ANT's In The Pants!
by Mikey C

Well not quite, ANT Stands for Amiga North Thames, an Amiga Usergroup that I founded back in 1999. (or was it 1998?) Tch! Memory, I wish I had some, unlike my Amiga, which has 96 MB of ram, I know this because,.

Why did I start ANT? Variety of reasons, one the Amiga user base was vanishing faster than a Pizza at a programmer's lunch and I wanted to arrest that. Two, because I was at the time attending SEAL user group meetings which involved a 64 Mile round trip and finally because it got me away from the wife for a while!

When I started out, I got in contact with a good friend of mine, who at the time was actively managing the AmigaSoc website based in the UK. AmigaSoc managed all the contact details for all user groups in the UK, they also had a system where you could leave your postcode and contact details.

Armed with the list from AmigaSoc, I set about cold calling everyone on that list (about nine in total). Excuse me you left your details on AmigaSoc and I'm ringing up about starting a user group in your area." That's what I should have said, but at the time I was so nervous, I'm sure it came out as "jhjhdkds ghfd gyegghh hgrehegjhgh uyuhu Area!"

Luckily the meaning must have been conveyed and we met up on a cold winters evening in a pub located in Walthamstow, London. UK. Originally, I came up with the name NLAUG which sounds quite painful, so after a few meetings we decided ANT was a tad catchier.

The very first night, 8 people turned up, a good start, over the next few meetings while we were trying to find our feet, attendance went down as low as 3 people. Disheartened, I decided to give it one more meeting. Well, over time our numbers grew to just over thirty members and things were really looking up.

Time and Changing owners have seen our numbers dwindle to about half of that. Those who left moved on to the PC and were never heard of again. I still wonder about those old members, are they happy with their PC's? Is it as much fun? - Don't know. But let that be a lesson to you, chuck away your Amiga and you'll disappear, never to be heard from again!

Today, ANT still exists while Amiga user groups in the UK have generally dwindled down to no more than a handful.

At The Meetings

Because of our location we occasionally receive emails from former Amiga users asking if we'll take their old stuff or if we are interested in buying an AmigaXXXX. Normally though it's Amiga500's which if we kept everyone offered, would have needed a warehouse to store them by now.

Sometimes though, gems drop in our hands for nothing more than a good home. We have seen lots of Amiga A1200, A1200T's, A3000's and A4000's donated to the club since it started. Not to mention, CD32's CD Drives, Printers, Monitors, Software (mostly illegal and promptly binned), Accelerator cards, Hard drives, extra ram etc., etc. (all this is brought to the next meeting and a free for all ensues where everyone takes what they fancies for free or at a small donation to club funds).

Of course we also have a sensible policy that as a user group member you should offer to sell/give away their older kit to group members first. (it's amazing how high spec all our machines have become over the years)

So what do we do at those meetings? Well product demonstration used to be a big thing, but new products for the Amiga have been a bit thin on the ground lately, so we all get together and crochet a Tea cozy for our Amigas.

Okay that last bit I made up! There are still people such as myself who are still upgrading their machines, I recently purchased a Power Flyer for my A1200T and left it for the meeting, because I wanted to share the experience with everyone else there. (truth be told, I wanted one of the more knowledgeable bods in our group to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn't botch it up! - This is one of the main benefits of a user group, free technical support!

Of course over time, those whom remain, have become really good friends, and it's become more of a social occasion when we meet. As always someone has an Amiga problem (normally me) that needs a helping hand tracking down some annoying glitch.

But this is not all that we offer. Steve is the most important person in the group! He ensures that There is always, Tea, Coffee, Donuts, Biscuits, etc, etc, for us to devour. We'd be really lost without him! Of course, we have our club secretary/treasurer, who recently brought a nice car! (hmmm) and our Webmaster, who still hasn't put our website back up!

Have we as a group contributed anything towards the Amiga scene in general? Yep! We play-tested the very much under-rated, but brilliant, Bubble Heroes by the now defunct Crystal Interactive Software and we are one of the main contributing groups to a little show called WOASE in the UK.

The Future

That's down to OS4; all of us in the group are chomping at the bit to get our hands on that particular product. - Hurry up Hyperion!

In closing, Amiga North Thames exists to support Amiga users in our particular patch, either with free upgrades, technical support, advice or tea and coffee! Once OS4 is out, we will also, rediscover our secondary purpose, to help promote the Amiga wherever possible.

We are looking forward to the challenge of learning new hardware (AmigaOne) and the new operating system (OS4), so that when the sheep finally wake up, we'll be there ready to guide them to enlightenment.

For more information on ANT, please visit our website.
But please! Don't offer us your old A500's or A500+'s