ABug North 10/11/12 June 2016, Halifax

[Arcadian]

Just for Kees ...

Phill
(lager lout)

[oss003]

Ok ....... Now I see you, Cheers!!

Greetings
Kees

[JudgeBeeb]

Many thanks everyone for another awesome weekend.

I must express particular thanks to hoglet for all his considerable patience and expertise. First in diagnosing the fault with my 1MHz bus and secondly, and very significantly, getting my OPL2 FM Synth project working .

If anyone is interested in seeing what we achieved, I have uploaded a video to YouTube. (Disco lighting effects courtesy of sPhilMainwaring .)

Also, thanks to daveejhitchins for his practical help... (I shall remember to recite the mantra: "90 degrees, no pressure, wiggle, suck and, above all, keep it clean". )

Thanks again everyone for making it such fun. Roll on Cambridge...

[Prime]

And home, after a magica mystery tour round Leicester and Northamptonshire....

Good weekend as normal, look forward to seeing most of you again in Cambridge.

Cheers,

Phill.

[Prime]

Ok ....... Now I see you, Cheers!!

Greetings
Kees

I might note that though I had had a few beers, I wasn't as drunk as I look, the shot was posed

Phill.

[oss003]

Yeah sure ....... LOL

[richardtoohey]

My first meeting - great fun, thank you.

Nice to put names & personalities to faces.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to attend another one but probably in a couple of years time.

Didn't do much retro (no 8 bit hardware (tad heavy to lug all the way) or software) but helped with scripting "glue" to help with a website, tidy up spreadsheets, and get the data ready for MGC. Used my RPi3 where possible, so at least Acorn was involved because of the ARM in there.

I meant to circulate a lot more to see what everyone else was up to, but the time flew by.

Thought the venue was very good - right amount of space, the Premier Inn staff were helpful and drifted around gracefully and let us get on with things. The free wifi was good enough for Googling stuff.

[sPhilMainwaring]

Another fantastic meet ...

Special thanks to Simon and everyone else who organised it

Again to Simon (Sidney) for the "Curry Taxi"

James (HiddenEvil) for sorting my RPiZero issue

Dave B (Hoglet) for teaching me the joys of github and "bare metal" development and for patiently putting up with my passenger seat/back seat programmer "suggestions"

See you all at Cambridge

Dave (hoglet) attaching a Rasp Pi co-pro to an Atom, sPhilMainwaring looks on

"Looks on" ... I understood a full 11% of what Dave was on about :p

ABuggers (can I say that?)

I think you already did!

[hiddenevil]

Had an awesome weekend, big thanks again to John for cloning my mmc rom after everything went a little pear shaped. Had fun using my Master for a change, after bringing along the wrong model b oops!

Thanks to Sydney for sorting things out and directing me to a charming bnb only a stone's throw away.

[KarateEd]

Thanks guys for the pics, makes you almost feel like you're there..... jealous I couldn't be there but the flight from Canada would be a purchase of a good lot of Acorn kit.....

Thanks for putting those up....

Ed......

[jbnbeeb]

Hi,
A day late in posting..

Just wanted to say how much I thoroughly enjoyed another ABUG weekend with fellow Acorn loving mad men

There were so many interesting projects going on - Jon's UK101 mods (to get it to talk to a Raspberry Pi IIRC), Robert's Yamaha soundchip project, Dave B's Raspberry Pi zero baremetal copro and a start on Raspberry Pi Atom VGA (!), Dave H's Electron Mega Games Cartridge, Ian's Econet-through-the-ages set up, Dan's SJ(?) fileserver resurrection work (I think?), James's Raspberry Pi mini homage to the Commodore SX64, JGH dumping old files and updating /troubleshooting vast amounts of code, Alex burning ROMs, Richard contributing to the fast-developing bbc software archive website, and Matthew working on his A3020 IIRC.

I was going to work on my game (still little more than a tech demo)..but on Friday night, Simon showed me his Master with his matchbox copro running GEM desktop via SD storage AND mouse input via Dave's (hoglet) rewired Atari trackball in to the user port. My eyes lit up and I grinned - I probably looked a little unhinged Just the sheer incongruity of issuing DOS commands and running DOS programs on a BBC was quite a novelty. Simon explained how this was possible . Normally, the SD card would be plugged in to the User port - but of course then we coudn't use a mouse. By adding another 6522 via the Master internal modem connector, he was able to plug in his SD card with ADFS images, and simultaneously have a mouse via user port and hence use GEM desktop via the copro. Dave had handily issued a modded MMFS so that it referenced the correct address for the extra 6522 going in via the modem connector.

After explaining this - he then said something like "do you want one" -- i.e. modem-port connected SDcard and a user port mouse. I nodded .. and that was it - Simon spent the rest of the weekend helping me clone his SD card 6522/connector and converting old PS/2 mice to plug in to the user port. I learned a little about digital electronics and became better at soldering to boot. Not only that, but Simon gave me all the parts and a multi-meter for me to take home too! A big thanks to Simon for spending so much time helping me across the whole weekend, and for organising yet another ABUG.

Thanks also to DaveM for creating the name tags for ABUG South (Cambridge)

Looking forward to Cambridge. I'll update that thread in the next day or so.



Jason

[sydney]

What a great weekend!
Many thanks to everyone who came. I had a great time and I think this was my favourite ABug so far as I actually managed to get something done!
I got my modem port based 6522 working with an sdcard hard disk, helped Jason build one and built us both an optical mouse. I'm going to need a crash course in ADFS, where's Colin?
Roll on Cambridge!