JagFest Micro continued...

I had a chat with Richard Stevens about his Milan 060. The previous owner had stuck a large Atari logo on the top but he was looking to improve the look of the machine, mostly by fitting it in a new case. However, as anyone with a Milan will know, the machine is a curious mish-mash of AT and ATX standards, though nowadays, PC motherboard manufacturers are no better and are going off in different directions inventing all sorts of weird rear port configurations. As such, most cases have adopted a common removable port panel style, and it should be no problem to find a panel with an AT keyboard cut-out. There was certainly no shortage of PC component suppliers (they finally turned up early in the morning - they've obviously got this down to a fine art!) and cases of many colourful and fancy designs were on show.

Our good friends Felice and CiH were among the early arrivals, this time as visitors. At midday, I headed towards one of the various coffee and junk food stalls, feeling hungry again. £2.80 for a hotdog, and that didn't even have onions in it! Mind you, I seem to recall hotdogs being £2.50 at the Atari 90's Show in 1990 so that's well below inflation. Standing in the seating area like two lost sheep were LinkoVitch and Blodge, also as visitors. Apparently they couldn't find the retro section so I pointed at the huge Retro Zone banner and large colourful area just below it!

Time came to start making some sweet music with ACE Tracker. Despite being a beta tester for ACE MIDI, and having a fairly good grasp of trackers in general, I couldn't work out ACE Tracker. CiH came to the rescue (cheers mate) but I got pulled away and when I came back he was well into creating something of his own! As soon as I got control of Peter's Falcon again, I proceeded to show off the cool real-time filters and created sounds from scratch. I then tried to write some tunes, but being musically-challenged I couldn't come up with anything so just recycled some of my old stuff. None of us were really prepared for this demonstration, otherwise we'd have had a MIDI keyboard - Matthew said he could play keyboard, modestly, which is better than I!

Thomas Wellicome made a late arrival (for an exhibitor!) when I got back from getting another snack. He brought his Atari 7800, a machine I've gained more and more interest in lately, for the potential it had and still has, thanks to the home-brew scene. It's a pretty neatly styled machine, too, and drew attention for its looks alone.

I played Galaxian and Pole Position (II, I think) on a tiny black and white portable television screen, with the (in)famous Atari 7800 joypads. The idea of a console that represents more or less the state of the art in its time (of design, not actual release in this case), and can play its predecessors' games as well is really cool, I love this machine! That shiny brushed metal strip with the Atari logo and rainbow colours are fabulous.

On the other side of the Atari stand, where the Jaguar competitions were running, with the screens facing outwards, Stone and Tyrant hijacked one of the screens to plug in Tyrant's heavily modified development Jaguar, to show beta versions of various Jaguar games, some unreleased. These included Alien vs Predator, Jack Nicklaus Golf, Tiny Toons and some other interesting items.

Mid-afternoon, more friends arrived. Hades owner, Paul Williamson, and his son Chris, made the trek up from Peterborough. Paul had been working in the morning but the lure of Papyrus X was a major reason to go. He'd tested and proofed portions of earlier releases and still uses it in preference to Microsoft Word. It was a pleasure to meet these old friends again, we probably haven't met since the last millennium.

Towards the end of the day, having failed to make any awesome sounds with ACE Tracker, I wanted a game of International Karate on Matthew's XE, with that punchy little hidden guitar amplifier. It would have been great with those bone-crunching sampled effects but we couldn't find the game anywhere!

Overall, I played far too much Tempest 2000 with those lovely rotary controllers from Tyrant (Gaztee, did I win anything?). It was a good show in many ways. It enabled friends of the Atari scene to get together and talk, but also being a special feature area in a larger event where modern PCs dominated to the point of blandness, it was a good opportunity to revive the nostalgia of many old timers. I saw plenty of people at the 16/32 stand buying up Jaguars and Lynxes and even older stuff, people I've never seen at recent events. Past Micro Mart fairs have had attendance in the thousands, so of course you could expect there to be a large number of ex-Atari and other retro users there. Nick Harlow said of the fair, "It was a real experience to show other computer users that there is so much life in the Atari user scene. It certainly stirred a lot of memories for folks at the show. Overall the show was very good and everyone enjoyed themselves, roll on JagFest '04!"

Thanks to everyone who attended and all the organizers, especially Shaun and his gang, Gaztee and Nick Harlow. It was great fun, I hope next time I'll get to play on the arcade machines as well.

shiuming@myatari.net

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MyAtari magazine - Feature #4, December 2003