ABUG EAST MIDLANDS (Leicester) 9-11 November 2018 - BOOKING NOW on THIS THREAD

[1024MAK]

More...

The main room

Is this the next step after wireless?

Ooh, something interesting going on at the other end... (see later)

Chris’s table

Cake (well what there is after most have had their fill!)

Ian’s table. I think he is working on IDE boards.

Dave’s table. He is working on his new IDE boards

What everyone was rushing to see...

Chris’s Beeb running a BASIC rendering program in a speed test with Sarah’s Arc. The Beeb lost.

The fastest Elk?

Yes that is an ARM co-pro.

Notice the different firmware versions.

Inside with the top memory board removed, showing the processor

Mark

[BigEd]

Oh, hang on, who's hooked up a 32016 second processor to an Electron? We need to know more about that!

[1024MAK]

Please note that I’m adding the comments when I can.

Things that missed the glaze of the camera:
John’s issue 3 Beeb going slow when running some software (reason unknown).
Phill repairing Richard’s Atom.
Chris showing his Bad Apple animation with a sound track on a BBC B via a CRT display. You can however see his You Tube Video here (although it looks better on a CRT).

Mark

[flaxcottage]

Please note that I’m adding the comments when I can.

Things that missed the glaze of the camera:
John’s issue 3 Beeb going slow when running some software (reason unknown).
Phill repairing Richard’s Atom.

Mark

Yes the Beeb is an issue 3 motherboard. When it boots the tape motor light is permanently on. It was to be upgraded with two of Chris Morley's SWR boards and an EEPROM board. All appeared to be working perfectly except for Interword and the Basic Editor version 1.32.

The Interword issue was solved by moving the SWR to different sockets.

The Basic Editor problem was vexing. The program worked properly when loaded into SWR, any SWR slot. When it was loaded into EEPROM it worked very slowly and then the whole machine slowed down, this behaviour even surviving a Ctrl-Break. Changing the ROM sockets in which the board was placed made no difference. Changing the EEPROM board and SWR boards made no difference.

Moving the EEPROM board which was running slowly in my BBC to another BBC showed the Basic Editor working properly.

Conclusion - the SWR and EEPROM boards are working properly. The issue 3 motherboard is the issue. That is not too worrying as I have a working issue 4 motherboard spare. I'll just swap the motherboards and use the issue 3 for spares. I know that sounds like sacrilege but that is why I had the issue 4 board in the first place.

[1024MAK]

And some more...

An Acorn Pocket Book II trying to connect via via an acoustic coupler held to a mobile phone!

A 6502 badge made from a kit of parts by me.

And yes it can run a version of BASIC, it just needs a serial terminal.

Me building an AP6 (previously supplied by Dave H.).

Mark

[tricky]

My atom lives with ramrom and mmc. Flappy birds crashes if you make it through the first obstacle. There were a couple of games that were crashing: tetris and w.a.r. but they were fixed by an mmc rom update.

[BigEd]

Thanks for the captioning Mark! Much appreciated. I know from experience it's extra work. And of course thanks for the photos.

If you know whose Elk that was, whose ARM copro, and whose 32016 copro, I'd very much like to know! (If you can get a close snap of the 32016 top label, and even the insides, that would be most excellent.)

Cheers
Ed

Please note that I’m adding the comments when I can.

Things that missed the glaze of the camera:
John’s issue 3 Beeb going slow when running some software (reason unknown).
Phill repairing Richard’s Atom.
Chris showing his Bad Apple animation with a sound track on a BBC B via a CRT display. You can however see his You Tube Video here (although it looks better on a CRT).

Mark

[hoglet]

Hi Ed,

If you know whose Elk that was, whose ARM copro, and whose 32016 copro, I'd very much like to know! (If you can get a close snap of the 32016 top label, and even the insides, that would be most excellent.)

We have all the components locally here to replicate the 32016 configuration:
- An Electron with Plus One
- An AP5 interface
- ADFS 1.03
- A Beeb SCSI with the Panos Image
- A original 32016 Co Pro

I had this setup running briefly last year for AP5 testing, but with a PiTubeDirect 32016 rather than the real one.

Dave

[jms2]

I tried the same setup on my Elk (ie, the PiTube version). I think it worked ok but I can't quite remember (it certainly worked on the Master and that is clouding my memory) - was it necessary to do anything non-obvious to make it work on the Elk?

[BigEd]

(Good point Dave, our own mini-ABUG but without the cluster of appreciative onlookers! I was idly wondering how many 32016 second processors are out there, and who has them, and what their configurations might be.)

[1024MAK]

Thanks for the captioning Mark! Much appreciated. I know from experience it's extra work. And of course thanks for the photos.

If you know whose Elk that was, whose ARM copro, and whose 32016 copro, I'd very much like to know! (If you can get a close snap of the 32016 top label, and even the insides, that would be most excellent.)

Ed, it’s Mark Andrew Smith‘s kit (he lives on the Facebook group).

Mark

[1024MAK]

It’s Sunday morning and busy again - well, some of the photos were taken in the morning!

The main room is still busy :-)

Richard running his Scramble game (modern camera defeated by a CRT, so sorry about the colours being washed out)

Jonathan busy coding.

Good to see Paul at an ABUG. He’s busy producing his video boards for Arcs.

A partly built board that I’m working on (I blame Duncan for getting me interested in RC2014...)

Mark

[guddler]

@Tricky - is the corruption at the bottom of scramble on the agenda for the weekend? Would be great to get that sorted

[Prime]

Annnnd home again.

Good weekend as always, and good to see you all again, look forward to the next one.

Cheers.

Phill.

[flaxcottage]

Yes, this was a great meeting. I loved the Vixen beer.

Thanks to Alex for organising it.

