Next:    More on surviving amongst hobgoblins and taniwhas:

A Legend

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 :(((

Have we heard it Before?

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.

The Amsmag goes HTML

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.

Virtue of a good Projector

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.

Our future

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!