ABug NORTH User Group meeting | 19-21 JAN 2018 | MANCHESTER *BOOKING INFO*

[BeebMaster]

Had a great time this weekend, and many thanks to the organisers for putting it on. It was great to see so many familiar faces, as well as some new ones, and some I'd forgotten I did already know.

Significant achievements were made this weekend, with JGH patching L3 FS version 1.24 to accept 21-st century dates, Daniel fixing my SCSI2SD board and one of my derelict MDFSes. I've made a start on archiving two piles of 5.25" discs for Dave Moore, but ran out of time this afternoon to finish them all.

Probably the most inappropriate moment of the weekend was meeting Professor Steve Furber C.B.E. whilst standing next to a pile of MDFS units, and talking to him about Z80 code!!

[crj]

Thanks Dave for organising this.

Agreed!

In terms of the two rooms, it was a great venue for the numbers that attended. Didn't feel cramped at all.Would be good to go their again if the other issues with the venue management can be ironed out.

On a practical note, I get the impression the majority of people arrived by car. If so, wouldn't it make sense to pick a more rural location? That would be easier to get to by car, probably have more car parking, and likely be cheaper to hire.

Given the choice between driving into Manchester on a Saturday and helping to ferry a few non-drivers between a railway station and a remote hotel, I know which I'd choose. (-8

[1024MAK]

The ABug in Leicestershire (Nov 2017) (link) was in a car friendly rural location.

Mark

[oss003]

Just arrived at home,.
Thanks guys for organising this meeting.
I had a great time, meeting lots of people and adding faces to Stardot names ....
Also got some inspiration for new projects ......
Great meeting ...

Greetings
Kees

[gebes]

I just wanted to also express my thanks for the Manchester Abug meetup . It was awesome to see all the machines, all the addons , as well as speak and the assistance shown in fitting my videonula.

So a big thanks from me !!

[roland]

Just before we left I was looking for Arcadian to thank him personally for organising this meeting. Not only in the months/weeks/days before the meeting but also during the meeting. I noticed (especially on Saturday evening) that this is not always an easy job. But Dave, and all others who helped you with organizing, as well everybody who attended this meeting: a big thank you from me as well for a fantastic weekend. I really enjoyed meeting you

I was at home at 21:30u (Manchester Time Zone) after a nice flight in a blue plane.

[jgharston]

I've been going through updates from ABUG Manchester.

• FServers - Y2K fix for Level 3 File Server v1.24 to create v1.25
• Level2SYS - 35FD and CACD renamed as Atom and System Econet ROM images
• DiskTools - Tweek to DiskToFile to give a neater display
• Updated Atom *VIEW command to use Econet v3.50, but haven't uploaded it yet, and untested as we needed two networked Atoms to test it
• System - Sorted System ROMs
• Made a start on Atom ROMs
• The ROM collection posted here a couple of weeks ago is next in the pile
• and then the disk images of Dave Moore's disks to check

...and I've probably forgotten some stuff I've done, but I've got a list of more things to plough through.

Retro Mark has given me a USB joypad thingy to play with to write some USB joystick drivers.

Somebody lent me a Lenovo USB keyboard, but left before I could give it back. If you're wondering where it is, I have it.

[jgharston]

On a practical note, I get the impression the majority of people arrived by car. If so, wouldn't it make sense to pick a more rural location? That would be easier to get to by car, probably have more car parking, and likely be cheaper to hire.

If we had everybody's home postcode we could write a travelling saleman algorithm to work out the optimum location.

[Arcadian]

Thanks to everyone who came - fab to see so many new faces, hopefully you've all caught the (A)bug and we can look forward to seeing you at future gatherings. It was a great honour to welcome both Steve Furber (thanks Phil M) and Kevin Edwards on Saturday morning. And it's always a pleasure to have Kees and Roland over (bring Wim with you next time please!!).

