Pictures from Amiga2001 in Cologne

These are some slides I took at the Amiga2001 show in Cologne.

A bit of background info: Once again, I couldn't tempt any of my fellow Danish Amigans to join me on the trip to Cologne. Fortunately, my wife Jette wanted to come with me also this year, and since we felt the flight last year had been a bit uncomfortable and tiring and not really saved that much time, we decided to go by car once again. That's a drive of a bit over nine hours each way from and to Copenhagen, but the weather was nice, and we enjoyed a smooth and relaxed ride both ways.

We stayed at the Jolly Hotel right next to the show again this year. We arrived late Friday afternoon and left for home early Sunday afternoon, which allowed me to spend time at the show both days, while Jette was shopping and sight-seeing downtown.

The show was very crowded. It took place in an even smaller venue than last year, but it seemed like there were actually more people, so everybody was more or less pushing everybody else around the narrow aisles. Lots of prototypes; Pegasos, SharkPPC, USB card, etc., but also lots of stuff to buy. And probably most important: the opportunity to talk to the developers and dealers in person and find out some more about what they think about the state of things and which way they intend to go. There were also some informative talks about AmigaOS XL and about the plans for AmigaOS 4.0. And last but not least, the chance to again meet some of the people I usually only get to communicate with over mail or news. All things considered, I once again enjoyed the show, and it was well worth the trip.

Enjoy! And greetings to everybody I met there - and those I missed!


Niels Bache (nbache2@mail.dk) Niels Bache

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1: A view from outside up into the crowded oval show hall.Slide 1 2: This entrance was closed in order to create a seminar room just inside it.Slide 2 3: Lots of people already in place, waiting to hear about Amithlon/AmigaOS XL and OS 4.0...Slide 3 4: - hardly even standing room left. At least until it turned out that the start of the seminars had been postponed.Slide 4 5: Looking from the first floor down into the Atari section. The seminar "room" was behind the light walls in the extreme left of the picture.Slide 5 6: Upstairs, in the smaller show room, Vesalia's booth. A fancy aluminum cased Pegasos prototype is on the counter.Slide 6 7: A closer look at the Pegasos prototype.Slide 7 8: There's bound to be more Pegasos boxen somewhere behind that crowd.Slide 8 9: In the meantime, a look at the other hall. Falke Media, the organizers of the show, and a big German magazine publisher. Yes, there are still real, printed Amiga magazines in Germany.Slide 9 10: Epic's biggest attraction seemed to be a Mac game (huh?).Slide 10 11: At H&P, Gudrun Haage was as usual on her feet seemingly constantly. This year assisted by Michael Kinch. A new employee?Slide 11 12: Martin Steigerwald and Markus Pöllmann demonstrating Amithlon and AmigaXL, respectively, on two of the fancy new tower systems.Slide 12 13: At one end of the hall, APC&TCP had their booth.Slide 13 14: Elbox were strategically placed on the platform between the small, Pegasos-/MorphOS-oriented hall and the bigger, more AmigaOS-/H&P-centered one.Slide 14 15: Another look down in the Atari section.Slide 15 16: Finally the seminars started. Jürgen Haage presents the AmigaOS XL package and the new PC towers to run them on.Slide 16 17: Again a big crowd, and they are all ears.Slide 17 18: Then Ben Hermans of Hyperion took over and told about their OS 4.0 plans.Slide 18 19: This presentation actually ran on an Amiga, as far as I could determine. VM and resource tracking in 4.0? Sounds fine to me (but let's see it before we rejoice).Slide 19 20: The Frieden twins in the far left corner, Ben Hermans with the mike, and Jürgen Haage listening closely in the background.Slide 20 21: Some of the questions were in German, so Ben was assisted by the natives.Slide 21 22: Martin Steigerwald getting the full amiga-news.de treatment.Slide 22 23: Not much of a betatester's meeting this year. Wolfgang Hosemann (left), myself, and Martin Steigerwald were the only ones there; Oliver Tacke (right) isn't a betatester (but did make the nice GlowIcons).Slide 23 24: And Martin was busy showing people that Amithlon could also run on a laptop.Slide 24 25: Still a big crowd there. Jürgen Haage chats up a customer, while Wolfgang Hosemann has gone over to bother Markus Pöllmann.Slide 25 26: Jens Schönfeld, Individual Computers, fully recovered from his car accident, but behind schedule on the Delfina board.Slide 26 27: Towards closing time Saturday you could actually get close to most booths; here Cool-Bits and APC&TCP.Slide 27 28: Sunday morning, a much smaller crowd listening to Jürgen Haage's AmigaOS XL presentation.Slide 28 29: Amiga-news.de as usual shared space with the club people, among them Volker Mohr (background center), this year with a nice hardwood cabinet A1200 (without numeric keypad).Slide 29 30: You could also get refills and other printer-related products for almost any printer (right).Slide 30 31: Upstairs again. Today, you could actually get close to bPlan's Pegasos prototype.Slide 31 32: Some of the parts that go into a Pegasos.Slide 32 33: ElBox's SharkPPC prototype (mockup?) was one of the most photographed objects.Slide 33 34: And it did look impressive.Slide 34 35: Amiga-news.de, and Rolf Tingler (top right) wielding his airbrush on unsuspecting cell phones.Slide 35 36: Still lots of business at H&P's stand. Gudrun Haage, Michael Kinch, Jürgen Haage (background, back turned), and Markus Nerding.Slide 36 37: Robot time: This contraption contains four CD writers, being attended by a robotic arm, which lifts each CD medium from the supply stack...Slide 37 38: - and drops it into the drawer which has meanwhile been opened. And so on. When the writing is finished, the CD is lifted out and dropped on another stack.Slide 38 39: Media Park 6 from the outside. Everything took place in those two lower floors. No wonder it was crowded.Slide 39 40: Between number 5 B and the Cinedom they are still busy building the last block, 5 A.Slide 40 41: The skyscraper (Köln Turm - the Cologne Tower) was finished this year. The lower building to the left is the Jolly Hotel.Slide 41 42: The Jolly is a really nice hotel, although a bit pricey. But the location can't be beat - 100 metres from the show.Slide 42 43: Also Sunday there was big interest in Ben Herman's OS 4.0 talk.Slide 43 44: A (relatively) quiet moment for the whole Horbach family: Martin and Andrea with Father Günther and Mother Kaja. Nice to meet them again.Slide 44 45: Michael Battilana from Cloanto demonstrating the 30 times speedup of Amiga Forever 5 over version 4.Slide 45 46: Not a massive crowd, but suitably impressed.Slide 46 47: Tired members of the press getting the last "live" reports done. Petra Struck and Christoph Dietz from Amiga-News.de with Amiga-Club's Hendrik Höner.Slide 47

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