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                                 ATARIADA 2001
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   (original article in german by MAD BUTSCHER, lame translation by moondog)

The ATARIADA took place on the 28.04. this year. This event is the biggest Atari
meeting in  the Czech Republic  and happens  many several  years now. Because in
the meantime  Atari dealers  didn't join the  meeting anymore, the atmosphere is
like a mix out of the ABBUC years general meeting and a computer convention.
This event is  lasting just  one day but even then the most people have built up
their computers.

The Journey
-----------
On Friday before the meeting TXG (Rene de Bie) and FOX (Robert) of MNX picked me
up at Wiesbaden. Both were already since 4 hours on the run with their legendary
ATARI van. We  droved about  16 hours  to  Prostejov, a city with  about  10.000
inhabitants, that  is  located between  Brno and Olmouc, so  it was  laying very
close to the slovakian frontier. As we  reached the  german/czech  frontier, the
czech customs  official wondered  a lot as  we told  him that we wanted to go to
Prostejov to a computer party and that there were a lot of computers in the van.

After we matched it to  take the wrong  way several  times at Prague and TXG had
checked out that  english doesn't helps  very much there  in comparison with the
german language, we finally reached Prostejov at 3 AM and after several tries to
leave the  highway we  found the house  of Zdenek Burian, were we wanted to stay
the night. Zdenek is the main organizer of the ATARIADA.
Unfortunately  his house  didn't got  a bell and  even the knocking on the first
window didn't brought some reaction. So we were set on panic  a bit since we did
not know how to find the place  were the ATARIADA  was held. At  home in Germany
surely someone would have called the police if 3 strange guys would sneak around
a house, but there  no one cared about  that and finally we have found the right
window to knock on.
In the end  a very tired  looking Zdenek  appeared on  the window and opened the
door for us. At his home also Petr Liebl (Platari), an Atari freak from Budweis,
was staying  that night. He is organizing  an Atari meeting  there in Frebruary.
Petr looked damn tired as well as  we 3 were entering the room, filling the room
with english language and noises.

The Party
---------
As we woke up we started some conversation with Zdenek and Petr  first and later
we were going  to the party place. The event  was taking  place in a restaurant,
that had enough space for all  people. As we  arrived there, there  were already
about 30-40 people present. Later on there were all in all about 50-60 people.
It was a great  feeling to see  some known faces on a meeting about 1000 km away
from home. At first  Jan came over to me to say  hello, even if we only meet one
time so far, and this was already 3 years ago.
Jan is  one part  of JAY SOFT, the other  one, Stanislav Opichals, was  there as
well. Furthermore  I remembered the ones I  knew from  the Unconventional Party:
Jiri Bernasek, Bohdan Milar, Gildor and Jindrich Kubec.

Because Jan was playing my interpreter (more or less happy about that) I finally
found very  fast interesting  people to  speak to. At first  I was speaking with
Petr Marsalek, the  organizer of the ATARI Hody Brno. He found  it very funny to
hear that "hody" sounds  in german  like "hotten" (editors note: jumping around)
and he gave me a lot  of flyers in  german language. The  Atari Hody will happen
on the 15th of  September, maybe  for two days. This is just  one week after the
Unconventional 2k1, but maybe I will go to Brno anyway.

At next I met  Xi of Satantronic  from Slovakia. Satantronic releases  there the
really professional looking "Atarix" fanzine and even if I  can't speak any word
in slovakian or czech I found some  interesting things in the  3 magazines I got
there.
Xi was showing me games for the XL/XE he  had done ("Jurassic Park 2" and "Magic
World", both are jump'n'run games), as well as the "Charset Tools", he did too.
Unfortunately all those programs need the Turbo 2000 datasette that I didn't had
at this time. Xi showed me another game as well, "Tekblast" for  the XL/XE, made
by Taquart from Poland. This  is a Dynabusters  clone and  looks a  bit like the
game "Dynakillers" from GMG.

As I was going  further I thought by myself  how great  it would be to have that
Turbo 2000  datasette, as  Bohdan Milar was coming to me and asked me if I would
like to have  a Turbo 2000 as well  as Visicopy 2 and 3, a  copy module  for the
Turbo 2000. Ofcourse I said yes, what a coincidence! Last but not least I bought
some czech Atari documents and books.

Now it was time for some  cigarette and as always your meeting some interessting
people on the ashtray where  you can get easy in  conversation with. This time I
met Vladimir Toman, who is known as Tomsoft. Vladimir showed me his self written
Atari Basic learning programs, that  he wrote  for his kids. I didn't understood
the questions but as I found the  word "labe" in  the answers  I remembered that
this means "Elbe" in german and so the question was right.

