All-day 'Virtual' Acorn session #4, Saturday 6th June 2020, 9am - 10pm - NOW FULL

[sydney]

It'll soon be time for the next all day meeting so please respond in this thread if you are interested in attending. 9am - 10pm is the running time and we are aiming to cap the event at 50 people.
The all day events tend to be a bit more structured but there are still opportunities for general discussion amongst the attendees so if there is something you'd like to talk about let me know and I'll make sure everyone knows about it.

Latest Timetable

Talks summary

Session 1 - Morning

10:00 - 10:45
Floppy disc preservation: HFE & Greaseweazel (Daniel J)

I'll be covering:

• The floppy disk and drive
• Floppy formats
• Philosophy of preservation
• Methods of preservation, including tools
• Case study
• Q&A

11:00 - 11:45
PCB Design: Tips & Tricks from dp11 (Dominic P)

With lots of people designing PCBs some for the first time, I'm going to share some tips and tricks to help make your boards electrically better. Even though retro clock rates are low , actually one of the most important parameters is slew rate of signals. Modern chips even if clocked slowly have very fast slew rates which can cause problems.

Items I hope to cover :

1. Loop area : Why it is important especially on 2 layer board
2. I'll show a a few simple tweaks to a design to keep loop area to a minimum
3. Via placement to minimize loop area.
4. Decoupling capacitors
5. 4 layer board stackups and why the traditional stack may not be the best.
6. A few little design tips to increase reliability for boards being hand soldered.
7. Questions

12:00 - 12:30
Dave Hitchins: PRES/ACP - Career before, during & after! (daveejhitchins)

We've asked Dave Hitchins to take us through:

• his career pre-PRES
• his work at PRES / Advanced Computer Products, where he designed numerous interfaces for the Acorn Electron and Archimedes
• career post-PRES
• Retro Hardware, products to-date
• Retro Hardware, what's next on the horizon

Session 2 - Afternoon

13:30 - 14:00
Home Computer Museum, Netherlands - Live demonstration of Acorn System One (Timo Hartong & BasV_NL)

It will be presented from the Home Computer Museum in Helmond by Bart van de Akker (Managing Director). I myself will interview him, with Bas V.

14:15 - 15:00
Coding demo effects on the Acorn Electron from 0xC0DE

A short description of my talks in the afternoon:

Bad Apple!!

• toolchain
• video of demo
• preprocessing the frames
• delta frames RLE compression
• syncing audio/video
• moving to version 2

Bouncing Basketball

• video of demo
• DOs and DONTs of coding fast effects
• stable raster on the Elk
• cycle counting
• speed tricks

Porting MOUNTAIN PANIC from the BBC Micro to the Acorn Electron, by 0xC0DE

• video of BBC version
• exploring the source code
• changes in Elk version
• optimising sprite plotting etc.
• video of Elk version
• coming to an Electron near you...

15:15 - 16:00
Coding WHITE LIGHT for the BBC Micro (Sarah Walker)

I'll probably:

• go into the history of the game
• cover some of the tech in the finished game
• show some of the tools used.

16:15 - 17:00
Using Arcade Game Designer (AGD) with the BBC Micro, Electron and Atom - (Kees van Oss)

I will cover:

• What is AGD/MPAGD
• How does it work
• How do you create a game in WinAGD
• Demo creating multi platform games

Session 3 - Evening

18:00 - 19:00
Speaker - Matt Godbolt (mattgodbolt): jsbeeb - The BBC Micro Emulator

The talk is broadly:

• Why jsbeeb exists
• Some neat things in jsbeeb you probably didn't know about
• How emulators work, and specifically how jsbeeb implements them

19:15 - 20:00
High Score Challenge, coordinated by KarateEd (Ed)

When it's time for the HSC, visit this thread which by then will have been updated with all the links and details for today's challenge!

20:15 - 20:45
New BBC Micro RPG Game Project by Naomasa298 (Shane)

I'll be demonstrating and covering progress on my RPG project. Some areas I'd like to cover are:

• Technical challenges I've come across so far, and anticipated issues
• Game design - including features and ideas
• Graphics

21:00 - 22:00
Speaker - Phil Pearson (myelin): The "Ultimate Electron Upgrade"

I'll be talking about the trickiest hardware project I've done the Ultimate Electron Upgrade and will include:

• A brief rundown of the Electron ULA's capabilities and the original wishlist for the UEU
• Hoglet's work to implement a ULA workalike in VHDL, and the full ElectronFpga project
• The UEU PCB and its quirks: four layers, tons of BGA, missing IRQ/NMI pullups, bus-hold buffers, LVC vs HCT for video
• Writing and debugging the RTL: SDRAM, QPI flash, audio
• Future potential: how to max out the SDRAM bandwidth, internal coprocessors, emulating bigger systems

