Amiga things to do in London UK

[KONEY]

Hey Amifolks!

I'll spend a few days in London during XMAS, is anyone aware of anything Amiga related to suggest? A shop, a pub, a museum... anything goes!

[alexh]

Not that I know of. At least not in London itself.

http://www.amiganorththames.co.uk/main-nojs.shtml

You could take a look at Earls Court where the World of Commodore show was held in 1991

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Commodore

The best place to buy Amiga's in London in the late 90s was CEX which started out on Tottenham Court Road

https://uk.webuy.com/site/storeDetail?branchId=1

(P.S. They don't have them anymore)

[nogginthenog]

The Science Museum has a retro gaming thing but it looks like it's consoles.
https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/power

The National Museum of Computing is good but it's an hour on the train from London. They have a collection of computers on display.
https://www.tnmoc.org/

Do you like Mexican food? :-)
http://www.amigalondon.com/

[Dunny]

To be honest as has been pointed out there isn't much specifically "Amiga" in the UK, but there are things you can do, like play Amiga games. I would suggest a round or two of Carrier Command if you can, followed by some Willy's Weirdy Nightmare. You may need to resort to Emulation unless you have a LOT of checked-in luggage space.

The time will pass pretty quickly, rest assured

[dreadnought]

Speaking of games, The Clue is set in London.

Some well-known Amiga publishers had their HQs in London, mostly between WC2-EC2 postcodes. Eg, Mirrorsoft was based in 66 Shoe Lane EC4 and Melbourne House in 8-10 Paul Street EC2. But now they're all corporate/hipster offices.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Dunny

To be honest as has been pointed out there isn't much specifically "Amiga" in the UK

In the UK there are lots of places to go with Amiga exhibits. (RMC in Gloucestershire and RCM in leicester being two great ones) Not so much in London

[Retro1234]

I heard of the Retro Cave? in the UK?

There are various shops in the UK where you might pickup a Retro bargin.

and Museums in the UK.

[KONEY]

Thank you guys, I'll let you know if I've been hitting any of these

[Phantasm]

Yes if there's any chance to get up to Leicester to RCM there's quite a few of us Amiga enthusiasts amongst the volunteers and we have the (most likely) only remaining cd1200 prototype (sadly not complete) and on display we also have the gold 1 millionth Amiga 500 as well as some other amiga related stuff.

[bluescrn]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

I heard of the Retro Cave? in the UK?

https://www.retrocollective.co.uk/the-cave.php - Quite a long way from London, though

Arcade Club (www.arcadeclub.co.uk) is well worth a visit too, but even further away.

There's at least a couple of retro/arcade bars in London though (Loading, NQ64)

You're not likely to find anything Amiga specific unless you're coming for a specific event/meetup, and there's not likely to be any of those happening during the xmas period.

[desiv]

Originally Posted by alexh

Not that I know of. At least not in London itself.

Yeah, we just got back from London (we stayed in the Southwark area), but I didn't try for any retro stuff while there...

Not a huge draw for my wife, and while she would be supportive, I generally leave our vacations as non-retro...

Tho, if I would have seen a 48k Speccy in a shop window somewhere while walking around, it might have made it's way into my luggage... It's on my list of eventual things to try to track down, even tho I didn't know they existed back in the day...
I do have my TS1000 hooked up, and my US ZX81 on a shelf.
I might end up with the TS2068 (the US Speccy), but I just really like the look of the rubber keyed 48k model...

As I have a couple of Amigas already, I wouldn't be able to justify spending and/or space in the luggage to try to get one of them back...

[KONEY]

So I followed @nogginthenog suggestion (thanks!) and took my trip to Bletchley to visit TNMOC. It was really worth it!

For the first time I witnessed a Cray supercomputer and a Silicon Graphics INDY. Other cool things were a working repro of Alan Turing machine and an Acorn-only room, full of BBC micros and Archimedes, which made me realize how British are proud of these machines

Anyway here is a picture of the most important piece of the museum



Also nice was the presence of a T.A.R.D.I.S Reproduction

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

The National Museum of Computing is good but it's an hour on the train from London. They have a collection of computers on display.
https://www.tnmoc.org/

[nogginthenog]

The last time I visited Bletchley Park was the Vintage Computer Festival in 2010!
I hope you saw the Colossus computer!

Some vids from Rainycat:
[ Show youtube player ]
[ Show youtube player ]

There was a talk the new Amiga (maybe Trevor Dickinson?).

You could tweet from a ZX Spectrum.

[KONEY]

Sure, wasn't Colossus Alan Turing Machine I mentioned?

[fxgogo]

Did they actually call it the Alan Turing machine? There were a lot of people involved with that. I love Bletchley Park, but have not been back since 2007. Must go next year.

[KONEY]

Actually no, they call it "Colossus" but for convenience I referred the "Wartime" section to as "the Alan Turing machine"

[CCCP alert]

Too late but I love the old Victorian architecture in London. You just can't see building/structures as awesome as that. Also the Victorian dinosaur park thing is cool.