ABUG Scotland #3 - Thu 18th January 2024 - PICS from the event

[Tosk]

My wife's car is out of action meaning I can't make it tonight either.

D.

EDIT: I was also giving Rodrigo a lift so he won't be able to attend.

Okay- thanks for letting me know.

[Tosk]

Unfortunately I'll no longer be able to attend this evening Train and car issues have spoiled my travel plans.

Apologies to those who were looking forward to seeing the Z88. Hopefully I'll make the next one and be able to demo it then.

Chris

Okay Chris - thanks for letting me know.

[brianmartin_2001]

Night Owl is up in case anyone fancies logging
in thru the web link or other.

http://fish.ccl4.org/js-nightowl/

other details are in the Communications Night Owl BBS thread

Apologies I couldn't make it tonight.

Brian

[gordonDrogon]

Nice to pop along last night and meet everyone - thanks.

And FWIW, my little 6507 SBC which "broke" is working after I re-flashed the EEPROM. It's not protected against accidental writing, so when it landed on the TTL USB adapter something must have caused a write somewhere it shouldn't have.

It can be write-protected (in software) but I simply don't have the code-space in the EEPROM to add in the code for the protection and un-protection. Still 4KB for a (somewhat "fat") TinyBasic plus the bit-banged serial IO isn't too bad.

I should make it as a sideways ROM for a regular Beeb - it might be fun for amusement purposes if nothing else!

Cheers,

-Gordon

[thecellartroll]

Very interesting stuff brought along last night! I was quite impressed by the little Amstrad despite its apologetic dislike of the MODE command.

The American Beeb was very interesting to see too. Clearly someone really enjoyed reducing the RF interference designing that. I never realised they had a completely different board layout.

The minimalist computers were impressive but beyond my level of understanding. I did like the Christmas tree LED animation

And Starfighter 3000 on an Elk

[Tosk]

Thanks all for attending last night.

We had a great bunch of Acorn users and an interesting set of machines:-

- A pristine BBC Compact Master



- An Acorn Electron running RISC O/S ?!



- A U.S. version of the BBC Micro that was never shipped and we think modified back to a U.K. power supply.



- A Raspberry PI 400 running RISC O/S Direct



- A home made 4 line LCD display connected to an Electron



- An encoder project using a 6507 chip



- An Amstrad Notepad computer

[gordonDrogon]

Very interesting stuff brought along last night! I was quite impressed by the little Amstrad despite its apologetic dislike of the MODE command.

The American Beeb was very interesting to see too. Clearly someone really enjoyed reducing the RF interference designing that. I never realised they had a completely different board layout.

The minimalist computers were impressive but beyond my level of understanding. I did like the Christmas tree LED animation

And Starfighter 3000 on an Elk

A little bit of research I did earlier suggests that the US Beeb was "remanufactured" for the UK market. It seems that after they were a bit of a flop over there, they sold them back into the UK. That might explain the UK 240v PSU and plug if nothing else.

-Gordon

[gordonDrogon]

Not Acorn but the "encoder" thing is my interpretation of a minimalist working 6502 system - in that it's a 6507 which is a 6502 in a 28 pin package, so no interrupt pins and only 13 address pins. It's setup as 4KB ROM and 4KB RAM. There is an 8-bit latch and an (optional) VIA (which is what was driving 18 LEDs) plus a GAL to tie it all together. Possibly not as minimal as an Atari 2600 which only had 128 bytes of RAM but just as fun...

The 6507 is running very reliably at 2Mhz too. The 4K ROM is actually a 32K EEPROM arranged as 8 'banks' of 4K - the first bank is the boot code which is my own TinyBasic interpreter and serial IO the other banks are used to store programs.



and in-case you're wondering where the RAM chip is, it's underneath the (Atmel) EEPROM.

https://unicorn.drogon.net/6507-tree.mp4

-Gordon

[BigEd]

Glad it went off well and thanks for the photos!

[paulb]

A little bit of research I did earlier suggests that the US Beeb was "remanufactured" for the UK market. It seems that after they were a bit of a flop over there, they sold them back into the UK. That might explain the UK 240v PSU and plug if nothing else.

Yes, see this Software Bargains advert in Acorn User as well as this advert, possibly from their own catalogue.

[thecellartroll]

Should last a lifetime! (6 month warranty)