The show is over, but the legacy will continue. This page is designed to capture the details of the event and bring together what happened and who was involved.
The Show Floor
The design above was our initial concept for the show floor; the final layout differed slightly, but this captures the key elements we presented.
When we planned the exhibits, we wanted to present something much more than a table with artifacts or machines. As we moved forward, we aimed to elevate the experience to something you would expect at a world-class museum. That led us to the idea of placing kiosks with a video presentation of each element. With the power of AI and some Google searching, we produced four videos that explain each of our scenes: the Winter 1984 CES booth, the Lorraine prototype room, an A500 in a child’s bedroom, and finally the Video Toaster Edit bay.
Here are those kiosk videos:
The Winter 1984 CES Booth:
When we began discussing the event and what we would do at AmiWest 2024, our goal was to create a tour of the Amiga’s history. Our research brought us the photo on the left. After considerable effort, we developed what we could, as shown on the right, at VCF West 2025.
The Lorraine Prototype Room
Our theme early on was “step through the curtain”. This theme was to honor the first showing of the Amiga chipset prototype, called Lorraine, at the CES in January 1984. This was an invite-only space where Amiga Corp salespeople would bring special guests to see the future. Inside the room, an engineer, Dale Luck, RJ, or Sam, would take the guests through the video and audio demos. Outside this room, the most advanced home computers offered a low-res 16-color display and beeping for audio. The Amiga provided 16-bit audio, hundreds of colors on screen, and smooth animation.
Amiga Los Gatos Artifect Area
A few years after Commodore acquired Amiga Corp, C= decided to shut down its West Coast Amiga office. There was great sadness as this chapter of the Amiga history came to a close. Dale had the foresight to preserve the documents, decor, and videos from that event. These items rarely see the light of day, so it was a great treat to be able to present them at the show.
Kids Bedroom scene
Arguably, the Commodore Amiga 1000 was a commercial failure, with only 35,000 sold in the launch year. When Jeff Porter and team completed their cost-reduced version and Commodore shipped the Amiga 500, history was changed, and millions of folks, mostly kids, got new Amigas. This display was to honor that part of Amiga history and how so many users around the world kept their computers.
Video Toaster Edit Bay
When NewTek released the Video Toaster, an add-on card for the Commodore Amiga 2000, they did not need to sell it for a few thousand; they could have charged tens of thousands and still been lower cost. That decision put the Video Toaster on a path to bring world-class video editing to the masses, and it did. No Amiga history journey would be complete without talking about the Video Toaster. The display we planned consisted of a table, three monitors, a camera, and a machine, positioned on the left side of this photo. Mark Randall, an early NewTek employee, arrived on Friday with all the items on the right. Thank you, Mark!
Amiga Line Up
The core display of the Amiga 30th in Silicon Valley was a massive lineup of nearly every Amiga ever released. For the 40th, we wanted to showcase a few Commodore systems, as well as systems built after Commodore died in April 1994. The Sacramento Amiga Computer Club stepped up and provided machines and support to make this part of the display happen, thank you SACC!
Amiga Coin Ops
Dale is a true Coin-Op arcade collector and often presents parts of his collection at Northern California’s CA Extreme show. Here, Dale provided us with two machines: The unreleased Moonquake machine and the interesting Super Select System, based on an A500 with up to 10 ROM boards.
FutureWall
We wanted to wrap up the display with a collection of systems that were physically built within the last year (from Summer 2024 to Summer 2025). This unique exhibit offered visitors the chance to experience the best of the Amiga community’s creativity, passion, and technical expertise.
The machines on the wall:
Upper Left – A-Eon A1222+
Upper Right – ReAmiga4000 with z3660
Left – Vampire Standalone
Right – A600GS
Lower Left – A1200NG
Lower Right – Dense (A500 redux)
Finally, here is a walk-through of the show floor filmed by Robert Bernardo:
The Evening Event
The Friday night event at the AMIGA/040th featured two presentations: one was a homage to the A1000 launch event, and the other was the Ammi Awards.
This is the introduction and the A1000 launch presentation:
The presenters on stage are Bill Borsari, Jeff Bruette, Tim Jenison, and Kiki Stockhammar.
Music by: Paulee Bow, Richard Hollins (Tufty)
Filming and editing: jtabayoyon88
Here is the Ammi Awards video:
The presenters are Bill Borsari and AmigaBill
Game videos by Daniel Waddington, and Bill Borsari
Ammi award by Lewis, Cageman, Jerry Grey, and Rob Borsari
Crafted by Chris Collins, Winnie Wong
Filming and editing: jtabayoyon88
Volunteers
Thank you to all the donors who supported the event.
Thank you to the volunteers who worked tirelessly to make this happen
Thank you to the VCF West team: Erik Klein, Zach Hardesty, and Vintage Computer Federation
Thank you to the AMIGA/040th organizers: Dale Luck, Chris Collins, Luca Severini, Evangelos Goulas, Alan Swithenbank, and Bill Borsari
