This report is all about my important trip to Amiga 37 in Mönchengladbach, Germany. A city that was turned totally upside down on the 15th and 16th of October 2022 with over 2000 visitors showing up!
The name for the Amiga event was chosen to congratulate the Amiga home computer! It’s been alive for 37 years this year as Amiga 1000 was released back in 1985. In many European countries such as Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom the Amiga computer community is still thriving a lot. The Amiga 37 event is big proof of that!
So, let me take you back to one of the best Amiga exhibitions ever that I’ve been to which begins with a HUGE thanks to Markus Tillman that did so much putting this amazing Amiga event together. Kudos!
Amiga Flix Trip 2022
I began my trip many days before Amiga 37. I decided many months ahead that I wanted to stay and live in Wuppertal, because of its unique suspended monorail. It is something out-of-this-world steampunk alike construction that I wanted to face every day during my stay in Germany.
To reach Wuppertal, I used the FlixBus and FlixTrain services. It took some time to arrive, but with power and WiFi.
The bus trip was quite good. Also, I got to meet lots of interesting people on the trip telling me about various life experiences. I told them back about my Amiga interest and the talk kept on going.
When staying in Wuppertal I got an insight into how much this suspended monorail system means to the citizens of Wuppertal and at the same time got a nice trip by train and later with an Amiga user coming from Wuppertal. He was so nice to give me a lift to and back from the Amiga 37 event. A nerdy trip it was, but I loved it.
Amiga 37 in Mönchengladbach, Germany
Reaching Amiga 37 on the very first day was quite interesting. I’ve never heard of Mönchengladbach city before as I’ve never seen the name at all in my life before. I am no sports fan of any kind but learned quite fast after talking with lots of German Amiga users at the event that this city got a famous soccer team.
Mönchengladbach got about 260.000 living there but is very widespread. I am very happy that I got all the help I needed to get there because the town name was not known at all to me.
Just beside Aldi and REWE store in a huge hall, Amiga 37 was held. It is one of the most beautiful halls that such an event was held in that I’ve seen in my life. This was the perfect choice for Amiga 37 I think. Also, the roof didn’t let light inside so all the companies including Amitopia could show things without no sun interruptions.
What Markus Tillmann and his crew did an amazing work to make this happen.
Amitopia at Amiga 37 showing AmiTube
Together with the tiny Discord team for AmiTube. Amitopia set up a stand and we loved every visitor to our stand seeing that every Classic Amiga is capable of showing YouTube clips.
The developer of AmiTube couldn’t come, and we did have some monitor issues at the beginning.
Other than that the rest of the team had a blast at Amiga 37. We got tons of questions from visitors, with the highlight beeing Amiga Bill that came to interview me (as seen above). It was very spontaniusly done, but I hope it didn’t became too hard to edit.
By showing AmiTube. We mindblowed people by showing what the amazing CDXL player AGABlaster can do for people.
Some visitors though it was all fake. But when explaining that CDXL on the Amiga is as real as it gets! That it is capable of showing video on 68000 and higher.
Visitors got big eyes! Especially when we show cat videos, lol. Which was really funny to see.
YouTube on Amiga is possible thanks to AmiTube and that’s what we wanted to show at our stand. Also, Amitopia had some products to sell. Together with them we gave away AmiTube 1.3 on floppys and Norwegian Kitkats.
The income of the sales at Amiga 37 goes back to the Amiga community in December this year. Thanks to all that donated and to all that visited our stand. It will go to some amazing projects that you can read about below in this article. I had to decide what to focus on and its fully clear for me now.
I must thank McDope for all the amazing help that I got at the stand. He made the floppies for Amiga 37! They were created in a hurry, but looking so good still!
Another big thanks also goes to Amiga Bill (picture) for showing so much interest in AmiTube.
The YouTube on Amiga project been an important one for me as CDXL deserves a higher ranking in the computing history. It is the very first video fileformat that Commodore created with the launch of Amiga CDTV. Marcus (developer) couldn’t come, but I think that we made AmiTube shine at the event!
It is good that Marcus is all good now, as we were worried a lot at Amiga 37.
Other Important Amiga News and Events at Amiga 37
There were tons of stands. Everyone trying to keep the Amiga flame burning including the Amiga 1200 keychain maker that was our neighbour at the event.
With 16GB RAM storage, I can keep my data on it everywhere I go. Great design.
Amiga, Cloanto was at the event!
Mike Labatt talked to me about focus on gaming and how Cloanto and Amiga still struggles because of old history. It feels as if nothing moves on and that it is the Amiga community that is the key to the survival of the Amiga. There are talks about open sourcing AmigaOS, but a blokade from a certain person in Belgium makes this a horrific task.
Mike also talked about Evercade console that is going to bring Retro gaming to the next level. It will get Kickstart Rom License for Amiga Game packs, like the Gremlin One they have. Check out way more info at https://evercade.co.uk/exp/
Antstream is also to get more Amiga games.
A-EON / Acube could announce lots of News
Trevor could reveal to Amitopia that Sam460le will be the final Sam460 motherboard and that A1222 is finally on its way.
