Tournament treasure chest

[Danny D]

I have this idea of a tournament treasure chest consisting of Amiga machines. When needed this chest that can be anywhere for tournaments.

The A600's formfactor is ideal. 2.4Kg vs 3.4Kg for the 500. No modulators required. lack of numeric keyboard isn't an issue, Steve's ko2CV has fixed this.

Shipping costs might be 50-100 Euro but it's a ready to go kit! No hassle, no worries.

Monitors would be prohibitively expensive to ship I would imagine. What sort of monitors can be used in conjunction with the A600s rgb output?

What else should the treasure chest contain?
UK/EU plug adaptors
power supplies.
rgb to modern monitor converters ?
ko2cv disks.

How would the contents of the chest be funded? Donations of hardware, $ whip arounds at tournaments.
Where would it be stored while not in use? Perhaps the tournament organizer who requested the loan of the chest minds it until it's next needed?

[Freshmaker]

I think most countries (apart from Denmark) have got what they need to hold tournaments of quite large scales. And as you yourself point out; amigas are easily transported. The monitors are the issue. That's why I went to online sites for selling/buying and sought out smaller tv's. I got 4 14" tv's for about € 20, and that's what I needed to pull it off, together with what the germans and swedes brought in.

Considering your desire to host the WC, I'd advise you to rack up tv's. If you've got some room for storage, go get some screens early on. Just make sure they've got scart.

[Danny D]

Thanks for the tips. I was looking online and indeed there are lots of (BEKO) 14" tvs with scart in Ireland for the same price. What were your totals , amigas and tvs ?

[Freshmaker]

Note, I paid €20 in total for the 4 screens.

I think we had 8 working stations. 8 or 9.

[Freshmaker]

I only had 1 amiga my self. John H, Jacob and the Germans (Wolf, Panni, Peter, Thomas) provided the rest.

[Danny D]

I only had 1 amiga my self. John H, Jacob and the Germans (Wolf, Panni, Peter, Thomas) provided the rest.

How many in total ?6 ?

[Freshmaker]

Read above post. 8 or 9 stations.

[Danny D]

LoL !!! Never saw that ! How many again ?

[Freshmaker]

Read above post. 89 stations.

[Torchiador]

I have this idea of a tournament treasure chest consisting of Amiga machines. When needed this chest that can be anywhere for tournaments.

The A600's formfactor is ideal. 2.4Kg vs 3.4Kg for the 500. No modulators required. lack of numeric keyboard isn't an issue, Steve's ko2CV has fixed this.

Shipping costs might be 50-100 Euro but it's a ready to go kit! No hassle, no worries.

Monitors would be prohibitively expensive to ship I would imagine. What sort of monitors can be used in conjunction with the A600s rgb output?

What else should the treasure chest contain?
UK/EU plug adaptors
power supplies.
rgb to modern monitor converters ?
ko2cv disks.

How would the contents of the chest be funded? Donations of hardware, $ whip arounds at tournaments.
Where would it be stored while not in use? Perhaps the tournament organizer who requested the loan of the chest minds it until it's next needed?

Although your idea is nice, unluckily I truly believe it is a dream with no legs.
First: Amiga 600 aren't good for tournaments. Yes, Steve did a mod that somehow compensates for the lack of numeric keyboard. The point is that to use shift-key to change tactic is frustrating. of course there are players that don't mind it as they never change tactic, but players that change often tactic don't really like to play on A600. This is why no A600 are used in international class tournaments.
Assuming A600 would be good to play KO2, the treasure chest wouldn't work though.
Every bloody year we cry for our loved amiga because, although they worked very well at home, once in the world cup venue they stop to live. audio is corrupted, just one channel works, not the other one. you connect your amiga on a tv but there is no signal on it because that particular scart cable doesn't work on that particular tv. Joystick ports stop to work, floppy drives don't read any more. Guys, they are 25-30 years computers and they are very stressed during a tournament, being running for 12 hours straight and dozen of changes of players (joystick plugged in and removed) punches, people nervous that press the keyboard hard after a suffered goal. and unplug the joystick even harder after an undeserved lost.
In Copehnagen we lost one hour and more trying to set up the big screen amiga station, the only working A1200 (who has 2 colours output, one for monitor and one for projector) had the floppy drive broken so we had to use an A500 with modulator and RF cable for TV so for the first time so far we had a world cup final on A500 and RF vision for the players (to be said it wasn't bad though!).
Here is where I want to come: the treasure chest would become a wreckage chest in 0,5 seconds.
Why? who would have care about the hardware inside it? we cannot even guarantee the right functioning of our own home hardware once it is in the tournament room. I cannot figure out who we could guarantee about a chest that we open once every year and after and before a destroyer amiga event like a international class tournament.
I wouldn't spend money to ship a wreckage chest all around Europe.

