ABUG SOUTH 24 to 26 January 2020: NOW FULL

[Pernod]

Some nice photos there, plenty of different things going on

The Beeb with orange/yellow keys, I've seen it mentioned before somewhere. What's it's story, was it personally customised or produced like that for a particular application?

[1024MAK]

I understand that the BEEB with the unusual coloured keys was bought with these key caps already fitted. I sure Simon will tell you more when he visits the forum (he’s currently busy so I don’t want to interrupt him).

Mark

[1024MAK]

More info on the colourful keyboard here...

[1024MAK]

So far for me, today I connected up and tested the Power 3000 / Lambda 8300 (see photo from my earlier post). Fitted extra RAM to my A3020 (RAM modules supplied by Chris), more details here and have helped a member get his BBC B working again (poor contacts on the 6502 CPU socket after a Watford Electronics RAM / ROM board had been fitted).

Oh and I’ve stuffed myself at dinner...

Mark

[j6wbs]

Thanks all for making myself and my partner so welcome this afternoon, we were only present for a short time, but managed to fit an awful lot in...

1024MAK did a brilliant job of diagnosing the issues with my original Beeb, and spent more time than I deserve going through how everything fits together, the Beeb appears much more stable now, so I'm very grateful to Mark for his help and sharing his detailed knowledge.

I was delighted to catch up with chrisn, it is good to meet someone else working on emulators (he is currently maintaining BeebEm for Windows at https://github.com/stardot/beebem-windows ), as I delve further into Beeb emulators for handhelds (RG350 and LDK), I might well have to chat with you Chris about the hairy internals of BeebEm.

markdryan showed us his lovely little ZX Spectrum OMNI HQ laptop, which is a cute machine. Most interesting for me was Mark's hand rolled BBC Basic parser which compiles down to ARM binaries, in his demo he was using RPCEmu to show the lovely raytracing demo (Which I believe simonsideburns hand typed from the Spectrum version over to the Beeb, nice work). I'd be interested to have a play with that myself at some point Mark.

simonsideburns has quite a task on his hands archiving the wonderful hoard he obtained at auction (including the very funky coloured Beeb keyboard), luckily Phoebe was happily assisting him, and seemed to enjoy the jokes too

0xC0DE (Kelvin) has some amazing demos from the Electron (I was particularly impressed with the basketball one, nice job sir), I'll have to have a play with elkulator at some point.

mattyj has a great A5000 from the 4th dimension, without battery leakage, he was tempting me over to more machines, this hobby is gonna start getting expensive...

tricky was showing his marvellous ports of arcade games from MAME over to the Beeb (Scramble, Frogger, Phoenix, Carnival etc) http://www.bbcmicro.co.uk/index.php?sea ... st&on_A=on These were very impressive, I'd be interested to see the source to these, and have a go at compiling them myself Richard, is the source available? Also picked up a little gizmo to plug in a megadrive gamepad into the back of the beeb, that looks like it will be fun when I get that working.

It is a shame I only had the one afternoon to meet you all, and I would love to have come round to each of your tables to see what you are most enjoying with Acorn products at the moment, hopefully I'll be able to find the time to come to another meet up in the near future, and I'd encourage others to try and get along to ABUG meetups, as they are such a friendly bunch.

Thanks to judgebeeb et all for the arrangements of the venue and event, it was great fun,
cheers

Jez (username:j6bws = for those that want to know the meaning behind usernames, mine is... (j)ustyce (w)ill (b)e (s)erved [Doctor Who Audio reference] + No.(6) from the prisoner, arranged in a fake HAM radio callsign arrangement)

[1024MAK]

Thanks for the nice comments Jez.

I tried to take a photo of the coloured keyboard yesterday, but it did not come out very well, so here is a better picture:

Coloured keyboard

Yesterday evening I found a fault with Xavier‘s A3020. There was damage to the PCB track between R60 and D15/R61 meaning that no standby power was getting to the CMOS/RTC chip when the mains was switched off. Hence it was not retaining its configuration. The break in the damaged track was bridged. I reset the configuration and was rewarded with it booting into the graphical desktop .

Not quite as busy as yesterday but still busy this morning

Sunday morning and it’s already busy at 10:45

Mark

[sbadger]

Hi

A great weekend everyone! Thanks for the company, the chats, the help, the beers and thanks again to Robert for sorting.

stew

[cmorley]

Yes many thanks Robert.

It was great to see everyone old previously known faces and new!

