2024 Econet LAN party 18 & 19th May

[Issue7]

Its back! You are all invited to TNMoC at Bletchley for this year's Econet LAN party. Bring your machine along and plug in. Last year we got 57 machines and several remote connections - how many can we do this year?

Book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/econet-l ... 3532547827

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.

To make the event more memorable, we want to do some multiplayer gaming. Would you be interested in writing a simple game for the event? We’ve got Colossal Cave, but what about some other games? So we are putting a challenge out there. Could you write or convert another game to make it multiplay over the network?

As part of the event, we’re going to have some short talks with an Econet theme. We’re planning four talks on each day, exploring the past and present of Econet.

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’ll be allocating Econet station numbers shortly. There will be several sub-nets, linked by bridges.

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 izzy.swaney@tnmoc.org to discuss your needs.

Admission

Admission is £15/day or £25 for both days. The museum will be open to normal visitors too, and you are welcome to look around. Lunch is included in the ticket price.

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 is a short walk from TNMOC’s building. Bletchley train station is a 5-10 minute walk away with two direct trains per hour to London and Birmingham.

Tom
TNMoC Acorn Curator
(Edited 5/3/24, adding full details)

[Cruxinc]

i’ll definitely save this date! thanks for organising once again tom

[philpem]

Thanks again for organising this, I'll block out the dates in the calendar!

[Ukwebb]

i'll be there

[baz4096]

I think I can make it this time!

[komadori]

How exciting! I read about last year's one, but I assumed it was just a one off.
Not sure if I can make it, but perhaps on one of the days. I'm already working on a game with planned Econet support, so it's tempting though .

[Cruxinc]

do 32bit machines work with 8bits on econet? this event is just after birthday so hopefully will bring along a beeb and archie!

[philpem]

do 32bit machines work with 8bits on econet? this event is just after birthday so hopefully will bring along a beeb and archie!

They do indeed! You can use a 32bit machine as a file server for an 8-bit, and might be able to go the other way too (I'll leave it to someone who's used the BBC Fileserver software to confirm!).

The only issue is that the BBCs don't run as fast as the 32bit machines, so the network clock has to be a bit slower to let them keep up.

[BeebMaster]

I'll try to get there somehow.

Continuing the theme from the Manchester ABug, what about a multi-station effect for the Watford Beeb Digitiser? Be good to see an image of Flibble broadcast around 20 stations!

[Issue7]

That sounds a good idea. Something like:
* The machine with the camera does a broadcast, and
* All the receiver machines grab the data when they see it.

That's beyond my skills at the moment... would it be straightforward to write?

Some other ideas we've been chatting about:
* Card games - e.g. poker
* A clone of the 2-player Tetris on a game boy

[IanJeffray]

I shall try and make it, with the dodgy 386 and EcoLink

[jbredcar]

I'll be there too, albeit over 5 stone lighter than last year, so carrying kit will be much easier for me

[arg]

I shall try and make it, with the dodgy 386 and EcoLink

What sort of dodgy 386? And presumably an Acorn Ecolink? All working or a 'project'?

I spent practically the entire event last time grinding away unsuccessfully to get an SJ PC Econet card to work in one of TNMOC's ISA-slot PCs, being stalled at the first step of getting it to boot into either MS-DOS (to then run the Ecolink software), or FreeBSD (for which I have a driver with the same API as the R140 Econet, on top of which I can run fileserver and remote access terminals from BBCs).

Any collaboration we can do in advance to maximise the chance of actually achieving something useful on the day would probably be a good idea.

[jgharston]

We could all *TALK to each other.

[jbredcar]

I spent practically the entire event last time grinding away unsuccessfully to get an SJ PC Econet card to work in one of TNMOC's ISA-slot PCs, being stalled at the first step of getting it to boot into either MS-DOS (to then run the Ecolink software), or FreeBSD (for which I have a driver with the same API as the R140 Econet, on top of which I can run fileserver and remote access terminals from BBCs).

Any collaboration we can do in advance to maximise the chance of actually achieving something useful on the day would probably be a good idea.

I have a few machines that I’ve been building and getting working over the last 9 months. They are now happily running MS-DOS and FreeBSD, so that we can get your board working.

