1: Ah, there's the door! Let's enter and see what happens.
2: Well, over there ... mmm, pizza! Uh, as I was saying, over there along one wall were a couple of Pegasi, an A1200 and a Mac. All getting along quite nicely.
3: And along the opposite wall, there were two AmigaOnes with the latest OS4 prerelease, and Max Tretene (Soft3) had some of his items on display. I got a good deal on an SiI3114 SATA controller. In the foreground a table where the Italian site Amigaplatform.com had lots of old software and magazines etc. for sale.
4: Further on up the room, it turned into an auditorium with plenty of nice chairs. Good for taking a break as well.
5: In another room across the hall was a more or less continuous video display with various demos, as well as some samples from the videos that will come on the two DVDs packed with the new Amiga Forever 2005.
6: There was also some interesting old collector's items. How about this Altair 8800, complete with the issue of popular Electronics that first presented it, and Bill Gates' handwritten sketch of the memory map for the builtin BASIC?
7: Or the legendary NeXT Cube? It looks a bit like a modern mini tower, it was just slightly ahead of its time, I guess.
8: More oldies but goodies: aTI99/4, a C65, an SX64, and a beautiful chess computer.
9: And here are the innards of an A4000. Well, not just any A4000, of course. It's an early prototype.
10: Next to that is a prototype for the legendary Picasso II graphics card from VillageTronics, along with an original A1000 and a copy of the issue of Byte Magazine that presented it.
11: Back in the main hall, a reporter from a regional newspaper is busy covering the event, while others sample the nice "refreshment" table. There were, at various times during the day, pizza, sandwiches, snacks, cakes, cookies, soda, water, wine, beer, and probably lots of other stuff. And it was all for free. Really nice!
12: The two Pegasi get a good looking over. As usual, Morphos draws quite some attention partly because it simply looks fabulous.
13: Well, the podium is ready, let's get this thing started.
14: So off we go. Michael Battilana (Cloanto), who is the main organizer of the show, bids us all welcome and outlines the agenda.
15: The crowd gather with eager attention.
16: Michael introduces Delilah, who organizes the demo competitions of the day.
17: Christian Zelona of the Mannheim-based company yellowTab starts his presentation. They market an x86 OS called Zeta, which has evolved from BeOS.
18: It looks like a pretty no-nonsense, simple and clear design. Not flashy and overdone like some we could mention in comparison.
19: The boot screen. Zeta can be installed in a few minutes to act as dual boot alternative on a Windows machine. The installation procedure looked very hassle-free.
20: Then Dario Soccoli was introduced, he made a very nice presentation, outlining the developments that had taken place during the three releases of the OS4 Prerelease, and showing various features and capabilities. Max Tretene is sitting over to the right, he later followed up with some tidbits from the latest beta (those that had been cleared for the public, of course ;-)).
21: Among the things Dario showed was the tool he had used to make his presentation, Hollywood. This is the first time I've actually seen it "in real life", and I must say it looks really great. I'll have to get that, I guess.
22: Here are the panels that define how the slides look, with one of them showing behind.
23: Next up were the two Pegasos users, Andrea Maniero and Mauro Nardotto, who showed Morphos and Ambient in all their glory, along with some nice applications. Here we see mplayer in action.
24: And here's some live video. That's actually yours truly there in the centre of the frame, taking this very picture.
25: Right, compo time. Michael introduces the music compo, which had all of four entries, so we had to actually vote to find a winner. Later, in the demo categories, only one entry was submitted for each, so they automatically won. Hopefully there will be a little more activity next year.
26: Delilah and Skan sitting back and listening to one of the music entries.
27: Three OS 4 beta testers lined up for your pleasure: Enrico Vidale (Virtual Works), Joachim Thomas, and Stefano Guidetti.
28: The after-show dinner at the Trattoria alla Ghiacciaia: Michael, Sara (Michael's girlfriend), Maurizio (Cloanto), ?, Valeria (girlfriend of The Dark Coder), Luca Forlizzi (The Dark Coder), Luca Danelon (Cloanto).
29: Luca Danelon, Claudio Marro Filosa (Cloanto), Jens Schönfeld, Andrea Maniero, Stefan Leitner, Joachim (with his DV camera).
30: Andrea, Stefan, Joachim, Andreas Bornmann, Sami Ylönen, Alessandro Sartori (Amigaplatform).
31: Andreas, Sami, Alessandro, ?.
32: Dario Soccoli (Cloanto), Varthall, Luca Giusti (Amigaplatform).
33: Luca Giusti, Enrico, Stefano, Max.
34: The day after: A small group relaxes on a pretty square in downtown Udine: Sami, my wife Jette, Michael, Sara, Dario, and Claudio.