This new AmigaOS 4 compatible board from Acube will be out before the end of the year. Trevor also mentioned that A-EON is creating their own operating system as they also struggle with a certain person in Belgium. Enhancer Software/System54 will required AmigaOS4 to load up still but the goal is to make it standalone within 4 to 6 months.
Enhancer Software 2.3 will hopefully be available for all by the end of the year!
A1222 motherboard is finally getting somewhere? MorphOS Team says clearly that they won’t support it, but AmigaOS 4 and the new A-EON OS will for sure. Do check out https://shop.acube-systems.biz/5-sam-motherboards for all the A1222 details you need.
1000 CPU have been secured, 200 initial board production hopefully early next year-PPC notebook might still happen, Acube showed of a prototype. It’s so awesome to see how much effort and energy been put into keeping the PowerPC line up and that is important. Updating both PowerPC and 68k is important for keeping the Amiga platform alive!
Latest MorphOS for Classic Amiga
At the MorphOS stand you could see the latest MorphOS 3.17 running on a phase5 PowerPC accelerator. So, this is something that is being developed.
The MorphOS stand wasn’t the biggest this year. But it didn’t need to. It was awesome meeting them there.
ACA600 for Classic Amiga
Jens from Individual Computers showed of the ACA600 board that will be released later. I am looking forward to that project as the Amiga 600 deserves much more love in my view.
Vampire blackout at Amiga 37
They had the biggest stand at Amiga 37 for sure. But with little interest in keeping the Amiga flame burning and creating their own chips and games they do their own roadmap. Vampire is in my view moving away from what they were going to become.
Vampire was my reason for entering Classic Amiga back when their V2 lineup was announced. But now it is so much bigger than itself.
Its amazing to see their support for Amiga 600 again. But I don’t know how it goes when the leader have thrown out some of the best and most passionated Amigans out of the project. I won’t publish any names as people know who they are. Vampire is a fantastic project, but its been torn down by personal interests rather what the community wants.
68060 Accelerators
The Amazing Warp Team from Poland was showing all of their products. It is the most perfect Classic Amiga accelerator release ever made. I am a user of Warp1260 and I must say it is one of the most stable accelerators ever made for Classic Amiga that I’ve ever had.
Including all of the Warp accelerators that the Warp team had on display for people to see. They also showed the Scandoubler.
Warp is the perfect upgrade for your Classic Amiga as it gives RTG up to 1920x1080x32, 16-bit sound, WiFi, USB, MicroSD slot, 256MB RAM on a card with 68060 + ARM. This solution is so stable when using the latest AmigaOS 3.2.1 with it. The way you upgrade the Firmware of the Warp cards is so easily done compared to Vampire. No need to connect a PC to do it.
Chucky showed of 68060’s too together with TF1260 cards and an amazing 68060 card for the Amiga CD32 console. Some nice speed improvements for CD32 owners there.
Amazing Joystick and Mouse future for Amiga!
I had some time walking around at Amiga 37 when I met the creator of UNITHOR! It is a modern, retro-styled joystick designed for Amiga and other Retro computers using DB9 plug.
You can’t buy the joystick just yet. But Amitopia is looking at putting lots of LOVE for it in December this year. If you missed the Kickstarter campaign but still want to preorder UNITHOR then you must follow them on Facebook as such an opportunity might arise soon.
Including the DB9 standard version. There’s also a UNITHOR version equipped with the USB connector so that it is possible to use it with modern retro consoles and computers.
Jacek told Amitopia at Amiga 37 that the led light in the joystick is reading the copper colors on the Amiga screen. It means that the colors on the screen when playing is transmitted to the Joystick which I think is very very cool.
The UNITHOR looks as if it will be an amazing Joystick! I tested it while playing Jump! at Amiga 37 and this is for sure one of the best joysticks that I’ve tried. It needs to be tested a lot though with Summer Games or Skidmarks though where you have to use the stick a lot to win.
Then I must share the news about the new Tank Mouse in development. It should be on sale by Christmas. It is Optical, Wireless, 1600 DPI 2 button mouse, with a sensor between the buttons that acts like a mousewheel.
It will be released with USB connector. But the author also revealed that a DB9 adapter will come as standard with the final product.
This project is also worthy to support, and so Amitopia decided to give this years donation income to both of these projects. Both are run by awesome Polish guys that knows what the Amiga feeling is. It is thanks to people like them that Amiga lives on forever. Play and use your Amiga in a much more modern way thanks to them. I love it! This is why I do Amitopia. Because of people like this keeping the Amiga spirit alive!
Over 2k Visits to Amiga 37
Amiga37 had Over 2,000 attendance according to this post on Amigaworld.net! There were so many visiting all of the stands at one time it was really hard to get anywhere.
There was also tons of speeches at Amiga 37, but I didn’t have time to go there at all. So, I expect Amiga Bill to bring some nice info on his stream in one of his upcoming streams on Twitch.
The Amiga scene is alive and kicking! This was one of the best Amiga events in a very very long time.
