Building the Amiga 40th: a carousel of progress

The Amiga turned 40, and we wanted to do something special about it.

Bill Borsari and I had been talking informally about doing something for a while, but the real start was the last day of AmiWest 2024. On the way back from the show, Bill and I had a multi-hour conversation and started to flesh out the idea. When I got home I wrote up a "treatment" of the show, and over the next few weeks I sketched out my thoughts while Bill started sketching the floor layout.

We talked to Zach Hardesty from the Vintage Computer Festival, and he was fully supportive of helping us celebrate the 40th at the Vintage Computer Festival at the Computer History Museum. Over the following months we talked with the VCF staff, who at first had a hard time understanding what we were trying to do. Perhaps that’s because, up to then, most VCF exhibits had been a few treasured machines on a table. A fully immersive exhibit, more like a pop-up museum, took a little more imagination. :-)

A carousel of progress, for the Amiga

We wanted to tell the story of the Amiga, and I proposed modelling it on Disney’s Carousel of Progress: walk through a series of scenes, each one a moment in time.

It starts at the first CES that Amiga attended. Out front, Amiga showed off joysticks and games for 8-bit computers. Behind a curtain, by invitation only, was the Amiga computer itself, still in its TTL wire-wrap prototype form. So our exhibit began with a facade of the CES 1984 booth, and a curtain took you through to the wire-wraps.

The CES exhibit, complete with video games.

Several racks of wire-wrapped prototype circuit boards on a table in front of a curtain

The original Amiga TTL wire-wrap prototype boards.

Some of the black devbox tooling.

Vintage computers and equipment on a table

Part of the prototype demo.

Two room sets in the hall: a bedroom with a rug and a desk

The bedroom and the NewTek video scenes, side by side.

Alongside them was the tooling it took to run the Amiga, including a Sage computer, and some of the black devbox work, in operation.

From there you walked into a reenactment of a typical bedroom, where so many kids had an Amiga 500 to play games and "help do homework". Next door we paid homage to the Video Toaster with a recreation of a video booth and office.

The NewTek video office scene with monitors and equipment

The NewTek booth.

Then the Future Wall: lots of new Amigas, all stripped bare and mounted on a single wall, and synchronised so they worked as one big display. We also showed the industrial design work of Rob Gemmell. Each scene had a kiosk playing a video that explained it. Bill produced the videos, with some help from AI; the scripts and ideas were all his. I built the kiosks and some of the software that drove the videos.

Building it at home

Almost all of the exhibit was made at my home, with help from Winnie, my son Kyle and Alan Swithenbank. The planning started after AmiWest in October, but nearly all of the real making didn’t begin until July.

The hardest part was the trial and error of working out how to put it all together quickly and on budget. I did a lot of prototyping for things like the CES facade and how we would construct the bedroom. The art for the large prints in the bedroom and the video room was done by Evangelos Goulas.

Alan cutting timber for a tall wooden frame on a driveway

Alan building the frame that housed the demo monitor in the secret prototype room.

Part of the CES facade, loaded onto Dale’s truck.

The Amies trophies

In the evening we held the Amies, giving out awards to people who have contributed to the Amiga. There were lots of small awards for different kinds of contribution, some very small ones to give away, and one very large one that served as a display piece and for people to hold in photographs.

The trophy is a lemming. It was designed in LightWave by an Amiga fan in eastern Europe, because at the time we couldn’t get AI to produce a model that was printable. I printed, cleaned and painted them.

A small gold lemming trophy in front of a large grey 3D-printed lemming

A giveaway lemming beside the full-size one we used for award-ceremony photos and promotion.

The finished full-size lemming.

Close-up of the red and white checked boing-ball base under the gold figure

Getting the boing-ball detail right.

Winnie holding up a tray of small gold lemming figures in a kitchen

Winnie with a tray of giveaway lemmings, after a lot of post-print cleanup and gluing.

Each award carried a chip that said what it was for, so of course we made a giant one too.

Winnie painting a red and white boing-ball on a large black chip

Winnie putting the finishing touches on our massive chip.

Me holding up a large black chip with a boing ball

The super-sized chip. Smaller ones on each award said what it was for; this one went with Bill’s lemming outfit to promote the evening.

A table full of small gold lemming awards with their chips

The Amies.

The large gold lemming on display at the exhibit

Mama Lemming.

