Econet LAN party – TNMoC 20th and 21st May 2023

[Issue7]

Hello everyone. We’re planning an Econet LAN party at the museum and we’d love you to come along and plug your machine in!

We’ve got 13 machines already on our network and we are now cabled in two rooms. We've got several bridges we can deploy and servers we've never used yet. So could we make the worlds biggest Econet? (For 2023, anyway).

If you have any BBC or Archimedes machines with an Econet interface, please bring them along. We’d be very interested to see any other machines too, so if you have a rare System rack or an Atom, you’ll definitely attract our attention. As well as our current display, we aim to bring our collection of ABC machines, and some early Archimedes A305 and A440 machines will have their first powering in a long time. We may need your expertise to repair them or set them up.

Details

Doors open 9:30am on both days. Clear up by 5pm on Sunday. The room will be locked overnight, so your equipment will be secure. If you wish, we can stay open late on Saturday night (with prior arrangement), or we can decamp to a local pub.

We will provide chairs and tables, a nearby mains socket and an Econet point(s). Please bring your own Econet cable and mains leads. To avoid confusion, we recommend you label your kit. We may have to allocate Econet station numbers nearer the date.

Please do not plug in any equipment that is damaged, unsafe or may have faulty mains capacitors. If you are unsure, we can work together to repair any power supplies on the day. Please do not have covers open on any equipment which runs at more than 12V. i.e. you can run your Beeb or Arc with its cover off, but not a monitor or partly dismantled power supply unit.

Some people have asked about monitors. We may be able to loan some monitors, so please get in touch with your needs. We do have some Cubs spare at present, although we cannot guarantee they will be available in May – although our reliability is improving thanks to previous Fixathon events. We do have lots of HDMI input monitors, so if you have an HDMI converter, no problem. We may also have some SCART TVs or mono screens available.

Admission

Admission is free if you bring a machine to show off or if you can help us fix a museum computer (please bring your own tools and soldering kit). The museum will be open to normal visitors too, and you are welcome to look around.

Catering

As a minimum we will have tea and coffee available and sandwiches to buy from our shop/eating area. Depending upon interest, we can arrange pizza or take away.

Getting there

Sat-nav postcode is MK3 6DS. Parking is available very close to the room. There is an electric car charging point on site although this a short walk from TNMOC’s building. Bletchley station is a 5-10 minute walk away with two direct trains per hour to London and Birmingham.


Please book via this Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/econet-l ... 7163118617 I look forward to seeing you there.
Any questions? Please pop them here and I'll do my best to answer them, alternatively please contact the museum.

Tom
TNMoC Acorn curator

(edited 19/2/23 with text tweaked and Eventbrite link added)

[KenLowe]

Hello everyone. We’re planning an Econet LAN party at the museum and we’d love you to come along and plug your machine in!

We’ve got 13 machines already on our network and we are now cabled in two rooms. We've got several bridges we can deploy and servers we've never used yet. So could we make the worlds biggest Econet? (For 2023, anyway).

That sounds pretty cool. To get the world's biggest Econet, you need to connect Econets together around the world ! Now, there's a device that will do just that !

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=22868
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25126

If someone brings one of those devices along, that will open up endless possibilities.

However, you will need access to an internet attached router to do some port forwarding. And you will obviously need a second (or more) device(s) at a remote location with optionally other beebs on that (those) network(s) too.

[JimR]

Sounds brilliant! I’m definitely up for it.

[markusher]

Not sure if I’ll be in the UK, but I am scheduled to be there around that time.
If not, I can probably set up a network in Switzerland accessible online via Ken and Chris’s magic running several different file servers.

[WrightStuff]

Might be tempted to pop along !
Daft question but for attendees bringing their own machine to plug in....are you providing monitors or expecting them to also bring (lug!) their own to the venue ?

[jgharston]

Being an Econet dude, I'm definitely pencilling this in!
The car's passed its MOT, I should be able to bring Compct, BBC, Electon, Atom. Just need to get enough monitors.

[BeebMaster]

Using *VIEW only one monitor is required!

I'll have to miss it, I'm afraid, as my mother has decided to turn 70 at the same time and insists being attended upon.

