SOUTH WEST AMIGA GROUP

January 25th 2020 – Chipping Sodbury
10:00 – 10:00
sponsored by

Games, Tournaments, Talks, Repairs, Traders, Live Music & More!

Following on from our initial Workbench 2020 announcement this second email brings news of a revised start time and details of our sellers.

First-up, and our start time has now moved forward from midday to 11:30am. For those of you who have attended previous SWAG meets the first hour of each session is usually spent getting the tables arranged into an optimal layout and for attendees to get their kit set-up. This extra half hour will mean we have a bit more time to spend enjoying the day.

If you’re not bringing kit with you then you’re still very welcome to get to the venue as soon as the doors open. We can always do with help arranging tables and assistance in lugging kit from car boots to the hall!

Seller Lowdown: RetroBench

Following the success of their stand at the September SWAG event sponsor Retro Bench will once again be selling a mass of Amiga related goodies.

From cap kits and Amiga spare parts & accessories to new Re1200 motherboards & PCBs, you’re certain to find something to spend your hard-earned pennies on at the Retro Bench stand.

The team will also be on hand re-capping classic Amiga systems and performing repairs. Don’t forget to dig deep when tipping for the work!

Seller Lowdown: AmigaKit

We are pleased to announced that legendary long-time Amiga retailer and supporter AmigaKit will be manning a stand at SWAG’s Workbench 2020 event.

The Amiga Kit team have booked a whopping four tables and will be taking up an entire alcove at the hall.

You can expect to see Amiga items for sale covering both classic and modern systems. We’re hopeful that there may even be a next generation Amiga system up and running on the Amiga Kit stand.

Tickets on Sale – 21st December 8pm

Tickets to the Workbench 2020 event will go on sale on Saturday 21st December priced at £7. We’ll send out ticket links via email once the page has gone live. Be quick! Tickets sold out extremely fast for our September meet.

Merchadise for Workbench 2020 is now available.

January 25th 2020 – Chipping Sodbury
10:00 till 10:00
sponsored by

Games, Tournaments, Talks, Repairs, Traders, Live Music & More!

As the date of our second annual Workbench event gets ever closer we’ll be teasing you with regular updates detailing just what you can expect to see (and hear!) at January’s event.

Once again, we owe a very big thank you to Scott MacDonald of Retro Bench for sponsoring the event and covering the room hire in full. Scott will be returning to repair more of your poorly Amigas while his team man the Retro Bench stand selling all kinds of upgrades and goodies for your beloved machines.

In this initial teaser post we are proud to reveal our first very special guest. Ravi Abbot, co-host of the ever popular “Retro Hour” podcast will be bringing along his dual Amiga DJ set-up to blast out tunes across the hall. Not only is his music a joy to listen to, but this is a great opportunity to check out Ravi’s set up, ask questions and find out just how he DJs with two retro machines.

We’ll have further reveals in the coming weeks, but for now make a note in your diaries. Tickets to Workbench 2020 will go on sale the week before Christmas (December the 21st) at a cost of £7 per table. This covers the cost of a sandwich lunch, snacks, soft drinks, tea/coffee and one entry to the main tournament.

If you are a trader, have an announcement, or wish to talk to the organisers then please contact us as we are still preparing for the event.

Once again, where do we start? the South West Amiga Group came back to Doddington Parish Hall in Chipping Sodbury for our tenth meet where within 48hours on our booking page, we were sold out of our tables. But the venue that week had sprung a leak, part of the building was roped off and toilets were outside, but this didn’t put us off from fitting everything in and having a good time.

We wish to thank so many people for all their help in bringing this together, there is a true feeling within the group that we made something special for the community and we are listening to you. Scott from Retrobench , who has been to virtually every meet helped sponsor this event, he had helpers to sell items on his table as well repair Amiga’s all day long. Retrobench not only sponsorred the meet, but ran a raffle where ‘3 Amigas’ were the prizes and the proceed’s of the raffle were reinvested for future meets.

We also had Chris Poacher with a music studio setup, he showcased his music catalog and how he used Octamed to remix dance music and how he was sampling back in the day. He also had an array of studio equipment that was on show.

A sligthly different presentation was from Chris Forrester from then ANT group , he showed how the Amiga was used in Stop-go frame-by-frame capture which was used for Felix the Cat commericals.

We also had demonstrations of Video capture from Andrew Reader, Retro Revival Craig and Arron with the latest games for the Spectrum next and an interesting lightgun project. Error 42 Paul was also at the meet and below is his preparation video.

We had so much going on it was hard get around and see everything, so with the help of our friendly YouTuber’s, Colin and James from Let’s Talk Retro, the other video will be from Neil of Retro Man Cave and currently that video will be shown to Patreon’s first and we will link it here soon.

So, two dates to add to your diary are 25th January 2020 and 30th May 2020, we are now starting to put together what we are going to do and invite anyone with ideas (amiga related) to contact us to share suggestions.

Most importantly thank you to everyone that came and enjoyed the day with us and we look forward to seeing you at the next one.