Acorn Mini-Hackfest 2014 / Halifax / 15-16 Aug (aka ABug Zero)

[Samwise]

Hi, all.

Apologies for the short-ish notice on this one, but we've booked a meeting room in a hotel in south Halifax for a Mini-Hackfest for the lucky denizens of this forum who can make it.

The idea behind holding the meet-up at the same place we stay overnight is that that we can flit between hacking, the bar, restaurant etc. whenever we want, and can go on hacking as late as we want each night and we can have as many drinks as we like without needing a "designated driver"!

We have a good chunk of our Atom hackers already confirmed (no Charlie ) and the focus will be mostly on hardware hacking/demoing but there'll be room for most things. I'll undoubtedly be catching up on my neglected web duties in the corner.

We're looking for approx. £15 per attendee to contribute to the cost of the conference room hire (Arcadian and I will cover any shortfall), and if there's any cash leftover it'll go towards soft drinks/snacks for the weekend. That's in addition to your own individual cost of a hotel room for two nights.

There are limited spaces available so please send Arcadian (and optionally me) a direct PM/email to check availability and a link to the hotel booking website.

Confirmed attending:

• Arcadian (Fri-Sun)
• Samwise (Fri-Sun)
• Prime (Fri-Sun)
• oss003 (Fri-Sun)
• daveejhitchins (Fri-Sun)
• GaryF (Fri-Sun)
• IanS (Fri-Sun)
• jbnbeeb (Fri-Sat)
• hoglet (Fri-Sun)
• flaxcottage (Fri-Sun)
• AlanD (Fri-Sun)
• sPhilMainwaring (Fri-Sun)

[richardtoohey]

Sounds good, have fun!

[roland]

Unfortunately I cannot attend for several reasons

But if you can determine the date of this Mini-Hackfest for 2015 somewhere in January - March then I will try to convince my family that next year's holiday has to be in the UK

[Prime]

Yep I'll be there but as I'm already on the list.....

And I will be driving so will be able to bring more than in previous years where I've been limited to what I can haul on the train....

Cheers.

Phill.

[flaxcottage]

Sounds a good show.

Hope there is a place left.

[flaxcottage]

Been knocking on the door ...

Light is on but nobody is at home.

PMs sent.

[Samwise]

Ah, c'mon now. I emailed you at 11 last night!

Hang on, lemme see if I can drag the details from Arcadian again! Check your inbox!

Sam.

[Samwise]

Full info should be in your inbox and I've added you to the attendees list above. Do let us know if you can make all 3 days.

Welcome on board!

Sam.

[flaxcottage]

Sorry, no messages in my inbox.

I'll keep on looking. Thanks for adding me to the list. 3 days will be good, yes please.

[Samwise]

Ah. Then your email address may be out of date in the forum.. Can you update it in the user control panel?

Cheers,

Sam.

[flaxcottage]

Problem solved. Email address IS up to date but for some reason your message ended up in my spam folder. You weren't selling double-glazing in a past life were you?

Will reply via email, thanks.

[Samwise]

ah, cool. it's generally better if we try to keep things on the public forum anyway but Arcadian has been sending the final details of this event by email, just so we can keep an eye on the numbers and make sure we're not surprised by overwhelming crowds.

Sam.

[Samwise]

For those wondering when it's all starting, the conference room is booked from 18:00 on Friday but it will depend on everyone's individual travel arrangements when we all arrive. I will probably get there late-ish because it will take me a few hours to get to the hotel, after work.

If people arrive early then the best place to make camp is going to be the pub on site, attached to the hotel. I imagine everyone will start to congregate in there after checking in, until we can get access to the conference room. Early birds can post to this topic to say they've arrived, to help everyone find each other.

Sam.

[Prime]

If people arrive early then the best place to make camp is going to be the pub on site, attached to the hotel. I imagine everyone will start to congregate in there after checking in, until we can get access to the conference room. Early birds can post to this topic to say they've arrived, to help everyone find each other.

**IF** we can get onto the pub wi-fi which I remember being slightly erratic last year.

But at least some of us know each other by sight now so should at least be able to wander up and say hi

BTW is there anything anyone wants me to bring as it looks like I'll be driving up this year, so won't be limited by what I can carry in a train....just by the boot of the car.

Cheers.

Phill.

[Samwise]

I never expect pub WiFi to work so it's a nice surprise when it does. lol. I was assuming 3G.

Weird question, but did you have a colour Tatung Einstein (or black and white for that matter)?

I have a disk (familiar to most Acorn users) that I've wanted to try out in rl for ages ...

Sam.

[flaxcottage]

If people arrive early then the best place to make camp is going to be the pub on site, attached to the hotel.
Sam.

Getting better by the minute.

[hoglet]

Sam,

I'll be coming for all three days. Just not sure how much "stuff" to bring...