[jgharston]

Using *VIEW only one monitor is required!

You can only VIEW between compatible architectures. A BBC trying to *VIEW an Atom or Arc isn't going to be happy.

Hmm...... Project idea. Application that will ping a machine, find out what it is, fetch the screen memory, and display it appropriately. Should work for anything being able to view anything "lower down".

[BeebMaster]

Yes, that would be good. It should be possible for an Archimedes to view a screen from anything earlier. I don't know enough about the RISC OS memory layout to be able to do it myself, I know I've tried the 8-bit method of direct remote peek of screen memory straight into local screen memory, but that's never going to work on Archimedes machines.

One thing I've always wondered about on RISC OS is whether it's possible to display a screengrab from another machine or another screen mode within a Desktop window, eg. display a Teletext screen on the Desktop using the mode 7 emulation. That way multiple remote stations' screens could be displayed at once.

[Issue7]

Might be tempted to pop along !
Daft question but for attendees bringing their own machine to plug in....are you providing monitors or expecting them to also bring (lug!) their own to the venue ?

We may be able to loan some monitors, so please get in touch with your needs. We do have some Cubs spare at present, although we cannot guarantee they will be available in May – although our reliability is improving thanks to previous Fixathon events. We do have lots of HDMI input monitors, so if you have an HDMI converter, no problem. We may also have some SCART TVs and monochrome screens available.

... To get the world's biggest Econet, you need to connect Econets together around the world ! Now, there's a device that will do just that !...

That would be fun! I presume we could have up to 127 networks linked! I will see if the museum could buy such a device, but otherwise it would be great if someone could bring one in. If we had one it would certainly help me set stuff up on our Filestore from home, somewhat easier than posting a disc down. Otherwise, our A5000 can now be connected to the internet for file transfer, thanks to volunteers at our last Fixathon, much smoother than struggling with floppies.

Tom

[Issue7]

We are now open for bookings - please see the Eventbrite link below:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/econet-l ... 7163118617

See you there!

Tom
TNMoC Acorn curator

[Issue7]

We're getting ready for this event. We're making up some more Econet socket points, and we are rooting out clock boxes...

We've also got three of these ABCs to show off, and hopefully one will be working, with an undiscovered hard disc to explore:

Come and marvel at the unique case design - just don't cut your fingers on its sharp edges!

[arg]

I've got a fair bit of kit I can bring - exactly how much depending what I get around to building/mending before then.

Infrastructure-wise I've definitely got several clocks (and several newer devices that can act as clocks/terminators), and an original Acorn bridge. A certain amount of cables and T-pieces etc. And I'll put a fresh battery in my cable tester...

MDFS probably worth bringing; not so sure about BBC micro as you've lots of those already.

I have PC Econet cards, but no ISA-slot PCs to put them in (but have built a jig to power them up independently).

R260 would be nice to have (with BBCs as terminals to Unix over Econet), but mine is currently broken.

[BeebMaster]

Shame I can't be there, as I would have like to have seen an PC Econet ISA card. And I do have at least one PC with an ISA slot!

[danielj]

I've got a PS/2 30/286 that seems to have ISA slots - I'm not sure if I'm coming yet, but if I am I'll bring it along.

d.

[Issue7]

Hi arg - Oooh that will be very good. I would certainly be interested in seeing the mythical Econet card for a PC! If you need it, I have a 486PC with ISA slots to hand that you could plug in to.

We have an R260, so I could get that out if you are interested. However it also may be poorly. Last checked in 2011 and was having problems then.

We have a number of hard discs, that I think were from L3 servers. I'm hoping we can set these up and do a 'spin and see' to discover what's on them!

We'll also be showing off our Acorn Communicator. This version is an interesting briefcase mounted type and works well. We've never plugged it into a network though!

[arg]

We'll also be showing off our Acorn Communicator. This version is an interesting briefcase mounted type and works well.
We've never plugged it into a network though!

I have a printout on fan-fold paper of the source code of the network primitives for the Communicator!

It certainly deserves to be networked.

