Cloanto at Saku 2001

Cloanto had the pleasure of joining Saku 2001, the Amiga event organized by the Finnish Amiga Users Group and held at Heureka, the Finnish Science Center, on September 1st.

During the event the public and Cloanto developers had a chance to exchange ideas about the Amiga universe in general and Amiga-PC connectivity and emulation in particular. The latest experimental version of WinUAE, which includes a just-in-time (JIT) compiler created with the gracious contribution of Bernd Meyer, was available for testing, and impressed for its amazing speed. Tasks such as opening folders, compiling Personal Paint with SAS/C, image processing and word processing appeared to be more than 10-20 times faster (more than 50 times faster at certain specific operations, such as color reduction with Personal Paint) than with the emulation as included in Amiga Forever 4.0. Use of DirectX functionality and native x86 code for graphics-intensive tasks resulted in speeds which appeared to easily exceed those of JIT-enabled emulators on other platforms, while at the same time supporting the widest possible range of hardware. Like other programs which have recently been announced, although very fast, this new emulation still needs a few refinements, after which it will be available as a recommended and free upgrade to users of Amiga Forever. Buzzwords like "custom chips", "native x86 code", "virtual memory", "TCP/IP", "run from CD" and "fastest Amiga ever", to mention only a few, while perhaps not completely familiar to those who just joined the enthusiasm for Amiga emulation, have been associated with Amiga Forever since 1997, when Cloanto made it possible for emulation to grow and prosper to the levels it reached today without fear of legal consequences. Cloanto also announced that it will soon release a completely new and free tool to the emulation community.

The pictures below include photographs taken during the show, at the auditorium, and during the raffle of T-shirts. The first picture (provided both in the original size in true color PNG format and as a more compact JPEG image) is a grab of the screen as shown during the demonstrations of Amiga Forever at Saku.  It includes two Amiga sessions running side by side, one running Workbench 1.3, and the other with the most recent ROM and operating system and featuring the JIT compiler, TCP/IP, virtual memory, etc., while on the Desktop a window shows the contents of an Amiga connected to the PC via Amiga Explorer. 

Some pictures courtesy of Sami Ylönen and Risto Mäki-Petäys. Thanks to Tuomo Mämmelä for making available his Amiga 600. Thanks again to all organizers and attendees for making this great experience possible.

Other Fall-Winter 2001-2002 Events

Cloanto at Spoletium 4 (Spoleto, Italy)

Cloanto at Amiga 2001 (Köln, Germany)

Cloanto at World of Amiga 2001 (London, United Kingdom)

Cloanto at Pianeta Amiga 2001 (Empoli, Italy)

Cloanto at Alt-WoA 2002 (Huddersfield, United Kingdom)

Cloanto at AmiGBG 2002 (Göteborg, Sweden)

Cloanto at Amiga Expo 2002 (Baltimore, MD, USA)

Links

Saku 2001 Homepage:
http://saku.amigafin.org

Personal Note

Thank you again to all organizers and attendees of SAKU 2001! I greatly enjoyed the visit. Special thanks also to all those Amiga Friends who took extra time to accompany me and make this experience so special. The pictures below are from a small 640x480 camera, so the quality is perhaps not as good as the memories, but still the two play very well together, especially in consideration of all the Finnish drinks I had a chance to taste... As you can see immediately after the "questions/beer anyone?" speech somebody promptly offered me a beer, and that's how the post-show evening started. Not sure if the trick will work next time as well though... ;-)

As I am here, I would like to invite you all to our Codex Alpe Adria event, which takes place near Venice, Italy.