[tricky]

Thanks everyone, especially judgebeeb for organising the event again.
Sorry for being a day late, but at least it meant that I couldn't boor as many people as useual.
I have posted the source for some of my games, but usually wait for someone to ask in the game's thread. The build process is a dos/cmd batch file that chains beebasm (RichTW) and my compressor (posted with basic c++ source) to create a MODE 7 splashscreen/loader and an "exe" that in most cases can be run or pit in sideways ram/EPROM or auto booted from slot 0 on a master cartridge.

[pixelblip]

It looks like you all had lots of fun.
Did anyone manage to get any video of Paul with his Clef keyboard please? That sounds most interesting to me.

[gidandridge]

Just to say a huge thank you to everyone at ABUG this weekend.

This was my first time visiting and you all made me feel really welcome. I think my brain is still buzzing from all the great conversations I had and all the amazing things I saw. I tried my best to get round an meet everyone but with such a busy event it was inevitable that I failed.

Huge thanks to Robert for organising and I hope to see you all again soon!

[BigEd]

Me too: a good weekend in good company! Sorry I didn't wear my name badge - it was doing my neck in, surprisingly enough. I'd ask for posture tips but I think it might be the wrong crowd. Anyhow, I was the bloke in the corner, fiddling about with the 16-bit Communicator, with help from Dave and Ian and others, including help from RobC, the owner, from afar. I surprised myself by writing a few lines of 65816 assembly too.

[Dave Footitt]

Yes great event, first time I've been to that particular venue and I think it works really well. Great price and plenty of space. I could've happily had a few more pints last night and carried on gaming so in retrospect I'm glad it closed at midnight!

Great to meet some new faces and catch up with old ones Many thanks to all involved in making it happen.

[flibble]

Many thanks to Robert for organising again. Had a great time and managed to do the occasional useful thing in between the nice food

Also thanks to all who helped with testing a benchmark program on Sunday, it produced some interesting comparison results!

[chrisn]

Thank you to judgebeeb for another great ABUG weekend!

I took along my newly acquired Atom, which had stopped working after I'd removed the Acorn colour board. hoglet and 1024MAK helped me get it running again, it turned out that the 6847 wasn't making contact in its socket. Many thanks to you both! hoglet also helped me install the AtomMMC from sirmorris, and loaned me his Raspberry Pi HDMI video converter for the duration of the event. The board works perfectly, so I'm looking forward to making one of these up myself.

It was great to meet some new people including 0xC0DE, gidandridge, trevorg, and j6wbs, who brought along his handheld consoles running BeebEm with Citadel and Repton, really impressive!

Had fun playing some music on SimonSideburns' Beeb with Music 500 and ATPL Symphony keyboard, as well as loudscotsbloke's collection of rare 8-bit machines (eg., a Commodore SX-64), and a quick blast on Stunt Car Racer on tricky's Master Compact.

[daveejhitchins]

Had a great time, as always, despite suffering from Man-Flu - Hope I've not passed it on to anyone - I did use lots of the hand gel. You'll notice in the photos that I'm wrapped up well with jacket and hat

Lots of help from DaveB (Hoglet) with the MGC MKII - I'll post details on the MGC MKII thread later. Still trying to speed-up the display listing, though.

Traveling to and fro was a lot easier this trip - 5 Hours down and 4.5 hours back which included a break a Leister on both journeys - as opposed to 6 hours each way last november!!

Interesting to see another Comex 35 actually working and running a version of Boulder-Dash (?). Must dig mine out and see what I can recover drom the discs I have . . .

And thanks to Robert for the organising

Dave H

[oss003]

I also had a great time, it was nice to see and have a chat with other Stardot guys. Didn't do much of the planned activities but enjoyed myself this weekend.

Thanks Robert for organising this meeting ...

Greetings
Kees

[JudgeBeeb]

As ever, although it was quite a bit of work this time, it was a pleasure to organise. I am glad that everyone had a good time, as did I. I particularly enjoyed meeting new members (both two-legged and four).

Also, I am glad to report that my replica Atom is fully working. (Although there are a few tweaks that I would like to make.) I am away from home for most of the week. When I am back, I will take some decent photographs and post an update in the Replica Atom thread.

Now looking forward to attending an event that I am not involved in organising!!

[SimonSideburns]

I would like to also give a big thanks to Robert for his hard work, and to others who chatted with me over the weekend.

