Next:
More on surviving amongst hobgoblins and taniwhas:
A
LegendTop
- Next
Competent repair services in Auckland went in two or
three years, motherboards getting difficult to repair.
Second hand sales gave us new members from some areas
and lost us members from others but that process has
long since dried up. The occasional new member now is
likely to be some big system owner come in from the
cold, or arrived from UK.
The New Zealand Commodore User Group, early in 1996,
transformed into the Auckland Commodore User Group,
AKCUG, and became a branch of Amiga Auckland, bringing
with them a large and well developed BBS (Sysop Richard
Doull) and considerable funds, having put money by
during the years of plenty, unlike the former New
Zealand Amiga Club. This money is now committed to
buying new Amiga hardware and software so members
can see and experience it at meetings first hand as soon
as it is available. AKCUG decided to cease operation
late November and held a wake, with C64 in a coffin, at
our Christmas party (they all have Amigas and/or PCs
anyway). The new Commodore One? Alas!
Later the same year Southeast Amiga joined us, having
split from the earlier New Zealand Amiga, like a number
of other groups. Neither AKCUG or SE Amiga made a huge
bump in our membership. Still it helped a lot.
We now had lots of CDs and a three line BBS with
Aminet CDs on it. Through the BBS, members could read
newsgroups, receive and send e-mails Internet accounts
were still too expensive for many of us and the BBS
remained active, particularly with respect to Fidonet.
When "wild" Amiga users innocently went to computer
stores they were met with blank looks, even derision, so
we left cards at the stores to refer them to us. Now, at
a store where people do know their computers, mention of
Amiga is met with the respect due a legend of antiquity,
like owning a vintage car, but none I've met realize
that a change may be in the air. To them a big change
would be deigning to consider Linux - Intel only of
course :((( Next
Have we heard it
Before?Top
- Previous
- Next
Hopes rose and fell with news of Viscorp, then
Gateway. Now the Viscorp people run Genesi. Where there
has been hard news of MorphOS and later Pegasos I've put
it in the Amsmag but somehow no one in our group that I
know of, has taken steps to getting a Pegasos. It may
happen. A couple of members got Mediators, and now and
then developments are shown off at meetings, and of
course those with PPC boards on their 060s also await
OS4. More wait to see how the A1 and OS4 stack up.
We tried to be positive but a certain cynicism
developed - until Bill McEwen and Fleecy Moss launched
Amiga Inc. It took a while. We thought they may be
hopeless optimists and could not see them finding much
finance, but we cheered them on anyway. Now we see them
finding useful markets. We have taken advantage of the
succession of developments, OS 3.5, 3.9 since the advent
of Amiga Inc., felt the difficulties, and believe
Hyperion and Eyetech, with whom our members have dealt
for years, are substantial, and credible operators.
Next
The Amsmag goes
HTMLTop
- Previous
- Next
Our regular Amsmag Masthead produced with
Draw Studio by Chris Spong.
With the advent of cheaper IPs and more of them,
members got their own Internet accounts and downloaded
directly so interest in bulk buying of CDs through the
club faded to nothing as did use of the BBS. Borrowings
from the library have almost ceased. With fewer numbers
we can no longer find an expert on everything within the
club, as we used to. I have to search the Internet for
Amsmag content whereas formerly the members supplied
enough.
November 98: members got an AmigaGuide Amsmag instead
of Magnetic Pages. In November 2001 I upgraded my ARexx
scripts to produce an html Amsmag as well as the guide
version. Members with only PCs or Macs, and secret PC
users who only kept Amigas to read the Amsmag, made loud
huzzars of pleasure. Graphics assumed a larger
prominence. Subject matter includes a lot of items that
have nothing to do with the Amiga or even computing,
just to add interest.
Here, one of our
members is defending his hat, making our front
page. |
We think the change to html has contributed
substantially to maintaining the club, the content
usually between 50 and 60 pages, with lots of navigation
buttons. Very few still prefer the guide on disk.
About the same time we got our Website up and
running, our webmaster, Garran Whitley, using it to
duplicate info he does not want to see lost, and to
provide lots of interest. The focus now is on the
AmigaOne.
I was BBS sysop for a few years but low activity led
to termination of the BBS in mid-2002. Next
Virtue of a good
ProjectorTop
- Previous
- Next
November 2002: Central Amiga moved to a venue at the
Hauraki Kayak Group Clubhouse, Coxs Bay, where there is
a very convenient wall, painted white for use with
projectors. Since a few months earlier we began to use a
projector to enhance our presentations. This has given
us a tremendous lift. Never before did I really see what
was happening. Now we all do. It makes a difference.
Jarno Van der Linden, a very nice guy and good
presenter, benefited from the projector in providing a
demo and explanation of AmigaDE and for this he wrote a
script driven slideshow program for AmigaDE. I wonder if
he has told anyone yet or done more with it? As one who
makes rather good PowerPoint shows (PowerPoint 2002) I
am keen on anyone who can develop something comparable
or better for the Amigas of the future, with one proviso
- where possible, there should be an ability to display
on other platforms, else shows are very limited, perhaps
through free viewers. Ok! OK! I know! Amiga Anywhere!
:)) At our Christmas meeting we ran three big html
slideshows, generated very rapidly with some ARexx
scripts, which would not happen without that projector.
Last night members solved various problems on my
computer just because everyone could see what was
happening, and pointed out the corrections needed in
this article.
I have been buying software that looks like it will
be supported on OS4, even if it is somewhat crippled on
my, AGA only, A4000. I have hopes of the slideshow
program `Hollywood' for instance. Some of us are looking
forward to the arrival of our AmigaOnes and OS4 so we
can really use our software and have a fun time. Next
Our
futureTop
- Previous
It is our view that the future of our club hangs on
OS4+ and machines to run it. This is the only way new
and younger members will show.
Most members are somewhat aged and the really old do
not want to cope with further change and expense, which
is OK, we will continue to support the classic amiga,
but we expect a further drop in membership before things
improve.
Are our members Amiga users? I am, every day, but
there are not too many. They use their PCs or Macs,
maybe running UAE, Amithlon, Amiga Forever, but using IE
rather than Amiga Browsers, so why are they still
members? Maybe they like the ambience maybe they just
want to be in on what is coming down!
AmigaDE is still remote to us, who are not running
about buying PDAs, or interested in playing games on
tiny machines (whether age or eye damage
from computer screens, we can't see on anything less
than a 17" screen anyway!), but AmigaOne and
OS4 are almost now. Hope springs eternal they say. True!
|