Managed to get my Beeb working with Chris's Boobip gizmos. I shoved in a new Issue 4 motherboard (well not new but you know what I mean). The board looks for all the world like a model A that has been upgraded to model B standard.

It did not have a disc interface fitted so, after checking that the EEPROM board worked and the SWR boards, the first job was to swap the 8271 DFS interface from the faulty Issue 3 board. I forgot to open S9

Once S9 was open everything worked properly. Even the disk drive worked faster.

The faulty Issue 3 I shall now use as a potential donor should I need any chips from it. I have another Issue 3 bare board which is missing several chips. Maybe I can rescue that.

I was so pleased with the 'repair' that I even added Kenneth Kendall so the Beeb can talk to me.

[1024MAK]

Ahh, back home now

Thanks as always to Alex for all the arrangements
Also, thanks again to Alex for the free gifts

And thank you to everyone who attended

Thanks for the captioning Mark! Much appreciated. I know from experience it's extra work. And of course thanks for the photos.

If you know whose Elk that was, whose ARM copro, and whose 32016 copro, I'd very much like to know! (If you can get a close snap of the 32016 top label, and even the insides, that would be most excellent.)

Sorry Ed

He did not bring his 32016 co-pro into the room today. I would have asked, but by the time I had a chance, Mark was packing up to go home

Mark

[BigEd]

No probs. Evidently a very good event and that's the main thing.

[mattyj]

Back home in Bristol, brilliant weekend! Thanks for organising Alex!
Now on with the new workshop!
See you all next time
Matt

[tricky]

@Tricky - is the corruption at the bottom of scramble on the agenda for the weekend? Would be great to get that sorted

I forgot to take the scramble source and to be honest, until I was talking about it on Sunday, I had forgotten about it. It is a simple fix, I just keep forgetting to do it!

[pau1ie]

Im back home too. I made a start on putting in the meanwell power supply but messed up the disc drive power socket. I ordered some terminals but am without a bbc till they arrive, which is sad.
I did some work on vi65 which is taking shape. Made good progress Saturday, but less today.
It feel I made a social faux pas at dinner on Sunday by inaadvertantly being the only person at our table not called Mark!
It was great to meet everyone and see what you are all working on. Chris' Bad Apple was amazing. I really wouldn't have believed it possible! Thanks also to everyone for the advice and help - especially Phil for the phone charger!

Thanks Alex for organising the event.

[tricky]

Thanks Alex for organising and to Phil for all the work it getting my Atom back into good shape.
Thanks Retro Hardware for your help and to everyone else for a great weekend.
When I got home, the 8-bit annual 2018 was waiting for me, three beeb games, photos to follow.

[jgharston]

I updated my keyboard test programs (link). This is what I was doing in the "Jonathan doing some coding" picture. Tricky originally wrote the negative INKEY tester to display BBC keypresses, I updated it to add the Master keypad and various RISCOS keys. This weekend I updated it to list the RISCOS keys in a more logical layout, and it now tests all 128 possible negative INKEYs, making it really useful for testing INKEY implementations:


I was able to go around testing what people's machines reported, and discovered some undocumented keycodes for the Elk-specific keys. Still need to run it on a Communicator. Also found that on Windows BASIC a handful of Japanese keypresses aren't detected: KbdJapan. I'll have to check BBSDL as well before emailing Richard.

Clarified things with Dave regarding updating the Basic Editor. Updated my PiTube and used it to test the Elk Tube after it played with a real ARM and 32016. Investigated what would need patching to support the Tube on the Compact. Helped FlaxCottage with something. Too tired to remember! Loads of other stuff. Happy time all round.

(I've been typing this on my Japanese keyboard so any typos are entirely accidental!)

[JudgeBeeb]

Another excellent event. Thanks Alex for organising this. I know how much work is involved.

I had an enjoyable and productive weekend working on my ROM/Games Board. Particular thanks to cmorley and SarahWalker for all the help and encouragement. I learned loads as a result.

Hope to see as many of you as possible at ABUG South in January.

[flaxcottage]

... Helped FlaxCottage with something. Too tired to remember!...

The order of precedence of Boolean operations in an IF statement.

[JudgeBeeb]

I should add that it was both a privilege and an inspiration to finally meet paulv. Huge admiration at want you have managed to achieve over the last few years.

[Elminster]

It’s Sunday morning and busy again - well, some of the photos were taken in the morning!

A partly built board that I’m working on (I blame Duncan for getting me interested in RC2014...)

I deny everything. I do have a box of RC2014 cards to build at some point.

[paulv]

I should add that it was both a privilege and an inspiration to finally meet paulv. Huge admiration at want you have managed to achieve over the last few years.

Thank you To be completely honest, I still get a bit uncomfortable with praise like this, it's not that it's unwelcome, in fact I appreciate it very much but really, I didn't have any choice in going through what I've been through and I would have chosen not to have done any of it if there had been a choice. In that sense I suppose I feel a bit of a fraud for getting praise for something that "just happened" to me.

I'm not one to mope about and give up on life so I just got on with things, slowly but surely. I likely under estimated my recovery time but other than still needing to lose the weight I put on through the whole process, I'm as fit as I was before, I'll never run again but that's fine by me. The side effects I have were inevitable and are something I have to live with but I refuse to let them dictate what I can and cannot do. Certain things are more difficult than before, but if I put my mind to it, most things are still possible, even riding a bike!

My GP has it writ large on my notes that I'm "stoic" I prefer practical as there's no sense in complaining about it because it won't achieve anything. It is what it is and I survived it so that's that.

Paul

[trixster]

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed looking at the photos and reading up about everyone’s weekend. I’d very much like to attend an ABUG at some point to meet you all, assuming #lifeevents! allow at some point!