I think it's fair to say that things seemed to run pretty smoothly - apart from the nonsense with that hotel rep on Saturday night of course. I'm sorry to Matt, Phill and anybody else who were inconvenienced. We'll work on firming up our booking procedures and general communication to try and reduce the likelihood of incidents like that occurring again.

Just for the record, £120 was spent on food and there is still a £95 surplus. These funds will go towards the next ABug event which is being organised by Robert on 1-3 June in Hampshire (really hope as many members as possible can make it along to this - we have a huge hall and the potential for 40 people+ to each take a full table for their gear!).

Would like to hear what everyone thought of the selection of refreshments, the attempt to mix some fruit, nuts etc in with all the crisps and biccies. Bottled water would probably be a worthwhile addition for example...

On a practical note, I get the impression the majority of people arrived by car. If so, wouldn't it make sense to pick a more rural location? That would be easier to get to by car, probably have more car parking, and likely be cheaper to hire.

Given the choice between driving into Manchester on a Saturday and helping to ferry a few non-drivers between a railway station and a remote hotel, I know which I'd choose. (-8

Just to give some background we have generally only used rural locations (Halifax and Leicestershire) with Bolton being the only exception. Manchester was the same price to hire as Leicestershire. Both were slightly cheaper than Halifax IIRC.

Whilst rural locations with good/free parking suit me down to the ground (because I drive everywhere and barely ever use buses/trains) I personally like the idea of switching between city centre and countryside. I think it keeps things varied. Cities offer plenty of dining out options, make train travel relatively easy (without needing to rely on organising lifts from stations) and in the case of this event, I didn't think the parking options were too bad - most people I spoke to seemed happy with the parking arrangement at the hotel and there was a car park just around the corner that I used which was only £4/day (not £5.50 as I stated previously). I'm not sure if we'd want to use this particular venue again but if we did, I'd need to do a better job of communicating the unloading point by the Wharf room, I think. Oh and a few people commented that having a free museum next door was a nice bonus!

What do others think?

[hoglet]

Hi Jonathan,

Made a start on Atom ROMs

The AtomSoftwareArchive has a collection of ROMs here:
https://github.com/hoglet67/AtomSoftwar ... aster/roms

The actual files are named with their "Atom" CRC; a C program to generate this is here:
https://github.com/hoglet67/AtomSoftwar ... 16/crc16.c

Dave

[sPhilMainwaring]

Hi all

Thanks to Dave M and anyone else involved in organising the event

As always great to meet new faces and reconnect with old ones (Old as in previous!!!)

Apologies for the late announcement that Steve Furber would be attending. The filming had been arranged well before Christmas but I wasn't one hundred percent sure that his plans might change before or on the day so it wasn't until he asked to firm up the arrangements last week that I felt confident enough to announce on stardot

Despite being a techy and not a bone-fide interviewer the filming went well for the most part - I varied between slightly awful and awful but Steve was wonderful of course. I will have to edit a much "cooler" me in later!

We were originally going to film in his office but he was too busy during the week and so he very kindly agreed to give up time from his weekend. Fortunately for us of course this meant that he would actually be at ABUG so I asked if he would be okay doing some meeting and greeting. Despite the filming time being twice that intended (I could have continued our additional chat about Spinnaker all day) he still made sure to take the time to go around and look what everyone was doing - lots of photo opportunities and even a few autographs

I think he stayed nearly an hour longer than he had been able to in total - thoroughly awesome chap!

Phil

p.s. Dave

Hi Jonathan,

Made a start on Atom ROMs

The AtomSoftwareArchive has a collection of ROMs here:
https://github.com/hoglet67/AtomSoftwar ... aster/roms

...

Dave

JGH has done a lot of work adjusting addresses and so on in the Atom ROMs Dave ... there were a few things needed changing to coax the econet stuff to life ... Kees may have told you about this of course

[oss003]

We're talking about patching the Atom econet utilities for the econet v3.50 rom.