I suppose it depends what project I want to work on, and also what others are interested in. Here's the stuff I have going on at the moment:

• Atom GODIL. I could bring along my real Atom with the GODIL fitted, a mouse, SID audio, UART, etc.
• Atom FPGA (Papilio and Olimex boards). The has recently undergone a major refactoring to share code with the Atom GODIL project. I could try to support additional FPGA boards, if anyone has one (e.g. the Papilio Pro)
• Atom Software Archive. There are a few recent releases we could add into a V8 release. (BeebSID13, Flappy Brid, Atomic Joe Blade, TCCOTMV). Anything else?
• Beeb Tube ULA Reverse Engineering. BigEd and Chris Smith managed to get hold of a high resolution copy of a check plot for the Tube ULA from Steve Furber, one of the original Acorn hardware engineers. This is a massive 1.8GB 30000x25000 pixel PNG. I've been trying to write some Java to extract the metallization layer, from which we can hopefully derive connectivity, transistors and eventually logic gates. Here's a sample (approx 1/9 of the whole design)
  https://www.dropbox.com/s/gig5p2nn0b667 ... 140802.png. The red lines and green blobs represent the connectivity that has been extracted. Still a few mistakes, but it's getting better by the day. The main reason I'm interested in doing this is so we can have an FPGA Tube implementation for use in Atom second processors. Continued in this thread.

Are any of these of interest to people?

Dave

[daveejhitchins]

In case anyone is interested . . . I'll be working on the Plus 5 (in the middle of refurbishing one of Arcadian's) and 1MHz cartridge in respect of getting them both working with the DataCentre. Mark's had it working with the Plus 5 so I'll be able to look at the timing and compare it to the 1MHz cartridge, which, by the way was designed to support the Music 500 - so I'll bring that too.

List of gear:

Yokogawa 'scope
Logic analyser
Soldering iron
Desolder station
Elk with Plus 1
Elk with Plus 1 and Plus 3
Drives for above
Device Programmers
Music 500 with ROM and software (Anyone got music for this??)

I also still have the ViewSonic PF775 up for grabs FOC! (I've attached the 'spec' sheet)

If you can think of anything else I should bring, let me know - any of the kits etc?

Dave H

pf775.pdf.zip

(113.23 KiB) Downloaded 136 times

[flaxcottage]

If you can think of anything else I should bring, let me know - any of the kits etc?

I have recently acquired a PRES AP3 which is ADFS only at the moment. I should like it to be DFS as well. Any help, advice, equipment to accomplish that would be much appreciated, thanks.

[daveejhitchins]

I have recently acquired a PRES AP3 which is ADFS only at the moment. I should like it to be DFS as well. Any help, advice, equipment to accomplish that would be much appreciated, thanks.

No problem, John . . . You need the DFS ROM, SRAM and a removal of the 'link', if fitted. I'll bring along the parts.

Dave H

[flaxcottage]

No problem, John . . . You need the DFS ROM, SRAM and a removal of the 'link', if fitted. I'll bring along the parts.

Dave H

Thanks. You are a star.

[flaxcottage]

In addition to upgrading an AP3 to DFS I was hoping to bring/do;

• a short Econet; just a master and fileserver and connectors
  upgrade a BBC B to econet
  repair a SJ clock box
  build a 5.25"/3.5" dual disc drive
  convert an Amiga external FDD to work on a BBC
  tools, components, etc to accomplish the above

The Econet should be able to handle 6 stations if anyone feels the need.

A whole weekend devoted to hacking - heaven.

[richardtoohey]

I enjoy reading the write-ups and seeing the odd picture (and sometimes they are very odd!), so if you guys can manage any of that during your drinking retro-computing, that would be appreciated.

But I'm sure you'll all have fun.

[jbnbeeb]

I'm not very good with hardware, though I could do a bit of soldering if people show me what they want doing. Otherwise I'll be bringing my beeb with data centre. I could also bring an electron with plus 1 and the martinb upurs circuit which has user ports and fits in cartridge slot.

I will be working on my biplane Dogfight game.. If I get two player input plus bullets firing I'll be happy..

Samwise, do you still have any of those joystick converters? I lost mine at Wakefield show earlier this year.

[Prime]

I guess I'll bring....

Atom & related stuff, AtomSID, video boards etc, will prolly bring clone for those that have not seen it.
Will possibly bring soldering iron & Rigol scope + tools.
Device programmers : [EE/E/Flash]ROM, AVR, CPLD, PIC + Laptop.
Components & boards for BeebSID, Plus3 RAMROM etc.

Could even bring my QL plus addons for that I have been working on....not Acorn I know but....

Cheers.

Phill.

[Samwise]

@jbnbeeb, I don't I'm afraid - I returned the unsold Retro Adapters back to mojo. I think he's currently sold out, but it may well be worth emailing him to check the latest status.

@Prime, no chance of the Einstein, then?

Sam.

[Samwise]

@jbnbeeb, actually, Paul might just refer you to Wolfsoft who I think still sell them and a bunch of the connectors.

[oss003]

Hi guys,

I'll be bringing my laptop with my software projects because if I pass the customs at the airport with all my Atomic stuff, they will think I'm a terrorist with an Atomic bomb .....

However I'll bring my RAM/ROM board for reprogramming the CPLD for BBC mode.

@hoglet Are you bringing your programming device?

Greetings
Kees

[hoglet]

@hoglet Are you bringing your programming device?

Yup, I'll bring both of them.

Dave

[Prime]

@Prime, no chance of the Einstein, then?

Sure I'll try and remember to pack that too.

Cheers.

Phill.