For the future I'm worried about real amiga stations. it is always more rare to find good working hardware and every year that passes it is worse.
Luckily from the other side I'm really confident we will have laptops that will be able to have a 1:1 input lag-free amiga emulation.
At home I can finally say that I don't miss my Amiga in any way because, thanks to the last technologies I can say that I play real amiga with WinUAE.
I think that in the next few years we will have laptop that will be able to run WinUAE and play kick off feeling no difference with Amiga. That could break the wall and we could arrange a world cup virtually everywhere would like.

[Danny D]

I have this idea of a tournament treasure chest consisting of Amiga machines. When needed this chest that can be anywhere for tournaments.

The A600's formfactor is ideal. 2.4Kg vs 3.4Kg for the 500. No modulators required. lack of numeric keyboard isn't an issue, Steve's ko2CV has fixed this.

Shipping costs might be 50-100 Euro but it's a ready to go kit! No hassle, no worries.

Monitors would be prohibitively expensive to ship I would imagine. What sort of monitors can be used in conjunction with the A600s rgb output?

What else should the treasure chest contain?
UK/EU plug adaptors
power supplies.
rgb to modern monitor converters ?
ko2cv disks.

How would the contents of the chest be funded? Donations of hardware, $ whip arounds at tournaments.
Where would it be stored while not in use? Perhaps the tournament organizer who requested the loan of the chest minds it until it's next needed?

Although your idea is nice, unluckily I truly believe it is a dream with no legs.
First: Amiga 600 aren't good for tournaments. Yes, Steve did a mod that somehow compensates for the lack of numeric keyboard. The point is that to use shift-key to change tactic is frustrating. of course there are players that don't mind it as they never change tactic, but players that change often tactic don't really like to play on A600. This is why no A600 are used in international class tournaments.
Assuming A600 would be good to play KO2, the treasure chest wouldn't work though.
Every bloody year we cry for our loved amiga because, although they worked very well at home, once in the world cup venue they stop to live. audio is corrupted, just one channel works, not the other one. you connect your amiga on a tv but there is no signal on it because that particular scart cable doesn't work on that particular tv. Joystick ports stop to work, floppy drives don't read any more. Guys, they are 25-30 years computers and they are very stressed during a tournament, being running for 12 hours straight and dozen of changes of players (joystick plugged in and removed) punches, people nervous that press the keyboard hard after a suffered goal. and unplug the joystick even harder after an undeserved lost.
In Copehnagen we lost one hour and more trying to set up the big screen amiga station, the only working A1200 (who has 2 colours output, one for monitor and one for projector) had the floppy drive broken so we had to use an A500 with modulator and RF cable for TV so for the first time so far we had a world cup final on A500 and RF vision for the players (to be said it wasn't bad though!).
Here is where I want to come: the treasure chest would become a wreckage chest in 0,5 seconds.
Why? who would have care about the hardware inside it? we cannot even guarantee the right functioning of our own home hardware once it is in the tournament room. I cannot figure out who we could guarantee about a chest that we open once every year and after and before a destroyer amiga event like a international class tournament.
I wouldn't spend money to ship a wreckage chest all around Europe.

For the future I'm worried about real amiga stations. it is always more rare to find good working hardware and every year that passes it is worse.
Luckily from the other side I'm really confident we will have laptops that will be able to have a 1:1 input lag-free amiga emulation.
At home I can finally say that I don't miss my Amiga in any way because, thanks to the last technologies I can say that I play real amiga with WinUAE.
I think that in the next few years we will have laptop that will be able to run WinUAE and play kick off feeling no difference with Amiga. That could break the wall and we could arrange a world cup virtually everywhere would like.

I believe Torchiador's well written post has sunk the treasure chest idea. I didn't consider capacitor degradation in these 20 something old machines. While perfect going into storage there is no guarantee the contents of the chest will be in working order when next used.

Why did Steve pick the SHIFT + numbers for the A 600 ? Could 67890 not be used ?

[Steve Camber]

67890 are already used by TeamA.
We use 8 tactics these days