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

[jgharston]

I'm just down the road in Sheffield, so could come up on the day.

I've only just woken up, so won't make it.

[davidb]

Looks like fun. Now we know why the forum is so quiet.

[Samwise]

Yep, the afternoon wears on but the enthusiasm has yet to diminish!

[roland]

Only two pictures ???

[paulv]

Only two pictures ???

Yeah! Where's the beeb with a Watford digitizer streaming live images to the web??

Paul

[sPhilMainwaring]

Only two pictures ???

Yeah! Where's the beeb with a Watford digitizer streaming live images to the web??

Paul

They're here:

http://live.stream.com/acorn/hackfest/d ... ye/$.video

[flaxcottage]

Only two pictures ???

Yeah! Where's the beeb with a Watford digitizer streaming live images to the web??

Paul

They're here:

http://live.stream.com/acorn/hackfest/d ... ye/$.video

Oh no they are not!

[Samwise]

You want more pics of our gloriously photogenic group?

Here ya go ...

[flaxcottage]

A great day at the Halifax HackFest.

My personal goal was to add an Econet interface to one of my Beebs.

Thankfully the operation was performed successfully and the Beeb survived, though not without some tribulation. I chose a Beeb with a MMC interface and MMC ROM - big mistake!

The MMC ROM and interface just are not compatible with Econet using NFS 3.34! So now I have an MMC interface to fit to another Beeb.

During today we set up the biggest Econet in Halifax and possibly the UK. We had two fileservers - a level 3 on a BBC Master and a 'special' running on an A4000. Connecting these together were no less than TWO bridges.

[roland]

You want more pics of our gloriously photogenic group?
Here ya go ...

Thank you! Looks real good with all those beers And computers of course I'm looking forward to the Dutch TechSat on August 30....

[aerworuld]

Cant see many Elks though gang!

[IanS]

A great day at the Halifax HackFest.

...

During today we set up the biggest Econet in Halifax and possibly the UK. We had two fileservers - a level 3 on a BBC Master and a 'special' running on an A4000. Connecting these together were no less than TWO bridges.

Here is the machine list:-

[IanS]

Cant see many Elks though gang!

There were at least two as you enter the room.

[daveejhitchins]

I've been working on the Elk Plus 5, all weekend. I now have what I hope to be an accurate schematic of the Plus 5. I'll start a new thread, tomorrow, and post it there.

The goal was to check that Mark's DataCentre worked (he has said that it does!). Unfortunately, I haven't managed it. The Plus 5 has been fully cleaned, all IC's removed - sockets fitted with new IC's. I've also checked that all the signals are OK at the 1MHz socket - they appear OK (?).

I have a question with Mark and I'm waiting to a reply . . . Maybe next week.

I'll keep everyone informed in the new thread.

Dave H

[flaxcottage]

Did some Electron work on Friday evening. DJH kindly upgraded the AP3 I recently acquired so that it is an AP3/4.

Looking forward to playing with (sorry using) the up-rated Electron in my new Man-Cave.

Couldn't be there Sunday. Busy moving wardrobes etc.

The meet was a great experience. The support and expertise of everyone was tremendous. Thanks to all. I now feel much more confident in my skills as a hacker and look forward to doing lots more - I have a BIG list.

[tricky]

Looks like it is going really well, sorry I couldn't make it back from SIGGRAPH Canada in time
Richard

[paulv]

Looks like you all had fun

Sadly due to work commitments I couldn't make it at all, I'm even working today in between taking breaks to check out the Dave's A3000 with the scope.

Hopefully, in the next year, work circumstances will change so that I can actually get out an about more and not be tied to a PC for work 24/7 so if there's another event next year I might actually be able to say yes if/when invited to attend.

Paul

[jbnbeeb]

Hi,
Here's a little ramble/write up:


I was able to come along late Friday but sadly had to leave first thing Sunday morning. What a great get together - I wish I could've stayed for it's entirety! It was great to meet some old and new faces there and see what projects people were working on. My project - a bi-plane dogfight game - didn't make much progress at all! I had so much fun chatting with everyone (whilst complaining I couldn't concentrate- I wonder why, what with my constant talking?) - that only a few new lines of code were done.

Along the way, Phil and Kees gave me some great tips for my coding efforts; Kees also took me through his fantastic implementation of Flappy Birds on the Atom. I think I understood most of Kees's cunning routines and his use of tables of address offsets for rapid plotting to screen. Kees and Dave(Hoglet) also took me through their adaptation of the BBC MOS for Atom.

