ABUG Canada West - July 5th 2018 Meetup

[KarateEd]

Hi Folks,

Paul and I are going to be getting together again on July 5th to explore a couple of things.

We're going to go into in depth recovery attempts at his non-working PSU. Right now he has a spare from me but it would be great to troubleshoot and fix his non-working one. That would be 3 fixes should we succeed.

We're also going to explore my new PiTube, associated software such as GEM, CPM, etc just to see what the possibilities are. It's really cool to see all that RAM in my Master with this device attached and playing with the different modes plus the software.

Time permitting, I hope we'll be able to test some of the software as suggested in the last post within ABUG Canada West on Paul's US machine.

This meeting may be a bit more fluid in nature as this is all that I can think of at the moment for activities but I'm sure we'll think of more.

We'll also try to remember pictures this time.

Ed......

[klintworth]

I’m there ..... and hosting! 4148 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver - further details soon! Paul

[z0m8ied0g]

Bloody hell, ABUG meetings are getting much harder to drive to, I thought the Cambridge one was miles away

[klintworth]

Worth the visit! Paul

[z0m8ied0g]

To be honest its probably quicker to fly to you than drive to Cambridge.

[KarateEd]

Hi Folks,

Paul and I had a wonderful time sharing our experiences and doing a bit of troubleshooting on different aspects of the machines and power supplies we had there. We also had a bit of time to just review some things on the A3010.

First up..... when I got to Paul's home, the PSUs seemed to be the most important things to try to resolve as Paul's PSU from his UK Beeb was definitely DOA and the one I lent him had gone the same way. Neither of us have a lot of technical skills in PSUs beyond the caps exchanges and tracing for broken wires, etc or continuity checks as far as possible.

We found that there was continuity on both PSUs as far as the switches and that both switches worked on the PSU. That being the case, the next step is to ask the experts what the next step should be on these devices.

The next thing to attempt was to get a screen output from Paul's US Beeb. There were some issues with the RGB and the TV out connector. Paul then attempted the BNC which we'll see the results later, well some of them as we forgot to take a picture of one step.

After that we played a couple games just for fun, such as Stryker's Run, Frenzy, and a few on the US Beeb for testing, darn, gave away a secret.

We also fired up CPM and GEM on my Master and played with that a bit. There are pics of the PiTube install (very simple really) and the Master playing Elite a bit. Paul has some of these pics.

Finally we looked at RISC O/S on the A3010 and opened the lid to show my setup for HD and RAM hardware configs. We even did a stabilizing fix for the HD which for some strange reason I never thought of before. It worked amazingly well.

So, on with the pics of this wonderful Acorn filled day......

Ed......

PS, Paul, feel free to add anything that I may have missed out.......

[KarateEd]

The first think up was the PSU work.....

YouTubes to follow..... basically, we didn't get them going but......that's life and we'll rely on the experts for tips and tricks and things to look for/try.

https://youtu.be/ee6slvyekD8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWSj4uq ... e=youtu.be

Ed......

[KarateEd]

Next up.... seeing if we could get a viable output from Paul's US Beeb.

We tried to get a signal from the RGB port out to the TV. This didn't work and then we tried to get a signal out via a GBS-8200. This also failed. We couldn't get a signal from the TV out either. Paul tried adjusting the coil to get a signal that way but it appears the coil is very hard to adjust and/or it has failed in itself. Since it's a US Beeb, I believe these to be fairly rare for TV output (RF modulator)... I think they are different for the UK Beeb versus the US Beeb so it's not a matter of a simple switch of a UK Beeb modulator to a US Beeb modulator, what to do?

What we ended up with on Paul's TV (through the BNC connector)was a scrolling screen but could find no way to adjust the signal to stabilize it. There should have been something on the TV that we could have adjusted but were unable to find anything there either. If I remember in the old days, we could adjust something on our TV to get a good clear signal, well clear for those days.

Not to spoil the outcome but I had brought a TV/monitor with me and we tried that one and lo and behold if the signal from the BNC connector wasn't perfect. This would appear to be something to do with the actual TV Paul had. Now he just has to source a good TV display and his US Beeb will work fine.

I have pics of this happening and maybe Paul took one or two that he can add.

https://youtu.be/IfExHc4PR5c

Ed......