I am very pleased with Phoebe's behaviour and how she quickly settled down after her initial excitement over meeting everyone, and I have to say thanks to Emma for her numerous times taking Phoebe when I attended to Belinda, and for the help I received when carrying things or pushing trolleys loaded with heavy vintage computer bits and bobs.

Shame I didn't get around to everyone to say hi, but there were plenty of people who stopped by my table to see my multi-colour-keyed BBC Micro. I particularly missed the other music keyboard and owner. I did see a box opened up while walking around, but it didn't click with me that the owner had previously posted in this topic to suggest a comparison of the two systems.

Also, a few words or help here and there, encouragement, laughs (is it IMPORT or EXPORT?), some great jokes, a few members providing some Music 4000 keyboard playing, etc. made the weekend even more entertaining.

If I promised anyone anything, or they asked me if I were willing to help with something, it would be helpful to me if you could let me know via PM or tag me in on the relevant topic (is that possible?). I chatted with so many people this weekend I'm not sure who said what or who asked what. I'm also quite lousy with putting names to faces.

Looking forward to the next event and hoping I'll be able to make it. Sorry, not a single picture was taken by me.

[roland]

Now looking forward to attending an event that I am not involved in organising!!

What about the Big Ben Club annually meeting? viewtopic.php?f=25&t=18579

Although that’s only a few hours so probably not worth travelling from the UK.

[tricky]

You can sort of tag someone by including their quote (press the " icon) which will notify them, but I'm not sure if there is an actual tag option.

[z0m8ied0g]

Now looking forward to attending an event that I am not involved in organising!!

Actually drove around yesterday scoping out a few possible locations of a NW event

[SimonSideburns]

You can sort of tag someone by including their quote (press the " icon) which will notify them, but I'm not sure if there is an actual tag option.

There does seem to be an extension to phpBB which allows a member to mention another. Whether it would be useful to have it installed on StarDot and whether an admin would be willing to add such a thing is another question (or is that two?).

[trevorg]

Hello folks!

I'd just like to add I had a fantastic weekend too. A great venue packed with friendly & knowledgeable Acorn enthusiasts.
I was the fellow with the beeb, near the outside door to the left of Dave the Electron chap with the cap.

This is the first time I have attended such an event. I thought I was the only one left that had any interest in Acorn hardware, how wrong I was I have come away with renewed energy and enthusiasm. Thank you all for that. I'd like to think I have made some new friends too. Many thanks Richard for making this all possible.

Kind regards,
Trevor.

[0xC0DE]

The wife and I returned to The Netherlands last night after a wonderful ABUG and extended weekend in the UK!
Many thanks to Robert for organizing this event. My head is still buzzing from all the nice people, interesting technology and new ideas.
It was my very first ABUG and I think I managed to meet about 70% of the people there. Sorry to the other 30%
I am not going to mention individual names (you know who you are!) because I will certainly forget to mention a few. I am grateful for hardware getting fixed, hardware getting upgraded, interesting conversations, amazing projects, sharing of demo ideas, playing with Acorn and other computers, and most of all, finally meeting all of you and being able to put names and faces together!

[trevorg]

I meant Robert or course, not Richard!
Sorry Robert
Trevor.

[flynnjs]

Seems such a long time ago, looking forward to the next physical meet.

[kieranhj]

Agreed. I was hopeful that a November meetup in Camberley might be feasible, and was even about to start a thread, but that seem premature at the moment.

[JudgeBeeb]

My non-8-bit life has been very busy of late and some of you will notice that I have not been active on the forum for most of this year.

The possibility of a physical ABUG in the autumn has been discussed but there was generally a view that it was a bit premature. Whilst I suspect that most and probably all of the likely attendees will have been fully vaccinated, we do have a lot of members who are potentially vulnerable. We were concerned that there might not be sufficient interest to make a meet-up feasible. The idea of a socially-distanced ABUG did not appear attractive.

In any event, I start a new job in October and have to go on training for this in November. So this would not be a good time for my organising an event.

I have a tentative plan (very much dependent on my having the time to organise this once I have started the new job) of an ABUG South Christmas party. This would just be a meet-up (?meat-up) for Christmas lunch one Saturday/Sunday, probably at the The Ely. There would be no kit or activities; just food, drink and chat.

I am hopeful that we will be able to have a proper full ABUG in the New Year. But only time will tell.

Watch this space...

[kieranhj]

Thanks for the update JudgeBeeb. We keep our fingers crossed for the next event and good luck with your new job when you get there!