Pictures from the HCC C= GG meeting and Amiga 20-year exhibition

These are my pictures from the HCC Commodore User Group party and 20-year Amiga Exhibition in Maarssen, Netherlands, April 16th, 2005.

By a strange coincidence, I happened to be in the vicinity of Maarssen on the day where this event was taking place. I was on a long weekend trip with my wife, and one of our stops was to visit fellow Amigan and ATO member Ji Yong Dijkhuis in Lelystad, in order to buy his old BPPC A1200, which I was intending to use for betatesting OS4

We decided to visit the event together, and I also contacted Davy Wentzler, who would be there showing his Audio Evolution music recording "studio", and arranged for him to give me a quick tour of the program. I had been looking for that opportunity already in 2003 in Rotterdam, but unfortunately Davy had to cancel his attendance at that show.

We could only attend for the last couple of hours of the opening time, but it still gave us enough time to see everything and get a good impression of the enthusiasm of this user group. What is really amazing is that they have several of these parties/meetings per year, and that so many people attend. Good to see so much life in the scene.

I also had enough time for having Davy give me the grand tour of Audio Evolution, which was really useful and gave me lots of new ideas for exploring. All I now lack is the time to do so.

I should probably make it clear that although this event had a special focus on the Amiga because of its 20 years' anniversary, the user group is a Commodore user group, not (only) an Amiga user group. And there were certainly lots of C64s and other CBM machinery and stuff. Being strictly Amigan myself (I had a ZX Spectrum before my first Amiga), I probably haven't given the other CBM stuff the attention it deserved. It is not out of ill will, just a matter of ignorance and personal preferences.

I should also apologize for the dark roundish regions at the bottom of some of the pictures. I have finally jumped on the digital SLR train with a very nice Pentax *ist DS and a Sigma 18-125 zoom. It turns out that if I use the builtin flash and the widest angle on the zoom, the sunshade should be removed, otherwise the flash sees it and creates that shadow. History has a habit of repeating itself, it seems.

In conclusion, a very nice event. Thanks to the organizers, and especially to Ron van Schaik for welcoming me so warmly and giving me directions around the place.


Niels Bache (webmaster@nbache.dk) Niels Bache

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The meeting took place at a community centre called the "Trefpunt", i.e. the meeting point. I'm not sure why they want passers-by to honk at my wife, though.Slide 1 Yet another beautiful Amigaized car, this one a Porsche 944, was parked outside the centre.Slide 2 Nice paint job! The Porsche was owned by Marvin Droogsma, BTW.Slide 3 Inside, lots of people are buzzing around, playing with and talking about their favourite computers. Here it is Sharwin Raghoebardayal of CoyoteFlux with his famous Amiga hat.Slide 4 Davy Wentzler, "DaveAE", was there showing his wondrous Audio Evolution 4 running native under OS4 on his MicroA1 in a beautiful case. No, that's not Davy there on the right - it's Robin, 8 year old son of show organizer Ron van Schaik.Slide 5 Background, standing: Sharwin, Mark Janssen, Bart van der Meer, and isn't that the other CoyoteFlux brother, Rakesh?Slide 6 Partly the same group of people. To the left of Sharwin is Ji Yong Dijkhuis, who caused the opportunity for me to attend this event.Slide 7 A small group of the many people showing various Commodore stuff. In the far corner, Computer City had a stand with some of their products for sale, and with a prototype of the AHT Ariana running.Slide 8 Ron van Herk, owner of Computer City, giving me a closer look at the Ariana. It's a sort of computer cum HD video recorder, capable of recording two different TV programmes simultaneously, and built around an embedded-class PPC CPU running at about half the speed of an A1 XE. It will come with AROS some time next year. - Someone should do something similar with a MicroA1 ...Slide 9 Another angle of the room, another group of eager users.Slide 10 Jens Schönfeld chatting with a customer.Slide 11 Jens Schönfeld's "shop table".Slide 12 Part of the exhibition room. Neatly in sequence, you have your 1000, 2000(s), 3000, 4000.Slide 13 And a couple of the juicier ones: The A4000T on the table above the somewhat more rare A3000T. Next to them an A600 and an A1200.Slide 14 Also a CDTV and a CD32 were exhibited.Slide 15 And next to the A1000, an A1200 was generating some nice graphics; hard to see here, though.Slide 16 Another look at the A4000T and the A600.Slide 17 Back in the main room. There in the lower left corner, an SX-64, the "portable" version of the C64.Slide 18 Davy Wentzler, author of Audio Evolution.Slide 19 Mark Janssen with his MicroA1 with the OS 4 Prerelease.Slide 20 Mark looking at Mark. Meanwhile we can have a peek inside his MicroA1.Slide 21 Meeting's over, time to pack up and go.Slide 22

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