ExpoSALT 2000
The alternative systems show
won't stop growing!

At ExpoSALT
Me (holding my A1200 manufactured in Brasil by PCI), next to the BeOS Brazilian Users Group Team booth, and also Celso Guimarães, an Amiga user and enthusiast in Brazil.

ExpoSALT's (Alternative Systems Show) second edition happened in Niterói (a neighboring city to Rio de Janeiro) on January 29th and 30th, 2000, and gathered in the same place a number of options for people who don't want to run Windows on their computers. Systems such as Linux, Amiga, MSX, BeOS, Mac, OS2/Warp, QNX were present, among others.

I gave a lecture about Amiga systems, making a general presentation of the platform, showing its main technological differences which make a system more than ten years old still be used all over the world. The main focus was on the issue about choice; what we choose to use and the computers on which we run these choices, and not being held prisoners by the interests of PC software and hardware manufacturers, since we must not let commercial factors be the only determinant of our decisions in life.

Amiga used to be manufactured in Brazil by PCI, and on years when it was impossible to find an Amiga being sold at stores in Europe and USA you could buy it here by phone, without having to go out! :)

Here, A600, A1200 and A4000 models were manufactured for a number of years, of course with a license provided by the late Commodore. The end of Commodore was also the end of Amiga being manufactured in Brazil.

I showed some 64Kb demos from Scoopex and SpaceBalls, in order to demonstrate what a 7-years-old machine is able to do with "a few" powerful resources (I used an A1200 with 030/50, but I would have loved to be able to show an Amiga with PowerPC), Voyager3 browser, the system dealing with JPEG images via datatypes, a brief explanation about how AGA chipset video architecture works, among others.

I hope in the future we get more shows like this one, such as "Amichurras" held at the south of Brasil (only for Amiga users) and ExpoSALT, a get together of so many different minds and mindsets in such a democratic space.

Alex Moura <nautilus@geocities.com>