[KarateEd]

Next up was the US Beeb and gaming.....

I think in this one the pictures show the story. I'll say that once you got through the setup screens in Stryker's, you could actually play it reasonably, the rest? Well, you be the judge.

Ed......

PS, don't know why these are coming out sideways..... if anyone has a solution to this, please let me know and I'll adjust them.

So, the concensus was, from this meeting, that for the most part UK programs don't properly run on a US Beeb.

[KarateEd]

Last 3.....

Ed......

[KarateEd]

Finally, we had a look at the A3010, just for a view for Paul who hadn't seen my setup inside and to try a couple programs out.

Essentially, this is only about looking in the machine.....

Essentially, the minor fix is a piece of tape placed strategically to ensure the HD cannot move at all. Under the drive is a spacer I created out of cardboard, should have included a pic of it. It's quite ingenious, if I say so myself (falls over with weight of ego shifting weight way too high) and works well to keep things separated.

The taped box is where the HD is. It's enclosed completely, it's from a laptop and never heats up. I've not had one iota of trouble with it in 2 years and every time I check to see if it's warmed up, it's cool as a cucumber. This was another of my 'inventions', the cardboard box. You would think I could get wealthy inventing this kind of stuff.

It's got 4M of RAM as well so can be useful. Paul gave me some programs at the last ABUG Canada West meetup and about 1/2 of them work, the other half seem to be 32 bit programs. Lots of fun for sure to be had in these types of meetups.

Ed......

[KarateEd]

Here are a few pics of our machines as we had set them up and were working on the different aspects of them.

The titles of the pics kind of describe what they are about.

Ed......

[KarateEd]

One more thing that we did was play with GEM and CPM. Really, there was not much there of practical purpose. It was just a great way to play with the PiTube and put it through it's paces. It's still really new (old) to me. I had played with GEM way back on PCs but never had it myself and the same with CPM. It's not much different from DOS (are you listening Bill Gates?). Anyway, Digital Research did a good job of making the DOS work fairly well and we played with both systems.

We also ran Elite for the Tube as shown on previous pictures.

There are a few pics of the TM6100 and 5522 speech chips in my Beeb, showing location and a youtube following demonstrating the total of the words in the chips.

https://youtu.be/fd1obLYQ3sI

There is one more thing to add to all this and that is this:

I've noticed that whenever there's been an ABUG meeting in the UK, there is always a participant's picture to wrap it all up sooooooo...... to wrap this ABUG meeting up we present the participants at the location of the meet-up, Paul's home in Vancouver.

Ed......

[klintworth]

Thanks Ed - great write up! Here's another couple of pics:

Tube Elite!

An amusing message on the Beeb!
Looking forward to our next meet up! Paul

[tricky]

Thanks for the writeup guys, it sounds like you enjoyed your selves despite some frustrations.
Did any of my games work on a US beeb? I would have expected them to output at 50hz, assuming that the display runs at the same dot frequency (or whatever it is called).

[Arcadian]

Yep, fabulous to see all the pics and the write up; glad you had a good time!

[KarateEd]

Thanks for the writeup guys, it sounds like you enjoyed your selves despite some frustrations.
Did any of my games work on a US beeb? I would have expected them to output at 50hz, assuming that the display runs at the same dot frequency (or whatever it is called).

Hi Tricky,

The frustration wasn't actually that bad. We've just got some stuff to learn about PSUs, nothing wrong with that.

We also have to figure out what the connector pinouts are for the RGB on the US Beeb. I think they are a different pinout, at least we couldn't get that working and it should have worked if the pinouts were the same.

Getting the US Beeb working on the monitor I brought was a revelation and a good omen. It probably means that the TV Paul has won't work properly with that machine unless it has a 'hidden' control for sync on it somewhere.

About your games, I don't think we got to try one of them on the US Beeb but when we were at my place I think we tried one, not sure. We'll put that on the list for next time.

I think what we'll do is start a 'to do' list for the next meetup and that should help us be a bit more organized. We did have a great time and really, i don't think of it as frustrating just because we didn't solve everything we wanted to. It just means we have more to learn and that's a good thing, for all concerned.

One thing I'd like to do is see if we can resolve the issues I have on 2 motherboards I have. Both have the 'long beep' syndrome. Putting 2 heads together will certainly help with that.

Ed......