From: smb@cs.nott.ac.uk (Simon Burrows)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: The ARM Club Open Day [was Re: MultiFs & Apple Macs]
Date: 16 Nov 92 15:41:14 GMT
Organization: <>

In article <1992Nov14.220255.15995@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> mhussain@nyx.cs.du.edu (manar hussain) writes:
>There is currently no software on the Arc to read Mac (high density) disks,
>but it is being written by ARXE and will hopefully be available this side of
>Christmas - if not soon after. Aditionally , given ARXE's floppy drive
>upgrades, I THINK that they might be working on a Mac drive upgrade???

Arxe Systems were demonstrating their latest products at the ARM Club Open
Day, which was held on Sunday in North London (admission free). Their
Incremental Interface Range does look quite tempting, providing a range
of drive options driven by a half-width podule providing 1.6Mb floppy
interface, 3.2Mb floppy and fast SCSI interface. Much of their current
software was available for demo, including Scorpius, ZipFS, MacFS and 
other released & unreleased items. They seem to have some exciting software
and hardware projects in the pipeline, so Arxe is certainly a company to
watch out for [I have no connection with Arxe!].

The Open Day was open to everyone, and the number of visitors was well up
on last year, with a constant flow of people coming through the doors.
All of the current Acorn machines were on display, including the PocketBook
which attracted much attention because they tend to be rather elusive, and
an A3010 was in pieces for people to examine (complete with real ARM250!).

All of the latest games were available for visitors to try out, and could be
bought from two of the Acorn dealers at the Open Day. Black Angel was perhaps
the star attraction amongst the games, now that the court action seems to 
have been concluded (following counter-claims for defamation), although
Fervour appeared to be most popular with the younger visitors (& wives!).

The Editorial Team of Archimedes World magazine was present (including the
Editor, former Editor (now freelance writer) & Disk Editor), giving away
free copies of the November issue of Arc World with disk, flashing (cameras)
like mad and answering all sorts of questions about their magazine, the disks,
the latest news etc, as well as giving technical & general advice.

As well as the dealers, several hardware and software developers were
showing off their latest products, although the emphasis was not purely
on selling the products - the atmosphere was relaxed & friendly compared
with the (excellent) BAU Show, and representatives of the companies spent
a lot of their time fielding questions about the products, as well as
providing on-the-spot technical advice.

Special Needs were catered for by Essex-based company Le Computer, who
were also showing off a range of games and more serious software.

Advice was available on all of the well known packages: Impression, Artworks,
Pipedream4, Squirrel, ArcFS etc (thanks to Digital Services for solving
my problem with Squirrel!).

The day had a distinctly different feel to a Watford Electronics, Beebug
or Acorn Open Day, and it seemed that everyone appreciated the difference.
The companies all claimed to have had a really worthwhile day (even those
not making money, such as Arc World), and hopefully the visitors did too.

Thanks to all C.s.a. readers who came along!

Simon.
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Simon Burrows   smb@cs.nott.ac.uk  psyhsmb@unicorn.nott.ac.uk  +44 533 712030
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