Booking thread: ABUG North, 26-28 Jan 2024. Manchester TABLES FREE - POP IN

[dominicbeesley]

Running late but just about to set off so I can enjoy the M60 rush hour...

[Arcadian]

We now have a few tables free therefore if anybody local/localish members of Stardot would like to swing by and bring some Acorn gear, either on Saturday and/or Sunday, please make a quick post here. The cost of the space has already been covered.

[Kevin Edwards]

All being well I shall be popping in on Saturday afternoon.

I will also be bringing my poorly old Beeb as it's in need of re-capping and possibly other fixes - it's not been used for a long time. If anyone is up for a bit of restoration fun I'd be very greatful for any help that can be offered. Beer and food can be supplied for moral support! I think I have the replacement caps somewhere too.

BTW This is the Beeb I used to develop Galaforce, Crazee Rider etc. so it's quite an important Beeb to me.

Here it is...I think I have the DNFS EPROM somewhere..

[Kevin Edwards]

Thanks to Ian Jeffray for offering to help fix my Beeb!

[Treborwall]

Hi

I know this thread says full but is it possible to attend? No table required.

What times is the event on..
Thanks

[elk1984]

I doubt it's full. At least three people on thread (me too sadly) who had booked couldn't make it.

Dave posted earlier there were spaces for anyone local too. It's on now...

[Arcadian]

I know this thread says full but is it possible to attend? No table required.

What times is the event on..

Yes just pop in.

We'll likely be in the room till at least midnight tonight, and until early-mid afternoon tomorrow (these things do thin out significantly from 2pm onwards on the Sunday).

[IanJeffray]

Thanks to Ian Jeffray for offering to help fix my Beeb!

It was a pleasure to meet you and glad to be of service. The most PSU work I've ever done. No pressure. Thanks to @IanS for able assistance.
We also replaced decayed ULA heatsink compound with a fresh SIL pad, ULA refitted, ROMs installed, boooo-bip!
Here's also a couple of ROMs imaged as requested...

[Kevin Edwards]

Hi Ian,

A massive thank you to yourself and @IanS for sorting out my BBC Micro on Saturday, very much appreciated! It was really great to see it spring back to life after so long. As I mentioned earlier, it was the BBC Micro that I developed / tested games such as Galaforce, Crazee Rider and Galaforce 2. It's also the machine I used when preparing the tape protection code used by games such as Exile, Alien 8, Knight Lore, Nightshade, Lunar Jetman, Sabre Wulf and countless other Ocean, US Gold and Superior Software titles.

It was also a pleasure meeting so many wonderful people who are still hugely passionate about Acorn's 8 and 32-bit machines. I wish I could have stayed longer. Hopefully there will be another event soon so I can get chance to spend more time with everyone.

Thanks also for dumping those two ROMs.

I'll explan what they are:-

TRANSFER - This is a USER PORT communications Language sideways ROM that I used for some of my game development. I had two Beebs/Masters connected together via the USER PORT. The target machine would have the TRANSFER ROM present and would listen for data via the USER PORT. The data packets had a simple header block that specified the load address, and length, of the data being transfered. There was another header type for specifying an execution address too to run the code. The host ( development machine ) would assemble the game code and then transfer the final object code to the target using the system described above. I would then test the running code on the target machine. Pressing BREAK would then put the beeb back into communications receive mode. This system allowed me to develop on a 'faster' machine - eg. Master Turbo/Beeb with 2nd processor and keep the source code open for editing whilst also testing the games on the target. If the game crashed it didn't stop me from editing / working on the other machine.

PROTECT - This is a modified OS 1.20 ROM I used to help me create/recover my tape protection code.

1.) It doesn't clear RAM on BREAK ( if *FX200,2 had been used ).
2.) It also has a back door that allows me to execute code at another address on BREAK - I think it checks for a certain value in memory somewhere - sorry to be vague. ( not Totally sure about this one without spending time disassembling the changes made to the ROM ). I may have removed it due to shortage of OS ROM space for my code. In fact, I splat over part of the character set area at $C000!

If you are familiar with the tape protection systems I used you will know that I made use of the 6522 timers to encrypt some of the loader code. The encryption/decryption code needed to run 255 times before I would save it out - via using this back door OS ROM. When it executes for the 256 time ( the repeat cycle of the encryptor ) it will actually drop into the now un-obfuscated code as the CRC check will pass. Basically, this allows me to recover the encoded / obfuscated code that the final version of the game needs to use.

Sorry if that technical rant doesn't make sense!

Again, huge thanks for your help yesterday and I hope to see you all again soon!

Big thanks also to @Arcadian for organising the event.

[Arcadian]

Photo dump!

Thursday PM table setup

[Arcadian]

Friday

[Arcadian]

Friday

[Arcadian]

Friday

[Arcadian]

Saturday

[Arcadian]

Saturday

[Arcadian]

Sunday

Only managed these shots of Budgie's Electron with replacement ULA including Mode 7, MMFS, Turbo and VGA Support (and probably more!).

Thanks to everyone that attended (and for Daniel and Chris for the help co-organising) - it all seems to have all ran pretty well indeed from what I can tell, so I'm sure we'll be back at this venue again in the future. Watch this space!

[paulb]

TRANSFER - This is a USER PORT communications Language sideways ROM that I used for some of my game development.

Tangent alert: I once crossed paths with someone who was fairly active on Usenet in the 32-bit scene who had done something similar for Beeb development but using the Archimedes as the more powerful system, although I think it may have facilitated some kind of live debugging as well. Searching for him just now indicates that he is now a professor at Caltech, and the only hint of his earlier career trajectory is a single 1995 paper about the detector of a particle physics experiment. Certainly no Beeb stuff!

Another weird coincidence: I'm sure the bottled water at this event is the same brand as the stuff I used to drink when I later worked at the same place where I encountered the aforementioned Caltech yet-to-be-professor. Some ominous signs here, I think!

[dominicbeesley]

A big thanks to the organisers from me!

And Dave feel free to show the reveal video now!

Cheers

Dom

[baz4096]

Huge thanks to Arcadian and DanielJ for organising, and to IanJeffray, Tom from TNMoC (Issue7), PhilPem and anyone else who pointed me in the right direction. Because of them, I managed to get my A3010 back in tip top condition and to *finally* get my A5000 Alpha of shame fixed (this is the third ABUG it’s been dragged along to) and working fully. Unbelievably happy about this. Thanks again!

[Joka80]

A very big thank you to Arcadian and DanielJ for organising a great ABUG and of course for all involved in the logistics that made everything go smoothly, comfortable & enjoyable. The importance of such meet-ups is paramount to keep all Acorn enthusiast and groups alive so that it just doesn’t get lost to time forever.

Lovely to meet up with everyone again and to be able to put some faces to names from Stardot that I haven’t met at previous ABUG’s

[BeebMaster]

Had a great time, and it might be my last appearance for a long while with the house move coming next month. (In the 29 hours I was away from home, the date changed, the removal man changed, and the skip on our drive got partly filled up, but as far I know the new address hasn't changed!)

I may have to wait now till driverless cars are introduced which can be operated by pedestrians before I can come again to anything with kit. Turning up on me tod is probably going to be all right still, but not as much fun.