ABUG Canada West Meet Up #28 December 23 2023

[KarateEd]

Hi Folks,

Well this is our last ABUG for 2023 but it was a great one for us......
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Paul has arrived and I thought he was moving in he had so much with him.....really good to see you after so long......

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Last time Paul was here he gave me a USB Power Supply that he got in the UK for 'standalone' functionality. This is my first project today.

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Focused on placement of spades for the wiring to connect to.

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Ah, that was the problem, I needed a tool.

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Just plugging the system in to give it a test.......

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As you can see the cabling is a bit on the messy side. Perhaps we'll fix this up a bit.

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As you can see it runs Snapper no problem from an SD card.

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See, I said I would tidy the wiring up. Whatever would we do without Red/Green and his show, a million uses for duct tape.

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It fits nicely into the spot and we'll recap some of the other than RIFA and startup caps in this PSU, another gift from Paul in a past ABUG

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During this particular ABUG Paul ended up showing me a tremendous amount of things he'd been working on, hence the plethora of tubs of Beeb stuff. He's been really busy.

2nd Part coming up.......

[KarateEd]

Now the gaming part.

To be honest the game we had this time was pretty much a flop with most people, me included. Not fun, not really good for the HSC but we finished it off in style with both of us beating our personal high scores we had already achieved. Well, at least we know one of the games to never play again.

Here we are getting ready to play some Beeb Chase.

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Having a pretty good game. I think this was during the first time I upped my score. I did it again later.

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And here's my new high score. This score is the first in a while that has been done on hardware for my personal high score. Usually it's on Beeb-Em, just more convenient for me.

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These are the gifts that Paul gifted me and they are all very nice and are well appreciated. Thank you Paul.

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Once again we have the obligatory selfie and another ABUG has quickly come to an end. This was a very good time.

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You're up Paul!!!

[klintworth]

The day dawned sunny and crisp, so the drive from Vancouver to Squamish was just beautiful. Although I wasn't able to take pictures along the route, here is a typical view:

Sea to Sky Highway - An Amazing Drive

Quite a bit to unload!

First up was Ed's lovely coffee with Christmas cake - much appreciated after the 80 minute drive!! Ed very kindly gave me a few gifts: chocolates, an arduino, and a hard drive adaptor with all sorts of different connectors. But the gift that I was really knocked out with was a ZIF socket to go in the Beeb's ashtray. It was just as if Ed had read my mind - I've been looking for one of these for a while now!!

Ed's Gifts to Me - Thanks, Ed!!


I couldn't really believe how much I'd packed into 4 boxes to bring up to Ed's place (4 beebs, comprising 2 x Master Compacts, 1 BBC Master and 1 BBC B!) So many projects to try! First up for me was to try the Fleabay homebrew User Port for the Master Compact. Well, after installation and soldering a wire onto the motherboard (seemed to connect up CB1) according to the Fleabay seller's picture it ended up being a 'nothing burger'! After disassembling the 9 pin joystick connector socket I spotted a loose wire so that may have something to do with the user port not working. I then set this aside to investigate further at home. I have my own working user port on my heavily modded Compact keyboard, so no hurry!

Homebrew User Port for the Master Compact

Puzzling out the Master Compact Schematic!!

I then showed Ed my recent acquisitions from my recent visit to the UK: RGB2HDMI video adaptor, and an internal Gotek for the BBC Master, installing the display and rotary encoder into a cartridge port. Both seem to work very well, and the RGB2HDMI meant that I didn't need to bring a VGA monitor with me (I used a Raspberry Pi HDMI monitor today).

BBC Master with RGB2HDMI and internal Gotek

I asked Ed to show me his 30th Anniversay Doom WAD, so he demonstrated a run through the level. I was amazed at all the devious traps that Ed had designed! I never really played Doom that much, spending much more time on Quake!

Forgot to take a picture of Ed playing Doom, so this'll have to suffice!

Ed made me a wonderful sweet potato and mince lunch, and it was flavoured beautifully with spices and herbs. After lunch we played the current HSC game of Beebchase. I have to say that I really didn't take to this game much, but at least both Ed and I achieved personal best scores.

Playing Beebchase on the Beeb

Time was now running short, but I then checked whether a couple of my discs would run on Ed's drive as there was one that I couldn't read on my own drives (it was giving me a disc error). Short answer was no - looks like the disc is corrupted. All too soon it was starting to get dark, so time to pack up. The drive home was quite amazing. As it was clear and the moon was almost full the visibility was good, though there was more traffic so it took a while to get home. We had such fun today, and I can't wait until it's time for our next ABUG!