The Australian Roadshow - Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra
By Sydney Amiga Users' Group (SAUG)

Looking back at old agenda for the Sydney Amiga Users' Group (SAUG) <link www.saug.org.au> meetings, it seems long ago that the prospect of a Roadshow in Australia raised its head. At the time, Colin Ward, our OS4 developer/betatester, had been trying to get his Cyberstorm repaired so that he could demonstrate OS4 (on Cyberstorm) to a club meeting. How ambitious it seemed then, how mundane it seems now! While the demonstration was delayed because of hardware problems, it transpired that Steve Bowman, our President, had been having secret discussions with Ben Hermans about the demonstration ;-).

It was going to become more than a demonstration to the Club members - it was going to become a full-on public event, all and sundry invited, reports to the Amiga forums, the works. The Australia-wide Amiga Downunder User Group (ADUG) <link www.amigadownunder.org> was to be the sponsor for the tour. Suddenly the importance of the demonstration assumed frightening proportions. Tony Wyatt, SAUG's Secretary/Treasurer and our hardware expert, worried about the hardware - would it work on the day? How would we guarantee a backup machine? There was no latitude for failure.

Slowly the plans for a European-style Roadshow took shape. Only OS4 beta testers or developers were approved to do the show presentation - anyone with less experience of the OS might make an embarrassing blunder on stage. Since only Sydney had a team of such people, we decided that a Sydney team travelling to all venues, using the hardware available in each city, and taking the remainder with them would present the Roadshow. The cities were to be Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, and possibly Melbourne. The local User Group in each city would organise the venue and share in the total cost for the travelling party.

We discussed the "rundown" - who was going to speak, the subjects, and the duration. Jeff Sereno, SAUG's Vice-President, took the responsibility of making the show look professional, with an audio-visual introduction and a Scala presentation to back up the presenters. We decided that Ross Vumbaca, our resident Linux guru and OS4 developer, would accompany Colin on the stage. Steve Bowman, as President of ADUG, would introduce the Show, and the local User Group would hawk their wares also. For Sydney, Jeff took on the responsibility of finding a suitable venue.

Jeff made up a stunning audio-visual presentation for the introduction to the show, showing a litany of Amiga models and OS screenshots over the years, to the accompaniment of music from Enigma. Ross and Colin sat down and wrote their presentations, then rehearsed them in front of the show team. After a couple of weeks and two rehearsals, we were all satisfied. Andrew Haslehurst printed all the banners on a huge plotter, including a three-metre and a five-metre long banner!

At that time, OS4 would only run on Classic 68k Amigas (not very exciting) and Cyberstorm-equipped A4000s. We found Cyberstorm machines and developers in Sydney and Canberra, but not Brisbane or Melbourne. We decided that Colin's A4000 with Cyberstorm was to be THE machine for the tour, and it had to be made reliable. Tony took it under his control, repaired it and rebuilt it to be "roadworthy". A primary backup Cyberstorm machine was found for Sydney. The secondary backup for the Cyberstorms would be Classic A4000s, running the 68k betatester's version of OS4. We would have some AmigaOnes running Linux, but the main thrust was to be OS4 on the Cyberstorm.

Then, a week or so before the Sydney show, the long hoped-for announcement was made: OS4 now booted on the AmigaOne. Would we have a copy by the day of the show? Ross managed to get a copy to run on his AmigaOne, but we had only one AmigaOne (no backup) and the demonstration of OS4 booting on an AmigaOne had to be a bonus. The main presentation would still be on the Cyberstorm, with the 68k as the backup.

The Sydney venue was a lecture hall at the University of Technology, Sydney.

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As a presentation room, it is breathtaking. Jeff had chosen well, for the room has three drop-down screens, built-in audio and video facilities, and comes with its own guard. Tony ran around with video cables, extension cables, adaptors, and all the stuff that "roadies" like to play with. Steve showed up in a smart green coat that matched his like of green apples, but couldn't find a matching tie.

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Doug Moir, the owner/proprietor of AnythingAmiga (one of the last Amiga dealers extant in Australia), arrived from Brisbane with a trolley full of equipment, including the secret AmigaOne Lite (as it was then called). Doug took one look at all of us, and then ran out to a nearby shop and had "AmigaOS4" T-shirts run up on the spot! Well done, that man!

The Sydney presentation went pretty well for our first attempt. Colin talked about the history of the OS from the developer's viewpoint.

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Ross talked about the history of the Amiga and some of the new features of OS4.

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He then described the AmigaOne board and showed OS4 and Linux booting on it. We never used the Cyberstorm or the Classic 4000. Doug showed off the "Lite" to the audience, then after the show, presented several Earlybirds with their long-awaited XE boards.

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Suddenly, after all the months with only a couple of AmigaOnes amongst us, we were awash with AmigaOnes!

The next weekend we traipsed off to Brisbane (1100 km north). The venue had been organised by the recently started Queensland And Northern Territory Amiga User's Group (QANTAUG), and was a large lecture theatre in the Queensland University of Technology, just as imposing as that in Sydney. Strangely enough, we had a larger audience in the Sunshine State, and there was an audible gasp of excitement, as Doug held up the Lite and the XE side by side by side by side. The show was entirely performed on AmigaOnes, except for the Scala presentation, which ran on a PC.

The third time was in Canberra, the national capital. Canberra is midway between Australia's two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, and is 550 km from each. We drove down from Sydney on the Saturday and after examining the Irish Club that the Canberra Amiga Users Society (CAUS) <link www.actco.org.au/canberraamigausersociety> had arranged for us, we feasted on pizzas on Saturday night. On the Sunday, the show was well attended, despite local thunderstorms that threatened to hail on cars with weak or expensive roofs.

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We enjoyed the less formal atmosphere of the Irish Club. It seemed much more sophisticated to be able to sneak out of the function room, visit the bar and bistro in the next room, and return with a plate of food that you could enjoy without missing the show. At the end of the show, Ross put up a demonstration of Quake running on the AmigaOne, native, with full sound effects from the Soundblaster Live! which is now supported on the AmigaOne. The Canberra crowd was enthusiastic and keen to touch and feel the new equipment and play with the OS.

As we write this, we are enjoying a rest, as Melbourne is still a couple of weeks in the future. Melbourne should be interesting, and we are all looking forward to it. The Roadshow has been tiring for all of us, worrying for some, but has turned out to be less troublesome than we expected. No equipment has failed (touch wood!); everything (that the customers have seen) has worked as intended. We have had a few minor hassles with video projectors that didn't sync to "normal" VGA signals, and presenter's monitors that wouldn't, but by and large it has all gone well.

After the Canberra show, we all gathered outside Parliament House and held up our big five-metre banner for a group photograph.

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This banner, according to reports, can be seen from the International Space Station. It was showering in Canberra that day and we had to wait for the rain to stop so that we could unroll the banner. We didn't want the ink to run! Naturally, once the pictures had been taken, the sun came out!

The crowds so far have been interested, asking many questions, most of which have been well informed. None of the attendees have asked "dumb" questions, all seemed to have a good knowledge of the current Amiga situation. Many of the crowd have been ex-Amiga users who have come to see what the new hardware/software is all about, and invariably have gone away excited, wondering how they are going to tell the wife about this new computer that has just become essential. One fellow even brought his wife along, but strangely, she appeared to be less excited than he was. We have to cater for everyone, I guess.

Pictures by Andrew Haslehurst, Richard Tapp and Kresimir Rogic.