Greetings
Kees

[Kevin Edwards]

Hi,

I'd also like to thank Dave M and this team for another excellent event and to all the members who took the time to haul themselves over to *sunny* Manchester to take part. It was great to meet many of you and match faces to names. Sadly, I had a limited amount of time to visit on Saturday, but still managed to meet many of those attending. Hope i get chance to visit at a future event.

It's so nice to see lots of love and enthusiasm still being given to the old Acorn machines. Keep it up!

I look forward to seeing the Steve Furber interview video, Phil.

If anyone else has photos or videos of the event please could you share them - direct or through links.

All the best,
Kevin.

[davidb]

Sorry I didn't manage to catch up with you, Kevin. If you were there at the same time as me then I wasn't aware of it. I'll have to catch up with you about Electron tape protection schemes some other time.

If anyone else has photos or videos of the event please could you share them - direct or through links.

I'll try to upload a short video to YouTube at some point. The other pictures I have aren't so interesting but I've attached many of them here.
Edit: Here's the incredibly short video I made with my phone: Reading a RISC iX system image from tape

[sweh]

On a practical note, I get the impression the majority of people arrived by car. If so, wouldn't it make sense to pick a more rural location? That would be easier to get to by car, probably have more car parking, and likely be cheaper to hire.

If we had everybody's home postcode we could write a travelling saleman algorithm to work out the optimum location.

You could start with the google map; http://www.stardot.org.uk/forums/viewto ... =41&t=8933

[Arcadian]

Group photos from the Saturday. Unfortunately a few people were missed - including Robert, Boydie (Tim) and Steve Furber who left in the morning. Oh and obviously I'm not in it either (taking piccie!).

[Arcadian]

... and here are a few snaps I took whilst filming Phil M's interview with Steve Furber.

I love some of the expressions I happened to capture on both Phil & Steve's faces!

[Arcadian]

Last few (not the best quality).

[crj]

I didn't think the parking options were too bad - most people I spoke to seemed happy with the parking arrangement at the hotel and there was a car park just around the corner that I used which was only £4/day (not £5.50 as I stated previously).

For Boydie and me, rolling up on the Saturday morning, the parking was a definite problem. Both those car parks were full, and we had to wait for someone to leave the hotel gym before we could get in. Even then, they had us park in a disabled bay! (Fortunately, someone else then vacated a normal bay).

I guess that issue was invisible to people who parked on the Friday and didn't move their car until Sunday, though.

[davidb]

Group photos from the Saturday. Unfortunately a few people were missed - including David Boddie, Robert and Boydie (Tim). Oh and obviously I'm not in it either (taking piccie!).

I am in both of the pictures!

[tricky]

Really sorry that I missed this one, I will try harder in future.

[Arcadian]

I didn't think the parking options were too bad - most people I spoke to seemed happy with the parking arrangement at the hotel and there was a car park just around the corner that I used which was only £4/day (not £5.50 as I stated previously).

For Boydie and me, rolling up on the Saturday morning, the parking was a definite problem. Both those car parks were full, and we had to wait for someone to leave the hotel gym before we could get in. Even then, they had us park in a disabled bay! (Fortunately, someone else then vacated a normal bay).

I guess that issue was invisible to people who parked on the Friday and didn't move their car until Sunday, though.

Ah right, I was unaware of that - I remember asking somebody who had parked at the hotel what the capacity was like, and was informed that there were plenty of spaces; but yeah I guess if they parked up on Friday night and didn't return till Sunday they wouldn't have known. There are other cheap nearby car parks (in addition to Elm Road) so apols for not thinking of listing a few more options...

[Arcadian]

Group photos from the Saturday. Unfortunately a few people were missed - including David Boddie, Robert and Boydie (Tim). Oh and obviously I'm not in it either (taking piccie!).

I am in both of the pictures!

Ah, didn't recognise you in the corner there! I'll update me post now ...

[hiddenevil]

Just wanted to say it was great to see everyone again. Computer woes aside much fun was certainly had Think I was forced to play an unnecessary amount of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet on the Saturday night