Today I took my AROS machines to show at a meet of the Midlands Amiga Enthusiiats group. There was a warm welcome even through my AROS machines were the only 'NG' systems there, the other systems being classics with varying levels of epansion, a coule of A500Minis, an A600GS and a MIST FPGA.

There was some interest in AROS and questions on aspects of the OS; There was some surprise, I suppose understandably, at the fact I can use AROS as my 'daily drive'. At the next meet in the new year I promised to bring along some installation media so we can try to install AROS on a couple ot the attendee's laptops. For my part it was really intetresting to see what people had done with their classics so, all in all, quite a posiitive day.

Cheers,
Nigel.

Thanks a lot for doing this! Hopefull after new years there will be more improvements to show

It was my pleasure

I was unsure of the format of the meet beforehand but it turned out to mainly be a 'show and tell' format with demonstrations of partcular software (mainly games) on particular hardware (mainly PiStorm), so I though my focus for the next event (so long as i can get details of the wifi from the organiser) could be OWB. The question was asked "Does AROS have a web-browser?" so I'd quite like to show just how capable OWB is.

Cheers,
Nigel.

Second MAE meet attended. I took along my i7 desktop 32 bit showing 3D games, my i5 laptop 64 bit showing OWB 3.0, my Samsung netbook 32 bit showing some Hollwood programs I've written and my ASUS netbook 32 bit showing Janus with classic games. Whilst there 64 bit was installed one netbook and 32 bit successfully booted on another, with pointers made to this site, the AROSone site and AROS archives.

I get the feeling that amongst Amiga enthusiasts it's not well know just how 'Amiga' AROS is; there was suprise at the ability to drag screens, for instance. There was also again suprise that AROS is a useful system rather than just a hobby, for example I was explaining how I often have to deliver my classes using my Samsung netbook when the P.C. is not working in the room. I guess just got to keep trying to get the message out there...

Cheers,
Nigel.

Very nice! Thank you for doing some evangelism for AROS.

Nigel, thanks for doing this. Educating about AROS is probably the most important thing there is now. I get a feeling Amiga people either have an impression of AROS from early 2000s or don't follow AROS much as they are content with their systems of choice.

Thanks For the next one I think I'll create an AROS FAQ presentaiton using Hollywood Designer and leave that running fpr people to explore.

Cheers,
Nigel.

Just back fro the latest MAE meeting with a couple of outcomes from the event. Firstly they will have a presence at the Zzap show in May, which is a UK national retro-computing event eld in May, and I'll be taking along my AROS machines to that. Secondly, one of the poeple involved with producing Amiga Addict magazine was there and they were interested in my writing some AROS articles for that publication.

Cheers,
Nigel.

Great!

Good outcomes! Looking forward to both

I'm now booked in to exhibit at the ZZap event in May Apprently as its a retro-computing event AROS will count as an 'exotic system'! There was a comment that they will be limiting the number of next-gen systems there so I guess I'm lucky to have had the green light there.

Cheers,
Nigel.

Glad to hear that! How many machines can you bring? Will you be showing both AROS One (native) and AROS Portable? Also do you need any help with preparations?

I've asked to take four machines:

i5 laptop 64 bit. Hopefully this will be running OWB if I can get onto wifi in the hall plus Amiberry and emuv0 running 32 bit apps.

i7 tower 32 bit to show 3D capabilites via Cube2. It also shows how flexible Trident is as I have all the controls mapped to a wireless dual-stick controller. I'll have mplayer running a video or two next to it just to show raw CPU power at work.

AMD laptop. I was planning to run my 'what is AROS' presentation on this. It does run 64 bit nativey but equally could be the AROS portable machine.

Samsung netbook 32 bit to show 2D graphics and AROS with a touchscreen. My plan here is to have an RPi zero 2W cionnected to a screen and acting as a wifi hotspot. The Samsung will then connect to it and send its screen (either SimpleWhiteboard or ZunePaint) for display by the RRi, giving AROS a wireless dual screen display. Obviously it will be possible to send a specific screen from AROS so you could have one displayed on the machine and a different one on the remote screen. I need this anyway for one class I teach in at work - trying to teach A-level Electronics in a room with no smartboard and a tiny, trapped-in-a-corner wihiteboard is becomming bit of a pain.

The other option instead of the Samsung is my Acer Aspire machine which would allow me to fit a bigger touchscreen but it's the one that refuses to have a working USB. Is it possible there will be another release of experimental USB3 before May?

Cheers,
Nigel.

I've been using the send screen application for a couple of weeks in class now.

I decided to park the RPi idea for the moment (as looking on the net it seemed many people were having problems setting an RPi up as an access point) and instead I'm using a little ASUS 4GSurf, running AROS of course, as the receiver connected to the class-room's screen.

My Samsung with its touchscreen then sends the selected screen to the ASUS for display. I combined the sending code with my ViewPubscreen application so I can choose which screen to send; I can be looking at one screen on the Samsung (e.g. with student details or speaker notes) whilst the screen with SimpleWhiteboard is presented to the students. It's obviously easy to flick between the screens as I need to.

So far it's working out well to give rooms without a smart board that functionality and with the added bonus I can stay facing the students rather than having to keep turning back to the board to write. This is on 32 bit (to use Hollywood's networking library) and I appreciate it's a bit of a niche application but if anyone's intersted I'll happily post up the code. In any case, hopefully it will provide an interesting demo of a practical use for AROS at the upcoming show.

Cheers,
Nigel.

P.S. I just saw Hollywood's PDF library was updated and was really hopeful it would finally support the loading of PDFs in AROS' Holywood but unfortunately not. A real shame as it's more capable at handlng current PDFs that our current version of GhostScript.

Glad to hear you finalized your setup and looking forward to hear how people react to your presentation/AROS.