SAM @ ANT - 12th October 2008

I arrived at the Amiga North Thames venue at around five past one, to find four strangers waiting to go in already, now as any ANT member knows, I am never there first, second, third...... oh heck, its lucky if I manage to get there before 2pm!

So, apologising for my fellow ANT members being late (oh the irony) I set about unloading my car, getting the key, to open the Vestry, and letting the poor waiting souls into the venue.

Within 30 minutes most of the ANT crew had arrived and I must say, never in my entire life of hosting Amiga related events have I seen so much chaos! There were cables, boxes, Amigas, Monitors, tables network cables, people making tea, coffee, eating cake, chatting all at the same time!


Eventually the place was organised into some semblance of order and Rigo arrived with his SAM.
Initially we had decided to use a large projector, but we couldn't get both devices to talk to each other, so in the end we decided to use a large monitor (well as large as we had anyhow)


By 2:00pm, we had a good crowd of people turn up, of which (apart from ANT regulars) I only knew one, metaljoe, (John Chandler esq) The rest of the people I can't ever recal meeting previously. (Thats the thing about turning 40, the first thing that goes is the...................)


2:30 pm came and within a few minutes afterwards, the presentation got started, it was pretty much elbow room only by that time as you can see by the picture.

Everyone listened intently as Rigo, presented the SAM, showing it running OS4.1. -- Admittedly, he didn't show its full capabilities, because it was pretty much (and you could see it was) a virgin install and to be honest, he was only just gonna bring it along, plonk it on the desk and let people look for themselves, however I don't think we were at all prepared for the 30 or so people in total who were still arriving by 4:00pm.
- having said all that, and despite him not being prepared for a full product demonstration, he managed to wring out nearly 30 minutes, taking questions here and there. Mainly though the room was so quiet you could have heard a church mouse squeak, as a matter of fact, I think I did!





Later, Rigo kindly helped me to re-house my MicroA1 into a new case, as the old case I initially got, had a failing power supply - in which was a custom PSU (company long gone bust). So, if you are reading this Rigo, thank you very much for returning me back to the land of Amiga usage once more
Having my ?A1 up and running allowed me to show the people who had turned up, OS4.1 running Games, Movies, Wookiechat, SabreMSN etc, whilst it didn't all run smoothly, (I think the ?A1 was still settling in to its new home) I think they all got a fair appraisal of whats OS4.1 is all about.


I would like to thank the people who turned up, many of whom were ex-amiga users curious to see what the fuss was about, whether they came, saw and decided to buy one, I don't know, But at least it does go to show that there is still some interest in the platform from former Amiga users.

Do you know, just between you and me, if Hyperion get a just settlement in the forthcoming court case, this Amiga thing might just catch on.

Here's hoping to a large turn out at the MAG bash event in Coventry on November 1st and to many SAMS being sold on the day.

Cheers!

Pictures of Rigo's SAM440EP
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