Attending

1. sydney (Simon). 9am - 10pm Moderating. C coding.
2. Arcadian (Dave). 9am - 10pm Moderating.
3. JudgeBeeb (Robert). 9am - 10pm Moderating.
4. jbnbeeb (Jason). 1:30pm - 5:30pm Moderating.
5. dp11 (Dominic). 9am - 10pm PCB Design
6. mattgodbolt (Matt). 6pm - 10pm jsbeeb
7. KarateEd (Ed). 6pm - 10pm High Score Challenge
8. naomasa298 (Shane). Daytime (lurking), 7.30pm - 10pm (participating) New RPG project
9. TimoHartong (Timo) & BasV_NL (Bas). 9am - 10pm Dutch Computermuseum LIVE. System 1.
10. BigEd (Ed). 9am - 10pm
11. 0xCODE (Kelvin). 9am - 10pm
12. z0m8ied0g (Stephen). 9am - 10pm
13. tricky (Richard). 9am - 10pm
14. chrisn (Chris). 9am - 10pm
15. markjw (Mark). 9am - 10pm
16. flibble (Peter). 9am - 10pm
17. Dave Footitt (Dave). 9am - 10pm
18. helpful (Brian). 9am - 10pm
19. Snuggsy187 (Neil). 9am - 10pm
20. SarahWalker (Sarah). 9am - 10pm
21. EdwardianDuck (Jeremy). 9am - 10pm
22. MarkMoxon (Mark). 9am - 5pm, possibly later
23. daveejhitchins (Dave). 9am - 10pm
24. Pernod (Nigel). 9am - 10pm
25. danielj (Daniel). 9am - 10pm
26. Roland (Roland). 9am - 10pm
27. anightin (Andy). 9am - 12:30pm, 6pm - 10pm
28. sirmorris (Charlie). 9am - 10pm
29. oss003 (Kees). 9am - 10pm
30. dominicbeesley (Dominic). 9am - 10pm
31. klintworth (Paul). 6pm - 10pm
32. 1024MAK (Mark). 9am - 10pm
33. sbadger (Stewart). 9am - 10pm
34. markoceans (Mark). 9am - 10pm
35. hoglet (Dave). 9am - 10pm
36. markdryan (Mark). 9am - 10pm
37. wolfgang (Wolfgang). 9am - 10pm
38. scarybeasts (Chris). 6pm - 10pm
39. myelin (Phil). 6pm - 10pm
40. Soruk (Michael). 9am - 10pm
41. IanB (Ian). 9am - 10pm
42. kieranhj (kieran). 9am - 10pm
43. CommanderCoder (Andrew). 9am - 10pm
44. jonsoft (Jonathan). 9am - 10pm
45. MattH (Matt). 9am - 10pm
46. pixelblip (Mike). 9am - 10pm
47. simonsideburns (Simon). 9am - 10pm
48. mark71 (Mark). 9am - 10pm
49. LeeW (Lee). 9am - 10pm
50. Budgie (Andy). 9am - 10pm

NOW FULL!

Some useful information for people unfamiliar with our Zoom meetings can be found here.

[BigEd]

I'm in! (Although as an every-time attendee, I'll queue up behind first-timers and part-timers)

[0xC0DE]

I'd like to participate again!

[sydney]

I've added the first two responders and those mentioned in the timetable to the list.

[z0m8ied0g]

Please put me down for all day

[tricky]

Me please sir.

[chrisn]

Yes please! I'll be there.

[Naomasa298]

I might not make it home until 7.30pm, so pencil me in for after that point, just to be on the safe side.

[markjw]

add me as well please - happy to run the schedule display again if you can update it for the day

[flibble]

me please

[Arcadian]

I might not make it home until 7.30pm, so pencil me in for after that point, just to be on the safe side.

No problem

[Dave Footitt]

Yes pop me down please!

[Arcadian]

Detail for dp11's presentation added to the top post:

PCB Design: Tips & Tricks from dp11 (Dominic P)

With lots of people designing PCBs some for the first time, I'm going to share some tips and tricks to help make your boards electrically better. Even though retro clock rates are low , actually one of the most important parameters is slew rate of signals. Modern chips even if clocked slowly have very fast slew rates which can cause problems.

Items I hope to cover :

1) loop area : Why it is important especially on 2 layer board
2) I'll show a a few simple tweaks to a design to keep loop area to a minimum
3) Via placement to minimize loop area.
4) Decoupling capacitors
5) 4 layer board stackups and why the traditional stack may not be the best.
6) A few little design tips to increase reliability for boards being hand soldered.
7) Questions:

[helpful]

I would like to drop in, mostly lurking again

[KarateEd]

Happy to be there....

Games anyone?

[Snuggsy187]

Yes please !

Great event last time (my first, physical or virtual !)

[sydney]

Attendee list complete up to here. Please let me know if I missed your request and your name is not on the list.

[Arcadian]

The first of the afternoon slots have been confirmed: expert Acorn Electron programmer 0XC0DE will give a talk and demonstration relating to the many, incredible graphics demos he's created for the "Elk".

He will also cover the conversion of Dave Footitt's beautiful arcade adventure Mountain Panic from the BBC Micro to the Electron.

This has currently been allocated a 45 min slot at 2pm.

[SarahWalker]

Me too

[EdwardianDuck]

I'd like to attend as well please. I'll be around for the whole session, mostly listening and trying to code something.

Jeremy

[MarkMoxon]

Me too, please! Really enjoyed the last two, looking forward to this one as well.

I'll probably only be around for the morning and afternoon slots, but we'll see.

Mark

[daveejhitchins]

Put me down for attending, please.

Dave H

[Pernod]

Count me in please. Already a couple of talks on the schedule that I'm interested in attending

[danielj]

I'm in for this one!

[sydney]

List complete to here, almost half full already!

[TimoHartong]

Hi Can I also be placed on this list. I will visit the home computer museum in Helmond the Netherlands. We can ask the museum director if we can show the Acorn System one in detail and stream it live.
I will be in and out

[Arcadian]

Hi Can I also be placed on this list. I will visit the home computer museum in Helmond the Netherlands. We can ask the museum director if we can show the Acorn System one in detail and stream it live.
I will be in and out

Oh, that sounds REALLY cool, Timo.

Do you think there's any way you could you get the necessary permissions in advance? As we could allocate a slot on the programme for you if so ...

[roland]

Please add me to the list as well.

[jbnbeeb]

Please add me.. likely in the morning and the evening.
Thanks

[anightin]

Yes please, for morning and evening slots.

Many thanks

Andy