Maybe I could bring them down to you in the next few weeks, so we can get them tested and ready before May?

[jgharston]

I'll be there too, albeit over 5 stone lighter than last year, so carrying kit will be much easier for me

Ooo, how did you manage that? Even being asleep for almost three weeks with Covid, I still haven't lost any weight.

[arg]

I have a few machines that I’ve been building and getting working over the last 9 months. They are now happily running MS-DOS and FreeBSD, so that we can get your board working.

Maybe I could bring them down to you in the next few weeks, so we can get them tested and ready before May?

Sounds great. I'll drop you a PM.

[IanJeffray]

I shall try and make it, with the dodgy 386 and EcoLink

What sort of dodgy 386? And presumably an Acorn Ecolink? All working or a 'project'?

The one I had at the Manchester ABUG - the EcoLink part works a treat and we had it connected up to the big Econet there, but the 386 itself is a bit 'fragile', though I've done some work on it recently which appears to have helped a bit, but the BIOS won't successfully boot from hard drive and I've only 4MB RAM - I've been looking for four 4MB 30pin SIMMs - rare/expensive now! I like the form factor of this one though - smaller than an A310, which is handy, yet still able to swallow that monster EcoLink card.

[Ukwebb]

Hotel Booked cant wait

(obviously not saying where as you never know who is watching)

[Ukwebb]

Its back! You are all invited to TNMoC at Bletchley for this year's Econet LAN party. Bring your machine along and plug in. Can we make a bigger network than last year?

@Tom....
Is this right???

[baz4096]

(This is the URL @ukwebb is looking at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/econet-l ... 3532547827)

[Issue7]

Yes that's the one!
I'm afraid we can't do it for free this year, but your admission price includes lunch.
Tom

[MarkMoxon]

And the ticket includes entrance to the museum, of course, which is normally a tenner.

Mark

[Winston]

I will try to make it again this year, I have an Econet project I'm working on (now I'm going to have to get my finger out and get it into a transportable state, as well as possibly enough software to be practical - it's possibly the first standalone RISC-V system on Econet too). No problem about having to pay, it's chicken feed compared to the costs of actually getting to Bletchley from the Isle of Man! Fortunately I have friends in Milton Keynes so a place to stay (and it's also right around my birthday!)

[philpem]

Just booked my tickets and hotel - hope to see you all there!

[Cruxinc]

sadly im not going to be able to make this one, as i have gcses around then and need to focus on them. @issue7 do you happen to know when the next fixathon might take place? thanks a lot!

[BeebMaster]

Go anyway and tell them it's your computer science coursework!

[Cruxinc]

i would but i have exams surrounding that weekend so will focus on just revising at weekends from abug onwards (aready revise quite a bit (taking a break from it rn lol)) but will hopefully do more events july onwards (after exams have finished)

[Issue7]

@issue7 do you happen to know when the next fixathon might take place? thanks a lot!

Hi, we're not setting a date for the next Fixathon yet. The meeting room is due to close not long after the LAN party for building work. We're not expecting to get the room back until the very end of summer... and you know how building jobs tend to overrun!

Note the rest of the museum will stay open as normal through all this. When finished, we will get a much larger meeting room, so future events can have more space. There may well be a Fixathon much later in the year.

Tom

[awilliams]

I shall try and make it, with the dodgy 386 and EcoLink

What sort of dodgy 386? And presumably an Acorn Ecolink? All working or a 'project'?

The one I had at the Manchester ABUG - the EcoLink part works a treat and we had it connected up to the big Econet there, but the 386 itself is a bit 'fragile', though I've done some work on it recently which appears to have helped a bit, but the BIOS won't successfully boot from hard drive and I've only 4MB RAM - I've been looking for four 4MB 30pin SIMMs - rare/expensive now! I like the form factor of this one though - smaller than an A310, which is handy, yet still able to swallow that monster EcoLink card.

IMG_5120.JPG

Mine won't be coming, a tad too far, some days its a bit depressing being in .au when you lot get up to such fun.

Its recently found a home in a modern PC case with no booming removable media driver bays. Its partner is a dx5-133 SBC,& I think the HD might be the original from my A4. though there is a flash drive destined for the job soon.