Nordic Atari Show 2005, Saturday 2 Jun 2005 in Gothenburg Sweden -- a mini-report. (See the association home page at http://www.sak.nu/ )
- (Original MB size has been scaled down to 800x800 webb-suitable linked from thumbnails.)
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This must be the place... |
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The NAS event has been ongoing annually for a decade, after some earlier irregularity, and gathers a core of die-hard Atari enthusiasts (that's Atari the 80s 16/32-bit computer by Atari Corp, not the Infocom games label) for what effectively is a national show with sometimes strong European presence.
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This is definitely the place! |
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It's a fairly agnostic affair, despite the hard-core pro-Atari slant, and not only Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon/clones are visible. Appearances can deceive too, because numerous Atari mobo have been mounted in PC-style cases to give better expansion potential (and better stock PSU).
| A Stacy, old enough to vote, but with very dim screen, next to a MegaSTE driving a modern LCD. |
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The classic ST and STM monitor. Absurdly low "high-resolution" and small screen by today's standards. |
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ST/STE ran 16 plane color as 320x200, medium 4-plane as 640x200, and high-resolution monochrome as 640x400. The GUI (GEM) itself could theoreticaly manage up to 64Kx64K, though with a 4 MB (ST) or 14 MB (Falcon) maximum RAM, it was more realistic to set up virtual desktops that were 4x or 16x the screen size. Falcons got 256-color VGA support. Remember, we are talking 1985-1990 here... Most PCs were easily outperformed.
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A C-Lab Falcon shows all. |
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More mods... |
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Virus-free low-fat Internet café :) Familiar sites in unusual rendering. Edward tries his hand at surfing Atari-style. |
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Enthusiasts have continued development of software to let Atari owners reap the benefits of the Web: browsers, ethernet, support for new harware busses. Debian Linux distributions also routinely support Atari alongside many other platforms, though realistically only the 68030-based machines (TT, Falcon and clones) have full support for Linux core features.
| Not a guys-only affair. (But close.) |
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| The day's special guest. R. Czuba, designer of faster and better Falcon add-on boards. Also see http://www.czuba-tech.com/ |
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...Spoke about the new "Hawk" project, an open-source hardware platform. |
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The point of the Hawk project is to provide a stable yet flexible open-source hardware platform around the PPC processor and select high-performance bridges. Current PC (Intel) and other platforms are effectively "closed" to independent developers. You might be surprised to learn how much useful software has been reverse-engineered around hardware that vendors and manufacturers refuse to divulge exact specifications about, NDA or not.
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A 520ST, real cheap. But interest is elsewhere. |
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| And at the real "café", Jonas M-N grabs a bite to eat. |
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