The Future Wall

The Future Wall needed lots of Amigas to behave as one display. Chris Hopper and his son designed a device that plugged into every Amiga through its joystick port and could strobe through each one in turn. An ARexx script on each Amiga reacted to the trigger and changed what it showed.

Black screens and red boards laid out on a wooden panel marked with blue tape

Laying out the Future Wall.

The finished Future Wall: screens and bare Amiga boards on a wall under a FUTURE WALL sign

The Future Wall.

Moving in

The empty floor, just before we turned it into CES 1984.

Two people hanging a large black curtain on a frame

Michael Slifak and Trevor Dickinson helping to set up the exhibit.

Three people lifting a long AMIGA sign onto the booth on a red carpet

Michael, Don and Dale putting up the official Amiga sign.

Three people working around a table in the exhibit

Michael, Hedley and Jeff adding the finishing touches.

Tim Jenison signing a banner that reads 1985 History was written

Tim Jenison, founder of NewTek, signing our visitor banner.

Jeff Bruette in a cap signing the banner

Jeff Bruette signing the banner. Jeff worked at Amiga and taught Andy Warhol to use the Amiga for the launch.

Colin Proudfoot standing beside the signed banner

Colin Proudfoot adds his name.

We also put up a banner for visitors to sign, and some of the first signatures came from people who made the Amiga’s history.

We did drop a few things at the last minute. We had planned more parts to the exhibit, but time and space ran out.

The day

The full exhibit: the CES facade with AMIGA header

The CES 1984 facade: the entrance to the Amiga 40th.

People were amazed. Some 2,500 came through.

Visitors walking through the curtain into the exhibit

Some 2,500 people came through.

A visitor’s feet on a joypad on the red carpet

Playing at the CES exhibit with an Amiga joypad.

Amy Herndon enjoying our fluffy red carpet. It was a bit like dancing on a polar bear.

Jeri Ellsworth at an Amiga 500 in the bedroom scene

Jeri Ellsworth living out her childhood in our bedroom scene.

An Amiga-based arcade machine from Dale Luck’s collection.

I showed Leonard Tramiel and Joe Decuir around personally. They both responded like kids at Christmas. Their eyes lit up, and they shared story after story.

Me with Joe Decuir in front of the red curtain

With Joe Decuir, Amiga’s original systems architect (Dave Needle later took over the role), talking about the early days. He was like a kid in a candy shop.

Me with Rob Gemmell beside a display of his design drawings

With Rob Gemmell, who did the industrial design for the Apple IIc and went on to draw the first designs of what became the Amiga 2000 (Ranger, which was about packaging, not a new chipset!) and the Amiga 500.

With Paul Lassa, who designed the Amiga 4000T and the C65.

Two people working on the Video Toaster setup in the video scene

Tim Jenison and Bill repairing a NewTek Video Toaster.

One visitor got so excited that he started "panic explaining" to his girlfriend what the Amiga meant to him. He mentioned playing on his 500 in his bedroom. At that point I said "hold on" and walked him over to the bedroom scene, where he actually started crying.

The special thing for me was all the original Amiga and Commodore employees who helped. It was also the last time I got to see Hedley Davis, who sadly passed away not long after. Hedley spent most of the day explaining the TTL hardware to visitors.

The evening

Bill drumming up business for the evening event.

In the evening we paid homage to the 1985 Amiga launch, and held the Amies.

The evening: our homage to the 1985 Amiga launch, and the Amies award ceremony.

On stage under a screen reading The winner is Trevor Dickinson

Amiga Bill, Bill Borsari and Trevor Dickinson.

Kiki Stockhammer holding a lemming award

Tim Jenison and Kiki Stockhammer of NewTek at the Amies, with Kiki playing the role of Debbie Harry.

Not everything went to plan. For the 1985 launch homage we were going to use Amiga speech to talk back, but we had technical issues, and problems with the video setup and feed caused a long delay in the evening event.

The team in tuxedos holding the large lemming in front of a press backdrop

The Amiga 40th team after the Amies, in tuxedos as a nod to the original 1985 launch at Lincoln Center.

Teardown

Ron Nicholson helping to tear down the exhibit.

It was amazing to see my personal idols taking part. We did this to celebrate them, and at the same time they all rolled up their sleeves and made the event fantastic.

Thanks

The biggest thanks goes to Bill Borsari, who was an amazing partner to work with: from the conversation that started it all to the kiosk videos. Everyone else who made it happen is on the project page.