be built to handle it, and that fan's going to suck some juice itself, but IIRC, idle is still closer to 50W on that, Athlons can get down to 30? or so when not being stressed depending on model, and Opteron _40s are supposed to survive demoing without a heatsink? http://www.eweek.com/print_article/0,3668,a=40576,00.asp )

You've got to factor in the drives, peripheral and power-supply losses, too. Running an old 486 (6W dissipation, plus older, less-efficient chips on the mainboard) headless still put a noticable bump in the power bill... especially since I kept its drive spun up and installed it in concert with a 14W DSL modem with what's doubtless a rather lossy power brick. ;) Adding my 50W Athlon Thunderbird machine was less painful than I expected, since the CPU was only pulling that much peak (though still toasty, true), and switching supplies are relatively efficient.

Oh, and yes, the toasty little DSL box is branded "Efficient Networks." Their earlier models apparently had a habit of melting.
First Pictures from Amigafest 2003! : Comment 27 of 27ANN.lu
Posted by Daniel Miller on 01-Sep-2003 18:09 GMT
In reply to Comment 26 (Joe "Floid" Kanowitz):
Joe "Floyd" Kanowitz says:

> Quite true. So if you must, tack on the extra $15-$30 of converting two
> or three more bulbs in the house to compact fluorescent to compensate. ;)

Wait, those lights were already converted over. ;) So we'll have to tack those costs back on to the X86 system.

Could have sworn I read the Pentium4 at 3 GHz guzzles 100 watts idle, but Intel lists a "thermal guideline" of 81.9W.
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