Then I saw an alpha version of  a Falcon emulator  for Linux. Ofcourse I'm not a
fan of emulations but it was  some kind of funny to see such an emulation on the
Linux desktop. This experience  brought me  to the  search  for more interesting
stuff for ST. Finally I found something by the makers of the diskmag "Narsil".
Jiri and his  friends had some  czech ST games and  stuff like that and so I had
the chance to relieve my collectors thirst.

Besides  that I  spoke  to  the developper of the  Phantom board, a czech Falcon
acceleration  card. He told me that  he is working  together with  others on the
realisation  of the Milan 2 idea. So we  can be curious  about the things coming
from them in the future.

Gildor copied me his GEM game "Klik". This game is only a GEM game and primitive
but makes a lot of fun.

Actual I wanted to know more about the routines of the SIO Network for XL/XE, by
Jiri Bernasek, but  since I wasn't  really receivable  anymore, he copied me his
sources. Besides Jiri sat Raster who is writing games for his 8 joystick adaptor
and demos  in the  last time. He showed  me his  latest game called "Multris", a
Tetris clone for 4 players.

After I  saw a lot I  started a  gaming contest, Bohdan and his  girlfriend took
over the organizing. At this  contest anyone  could win some  stuff sponsored by
the ABBUC, and many people took part in the competition. We have played Robotron
on an Atari XE Game System. As I checked there were a lot of people who liked it
a lot and would liked to have the Game System by their own, since it seems to be
a rarity  in  Czechia. Anyway, Bohdan  showed up  his abilities  and has won the
competition. I had 2 times  more points as  he got (...) but I wasn't playing in
the competition and I liked the moment as no Mr.XY was killing my highscores.
But it's too bad that Mr.XY and R.I.K. didn't matched it to come over since both
hadn't no time.

While I  was  walking  around, TXG and FOX had  shown  their  16bit XE/XL to the
crowd as well as their big demo collection. Around noon  a local TV station came
up to  make a report  of the convention. A real  smash hit  was their Fast Black
Screen Demo Effect. As they tried  to connect extra  spotlights the power supply
was broken down. They tried it two times and  gave up, unfortunately the stopped
FOX's harddisk while  reading both  times and  switched it off, but  we had some
troubles to make it run again. Furthermore the  guys from TV wanted to interview
TXG as he was  the visitor with  the longest journey, but  maybe they were a bit
depressive because of their  spotlight action  or maybe TXG's try for an english
conversation killed their mood to make an interview in the end.

Finally the event was  going to end then  and we dragged  our stuff to the ATARI
van, that was  standing in  front of the door. The van was  a real attraction to
the visitors and they made a lot of photos.

After Party
-----------
We transported some things back  to Zdenek's house, where  several people wanted
to stay over night again, such as Satantronic. We droved together with Zdenek to
Bohdan's  house in  Olmouc where  we stayed  that night. Ofcourse we  talked the
whole night through and Bohdan was  showing us his rarities  and we bored him to
death with Atari stories. Very interesting was a czech floppy for the XL/XE, the
czech one pin printer  and a czech plotter, as  well as a czech Sinclair+3 copy,
called "Kompakt".

After a short  night we were  going on to talk on the next  morning and suddenly
also Jan came over, since he's  living in Olmouc  as well and we exchanged a lot
of interesting things.
Around noon we  started to  check out  the city  of Olmouc. In the end something
cultural  since we're  going older. Olmouc  is the main  city of  a province  in
Moravia and has about 100.000 inhabitants. The organ of  the church in Olmouc is
the biggest in middle Europe and the restored old  city looks quite nice. On the
big market place it was nice to sit since the weather was really nice.
After the normal good bye scenes we started to drive home around 3 PM and around
3 AM on Monday TXG and FOX dismissed me at home.

As you can read  maybe this party brought  a lot of fun to  me and I hope that I
can drive to the next Atariada as well.

Many thanx for picking me up and taking me to the party place to TXG and FOX (it
isn't that bad to be kidnapped by some dutchies...) many thanx for the overnight
stay and the  sightseeing tour and  all other to Zdenek Burian, Bohdan Milar and
Jan. Many thanx also to  Stanislav and all people I met in Prostejov, untill the
next time!

Atari rulez!

                                                   Mad Butscher / Foundation Two
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