Dave (Hoglet) patiently showed me his very impressive project to reverse engineer the Tube ULA which is progressing very nicely. Both Ian and AlanD took the time out to explain the steps involved in implementing circuits on an FPGA.

In between this, DaveM (Arcadian) and I got to enthuse and show various games on my Beeb which was cool as I got to see some games I'd not known about previously that were really good. It was great to see Pete (Samwise) and have animated discussions on pressing topics like Stardot, mass use of iPads and the finer points of buying retro kit on ebay.


On the Sat evening, we all had an excellent meal out in Halifax. Thanks very much DaveH for the lift in to town and back. Upon returning we continued on our projects for while longer, aided by the very generous booze-and-snacks run that Samwise did (thanks very much )... After consuming a couple of JD-and-Cokes.. I seem to recall a moment where I became even more grumpy than usual and had a little rant about parents with younger children. I'm not sure why now! Hopefully this amused everyone and the evening finished off with a very comprehensive review of excellent Beeb demo tunes, ably conducted by DaveM, with assistance and advice from PhilM. I hadn't really appreciated how C64-like a Beeb can sound until now.

Other projects that I saw going on where John's (Flaxcottage) Econet-to-Beeb fitting, and IanS testing various bits of Beeb and Archimedes hardware, including extensive Econet testing. PhilM, having done a grand tour of England in his camper fan, had made it along to do a sterling job of repairing his Atom.

Overall, a fantastic Acorn hack fest meet up. I really look forward to going to another one. By then, I hope to have completed my bi-plane game, and am thinking about moving to a more hardware oriented idea for my next project.. so perhaps I too will also be wielding a soldering iron and squinting over schematics at the next one!

Thanks to everyone that attended.. you were all great company and I really enjoyed the get together.

jbnbeeb
[edit = corrected names in the post]

[aerworuld]

^^ top write up thank you!

[richardtoohey]

^^ top write up thank you!

Hear, hear! Thank you.

[Prime]

Bit late but here's my pictures of the weekend's proceedings.....

Cheers.

Phill.

[oss003]

Hi guys,

I got home without problems and had a great time in Halifax. Meeting you guys was great and also to match faces to the STH avatars .... It was also interesting to have a look at the projects everybody was working on. Some of them were pretty impressive and it's nice to see there's so much expertise available on the forum.

For the first time I witnessed, a realtime capacitor blow of an Archimedes power supply ..... I don't know if the hotel was pleased with the smell but we didn't have to pack our stuff and leave the room so I guess it was ok

I showed my Atomic Flappy Bird conversion with SID music added to it. Seems to be pretty difficult even on the low framerate. I'll publish it soon on the Retrosoftware site. Hoglet and I were also working on expanding the memory map of an Atom in BBC mode with sideways RAM at EXTROM1 and it worked. It worked on a real Atom and on Hoglets FPGA Atom.

It was a productive weekend where problems were discussed, solved and created
Thanks to Jason, John, PhilM, PhillH, DaveB, Alan, Ian, Gary and DaveH for the great company and nice conversations. DaveM and Peter, thank you for organising this hackfest, it was a nice venue with great food and drinks and a short walk to the hotel room. I'm looking forward to next years meeting .....

Oops .... @DaveH please say thanks to mrs H for the cake ....



Greetings
Kees

[Samwise]

The cake was fabulous - I strongly advise anyone who missed this gathering to get their act together next time. /Soooo/ good!

Sam.

[daveejhitchins]

Mrs H says thank you - thank you. And then told me off for leaving it until Sunday to open it

Dave H

[RobC]

Disappointed that I couldn't make it but was on holiday in France.

Did happen to see this on the bus between our hotel and Disneyland Paris on Sunday though :

It had been working correctly in the morning so I didn't realise it was running on RISC OS!

[Dave Footitt]

Looks great. Sorry I couldn't make it, was in Cornwall.

I always find it quite hard to get anything constructive done at these things, but it does give me a boost both before and after the event, and it's great to see what other people are doing

[sPhilMainwaring]

Hi everyone

Write up (including a video of my big mystery e-bay bid) to follow but, for now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyAvbdUOyC4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClsDUvbZ7LU

If anyone is particularly camera shy, let me know and I'll remove the links

Enjoy!

[IanS]

Hi everyone

Write up (including a video of my big mystery e-bay bid) to follow but, for now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyAvbdUOyC4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClsDUvbZ7LU

Are you ever going to tell us what you were bidding on?

[oss003]

Yes Phil, save us from suffering .......

[Arcadian]

I know ... but I'll let Phil spill the beans!