[Issue7]

Final items to dig out of our store are some Acorn System units. It has been a while since we had this one running. As I recall, this one boots to "Acorn DOS". Has anyone got any software that we could try in this please?

Look forward to seeing you all there!
Tom

[jgharston]

Final items to dig out of our store are some Acorn System units. It has been a while since we had this one running. As I recall, this one boots to "Acorn DOS". Has anyone got any software that we could try in this please?

BBC BASIC

[arg]

Final items to dig out of our store are some Acorn System units. It has been a while since we had this one running. As I recall, this one boots to "Acorn DOS". Has anyone got any software that we could try in this please?

Has it got enough RAM to run the fileserver? Needs at least 32K, which means a DRAM card or lots of 8K RAM cards (that won't fit in the case!).

Actually, from the photo it doesn't look to have an Econet card either. Probably someone can loan one (not me).

[cmjones01]

I'd love to attend the LAN party but I'm not sure I'll be in the UK. I'm normally based in Poland but I do have at least one Econet-capable machine here (it's probably the only one in the country!). If there's any way of tunnelling across the Internet I'm game, even if it involves constructing special hardware for the task.

Chris

[JimR]

I've booked my ticket for Saturday. Hoping to bring along a couple of Masters (one with L3 fileserver) and my new Econet USB interface: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=26775&p=390567#p390567.

Thanks for organising this, Tom, can't wait!

[MillieTD83]

I've got a PS/2 30/286 that seems to have ISA slots - I'm not sure if I'm coming yet, but if I am I'll bring it along.

d.

Model 30 was the only member of the PS/2 line with ISA slots as I recall - all the others were MCA.

[danielj]

Model 30 was the only member of the PS/2 line with ISA slots as I recall - all the others were MCA.

It was indeed - which makes it quite a handy PS/2!

[Issue7]

We’re getting ready for the party! We spent some time this weekend hunting down items. The computer says that there’s three bridges somewhere on this pallet…

Gravity points to the left in this photo

… Unfortunately it’s on a shelf 2 metres high, somewhere at the bottom of the pallet, and there’s a problem with the forklift. Ho hum, a job for next weekend!

Instead, we got the MDFS out.

I have to admit we haven’t had it out before, so it had some secrets to reveal. Firstly, someone had cut the mains lead off! Opening the cover, I was thankful it hadn’t suffered from battery cancer, but the battery will need to be replaced. Then I looked closer, and discovered the floppy disc chip was half prised out. Also the circuit board was only loosely fixed down.

I didn’t have high hopes. It looked like the power supply had gained some bonus capacitors, so I unplugged the power supply from the main board and powered on. At least that checked out OK. Now to try it for real… I prised the FDC chip out completely and tried switching on. Power and no clock lights came on, followed a few seconds later by all the other lights at once. That’s not right! Things didn’t improve when I put the FDC chip back in.

So its not working, but not totally dead either. Any ideas?

[arg]

I didn’t have high hopes. It looked like the power supply had gained some bonus capacitors, so I unplugged the power supply from the main board and powered on. At least that checked out OK. Now to try it for real… I prised the FDC chip out completely and tried switching on. Power and no clock lights came on, followed a few seconds later by all the other lights at once. That’s not right! Things didn’t improve when I put the FDC chip back in.

Unfortunately, that's common behaviour for "memory doesn't work". I have two more in the same state (and one that works!). Maybe we should have a session on fixing them.

[danielj]

So its not working, but not totally dead either. Any ideas?

It won't fix it, but get the batteries cut out of them, quick smart! They will start destroying stuff

d.

[Issue7]

In other news, we have sorted out some system units to show off:

That's two system 3s and a system 4, which is on loan to us.

[arg]

That's two system 3s and a system 4, which is on loan to us.

But still no Econet cards though?

(and what's that Sys4 doing with THREE disc drives?)

[markusher]

As I won't be able to be there in person, I've set up an Econet here in Switzerland and would like to make it available remotely for the party. Either by Trunking between two PiEconet bridges or as a simple stand alone set up to connect to.

Is there anyone going who can help me test the configurations? Or is taking a PiEconetBridge that can act as the gateway at the UK end?